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1 " Hoarding isn't about how much stuff someone has, it's about how they process those things. "
― Matt Paxton , The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter
2 " For a hoarder, staying clean isn't really about bins and labels; it's about processing items that come into the house. A good organizer can help a hoarder develop methods for sorting mail, for staying on top of recycling, and for making sure donated items get to their destinations... The repetition of bad cleaning skills is usually what got the hoarder into trouble in the first place, so an organizer works on repetition of new, positive cleaning skills. "
3 " I've always believed that a hoarder house is a house full of quitting. To make a change, the hoarder has to stop quitting and start trying. The hoarder has to want to change...When hoarders quit, they are cheating their potential. Every time they quit, they are taking a shortcut and they know it. The guilt builds, which is why hoarders can't allow themselves to quit again, not even once. Quitting on small actions eventually leads to completely giving up. "
4 " We're all about 4 or 5 decisions away from shittin in a bucket. "
― Matt Paxton
5 " For Wendy and Sam, the best rule was "everything has a home.” We made a list of their main household items and where they went - for example, pill bottles in the bathroom medicine cabinet, laundry in the hamper, and food in the kitchen cabinets. This may seem like a fundamental rule that everyone learns as a child, but many hoarders didn’t pick that up either because they grew up in hoarding houses themselves, or they grew up in traumatic households where finding a meal and avoiding a beating was a daily reality. Cleaning was the least of their worries. "
6 " I’ve learned that for hoarders, every cleanup is a grieving process. We are asking them to say goodbye to items that are heavy with memories - some wonderful, some painful. But all are important and deserve respect. A hoarder finds safety in the hoard, in the stacks and piles, and he or she will grieve over the loss of those items when they are gone. The week after the house cleaning is usually the worst. Instead of being happy and enjoying the new space, hoarders go through a difficult process. They miss their possessions, which were their closest friends for years. "
7 " Some hoarders choose to be alone because they have lost someone in the past. On the surface it looks like a hoarder wants to be alone, but the truth is the hoarder doesn’t want to get close to someone else and risk another loss or death. "
8 " The hoarder usually has been avoiding emotions for so long that getting back in touch with them is scary and painful. We want hoarders to reconnect with their emotions, and expressing anger is often the first step toward that goal. Anger is a powerful emotion, but it is often better to vent it than to succumb to a more debilitating and paralyzing emotion like grief or fear. "
9 " Family and friends, in fact anyone on the "team” that has a continuing relationship with a hoarder, needs to understand that, like a recovering addict, a hoarder is going to struggle for the rest of his or her life. "
10 " After my gambling problem, I lost everything and was forced to use cash only. Although it was hard, not having credit cards was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I learned during those years to ask myself if I needed an item or just wanted it, and I also figured out how to make myself happy by doing something instead of buying something.I encourage hoarders to ask themselves these questions whenever they are tempted to shop: Will this item make my life better? Does it help me keep my home in order? If this is a gift, does the person I am buying it for really want or need it? If I don’t have enough cash for this, am I willing to wait until I do? "
11 " When cleaning starts, hoarders tend to pick up and clutch items in their hands without putting them down. Pretty soon their arms and pockets start to fill up like they are a squirrel storing for the winter. They talk very fast and won’t look people in the eye. These are sure signs that the anxiety is taking over. Someone having a anxiety attack can’t function. "
12 " The freak out is actually a good sign. Many hoarders have literally built a wall of trash around themselves to mentally and physically protect them from the real world. A cleanup crew is tearing down this wall of protection. A hoarder who shows no emotions at all is probably not processing the cleanup seriously. Chances are the house will be full again very soon. "
13 " After Jim passed away, his sons and daughters went through a mourning period. Because they couldn’t handle the emotions of the cleanup on top of the loss in their family, they closed up the house and let it sit for about a year. Had they jumped into cleaning right away, it would have been tempting to keep a lot of Jim’s things, especially because so many of them were actually valuable historical items. This is one way I see hoarding passed from generation to generation. "
14 " The big challenge with Aimee was her emotional attachment to much of her stuff. Her "keep” items consisted mostly of things that had belonged to her late mother, who had been her closest friend and a major source of support during a difficult divorce from an abusive man. Aimee came to realize that the trauma of losing her mother had, in fact, triggered her hoarding. "
