Hoardhouse Blog

Once known for her confidence and charisma as Suzanne Sugarbaker on Designing Women, Delta Burke made headlines last year after opening up about her battle with compulsive hoarding syndrome.

Hoarding and decluttering have recently graced the pages of two major lifestyle magazines: Domino and Real Simple. In the February 2009 issue of Domino, interior designer Ryan Korban offers pack-rats solutions to clearing out clutter. In the March 2009 issue of Real Simple, a reformed hoarder, Erin Rooney Doland, discusses how she was able to purge her excess belongings.

With an estimated 4.5 million Americans suffering from compulsive hoarding, it’s no surprise that discussions on hoarding have become ubiquitous. Oprah.com has over 40 articles devoted to decluttering your home.

Here are a few simple tips on decluttering that I picked up from my experience attending the Hudson Guild decluttering support group meeting:

Don’t discard items – donate them!

Anna-Leah Braudes, the moderator of the Hudson Guild decluttering support group, said that it’s less stressful for hoarders to donate items rather than discard them. Most hoarders have an easier time giving up belongings if they can give it to someone who appreciates them. Braudes recommends donating clothes to the Salvation Army and books to Merchant Marines.

As for items like newspapers, Braudes says that purging papers is very difficult to tackle because of their frequent delivery. She added that hoarders like to randomly clip articles from the paper, but fail to file them in a place where they’ll have easy access to them at a later date. It was suggested at one of the meetings that hoarders should cancel their subscriptions to publications because most information is now available via the web through a publication’s online archive. Articles can easily be bookmarked or forwarded to a personal email account for quick future reference.

Acquiring decision-making skills

During each of her meetings, Braudes emphasizes to her members how important it is to acquire decision-making skills before discarding items. She says that if a hoarder discards an item without understanding why they’re discarding it, they’ll be more likely to repossess that item at a later date.

Braudes says that professional help, such as hoarding expert, Dr. Randy Frost’s, cognitive behavioral therapy for hoarding, can help hoarders tackle obstacles that they cannot handle on their own.

Below is a list of a few programs that offer professional therapy for hoarding:

Bio Behavioral Institute -  (Great Neck, NY)

UCLA - OCD Intensive Treatment Program (Los Angeles, CA)

The Institute of Living – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Hartford, CT)

Seeing it for yourself

Not too long ago, Braudes suggested a bold idea, that as a group her members visit each other’s home so that they can visualize what each person is referring to during group discussions. But to date, no one has accepted Braudes’s suggestion. In fact, several members ended up dropping out of the group to prevent this from happening.

Braudes believes if hoarders can view the clutter of others in-person, it will encourage them to look at their own clutter more objectively. Often times, Braudes’ members relate to the items being talked about and, she said this serves as an obvious way of helping each other.

With the start of a new year, Anna Leah, the moderator of a hoarding support group in New York, has challenged each of her group members to throw away one thing every day.

This resolution seemed somewhat unfathomable to one of the group members who claims that ubiquitous store sales continuously sway her into buying things she doesn’t need. Currently, her closet is cluttered with stacks of shoes, many of which she has never worn. In an attempt to curb her shopping sprees, the group member recently placed a sign in her agenda that says, “No Buy.”

Another group member recently donated a large quantity of travel books that she saved for trips she never ended up taking. Upon donating the books, she received a “donation receipt,” which she said motivated her to give away the books.

While she has taken control of cleaning out some of her clutter, she still feels obligated to ask her brother, who occasionally lives with her, whether she can donate his overbearing stacks of canned-food, which she says he’ll never eat. Another group member stressed that it’s important for her take control of her own surroundings and scolded her for suggesting that she ask her brother first before discarding his hoarded food.

At the end of the meeting, Anna Leah suggested that this year her members make an effort to create an environment where they’ll have access to fresh air and safe surroundings. The group members should start by clearing items away from windows or air vents, and if their homes are extremely cluttered, the group members should clear a pathway so that they can safely roam throughout their home.

Elizabeth Nelson said that she spent most of her childhood believing that she was one of the reasons why her mother suffered from compulsive hoarding and that her mother would frequently find excuses to blame the family for the clutter in their five-bedroom home. “My mother would tell us that the house is messy because you kicked your shoes underneath the dining room table and because your father doesn’t throw away the envelopes to bills,” Elizabeth said.

Like many children of hoarders, who are part of the baby boomer generation, Elizabeth grew up having no concept of what hoarding was. “We [my family] were all sort of taught that this was my mother’s thing to do, and we couldn’t do anything about it because she had such tight control of the house,” said Elizabeth.

Today Elizabeth is the moderator of the online support group, ChildrenofHoarders.com, which currently has over 2,000 members. Elizabeth believes that it’s important for children to confront their parents about their hoarding problems, unlike many psychologists who believe family intervention is not a viable solution and that it should be left to the professionals to handle.

Elizabeth Nelson discusses hoarding during an interview with WXYZ (photo credit: WXYZ.com)

Several years ago, Elizabeth decided to address her mother’s hoarding problems, after discovering that her father, who is handicapped, was using a portable toilet in the living room because her mother had barricaded the bathroom door with hoarded items.

While Elizabeth’s mother was away visiting her sister, Elizabeth and her brothers spent over a week cleaning several rooms in her mother’s house. When her mother returned, she was shocked and angry by what her children had done – a common reaction amongst many hoarders who have had their belongings tampered with.

“Our intervention was not a complete disaster,” said Elizabeth. “We didn’t solve the problem and we knew that it was going to be a temporary fix, but we made the house safer for my dad.”

According to leading experts on hoarding, the disorder can never officially be overcome. Since the cleanup, Elizabeth’s mother’s home has, once again, fallen into disrepair.

While growing up, Elizabeth's bedroom was cluttered with her mother's hoarded items. (photo credit: WXYZ.com)

Elizabeth said that many people within her support group have a difficult time organizing their own homes because they were never taught what a normal house should look like or what’s considered messy. She added that the support group has helped members differentiate between learning the behavior and having inherited the disorder.

Recently, the support group received a posting from a hoarder who reprimanded the members for “venting about their parent’s problems.” Elizabeth said that hoarders don’t always know how their children feel. “We’re not going to not talk about our experiences just to preserve their feelings,” said Elizabeth. “That’s not the point of the group.” “The point of the group is to talk amongst people who understand.”

Watch Elizabeth’s interview on her mother’s hoarding problems.

Anna Leah, who moderates a decluttering support group in New York, said that there are three rules, which each of her members should adhere to: they cannot bring any hoarded items to the group session, they cannot visit any thrift shops, and they must throw away at least one thing each week. Since starting the group four years ago, Anna Leah said that her members rarely follow through on her rules. Just last week, at least two of the members, found themselves rifting through items at a flea market.

Anna Leah said that the support group is a great way to get hoarders to confront their problems. She believes professional organizers only provide a temporary fix because they’re not showing hoarders what they need to do to minimize their clutter.

During the session, one of the members discussed the connection between art and hoarding. As a collagist, he’ll hoard various items and feature them in his work. But he said that lately he hasn’t been able to finish any of his projects because he easily gets distracted.

Several of the group members admitted to suffering from the same problem. One of the members suggested that she found it effective to set due dates for herself, while another member suggested keeping an agenda: her agenda included a list of color-coordinated tasks organized by their level of importance.

Anna Leah emphasized how important it is for each of the members to keep a “to-do list,” because it’s easy for people who suffer from hoarding to become forgetful and it’s important for them to establishing a level of control.

Another member of the group expressed her difficulty in discarding old magazines. After asking the group whether she should tear out the pages that are most relevant to her, one of the members suggested that she discard all of the magazines because most articles can now be found online through the publication’s archive on their website.