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The job doing inventory in a warehouse had been located through an organization that trained and found placement for workers with special needs. But Roger had been living alone and on his own terms for so long that he wasn’t able to meet some basic societal expectations. He couldn’t get to work on time. And when he did show up, he had not bathed, had food stains on his clothes, and crunchy things in his beard. He had trouble staying focused and carrying on simple conversations.

Roger was let go. After that, he went back to hoarding.

Roger’s family had done everything right, and Roger worked hard. But without therapy and some connection to the outside world, he couldn’t maintain a clutter-free house. Kathy isn’t sure that Roger can ever live alone, and he may need home health care support to make sure he eats and bathes.

Roger’s family is dedicated to supporting him and making sure he has a place to live, but at this point, Kathy feels like she has tried everything to help him be clean. She is working on accepting and loving Roger for who he is.

Advanced hoarders are all on the same journey that Roger is, moving back and forth along a continuum from clutter to tidy. Their goal may be merely to stay closer to the clean end of the scale, and their loved ones need to be content with that. Luckily, Roger’s living conditions are safe, and his family is accepting the reality of his situation.

WENDY AND SAM

After their cleanup and meetings with social workers and doctors to talk about the prescription pill hoarding, newlywed seniors Wendy and Sam were able to keep their house clean by following some rules and checklists. Sam, who had never been a hoarder, wasn’t really contributing to the problem, and he was able to support Wendy, an early-stage hoarder herself, in her efforts to stay clean. Because she wanted this new relationship to work, Wendy had the motivation to stick with it.

Wendy’s adult daughter and young granddaughter had been living with them, but after the cleanup Wendy realized that having extra people in the house was a stress button for her. Also, her daughter, having grown up in a hoarder house, had hoarding tendencies herself. She and the granddaughter were working on turning that around by applying the same cleanup rules Wendy and Sam had. But Wendy could see that it was a struggle to have four people in a small house, with at least two of them being recovering hoarders. She asked her daughter to find her own apartment.

Once the house was clean, Wendy and Sam were faced with maintenance issues that Wendy had ignored for years. Also, for the first time ever, they were doing weekly cleaning—dusting, vacuuming, and washing dishes. They decided that the house was just too much work for them to maintain. After Wendy’s daughter moved out, Wendy and Sam put the house on the market with the goal of moving to a smaller low-maintenance space.

Throughout the process, Wendy was being honest with herself, and by moving, she imposed space limits on herself. With this, combined with her newly learned cleaning techniques and the support from her children, hers has become a success story.

MICHELLE

Once her house was clean and de-moused, Michelle’s two children were returned to her from foster care. Michelle responded well to antianxiety medication. The house stayed clean, so Michelle’s social worker considered her a success story. As far as he could see, Michelle had cleaned up, passed inspection, gotten her children back, and was in compliance with her medications. So he closed her case.

A few months after, Michelle decided that she felt so great and things were going so well that she didn’t need her medication anymore. Once she quit taking it, she slipped back into anxiety and hoarding, not an unlikely scenario for a Stage 5 hoarder. The house isn’t as bad as it was before, but Michelle is definitely on that same path again.

During Michelle’s cleaning we had found some drugs in the house, which she said her son had brought in. About a year after the cleanup, I heard from Michelle