Hoarding: When clutter becomes a crisis

How many times have you heard the following sentence?

"I'm such a pack rat I can't throw anything away."

Maybe you've heard a friend say, "Why do I hoard all of this stuff instead of getting rid of it?" Possibly you've even said this yourself.

But in the grand scheme of things, are you a hoarder?

Relax, probably not. Even though your home may be messier than you like, and you've saved that box of papers from high school that serves no useful purpose, true hoarding is something completely different.

"Everyone knows someone who hoards," said Jane Carroo, professional organizer and owner of Clutter Coach Co. in Palatine. "Most hoarders are of the garden variety, but they range all the way up to those who have barricaded entrances and exits and the home is dangerous to live in."

In fact, the National Study Group for Chronic Disorganization, a coalition of professional organizers and therapists, list five levels of hoarding. They range from simple clutter with no odors and minor stains and pet damage, all the way to a unliveable home with structural problems, rampant pest infestation, rotting food and nonoperational utilities.

Carroo defines hoarding as when accumulated items are getting in the way, piled up with no more space for other items.

"It's getting in the way of you running your life," she explained.

For the worst cases, the mess takes years to accumulate and consists of multiple levels with the lowest layer resembling a compost bin of rotting materials. Yet, the situation can happen quickly, too.

"It can happen over a few months when a crisis occurs," said Dorothy Breininger, professional organizer and consulting producer of the Arts & Entertainment network show "Hoarders."

Some of the triggers include illness, a death in the family, job loss, an accident, or similar trauma. Most of the time, there is also an underlying psychological issue that makes the hoarder susceptible to this behavior.

For Melissa White of Schaumburg, the hoarding problem occurred relatively quickly. As a single mother and special education teacher for the hearing-impaired, she thought she had her life back on track after moving into a two-bedroom townhouse with her son in 2007. Yet a scant two years later, her home was filled with items she couldn't bear to give away like teaching supplies, clothes, eating utensils - you name it.

"My garage was filled to the ceiling with stuff," White said. "I had a mattress on end in my living room."

White acknowledged that she has markers that pointed to underlying problems. Divorced from her first husband when her son was two, she remarried three years later only to leave two months later due to physical and sexual abuse. She subsequently lost her job and became homeless for a year.

The realization that she had a problem came during a session of Healing Hearts, a support group for abused women White helped facilitate at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington. As the women shared their stories, she realized she needed to take care of her own problem and began talking about it. One of the women gave her Carroo's contact information as someone who could help.

White was one of the lucky ones. Because of past counseling for abuse as well as post traumatic stress, she knew something had to be done, but she needed someone to help her. Most of the time, hoarders need to be slowly coaxed into the process.

"The majority of organizers are not trained to work with hoarders and it's one of the toughest aspects of being an organizer," Carroo said. "The behavior can be so ingrained in these people that it's difficult to change."

It took Carroo and her team of three additional individuals four days to straighten out White's house top to bottom. They would go through a room, sort what to keep, what to throw out, and what to give to charity. The last two categories were removed from the home.

"The best thing was I had the say of whether things went or stayed," White said.

Giving the hoarder this control is central to successful culling and organization of the hoarding space.

"If someone says you have to do this, you'll dig your heels in and resist," Breininger said. "What an organizer must do is point to an item and say, 'We will do whatever you want to with this item.' This way the hoarder is doing it on their own terms."

Breininger also noted that all hoarding is related to the identity of the individual doing it.

"Hoarders are replacing human contact, hugs and love, with stuff," she said. "I do hug the hoarders and that's probably the most effective tool in my box."

White readily admitted that her hoarding problem was rooted in her former homelessness.

"When you lose things, you start to grasp at anything you can get a hold of," She said. "I just kept everything that was given to me after I was homeless. I needed someone to tell me, 'No, you don't need five potato peelers.'"

It was also a way for her to remain invisible to others, particularly men.

"I was always helping other people, but I made myself invisible by not inviting anyone over," White said. "I was focused on others instead of focusing on myself."

While White may be considered a general hoarder, all types of items may be hoarded. Carroo indicated that some people collect coffee mugs and dolls, others are consumed by garbage.

Hoarding falls along the gender lines, too. Breininger noted that women tend to collect clothing, jewelry, children's clothing, books and nostalgic items. Men, on the other hand, often hoard tools and work-related items.

On top of it, others may unknowingly feed the hoarder's desires. A hoarder who is hooked on jewelry, for example, will be tempted by a jeweler who praises how the item looks on her, thereby enforcing the behavior.

One of the worst things that can happen is for family members or others close to the hoarder to come in and clean out the space for them.

"Usually it backfires and makes it worse," Carroo said.

Once the hoarder has had the living space cleaned out, the process doesn't end there. Ongoing maintenance is needed with either a professional organizer or a therapist monitoring the efforts.

"Almost all of these people backslide if they don't have some sort of ongoing support system," Breininger said. "Those who take the support go on to be successful and those who don't, don't succeed."

White acknowledged the difficulty in resisting the tendency to hoard. For the moment, she is relying on friend Karen Ferguson, founder of the Healing Hearts support group, to keep her honest in her efforts not to hoard. Ferguson has already caught her on several occasions. Also helping White is her 20-year-old son, Justin, who had been caught in the same trap. Yet, she wouldn't hesitate to call Carroo in again if the problem got out of hand.

"It was such a relief to get rid of all those items and donate the ones that were usable," she said.

So what about the pack rat who keeps some extra items around as back up?

The key is don't worry about it unless you start getting carried away - and if you do get carried away, get help. The slope to hoarding is steep and slippery.

"We're facing an epidemic (of hoarding) as noted by the Centers for Disease Control," Breininger said.

Don't let it get to the point where you have layers of junk covering mummified cats or you lose a $20,000 check underneath all of the garbage. Yes, that kind of stuff really does happen!

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