Meghan54
Lifer
and you get asked to help "fix" it.......RUN!!!
Why? Well, we were given a bit of property on Cape Cod which included a house that had had a hoarder in it, who'd been hoarding there since 1960. And the hoarding, while not involving garbage at all, did spill outside and took over almost an acre of the ~3ac of the property.
It's sad, really. When we moved here 18 months ago to care for the hoarder (my wife's father) after his heart attack, we worked for 3 months trying to clean up, just my wife and myself. But we're both in our late 50's, and after filling up a 15 cu yd and two 20 cu yd roll off dumpsters, we gave up, esp. when her father began crying/complaining about us getting rid of his "good stuff."
Now that he passed last December and we're selling and moving, we've restarted the cleaning out of the house. I'm sitting here looking at some of his "good stuff", at least 60 old cameras----most of which are old Kodak Instamatics. He bought damned near every old, worthless piece of crap camera he saw over the years....yard sales, thrift stores, etc. And they were stuck everywhere, under the sink, inside a non-working dishwasher, everywhere.
And that was only one item he "saved"....others include paperback books. I quit counting at 1,000 and that barely scratched the surface. We've already thrown away a 5 cu yd dumpster full of paperbacks and have tons more. There were rooms that you could only enter the door, the rest of the room was walled off with crap.
Then there are the worthless CB radios, broken electronics, broken small appliances (he'd buy used shit, use it till it invariably broke a week after purchase, then save it to "fix it" later---which never happened), and on and on. I swear, if it had a cord, he'd buy it.
Word to the wise.....if a family member is found to be a hoarder, save your sanity and frustration----move them out and burn the house. It's the only way.
Why? Well, we were given a bit of property on Cape Cod which included a house that had had a hoarder in it, who'd been hoarding there since 1960. And the hoarding, while not involving garbage at all, did spill outside and took over almost an acre of the ~3ac of the property.
It's sad, really. When we moved here 18 months ago to care for the hoarder (my wife's father) after his heart attack, we worked for 3 months trying to clean up, just my wife and myself. But we're both in our late 50's, and after filling up a 15 cu yd and two 20 cu yd roll off dumpsters, we gave up, esp. when her father began crying/complaining about us getting rid of his "good stuff."
Now that he passed last December and we're selling and moving, we've restarted the cleaning out of the house. I'm sitting here looking at some of his "good stuff", at least 60 old cameras----most of which are old Kodak Instamatics. He bought damned near every old, worthless piece of crap camera he saw over the years....yard sales, thrift stores, etc. And they were stuck everywhere, under the sink, inside a non-working dishwasher, everywhere.
And that was only one item he "saved"....others include paperback books. I quit counting at 1,000 and that barely scratched the surface. We've already thrown away a 5 cu yd dumpster full of paperbacks and have tons more. There were rooms that you could only enter the door, the rest of the room was walled off with crap.
Then there are the worthless CB radios, broken electronics, broken small appliances (he'd buy used shit, use it till it invariably broke a week after purchase, then save it to "fix it" later---which never happened), and on and on. I swear, if it had a cord, he'd buy it.
Word to the wise.....if a family member is found to be a hoarder, save your sanity and frustration----move them out and burn the house. It's the only way.
