Can anyone help me deal with a hoarding mother?

caitlynzmom, this is something I wished I would have done earlier on when it came time to help my parents with various things. Make a list of everything, and I mean everything you do for your parents.... now cross off half the items on the list... then cross off a couple more things. Keep that list handy, so when your parents ask for you to do something you can say "sorry, I can't possibly do that", and keep it short, even if your parents throw out some guilt your way.

What happens is that we, the grown child, are enabling our parents to keep up their own lifestyle while we need to make major changes to our own. I bet 10 years ago if you asked your parents about caregiving, saying you would need to quit your job, and spend less time with your daughter, your parents would have said "no, do not do that".

As for the hoarding, I seen enough shows on TV to notice that is it almost impossible to curb the hoarding, it will continue no matter what. There are some successes, but not many. Most caregiving Agency will not send their employees into a hoarding situation.

Sadly we need to wait for an emergency situation before we can finally get a parent to move into Assisted Living if they can budget such the cost, or into a nursing home where Medicaid [different from Medicare] will fund the cost.

I had to do that 'wait' with my own parents [in their 90's], wait for that panic call, run down to the house, then call 911. In the mean time you are sitting on pins and needles every time the telephone rings, and have many sleepless nights, while the parents are sleeping soundly with no care in the world. Not fair, is it.

@freqflyer thanks for the reply. My mother thinks it is the children's responsibility to care for her and my Dad, because they raised us. I told her that is very selfish, especially given the fact that she is turning her grandchild away from any sort of relationship with her. I realize the toxicity of this thinking and am starting to let go. The manipulation is the toughest thing to deal with. She is a master! Yes, I think it will take some tragic event to force the move to other housing, I am preparing my mental mind to accept the outcome. I have a sibling who lives 3 hours away and she constantly feeds stree regarding this situation. She is the executor of their affairs so unfortunately I can't totally block her from my life. Anyway, thank you for your insight, honestly I think I just need a neutral place to vent, as the dysfunction of growing up with a narcxisitic mother and father have result in siblings that really can't effectively deal with my complex situation. They just don't get it as they aren't dealing with it everyday in a physical capacity.

Oh, the old "your parents raised you" theme. I remember one time I was grumbling about driving my very elderly parents over hill and dale. A co-worker said to me, well your parents took care of you when you were young. To which I replied, well my parents weren't in their 60's when I was a child, big difference.

Dear Caitlyn,

You are an amazing daughter for doing as much as you have. I know its not easy. About the hoarding issue, its a very tough one. My father and mother grew up poor and believed in keeping everything! I tried to do a little here and there to clean up or donate some items. My sister said that even made my dad mad. He said what was the harm in leaving everything.

I always felt so responsible for everything. All my siblings left and I was the only one left to clean as it were. I'm not sure if a social worker can talk to them on your behalf. Maybe an independent third party is what is needed to get through to them.

Take 10 steps backwards from your parents, who need more care and tending than you can give.

They are competent to make their own bad choices; you make your own good ones.

You have a 16 yo daughter who has just had her world rocked by her parents' divorce. That is where your obligations lies right now.

I have a friend whose mother was a hoarder. Once the EMS and fire department had to work together to cut a hole in her bedroom wall to get her mother out of the house.
Sadly, her dad died before the mother. He wouldn't leave his wife either.
The mother ended up in a NH after the dad was gone. He had been the care giver but he enabled the mother in all her issues.
After the mother died, the daughters had the chore of cleaning the house. Two floods made a nice mess.
Do not allow your mom to suck the life out of you. This is a critical time for your daughter and for you.
If you could get the dad out, she might follow but probably not.
Get yourself and daughter into therapy. You have to detach.

Your parents' hoarding is Not Your Fault. It is not your responsibility. If they wanted your help you could provide some. But they don't, so you can't.

If the hoarding is hazardous to their health -- attracting varmints, threatening to topple over on them, making egress from some rooms dangerous -- then report them to Adult Protective Services. If it poses no danger, let them live in it.

You need to detach from your parents. You need to nurture your daughter. I'm sure you know this, but having dysfunctional upbringing may make that especially hard. If you are having a difficult time doing what you know you need to do, seek counseling.

Good Morning,
You might consider hiring a Certified Professional Organizer® who specializes in hoarding and seniors. That is what I do. It is my experience that bringing in a "non-interested party" can be much more effective in clearing excess clutter and creating a safer environment.

My mother hoards. She is a child of the Depression. My parents owned a farmhouse, that had lots and lots of hidden storage space. When they filled the storage space, they hoarded up the barn. When they filled that, they hoarded up the garage (dumb idea). Then, they purchased sheds and hoarded that up. They were not considered hoarders, because they had money so that they could hide the hoard and look 'normal'.

I'm familiar with hoarding because I have two friends who hoard. Hoarders need to be treated by a mental health expert who has specific training in this disorder AND the treatment needs to happen at the person's home. Office / Clinic / Hospital based treatment for hoarding has been proven to be ineffective and can make the problem worse.

Before going ahead, you want to assess how much of a problem hoarding actually is. Here is a link to the Internal OCD Foundation's Clutter Image Rating Scale: http://www.hoardingconnectioncc.org/Hoarding_cir.pdf This rating scale has nine pictures of living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens, in various levels of clutter. It does take some judgement, but what you do is choose the picture that best describes the level of clutter you are seeing. If the average level of clutter is similar to rooms #4 or higher, you really do have reason to be concerned. I live in federally subsidized housing. Where I live, if your place looked like that in #2 or higher during an annual inspection, you would get into trouble.

The first thing I would do is contact your Council for the Aging. Hoarding is a common problem amongst seniors. My local COA has a social worker who is trained to treat hoarding. Not only does she do home visits, she has a group for 'clutterers' that meets regularly at the local senior center. She's in contact with local training programs and can arrange for a hoarder to work with an occupational therapist or social work trainee who is learning to treat hoarding. These trainees are well supervised and enthusiastic. Unfortunately, these sort of training programs are few and far between. If you don't know / can't find a local Council for the Aging, I would call your state's Office of Elder Affairs--they'll know who to talk to. If that doesn't work, call your state senator or state representative's office. They have a constituent services representative, who will work on your behalf to figure out who you should call.

In my area, we have Elder Services--which is a different organization (with different eligibility rules) than the Council for the Aging. I would try contacting them as well.

If this doesn't work, I would consider consulting a private Elder Care Coordinator who has mental health training and experience. Mine was an advanced practice nurse who was a nursing supervisor for the geriatric unit at a well-known psychiatric hospital. She was very good at sussing out the situation and helping you create a plan as to where to go from here. She was experienced organizing interventions, moderating family meetings, supervising care, etc. I would consider going this route.

This is important: hiring an organizer / cleaning service to help your parents de-hoard is only a temporary solution. The research is very clear on this--when hoarders are forced to clean up, but the hoarding itself is not professionally treated, they will continue to hoard and it's likely that they will recreate the problem within a few years. This is why hoarders need to work with someone with mental health training. In my friend's case, she did get a cleaning service to help--but only after she made significant improvements in her hoarding behavior and was actively getting rid of junk. My friend 'graduated' from the mental health intervention, to the 'Certified Professional Organizer' and is doing really, really well.

If the hoarding problem is serious, potentially life threatening AND your parents don't / can't do anything about it, then it's time to call Adult Protective Services. Remember that your parents are adults and adults are free to make some pretty dumb decisions.

Your first responsibility is to your own family, especially your 16 year old daughter.  She comes first... if it's between taking her to a band performance and visiting your parents, please, take your daughter to band--and enjoy the performance. If it's between taking your daughter on a trip to visit colleges or minding your parents, go take your daughter to visit colleges. (Visiting colleges is fun!) It's not your job to wait hand and foot on your parents. 

Does someone have power of attorney? I did for my mom. When she went into the hospital and a follow-up rehab, I "remodeled" her house! We told her "the doctor" said she needed a safe and clean environment. She actually liked the result! (Her physical state had gone down a good bit at this point and had a caregiver. (She liked the swanky assisted-living facility also that she later moved into.) My mom was never the "mean" type, though, always gentle and kind.

I feel like I'm reading an excerpt from my life. Although my father passed away 12 yrs ago, my hoarding toxic mother hasn't changed her habits. If anything, they've gotten worse. I had social services come in when my mom was in the hospital for knee surgery. They didn't say it but I lead her to believe if the junk didn't go she wouldn't be released to home but assisted living. She didn' t want that and I cleared out the mess. I had to call for an extra, oversized trash pick up that cost her over $200. The house was clean from top to bottom, by me, and when I brought her home she was actually happy! Her house was clean and clutter free. However, it didn't take long for the hoarding to start again. The next time she had to be hospitalized I just went in and dumped it. Another $200+ in fees. She's now 89 and it's a hazard in so many ways. She also has control and trust issues and I'm her POA and only living child. I should have prefaced this by saying when it all started I lived in another state and was a single mother to 3 teenage boys. At a time they needed their mom the most I had to leave every Friday night and drive to their house and drive back on Sundays. After my youngest son graduated from high school I made the decision to move back to my hometown. It was one of the worst decisions I ever made! It was so hard on my boys who were then 18 and up and alot happened with them and I can't go back and change it. My advice to you is concentrate on your daughter and yourself FIRST. If there is time and you can turn this into a life lesson for her, good but she comes first.
I'm almost 60 yrs old. I've spent the last 20 of it trying to do what I thought was best for my mom and my own health is in the toilet. She's healthier than I am and I'll probably die before she does.
I'm telling you all this to stop you now, before you make the same mistakes I did. Take care of you and your daughter, you come first. Whatever spare time you have, try to involve your daughter so she understands but don't force her.
I'm praying for you and I pray you find a good job that will support you and your daughter, that you and your daughter can work together on the grandparent issues and take care of yourself first. You're no good to anyone if you end up like me. Prayers and goodluck to you, you're a great mom and daughter, don't ever forget it!

It took a catastrophe to start the cleaning and decluttering (to put it mildly). My mother was in a car accident and spent a week in the hospital. When she came home, a visiting nurse came to her house. Two days later an investigator from Health and Senior Services came to her house. The result was that she was ordered to correct the "safety hazard" - all four rooms of the first floor. I finally had to walk away from my mother. She fights anyone who tries to clean her house and get rid of the hoarded mess. Waist deep in her bedroom. Screaming at me for trying to remove useless stuff. She made sure that I knew she was angry every minute that I was there to help. As a result, 80% of her hoarded stuff was moved to the second floor rather than removed from the house. This resulted in her dragging things back into the first floor and re-creating the obstacle course that will eventually cause her death by falling. It's a daily task to clear the pathways. I got a sinus infection from being in her house due to the cat hair, dust, dirt, and who knows what else was in the air. Finally, she was emotionally and verbally abusive to me one last time and I left. I thought I was having a stroke or heart attack. I thought I was going to faint in her kitchen. I can't risk that again. I won't risk it. I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown in my car after I left. It's been over three weeks since then. I feel so much better physically and mentally. I told her that if she needed anything she could call me and I would try to take care of what she needed, but from a distance. I won't go inside her house if I can avoid it. I take care of her checking account, I pay her bills, I keep track of her medical appointments, but I will not be alone with her. I felt guilty at first,but no longer. I told my brother he would have to deal with her in person because I will not do it any more. That includes giving her rides to her doctor appointments. She doesn't treat my brother or anyone else with the venom she spews on me. I can barely talk to her on the phone because after about five minutes she begins her abuse and I hang up. It's sad and gut-wrenching to detach, but the alternative is the risk of some permanent physical and mental damage due to the stress. I simply won't take the risk anymore.

It sounds like your parents are of sound mind. If that is the case - they can choose to hoard or not, move to AL or not, hire help or not. This is their monkey not yours. You mention that you are a newly single mom of a 16 year old girl. It sounds like there were some unpleasant changes - I think you need to focus on your daughter. She probably will need your emotional support - I remember 16! Also - you said you need to work. Focus on your daughter, focus on getting a job, and determine what little time you have for your parents & what you will do and NO MORE. Good luck to you.

Your post contradicts itself--you say that you find yourself getting more involved with their care, and then you have to "release the ties or it will have a negative affect" on you & your daughter, and then proceed to ask if anyone has ideas about community resources that deal with hoarding issues, which shows that you will still be involved in the stressful issue of their hoarding.

I believe you have somewhat of a guilt complex that makes you feel as if you are expected to take care of your parents because they raised you. It is a heck of a lot easier to raise a child--even a defiant one--than "raise" an older/elderly person-----I often say it is like dealing with a defiant 11 year old in an elderly body because after 60+ years, the behavior is already set in stone & it is impossible to change it. My mother's favorite line is "Nobody is going to tell me how to live." Ironically, she constantly tries to tell me how to live & doesn't like when that same line is said back to her. You do not have to do anything against their wishes, even in your attempt to make their lives better. You can't make somebody do something they don't want to do. Give up the fight---you won't win.

If the hoarding doesn't bother them, it shouldn't bother you. Their lifestyle is different from yours & you will be extremely stressed trying to change theirs. Put your time, energy & love into raising your daughter---she is the one that needs guidance, love & advice now. Your parents are grown adults---they certainly don't need those things. If it stresses you out too much to go to their house, don't go. You don't have to witness the environment in which they CHOOSE---remember that they have CHOSEN this way---to live. They are also choosing to alienate their grand child, but again---if they are choosing to do this, they must accept the consequences.

Stop wanting control over how they live, your mother's toxic behavior & whatever other issues there are. You mother will not change, and the only way to handle toxic family members is to distance yourself from them. She has been narcissistic, selfish & manipulative since the day you were born, and probably long before that. If you make yourself available to her, she will suck the life out of you & then you will be the one that suffers because your mother doesn't care. Waiting for someone to change from being a manipulative, selfish person will result in a life-long battle because those types of people DO.NOT.CHANGE. I deal with the same thing every day--selfish, manipulative, negative, miserable mother who has been like that my entire life (and long before I came into the world, according to my 2 older brothers). My one brother says that my mother has an uncanny ability to take a happy, positive person & flip their mood around to sad, depressed & unhappy in minutes because she is totally focused on negativity & misery--she talks about the "what if's" constantly, like "What if social security is stopped? I won't be able to live!!!" and "I thought I was bad--my neighbor is worse off than me, her arms are all purple and she can hardly walk." (meanwhile, the neighbor is 91 years old, still drives, does gardening, enjoys time with her children & grandchildren). My mother has effectively driven her 3 kids away from her--my 2 brothers take her in measured doses while I live with her so I deal with it every day--and does not have relationships with any of her 4 grandchildren. Neither of them made any efforts to spend time with their grandchildren (4 boys)--my mother expected my brothers to bring their kids to her instead of my mother making an effort to go see them. It wasn't until I became an adult & living on my own that I started looking in retrospect at the things she did when I was growing up, how selfish & entitled & controlling & manipulative & negative she was, and she hasn't changed at all.

Your sister is the executor of their affairs & she lives 3 hours away? Then it is her responsibility to do something, not yours. One thing I've learned in my life is that one single person cannot be the only person that cares because it will drive that person crazy. It may bother you greatly, but if it doesn't bother your parents you can't focus on it. You can certainly let your parents know that the way they choose to live is bothersome to you & you will limit your exposure to it for your own sanity---unless it is imperative that you go to their house, you will not be there. Let them know that until they agree to live in a cleaner environment, you will not subject yourself or your teenager to an unhealthy living condition. Also let them know that if they decide that they want to clean up their home you fully support that & will make every effort to help them out.

My heart goes out to you--and follow the good advice given!

Take care of you and your daughter, first and foremost. Mom and dad come in a far distant 3rd. I liked the idea of making a list of what you do for them and culling it down to "essentials". Then culling it even more.

My mother is also a hoarder. She will no longer even allow me to throw anything away. I actually used a tissue and when I opened the trash she said "WHAT are you throwing out?" A used tissue, did she want to keep it?

The concept of a professional organizer is great--except the rate of relapse among people who are forced into cleaning is about 100%. You'd have a tidy clean home for a couple of days. I cleaned my mother's 2 years ago (WITH her permission and total involvement) and that night she went out and retrieved more than half of what I had "junked" out of the garbage bins.

You can call APS. They WILL do something. The dr doesn't care and wouldn't do a thing, why people think drs are sources of advice on cleaning is beyond me.

My mother is so attached to her junk. She feels that all this stuff is like actually having the people who gave it to her there in the house--whereas if they actually came to visit, she wouldn't enjoy that. It's a mental disorder that is still not really defined. Why some people hang on to everything that comes in the house, and some keep a house so sterile it looks as if it's not lived in....

You can clean every single day for the rest of your life and your parents will still win. Walk away from the hoard, do what you can for them and call it good. All I do now for mother is take out the huge piles of newspapers. Period.

I haven't seen anyone capable of controlling another person's hoard and have it work out. That show "Hoarders" which brought the word into use? They usually have a tagline on the show and it's almost always that the person they "helped" has gone back to hoarding. Sad.

My mother always taught me, you pay for your raising by raising your own kids. In other words "Pay it Forward".

It sounds to me you need professional help to detach. As other posts have said, you need to put your daughter first. Get caller ID and don't talk to them. They are not your responsibility, your daughter is. What would they do if you were killed in a car accident? They would manage, so let them. Take care of your daughter, she really needs you.

You can only be a doormat if you lay down on the floor.

Just adding to what everyone else said. Your daughter needs you. Focus on her, being there for her, and enjoying this time. She is 16, and these years before college will fly by. And focus on your own health. Spend some time and you'll see how many of us have experienced a decline in physical and mental health as a direct result of the caregiving. Set limits with your parents, and as for the hoarding, if it does not directly endanger life and health, and I'm thinking hallways too cluttered to walk through and rat infestations, leave it alone. Their place, their lives.

Same with assisted living. Unless you want to go through the nightmare of trying to get them declared incompetent, which would be next to impossible anyway, they can't be forced into assisted living. Their lives, their choices. Now live your life, and don't let your parents take away from the time and energy you need for your daughter and for yourself.

Mary Kathleen you just articulated what I think about parenting SO well!!

freqflyer, you hit the nail on the head. Parents were young when they raised us; now we're in our 50s or early 60s (or older) and if we're still working, we're holding onto our jobs for dear life until we can get onto Social Security. And while most of our parents, when the stork dropped us down the chimney, :) were prepared for our arrival, we are often either not prepared for an emergency intervention or if we see it coming, may not have the legal power to step in because the parent didn't want to face the need to transfer that legal power. I was utterly furious when a worker in an assisted living facility where I had to transfer my mother commented to me that she never would have put her parent there but instead would have taken care of her at home. At the time, I was single, working fulltime and my 3rd floor apartment wasn't safe for a frail elder mom who would call 911 repeatedly. I never forgot the crap I went through to try and get everything organized but it did all work out in the end. People who want to put us through this guilt trip probably didn't get painted into a corner as we were.

Please define 'hoarding' as you see it - my mom kept things too but mainly family pix & momentos that were invaluable for the family geneology

If your mom is keeping 'garbage' a.k.a. things nobody would want or use in any conceivable way then ditch it [like old newspaper/flyers]- otherwise if there family history that you could be throwing out - please define your issue closer so we can help -

If there is family value get her to explain each thing [& document it] as that could 1 - show her you care about family & 2 - show she is significant still

FYI - by doing the above she may then be more manageable because you have shown you care about the family & will know that you won't just grab everything to go to dump - good luck & let us know how she responds