Hoarding

I just spent a week cleaning out a hoarder's house. You see hoarder's houses on TV and the sanitizing effect of television cannot give you even the remotest idea how bad it is. The stench is overpowering and can penetrate a respirator.

I had to clean the house that my brother and I owned. We learned a valuable lesson about being the landlord of a renter who happens to be your own parent: Check up on them on a regular basis and treat them like any other tenant. We trusted our mother who we knew had a bit of a messy house cleaning history. I don't care if the person raised you, they are still human and prone to failure. Also, a relative will lie to you or hide things just as fast as a stranger. Had we done at least a yearly inspection of the house we would've moved her out long before the house got into the state we found it in after she passed away. True, we would've had to play footsie with her to disarm her (she's notorious for keeping a loaded gun by her side) but she would've been moved out to a home or a smaller place. We would not be forced to sell our property because the damage she caused will cost us more than we have resources for to repair. We were too cowardly to move her to a space that would be more controlled and her filthy habits checked.

Hoarding isn't just a spontaneous thing. It seems to be something inborn. My uncle, the brother of our mother, is also as dirty. The two had a neat mother and yet those two children of my grandmother are lazy and messy with an excuse for everything. My uncle uses the death of his third wife as an excuse for his filthy house. His house was filthy long before he ever met her. Our mother used rebellion as an excuse for her laziness.

Hoarders get something, anything and won't let it go. It becomes a part of who they are. They become stubborn and rebellious if you try to take it away from them. Hoarding is another addiction. Our mother has been an addict of some sort all her life. I laugh now when I think of her disgust with my drug experimentation in high school. Here was a woman who became addicted to cigarettes in the 1940s, tranquilizers in the 1950s and 1960s, became an alcoholic and gambler in the 1970s and she wants to preach to me? Hell, I quit drugs out of boredom. Some addict I am. Thank god I was a failure at it. She was a champ. She could get addicted to anything.

In the end, she got addicted to buying things on QVC and local auctions. Useless things that no one needs. Sometimes she bought useful things and never took them out of the package. Perfectly good items never even looked at. Just bought. Our mother believed, hook line and sinker, QVC's claims that certain things were "collector's items" and would be "worth money" in a few years. As an addict she believed her pusher. As a result there were ceramic items worth very little. Certainly the items were worth a great deal less than what she paid for them.

The other thing our mother collected was animals, cats in particular. The cats had turned the house into a huge litter box. The stench of the urine and feces was overpowering. We shoveled it out. Many things were ruined by the piles of feces, cat hair and the snot from sick cats sneezing on them. None of the cats had seen a vet, many were unapproachable and feral in the house. A friend had trapped and removed most of them by the time we got there. A few cats were still in residence but they were kicked out into the yard to fend for themselves.

Lucky was one of those ferals. This poor cat had contracted just about everything a cat can get. His eyes told a tale of distemper. He had a scar from a huge abscess that had healed. He sneezed constantly. His coat was rough. Lucky's tail had been run over repeatedly by our mother's wheel chair. It had a bent spot and hooked at the end. Lucky wanted to be everyone's friend. The poor kitten just wanted to be loved, but no one dared pick him up. He was completely unadoptable. Had he been trapped and taken to a shelter he would've been destroyed inside 12 hours. I decided Lucky should be allowed to take his chances with the great outdoors. He seemed like a tough little guy. When he was finally kicked out of the house, 12 hours outside the house cleared up his poor eyes some. The effect of having been outside away from the ammonia in the house. Unfortunately, he was totally an indoor kitten and didn't even know where to find water, let alone food. Let's hope he's as intelligent as he is tough.

We were too late for 16 other kittens. They were dead all over the house. One mummified cat upstairs was probably locked in when the upstairs was permanently closed. The poor animal probably died of heat and thirst. Others were found flattened under piles of things. They were probably sick and crawled into small spaces to die. Many were flattened by the crowd of junk piled on top of them after they died. Many were barely recognizable as cats. Only the skull said what the pile of fur was. Even the bones were turning to dust. Some were dead under the bed. Only one cat as a recent death. He had crawled under the grandfather clock and was still putrefying.

In the end we moved two and a half tons of garbage, ruined furnishings, contaminated clothing, unsalvagable housewares, etc. Multiple generations of memories were hauled in a grain truck to the garbage dump.

If you have an elderly relation living alone, check on them. Don't believe their tales of "everything is ok." Look and, even if it causes a family fight, move them to a safe and clean place if you can. If you are the owner of the property, pull your rank as landlord and evict before you lose the property to the cost of repairs.