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Roxanne had no loved ones supporting her, no motivation to change, and limited time and physical energy. She had decades of hoarding under her belt and she was stuck in a fantasy past. She had resisted therapy and she had no outside interests. Roxanne had too many strikes against her for an effective recovery.

A few months later, we got news from the social worker that Roxanne’s cancer had gone into remission and she no longer needed hospice care.

That was a remarkable gift for Roxanne, but unfortunately, without other positive support in her life, I can only imagine that if she is still with us, Roxanne’s sitting in that smoke-filled trailer, full of stuff, waiting for her daughter to visit.

BEN

I stop by to visit Ben, the “pizza man” and late-stage hoarder, every few months to encourage him to let me help clean out his house, but he’s still not interested. Now he has three identical Volvo station wagons, each filled to the brim with empty pizza boxes, half-used bottles of pizza sauce, old pepperoni, and other food trash. At this point, the three cars have cost him more than it would have cost to clean up the house. Ben will probably have to buy a fourth car pretty soon and start filling that up. The house is definitely a Stage 5 situation, and his neighbors are starting to complain because the airplane and car parts are spilling out into the yard.

Ben is still in denial about his hoarding. When I mention it, he will talk about it for a few minutes but then change the subject. He can talk your ear off about almost any topic, but Ben won’t talk about his hoarding, or the fact that his wife and kids have left him because of it. I keep reminding him that I care enough to help him get his life back, but I expect that Ben won’t do anything until he is forced to. Eventually a building inspector will visit, and the process of condemning Ben’s property will begin.

The only way a cleanup can help Ben is if he admits that he has a problem that is ruining his life, and decides he wants to change it. Unless he can do that, Ben will end up just like Margaret, waffling between clean and cluttered for the rest of his life, and resenting “those people” who keep making him get rid of his valuable stuff. It’s really a shame. The man is brilliant and could add so much to so many lives. Instead he chooses to live a lie in complete solitude with his stuff when he could be acknowledging the truth and working toward recovery.

CANDACE

With her OCD, alcoholism, grief over her mother’s death, and advanced Stage 4 house, Candace seemed like a hoarder who had an overwhelming number of barriers to staying clean. Any one of those issues could keep her stuck in hoarding, but Candace is a strong woman who brought real enthusiasm to her recovery. However, she got bogged down in several challenges.

Before we would even take her cleanup job, I told Candace that she had to stop drinking. She poured out her liquor and started attending AA meetings again. She threw herself into the cleaning. Afterward, she started getting estimates for repairs and for adapting one of her spare rooms for temporarily fostering rescue dogs.

Candace was on a high after her cleanup; she was thrilled to have her life back. She was full of energy and plans for a promising new future. But a few weeks later, Candace slipped into the hoarder hangover. Because Candace didn’t have much of a life outside her hoarding, she got stuck feeling unsure of who her new “self” was. Candace felt overwhelmed by the repairs she had planned. It felt to her like she had taken on too much too soon, and she slipped back into some of her former comfort behavior. She stopped seeing her therapist and quit taking her OCD medication. Then she started drinking again.

Candace had a lot of challenges and not very many support tools. She didn’t have family or close friends, only her AA meeting contacts. She tried attending a hoarder support group, but she felt that was depressing instead of encouraging.