The new furnace is coming to the hoarder house in 3 days and it’s not ready! I think the basement itself is okay but there’s still too much in the way upstairs. For some reason, this friend keeps filling up all the doorways. She also keeps putting things on the stairs because that’s the only place to go with anything. The sun room leads to the back door and it’s the first place you enter. You could hardly get through to get to the back door though.
The sun room is actually a beautiful room. The light had a burnt out lightbulb so I was able to change that today. I love the wood. My mom says that years ago, it was beautiful in there. She remembers it being so pretty but now, you would never know. You couldn’t see the furniture at all when we got there so we didn’t even know what was still in there. I found most of it but there’s so many things it’s hard to say if there’s more.
The Safety Hazard
No joke, we couldn’t open the door from the outside when we got there because there were so many bags in front of the door. I carefully reached my arm in and picked up bags one at a time until we were able to open it. How can she not see that this is a hazard? It doesn’t matter to her. She wants to keep everything! Thankfully, we were able to fill up my truck with papers and magazines that were on the porch. Even though it’s just papers and magazines, it’s something leaving the house.
My mom is really losing patience with her. We had the whole backyard filled up with stuff and this was all still in the sun room when we left today. We only worked for about 5 hours and we don’t have much longer than that tomorrow. I don’t know how we’re going to finish. Now every day, she’s also calling my mom because she can’t really get through her house to her bedroom anymore. I told her that we will start working on that next but I don’t know where we’re going with the rest of the stuff from the sun room.
Every day I say that it’s hopeless but yet we keep going back every weekend. I really want her to get back into her house but it’s so hard when she’s fighting us every step of the way. I know she wants help but she’s having such a hard time letting things go. It seemed like it was a little easier for her this time but by that I mean she let me take those papers without having to look through every single piece. She also went through some clothes during the week and took some to St. Vinny’s. It was quite a few too because she had the hangers sitting there and asked me to bag them up. That’s progress I guess!
She really needs professional help to recognize that this is hoarding. Have you used the word with her?
Yes, she really does. We’re the first ones she’s let in, in years. She says she’s not a hoarder, she’s a collector. So she collects things whether she really wants the things or not.