Can hoarders be cured?
That's a great question and we're going to talk about that today.
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 Savvy Cleaner, which is a training program for house
cleaners and maids.
So if you go to customers' houses and you understand why hoarders hoard, then you will
be in a better position to serve your customers.
So we've got lots of training that might benefit you as a house cleaner or may, check it out
at SavvyCleaner.com
All right, on to today's show, which is from, I don't know a house cleaner or a homeowner
who wrote into the show and they want to know, can hoarders be cured?
Well, that's a very interesting question because that's like asking can a food addict be cured?
Well, no, not really.
Because at every meal you eat new food, right?
So yes, it's possible that if you are a food addict and you're 300 or 400 pounds, you can
lose a couple hundred pounds, but you're not cured, right?
Just having lost the weight does not cure you.
All the same reasons for the emotional eating or in this case it would be emotional storing
of things is still there.
So yeah, somebody could come in and clean your house, you could hire a professional
organizer, you could hire a professional house cleaner to come in and they remove everything.
They tidy everything up, they find a place for everything and boom, your house is lovely.
But the behaviors that put you in a hoarding situation are still there.
They have not been addressed.
And so, like the person that eats the food at every single meal from now through the
rest of your life, you will be looking at this and weighing and measuring in your mind
the calorie count.
If I eat this, what does this do to my weight?
Will this make me feel great if I eat this or do I need to not eat this so I can feel
great.
So there are questions that you have to ask yourself.
Now, a lot of people don't see hoarding as a problem, so they don't seek help for it.
And so, it's not like we're going to go to a therapist and say, "Hey, I'm a hoarder.
Can you help me?"
Most of the people go to the therapist because they have depression, and anxiety, and disappointment,
and they feel like they are failures and all these things and that is the result of the
hoarding.
Okay?
But the hoarding is the problem itself.
So there's a psychotherapy, which is what we call talk therapy and it doesn't require
any medication or anything.
You just go and you sit down and there is someone else that is objective to your point
of view that can help you decode why you do what you do.
And then when you discover like, "Hey, wait a second, I have this emotional gap that I've
been filling with trinkets.
Maybe I need to address that and I can get rid of the trinkets and not recollect."
Because, here's what happens, once you have your house up to an amazing standard, the
behaviors that got you there are still there.
So you end up replacing, filling the void of the empty space with a bunch of new stuff.
And so, almost like mad, people will go into these weird things, garage sales, and they
will go to the thrift stores and consignment stores, and they will go shopping and buy
clearance items off clearance racks so that they can fill up their life again to the point
where it's cluttered and messy, because unconsciously that is their norm, right?
That is the normal environment that they're used to living in.
And so, if you want to change, if you want to be cured, which you can't really be cured,
you can just change your behaviors.
But if you want to be cured, then you have to consciously, consciously change your behaviors.
So for example, I know that I grew up in a hoarding environment and it's no offense to
anyone, it's just we had lots of kids and lots of stuff.
And as I grew up, I took all those behaviors with me.
Then I moved away and I moved to a major metropolitan city where out in the country stuff was hard
to come by.
So if you went to the store and something was on sale, you would buy it and take it
home because you don't know when you're going to get to town again, right?
But I live in a major metropolitan city and I didn't make the connection, and now I was
buying things because it was on sale.
And I didn't know when I was going to make it to this store again. What?
Lo and behold, I live in a major metropolitan city.
There are five, five Walmart's within a 10 mile radius of my house.
I promise you I'm never going to run out of anything, if I need anything there are five
Walmart's within driving distance.
I can be there in 10 minutes, right?
So, I had to make a conscious decision that I personally do not need to go to Walmart.
For me, that's just like an alcoholic going into a bar.
I walk in and I see all this cool stuff and it's all cheap and I'm like, "Oh yeah, I need
it and its own sale."
No I don't, okay?
So I had to consciously in my mind say, "Listen, this is my storehouse, this Walmart is my
storehouse.
They're going to keep everything here for me and if I need to come here, I can come
in and look around and I don't need to take any of it home with me.
Right?
It's on sale today, it's going to be on sale again.
So I don't need it."
And if for any reason I decided I do need it, I then pay for it and take it out of the
store at that time.
But until then, it can all stay right here.
And it's awesome, because when you start thinking of it in terms like I own the Walmart and
all this stuff that's inside, not really, but you don't need to take it with you.
It's like having a great big massive monster storage unit with all your stuff and it's
all neatly organized.
It's all labeled, it's all on sale and they pay people to sit there and organize it for you.
And so, then when you need it, you go right down the aisle, you know where everything
is, you get what you need and only then do you pay the fee on it as you take it out of
the store, right?
So, I don't have all the insurance costs and all the shipping, and handling, and storage,
and employee costs, and all that stuff.
I don't have that because Walmart is, they picked up the tab on it.
I just don't have to pick up all this stuff and hoard it myself and pay for my own storage
unit and all those things, right?
Okay.
The next thing that I decided to do is not go to Walmart at all.
And so I started outsourcing all of my shopping and it's awesome.
I send a shopping list either to someone in my family, or an assistant, or someone and
I say, "Hey, these are the things I need."
And then miraculously they show up and they say, "Here's your box of stuff that you need."
And I give them a check.
I don't have to wander down any aisles.
I don't do my own grocery shopping.
I don't buy my own ... My husband bought my last pair of shoes, which was a bold move.
But guess what?
I didn't even have to go into the shoe store.
So, by removing myself from the temptation, which is like the alcoholic removing himself
from the bar, you are able to make new choices about the stuff that you hoard.
Okay?
Another thing that I would mention as far as hoarding goes, do you really need it?
Do you need this item?
Is there another item you have that could take its place?
Is there another way you could accomplish this task without this thing?
And you start getting rid of stuff.
And I started asking myself, well I need such and such, do I need it today?
If I don't need it today, can it wait till tomorrow and then tomorrow, do I need it today?
Or we can wait until the next day, can it wait till the next day can and wait until
the next day?
And I started putting it off.
Now, in the event and there was one time and about nine months where I did go grocery shopping
by myself.
And so, here's the rule, if you have to go into a store and it's about collecting and
hoarding stuff, if you have to go into a store, don't take a shopping cart, use what your
two hands can carry.
And then suddenly you will find after you're carrying four or five things and you're trying
to nook them in the crannies of your arm and trying to keep them from falling up, just
go to the checkout counter already and you're done, right?
When you have a bag you can just get a load stuff in there and it just can get heaping
as you want.
And there are times in the past I had two shopping carts.
Well, I don't need two shopping carts of stuff.
I'm one person, carry what you can carry in your hands and then be done with it.
Like I said, there are five Walmart's within a 10 mile radius of my house and there are
a whole bunch of other stores, right?
I'm not on any island or something.
This is not like items are scarce, they're available.
So, I can go get them at any time if I need them.
It's just do I need them?
And the answer is no, most times.
So can you be cured?
I don't think you can be cured.
I think it's like the person that lost the 200 pounds.
You will always be thinking at every meal.
What is it that I'm about to eat and why am I going to eat it?
And Is it worth it?
And then you realize how hard it took you to get to this point.
What did you have to jump through to get your house this clean?
How much did you have to pay a professional organizer to come in and help you find a place
for everything?
How much stuff did you have to give up that meant something to you?
And so, once you go through all of those questions, now you have a different series of choices.
But I do recommend that you speak with a psychotherapist
or a cognitive behavioral specialist that
can help you decode it and understand why you've been hoarding.
Because, nobody deserves to live in a home with stuff
because what happens is you can't find anything,
and then you go buy more stuff
because you can't find what you're looking for.
And then it gets misplaced, and then you spend hours looking for something
and lo and behold, it is a right in front of you.
And you can't see it because there's so much clutter.
There's just, there's so much stuff.
So, don't live that way.
Don't live that way.
Make a choice and decide that you're going to change the behaviors that got you in that
situation in the first place.
And yes, that is possible.
All right, I hope this helps you a bit.
If it did, please pass it on to a friend and until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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