The 3 P's

I'm heading out of town this weekend (a romantic getaway), YAY! So don't expect any new posts for a couple of days.

I've been contacted by a woman writing a book on helping hoarders. The author is a certified professional organizer. She wrote:

Hi Jamie,

Thanks so much for getting back to me. I am an organizer and have been working "organizing" hoarders since the mid 90's. At the end of the decade I was ready to abandon the effort as hopeless. Then I stumbled onto a process that actually worked. I would not work with them until they were getting emotional support from a therapist who was familar with attachment issues, OCD and hopefully hoarding. Out of the grew a protocol we call "Collaborative Therapy for Clutter Management" - check out my web site to see more about it.

So now I'm co-authoring a book directed at clueing organizers in on the whole complex tangled web of hoarding. I have been so impressed with COH and the work Donna is doing and asked her for some imput for the book. She suggested I throw the topic out to all of you.

Some questions that spring to mind are: (my answers are in green)

1) What would you like the readers to better understand about your experiences growing up in a hoarding household?

2) Do you struggle with the same clutter issues - or are you a perfectionist/purger?
I struggle in SO many different ways, but I think the main things can be summed up with "perfectionist/purger" and let's not forget "procrastinator"! I just call them the 3 P's, let's talk about them.

First, if things aren't perfect and it looks like I'm not going to get them to be perfect - then I just ignore it completely. It's all or nothing with me. For example, I live in an older home which we are remodeling one room at a time. I have no problem keeping the "newly remodeled" rooms clean and organized. But the older rooms are easy for me to ignore because even when they are "clean" they don't look it (old stains, permanently dirty looking trim, etc...). I know I do this and I drive myself crazy, and yet I can't seem to help myself.

Then comes the procrastinating. I let little things go over time ("I'll get to that later" kind of stuff) until they become big things. I let stuff build up over time and then I look around and see that I've got myself quite a mess! (especially paperwork, it's so easy for me to just stick it in the office with the mentality of taking care of it later).

Than comes the purge! This is where I truly separate myself from a hoarder , I can get rid of stuff with the best of 'em! I only learned one way to "clean" when I was growing up, (it was more like a self taught method when I think about it) but it goes like this...

Push/throw everything into a big HUGE pile in the center of the room. I mean everything, empty out drawers, clear every space! This leaves the outer areas clear and gives you a little space to work with (important if you live with a hoarder because there is usually no real assigned place to put anything so you've got to make some). Then you throw away as much as possible and sort through what is left, finding places around the room to put the stuff.

I never consciously realized the aforementioned method until I found myself explaining to my kids the best way to clean their disaster we like to call our playroom the other day. That is the only room in my house that I would ever allow to reach this point, kids will be kids (right?).

3) How can we help to break the cycle of hoarding? What long term support would be most helpful for you and your family?

4) What are your opinions about "shoveling it all out"/abatements, versus our collaborative therapy approach of supporting the clients emotionally, or another process that has made any real lasting change - if you know anything else, let us know!?

5) Family members can be a strong and important element in our support system. How can we maximize that?

Please don't feel you have to answer every question or if you have some idea or insight I haven't hit upon, talk about that. I will be referring to these responses in the book as coming generically from a COH and can make them as anonymous as you like.

Many thanks,
Heidi Schulz

Heidi Schulz, CPO-CD
Collaborative Therapy for Clutter Management
e-mail: info@heidischulz.com
www.heidischulz.com
805/569-5288

I'm still working on the rest of my answers. Right now I've got to get packed, as usual I've waited 'till the last minute!

An unwelcome sight...

This is pretty much the view you get of the entrance of most of the rooms at Mom's place...

This one happens to be my brothers' old bedroom (the one with all the food storage in it).

More from my sordid past...

Another "Oldie, but a Goodie" post from my COH group. I posted this on July 28th, 2006, I titled it "Knee deep in it and laughing":

Well, It's begun again... Mom's out of town for a week and we started in on the food storage room yesterday morning. We have been able to keep sane using our sense of humor though. Here is a little list of stuff we have found so far:

-4 dead and decaying mice (more to come judging by the amount of mouse feces covering the floor).
-3 cases of pears canned in 1989 (they were black, but kept their shape).
-2 cases of cherries canned in 1983
-1 case of apricots -1984
-2 cases of grape juice canned in '88 (my sister thinks that's a good year and maybe we should test it out!)
-6 cases (a case consists of 6 #10 cans)
-2 five gallon cans full of powdered milk -dates ranging from 1979-1990
-16-20 metal cans of pineapple juice(the big ones)-two of which were bulging so badly at BOTH ENDS that we were afraid to touch them lest they explode on us!
-Hundreds of cans of expired food -everything from spaghettio's to green beans.
-About 60 bottles of vitamins & health supplements - all expired by1998.
-Hundreds of bags and boxes of everything from cake mixes to elbow macaroni, we didn't even have to look at the dates, they were all mice-infested!
-The most disturbing thing that we found was that my Mom (who has always marked the dates of when she buys something on the cans or boxes with a black permanent marker) had been going back through the cans she could find one bag at a time AND CHANGING THE DATES to newer dates!!!! We discovered this through a little simple detective work (why are these smudged and written over?) and because in some cases the dates written were later than the best by date on the bottom of the can.
-We also found about 12 cases of food storage bought from a company in 1980, the shelf life is clearly written to be 15 years maximum for some of the products and 9 years max for the rest, so here we are 26 years later throwing it out!

The irony of all of this is my Mom is always complaining that she never has enough room in her food storage room and that is why there are cases and bags of food all over the rest of the house. She also claims that there is a system in the food storage room and we just don't know her way of organization -LOL!!!
We have already filled the driveway with at least 2 truck loads of stuff to go to the dump and if a normal person took a look in the storage room they wouldn't believe it all came out of there
because there are still boxes piled right to the ceiling with only a u-shaped path throughout it.

Well, give me an hour and I'll be back over there for round two! I hope my Mom is having a nice vacation, because she is going to freak out when she gets home! Until tomorrow, Jamie

P.S. Where is this weirdest thing our parents hoarded contest? My sister reminded me that when we did the cleanout 3 yrs ago we found hair from all our haircuts she ever gave us in our lives, in little baggies with dates and names labeled on them. The weirdest one being from a haircut our 21 yr old brother received before leaving the country. I bet he had no idea that Mom was going to sweep up all that hair off the floor, bag it, date it, and label it for all future generations to cherish!!! Just a note: it was interesting seeing the color changes our hair had gone through over the years - BUT NOT INTERESTING ENOUGH FOR US TO KEEP IT!

My next post was on August 1st, 2006 and I titled it "Not laughing anymore"...

Here's an update on our cleanout. Well, by Saturday morning we were ready to give up. We had loaded up 5 full truck loads to the dump and there were still stacks nearly touching the ceiling in the storage room. It was very depressing to not see much change after 2 and 1/2 days of backbreaking work, but we perservered and somehow got it all out by the afternoon.

The final count on dead mice only reached 8 (surprising) but I'm confident there are at least 20 more in the walls and heating vents. I did find about 25 lbs of split peas from my birth year (1976) and a lot more gross stuff, but the fire in me is gone and I don't have the energy to recount it all.

Mom got home last night and there was a calm before the storm for about 2 hrs, then it all broke loose. I'll probably never hear the end of this one bucket of honey that we threw out (because it had a deep crack in the lid and was covered in mice feces). Mom said we could have scraped off the top layer of honey and ate it anyway. She also said we never should have thrown out ANY food, regardless of expiration dates, because she could have hauled it down to my grandpa's farm (6hrs away) and FED IT TO THE PEACOCKS!!!!

This is where I start to feel myself detaching, I can't stand to watch the craziness come out in her. She actually believes these illogical excuses she comes up with!

After I lay down to go to sleep last night, I remembered when I was growing up and I would clean my room out - I would bag up all the garbage and take it to the outside trash can and just pray Mom didn't know. Then the next day when I would come home from school I would see the broken pencil stub I had thrown out on the kitchen counter and know that nothing actually made it out of the house. Mom would tell me how wasteful I was and how the mess was all my fault and not hers. You know, I am grateful that as an adult I can see through all the excuses, but I can't help but wondering if I would have had a happier childhood if I hadn't believed all the crap she told me. Well, tomorrow's a new day and I'm sure my Mom will start out by calling me and freaking out about the powdered milk I threw out from 1979. Later....

In case you were wondering, we haven't done a cleanout since then. I think my Dad was too scared that she might have a nervous breakdown or some other psychotic episode. In fairness, it was a scary time to be around Mom for a while there.

She is still mad about that bucket of honey I threw out. I get to hear about it on a regular basis.

Mom is going out of town again for a few weeks this summer and she wants us to replace the floors upstairs - Hallelujah!

Of course she doesn't realize just what she is asking of us... IT'S CLEAN OUT TIME!

I will be documenting this one with pictures and will keep you all updated.

Heaven and Hell...

I want to try something a little different today.

I'm going to tell you about my Mom. But it's not what you're thinking...

I want you to know a little more about her than the one aspect, hoarding, for which I have dedicated this blog.

I want you to see that hoarders are people too. There is more to them than just the mess that you can see.

My Mom is kind, in fact she's just plain sweet. She's one of those people who others would find it difficult to dislike. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body.

She is honest. In fact, she refuses to lie. It's funny when she is trying to keep a secret (like what she is giving you for your birthday or something along those lines) if you confront her, she gets this deer in the headlights look and tries to avert the question. It makes me laugh every time.

If you need something my Mom will drop everything to take care of you. In a crisis, she is the person to have around.

She is an amazing Grandma. She goes out of her way to make all her grandchildren feel special. When she babysits, she has a special bag filled with things for the kids and they LOVE it.

My Mom is very religious. She is a big believer in prayer and I have seen her prayers work miracles. She is never short on faith.

When I was growing up, my Mom stayed home to be with us kids. She baked homemade bread and she sewed our clothes to save money. My Dad was a schoolteacher and never made a lot of money, but we always managed because my Mom was determined to do what she felt was right in raising her children. I admire her courage and respect her decision as I now look back with a new perspective as a mother myself.

There is so much more that I can't put on this page, but I just wanted you to see that hoarders are not bad people.

Of course, that just makes it all the more confusing growing up the way I did..

You see it don't you? The problem?

Here is this practically angelic mother trying to teach us about honesty and other important life lessons, trying her very best to give us everything she felt we needed, all the while living in an environment that can only be described as hellish.

And therein lies the issue...


A picture of the kitchen counter... or maybe it's more a picture of what's on the kitchen counter.

It's all about your point of view...

I've been contemplating what to post today and I'm having difficulties. Not because I'm having trouble coming up with anything to write about. On the contrary, I just have so much in my head I'm finding it difficult to sort out just one topic.

My sister and I talk daily. Not always about hoarding (thank goodness), but it does come up quite a bit as we are both working our way through the issues that come with growing up the way we did.

I always find it interesting that she and I see things so differently. We can be discussing the same incident in our past and find that it affected us each in a different way.

For example, I "like" to go in and do the clean outs at Mom's (when she isn't there). When I see the huge mess in front of me and I know that the one obstacle to clearing it is out of the way (my Mom), I feel energized! I dig in and as I throw things out, I feel purged, refreshed...

I just feel good. I know that as the clean up goes on I will tire of it, but I will use humor to get past that. I know that eventually my Mom will come home and freak out and just end up messing it all up again, but I feel justified. I feel like I've made a difference.

On the other hand, my Sister (whom I always drag there to be with me) looks at it and she feels something else entirely. Anxiety starts to kick in, she starts to panic she says she wants to scream and cry and never come back again. She starts to feel hate towards my Mom and the way we were raised. She always says she can't take it and swears she will never do it again.

It happens that way every time and I just don't get it. But I guess, she doesn't get me, either.

I think it's interesting that we were raised in the same house, with the same mother, and for the most part (we are just two years apart) experienced the same things. Yet, we ended up so unalike. That's not to say that we don't have similarities, because we do. But we each reacted differently to the hoard.

And that's made all the difference.

I'm toying with the idea of recording our phone conversations on hoarding and posting them on here weekly (with my Sister's permission). I just haven't figured out how to make that work yet.

Avoidance...

I've caught a nasty bug and have spent most of the day in bed, so this post will be short and to the point.

Quote of the day...

"Along with difficulties in throwing things away, compulsive hoarders have severe difficulties with making decisions, perfectionism, and avoiding tasks.People with compulsive hoarding syndrome do not like to make mistakes. In order to prevent making a mistake, they will avoid making or postpone decisions."-Karron Maidment RN, M.A.Behavior Therapist-UCLA OCD,Intensive Treatment Program

Picture of the day... my Mom's office.

Ancient History...

This is a copy of my very first post on the Children of Hoarders private yahoo group. I posted it on July 5th, 2006:

Hi, I am new to this site. I've known for the last few years that my Mom has this "hoarding" sickness. She's always had it, it was just a few years ago that my Dad heard a radio show describing the symptoms and we gave my Mom's mess a name. Anyways, about 3 years ago my Mom went out of town for a couple of months... Can you guess what we did while she was away? That's right, we cleaned! We removed over 60 large truckloads of stuff to the dump and goodwill. Keep in mind this is about a 1600 sq. ft home (not big). We found out what color the carpet was downstairs, my brothers at home were able to use the shower upstairs for the first time in their lives, all the cupboards, drawers, and doors were actually able to close,and we were even able to get into one of the forbidden rooms (had to break the lock) and climb over mountains of papers and old bills,ads, etc... We found skeletons of mice, moldy food and other gross things in every room. We organized what was left and this took forever, because knowing my Mom's issues and wanting to be thorough not random, we had to sort through EACH and EVERY item in the house before throwing it out. I foolishly thought that this way I would be able to assure my mother that nothing precious was lost!!!! For about a month, it was heaven at home... My brothers had friends over for the first time in their lives. We ate in the kitchen -together! We didn't have to hold our breath in the bathrooms. We even remodeled one bathroom and replaced all the carpet downstairs. Any and all repairs that had been waiting "for the house to be clean" so someone could come take a look, were taken care of. Then my Mom came home from her vacation. She seemed calm and happy at first, then about 2 weeks later she freaked! She called me everyday ranting about this or that thing which she was sure I had thrown out. Within a month it looked as if we had never cleaned. Now 3yrs later, the phone calls have slowed but the blame has never gone away. Until the day she dies, my Mother will blame the loss of every little thing on me (because it was my idea, I have all the blame, my siblings have even tried to tell her that they were there too - but she only blames me) My Dad actually thinks it's funny now and has managed to turn this to his advantage many a time something went missing he has said "Jamie must have thrown it out". This is even more funny considering that it was something bought or acquired AFTER the "purge"! Humor is our only defense against this disease or whatever it is and has gotten us this far. Well, enough rambling I hope you have gotten this far in the message because here's where I need a little advice. My Dad was over yesterday and said he is taking Mom away for a week. You see where I'm going with this? My sister and I plan on taking on the one room we never dared set foot,not even 3 yrs ago, the food storage room. There is food as old as I am (30) in there. We have never dared go there before because my Mom hoards food storage and emergency items (for the end of the world or some foretold catastrophic event) religiously. This is the BIG one for her, when the earthquake or whatever it is comes she will be ready! The only problem is, the food will probably kill her it is so old and bug/rodent infested. That's the main reason we are going in now, my Dad says there is a serious mice infestation going on down there and it needs to be taken care of. My mom's health is connected with the mess somehow and lately she hasn't been doing to well. This is why I'm a little worried about doing this, what could happen to her? Could she have a mental breakdown? She always wants me to "help" her clean, but on her terms - I always refuse because that's when she exhibits all her CRAZY symptoms and nothing ever actually gets cleaned, just moved to another place in the house. HELP!

Back to the present. Here's somthing of interest... my Mom still blames me for any and every little thing she cannot find, whether real or imagined.

I've gotten used to it.

What I haven't gotten used to is realizing my Mom is "different". I really try not to use the "crazy" word (it slips out when I get really heated though), I don't really feel comfortable using that word to describe mental illness anymore. And part of me worries that I might be "crazy" too. I mean I've watched my Mom gradually fall deeper into this condition, and I look around and see my messy office and wonder if, any 30 years, I won't end up just like that.

Then I remember that my Sister and I have a pact. If either one of us starts to exhibit symptoms of "hoarding", the other will intervene. My sister told me that her form of intervention will probably include burning my house down when I'm not home... NICE! But, also something I've dreamed about happening to my Mom's place.

I WOULD NEVER DO THAT, but hey a girl can dream.

Ummm, where was I? Oh yeah, I've got a whole little intervention plan worked out in the event that my Sis turns to the darkside. But, that's for another day...