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My sister and I have just spent a week carting bag after bag of garbage and charitable donations out of that house, in order to make it safe for my father to live in his own home.<\/p>\nMy sister and I have just spent a week carting bag after bag of garbage and charitable donations out of that house, in order to make it safe for my father to live in his own home.<\/p>\n
He has spent the last four months in a physical rehabilitation facility and after depleting Medicare benefits, he must return home to the mess pictured above.\u00a0 He must navigate this home with a walker and\/or wheelchair.<\/p>\n
Points of interest:<\/strong><\/p>\n Even with videotaped permission from my father (the co-owner of this property), the police would not defend our right to clear the trash.\u00a0 My father does not want to live in a hoarded home and it is no longer safe for him to do so.\u00a0 If you share ownership of property with someone who does this, start saving up to pay for a lawyer NOW, because that’s what it will take to defend your own interests.<\/p>\n We removed many many many bags of trash out of that house and worked for four days in relative peace, experiencing only brief in-our-face screaming fits from Mom.\u00a0\u00a0 We worked in an upstairs bedroom that has not been usable as a bedroom for twenty years.\u00a0 Our plan was to make space up there for storage of the crap that is more current, more relevant and more memorable to our mother.\u00a0 The goal was to clear space downstairs so my father can live comfortably in three rooms on the first floor and hire outside help to assist him day-to-day (allowing my mother the remaining five bedrooms and full basement for her hoard).<\/p>\n If we got so much crap out of the house, you might wonder: how did the police get involved? My mother called them three times:<\/strong> first, when we moved three houseplants off of the kitchen table (where they were spilling dirt); second, when we “stole” food with expiration dates from 2007.\u00a0 She called police a third time with the update that she could not find her underwear and we had stolen that, too.\u00a0 The police told us that she seemed perfectly sane and they would not assist us in getting a psychiatric evaluation.\u00a0 When mom locked herself in the house– using rope tied around doorknobs and complaining of the stolen underwear– multiple police and fire department staff were witness and told us that they could do nothing.<\/p>\n Social workers tell us that our experience is not unique.\u00a0 We showed them pictures of the home and they were shocked, agreed that it required intervention.\u00a0 They called the police and fire department on our behalf and were told that we had no recourse.\u00a0 They told us that they are now being overwhelmed with calls from families just like mine and they can do nothing.<\/p>\n Programs like “Hoarders” are spreading a lie:\u00a0 don’t touch the hoarder’s stuff because the hoarder must make all the decisions about what to do with everything.\u00a0 According to the Hoarders shows (and others like it), the “right” solution is to get a team of people in to help.\u00a0 Such teams are not readily available for families like mine. My mother is like many hoarders: she would sooner lock everyone out of the house than invite ANYONE in to help.<\/p>\n For forty years, my family did not understand my mother’s illness, we only knew that moving her things or trying to clean up the house made her furious.\u00a0 We did not interfere with her hoard until it became truly hazardous.<\/p>\n Relatives from out -of-state (who are unwilling to help our mother) tell us that they have read ‘articles.’\u00a0 They tell us that they have seen programs that prove our strategy was all wrong and that we are not supposed to touch our mother’s stuff.\u00a0 They tell us that our father (who worked long hours for forty years to buy that home) should be moved into a small apartment.\u00a0 They tell us that our father’s primary asset– a 2500 sq. ft. house with five bedrooms and a full basement– cannot be sold, but should be surrendered to my mother’s mess.\u00a0 Because she owns half of it, he has rights to none of it.<\/p>\n I am part of an online support group for adult Children of Hoarders.\u00a0\u00a0 You can find Children of Hoarders on Yahoo groups or visit childrenofhoarders.com\u00a0\u00a0 My family’s experience is more common than what you see on television; my family’s experience is more typical than the cases of\u00a0 slow-but-steady recovery described by professionals. We have the financial means to address this problem, the education to understand it as an illness, and we have spent five long years begging our mother to seek the professional help recommended by ‘experts.’\u00a0 My mother has refused help from counselors, professional organizers, church pastors, and (most recently) a trusted friend.\u00a0 There are no solutions out there for families like mine.<\/p>\n This item<\/a> comes from my mother’s hoarded home.\u00a0 The item lived in a plastic bag, perfectly preserved in a box for thirty years.\u00a0 It came from the room in the featured picture.<\/a>
\nI invite you to bid on this auction if my story shocks you even slightly.\u00a0 Bid on this auction to help me justify the week that my sister and I just spent wearing respirator masks and latex gloves to protect ourselves from the heavy dust.\u00a0 We worked hard, trying to secure a safe place for our father to live.\u00a0 Right now, it feels like we failed.\u00a0 Thank you for reading and please forward this auction to anyone you know who might be facing similar challenges. This problem is not just a TV show.<\/strong><\/p>\n