Is there some sort of mental condition that causes hoarding
and prevents you from fiding a solution?
That's the question for today and we're going to answer it.
Hi there. I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, today's show is brought to us by MyCleaningConnection.com,
which is a resource hub for all things with
really cool cleaning stuff.
One of the things you're going to find in the resources section
is a whole section on hoarding.
If you are a hoarder or you know a hoarder, there are some books that I personally recommend
that are going to help you over that hurdle.
Okay, so the question for today comes from a woman who asks this: "Angela, I'm wondering
is there some type of mental condition that a hoarder has, because sometimes I become
so overwhelmed with the purchase or overwhelmed with doing something or not doing something
that I should be, that I can't even think myself through rationally to the right solution
or option."
All right, so back to hoarding.
The question is, is there some sort of mental condition that is preventing a solution for
hoarding?
Now, my answer is this.
I'm not a licensed therapist, I have not been through the psychosomatics of hoarding, and
so I don't know the medical terms.
But what I do know is this.
There are a lot of really fine people that I know who have hoarding tendencies.
Maybe you're not a full blown hoarder, but maybe you hoard certain things.
Now, for example, I have a true confession.
I come from a hoarding background.
My grandparents were hoarders, my parents were hoarders, and there's nothing wrong with
the things that they hoarded.
I hoard books.
My house is immaculate but I hoard books.
There was one particular time I woke up and
I realized I had over 10,000 books in my personal library.
I've always been an avid reader and I love books.
But I realized with the advent of Kindle, I don't need 10,000 books.
So, I personally changed my view on why I had those books.
Now, as a hoarder, you can do this, too.
You can ask yourself why do you have these tendencies?
Where did this come from?
It probably came from something very innocent, like maybe your parents didn't have enough
of something when you were growing up.
Therefore, they stored things and saved things and hung on to things, so that they could
reuse those or get the most value out of them or whatever, and you have brought those values
with you into your adult life.
It's nothing to be ashamed of.
It's just a state of mind.
If you take this on as, "Oh my gosh, I'm a hoarder.
My life is shameful.
I can't focus.
I can't concentrate," just pick one item.
For me, it was my books.
I said, "Okay, I don't need 10,000 books."
Some of them I've read and I love those books, and so I hung onto those books.
Those go in my reference library.
All of the rest of them, if it's not ... On a scale of 1 to 10, if it's not a 9 or a 10,
it goes in the other pile.
The other pile, I put labels on the inside of the books, and I said, "Hey, this is a
complimentary book from Angela Oberer."
Oberer is my married name.
"Enjoy this book or pass it on to a friend."
What I did is every time I go church, there's a little bookshelf out in the front of the
church and I would take books from home.
They were like self-help books or books on families or books on getting along with people.
I would take those books and I would leave them at the church.
Then I would go to the gym in the morning and there's also a bookshelf at my gym where
people can buy and borrow books.
I donated a bunch of books to my gym.
So, every morning when I would go to the gym, I would take stacks of books.
Again, these are all self-help books, or books on how to better yourself, or books on ways
to make your life easier, or declutter your home, or whatever.
Then every time that I would go to a coffee shop, I would take a couple of books.
I would slip them in there and I would leave them on the table for other readers to drop
by as they were having a cup of coffee.
I started leaving books all around.
Then what happened is I started running into people and they're like, "Oh my goodness.
You're the person that gave me the book."
I'm like, "Oh, okay.
Thanks.
I glad you got some good use out of it."
The good news is this.
You can start with one item and start giving it away.
As you give it away, you're freeing up space in your life.
Now, for me, I had a tendency to buy cheap things.
I love cheap things.
I love discounts.
I love bargains.
I love deals.
A lot of hoarders do as well.
When you go into a store and you see, true confession, you see a pair of water shoes,
okay we all need a good pair of water shoes for the beach because we all go to the beach
all the time, right?
So, when they are on sale for $2 a pair, we need to buy six pair of those water shoes,
right?
They're in our size and they're only $2 a piece.
Because we spend so much time at the beach, not, we need six pair, right?
Not.
Okay, so I ended up with six pair of water shoes that have now lasted me over 20 years
because they never wear out because I never go to the beach.
But I saved these six pair of shoes for this reason.
It was a symbol to me that I had a problem.
I realized that, wait a second.
I bought these because they were on sale.
I don't need water shoes.
I don't use the water shoes.
So, unless I'm running through the sprinkler in my yard and I need a quick pair of water
shoes for some strange reason, I don't use them.
For me, what I did is I changed the way that I think and I made Walmart my new storage unit.
Here's how it works.
Walmart stores all my stuff.
I own all the stuff at Walmart.
Not really, but in my head.
I own all the stuff at Walmart, and it's my storage unit, and Walmart pays people to display
everything for me.
Without buying anything, I can go and I can walk up and down all the aisles, and I can
look at all the stuff that I own.
Not really. I don't really own it. I'm just saying.
I don't have to move anything around.
I don't have to trip over anything.
I don't have to pick anything up.
I don't have to pay taxes on the storage unit.
There's no cost to me whatsoever.
Only, only when I take something out of the storage unit do I pay the price.
Oh.
Suddenly, I don't have to warehouse all that stuff myself.
Walmart does that for me.
I can go, and there are time, believe it or not, I've gone into Walmart, I've gone up
and down all the aisles and I've walked out with nothing but one thing.
It's not a basket of things.
It's not six pair of shoes that are on sale for $2 a piece.
What it is, is okay, they're on sale, they're $2 a piece, when I need them, when I'm going
to the beach, if I run out of water shoes, at that point, I will come back to the storage
unit, everything is nicely organized, I know exactly where it is, I will buy that one item.
I will pay the fee on it at that time and I will take that one item home.
It changed the way that I shopped.
It changed the way that I bargain shop.
It changed the way that I started thinking about my stuff.
As a house cleaner, I think about stuff a little bit differently than other people because
in my head, everything has to be dusted.
If I have a collection of stuff, that means I have to dust.
If I have clothes, that means they need to be hung up and there must be closet space.
As you start thinking of things in a different way, you're changing your relationship to stuff.
I used to save these plastic containers that prepackaged food would come in because they
had nice ... They were nice plastic and they had nice snap-on lids that were air tight,
that were great for refrigeration and freezing and all this stuff, but after I got like 200
of these little tubs, I was like, holy cow.
What am I doing with 200 tubs that are empty?
I'm not going to use these 200 tubs.
I ended up donating them all and saying, "Okay, now no more tubs."
I also got rid of prepackaged food that I don't eat anymore.
But it changed my thinking and my relationship to the stuff.
So, pick one item at a time.
It might be kitchen storage containers, and it might be water shoes, and it might be books.
I don't know what it is for you, but like I say, there's some really fine people who
have some hoarding tendencies, and they may only hoard one or two things.
But if hoarding is consuming your life and you can't function because you can't find
anything, and so you just go out and buy another one, then there's a problem.
If that's you, now's a time to pick up a good book or two on hoarding.
Don't do anything until you've read through it and you've implemented the things that
are inside that book, because there is a cure.
There's a cure for hoarding.
Once you find the cure for you, and once you start changing your relationship to things,
it frees up this huge load of junk, and weight, and the overbearingness of mold and mildew,
and just crap that gets buried and embedded inside your stuff.
Along with that comes rats, and ants, and mice, and all other kinds of things if it's
not contained and it's not maintained.
Today might be a day for you just to change your relationship with stuff.
All righty, that's my two cents for today.
Until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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