Trapped

[I love roses]

How to deal with hoarding spouse? Our bedroom and kitchen is ok and normal. But you can’t walk into any other room. I wanted to do some hobbies in the other rooms and this makes me depressed because I’m disabled and i’m not allowed to have a life with what I can do.Im too disabled to clean it out. It is broken furniture and stuff with tiny things stuffed in between. It is like those people on TV. My bedroom is too small to do anything. I feel he has backed me in a corner, like, you have room to “breathe” just right here in this little spot. If I kick him out I have no one to help me when my disability flares up. We had a nicer house somewhere else and he only hoarded the garage and down one side of the house outside. But we don’t have a garage now and he did it in the house. He recycles metal in the yard. But he lets it sit there. He never recycles it all away. I thought about hiring a moving company but I doubt they would do it. So many things are broken. Roof leaks, bathroom partially remodeled still tore up. Sometimes I just want to run away.

 

[Progster]

Sound like my partner, but instead of metal, it is wood. Basically he has his space, which I don't interfere with and I have mine, and I keep mine free of clutter. Or at least, I try to - I'm not exaclty the tidiest person in the world either. He has a shed, but has taken over a lot of the garden. I take a lot of the bottles and other things he wants to keep and put them down in the basement. Somewhere where he knows they are there, but I can't see it. As long as these boundaries are respected, it's ok.

Do you have room for a shed? That might help organise clutter.

I'm a hoarder, too. I have a large CD collection, and a large collection of digital albums. But the digital collection only takes up hard disk storage space, not physical space.

 

[I love roses]

He hoarded all the sheds. They are so bad you can’t find anything. a lot of it is broken things he picked up on the side of the road. He is a hoarder in the real sense like in “Hoarders.” It got worse when a man let him clean out storage rentals, or people died and he cleaned out their houses.

 

[I love roses]

Actually, I have some green bottles. But I was going to use a room to make glass art to sell, like vases, drinking glasses, guitar slides, wind chimes. Those are boxed up and easy to get rid of if not used. But this other stuff is a mix of dusty, nasty, filthy broken stuff, a lot of broken furniture. Other people’s clothes. If you have seen Hoarders, it is like that but without the bugs, mice, and excess cats. We do have a couple mouser cats in the house but they are kept clean and healthy. There are a few ferals outside, but they keep their own colony small and what survives, (coyotes get them or other tom cats) are fat and healthy. We average 5 to 8 cats outside. But they keep mice away and with his hoarding I especially need them. It makes me feel paralyzed.

 

[Mary Anne]

Can you get some help just “like those people on tv?” Therapist, or organization specialist? Your husband probably has obsessive compulsive disorder. He will not change if he does not want to. Many hoarders need to be given an ultimatum before they even consider steps to change.

Sometimes it’s the city or community that gives citations. Sometimes it takes many neighbors complain8ng. Other times, it takes the spouse threatening to leave the hoarder...and following up by doing it. It’s not safe or healthy for you or anyone else living in that. If there are children, they can be taken from the home.

 

[I love roses]

I don’t have children at home.I’m low income so I can’t move out. The house was bought with my inheritance. The city doesn’t care. Everyone leaves us alone. The metal outside is pretty much confined to one pile so it isn’t all over the yard. I could easily get the city involved but then he might not get rid of it all and if they knew how bad my house is they might condemn it and l would be homeless. I can’t allow that. I can survive in the back bedroom and kitchen which is better than nothing. The leaks aren’t bad and the house is 100% solid wood with tongue and groove wall boards. We keep buckets in the attic. So I stay dry. The rafters dry out quick. There isn’t any insulation at all. There is a little mold in a couple places. The house is historic,year 1894. Ceilings and attic both 13 feet.

 

[I love roses]

I love the location, only one neighbor. surrounded by privacy tree line. can see downtown but yet out in the country, creek big as a river out front, lots of pretty wildlife, Red Tail hawks. Cool old house. The 13’ ceilings are relaxing to look up at. Seven foot windows.

 

[Mary Anne]

You are in the states right? There are companies that will take it all. We had a company called “got junk” come and take everything away when the old homestead was sold. We donated good stuff, or sold it. The rest (an enormous amount of junk spanning over 45 years) was taken away by a company we know sends recycled items to the correct places and tries not to landfill everything. You will probably get protests from the hubby, but tell him this is what you will do within a specified time frame if he will not. Stick to your promises.

 

[I love roses]

I threw him out six months once for a different behavior. I got that under control. I didn’t even have to monitor that. But that is trying to come back so I had to take over that problem again, too. The counselors here are terrible. They just said it is OCD from his ADHD and acted like there was nothing I could do. We live in such a depressed area that there are people with way worse problems so counselors treat me like an annoying fly.

 

[Mary Anne]

You still can tell him you are hiring a clean out company. They can do it all in a couple hours, while you sit there and tell them what to take and what to keep. You are not powerless, nor a victim. Don’t let yourself fall into those damaging mindsets.

 

[Tom]

I don't know of any way except sitting down with your spouse and trying to work it out with some compromises.

 

[I love roses]

I’ve been damaged from this since a few years after marriage, been 22 years. I hope Got Junk isn’t terribly expensive and with an expensive call out fee. It is going to be hard because he has a strong defense mechanism. He pretends to go along but cooperates minimum, almost nothing. I’ll definately call them. I’m so sick of it I never even want anything in my house again. not even furniture to actually use even if new! I want empty rooms!

 

[I love roses]

I don't know of any way except sitting down with your spouse and trying to work it out with some compromises.

He’s passive aggressive, agrees. Then throws out six boxes of actual trash like paper and plastic and quits. says someone called and wants him to work Then he goes and is gone for days like he’s working and comes home with $20 he made.

 

[I love roses]

He makes about $100 to $200 a month on penny annie jobs. The jobs makes other people think he “works”. He hasn’t lots of serious issues but I can tolerate those as we have social security. But they are all defenses. He can’t read or write hardly, can’t do math except basic carpentry requirements. So it is all a defense for his learning disability of which he never found a diagnosis or took tests after awareness has come about. He isn’t on retirement social security so that is no use now for an expensive diagnosis. But y’all have some awesome ideas!

 

[I love roses]

I have given ultimatums before. He breaks me first.

 

[I love roses]

I can’t stand to live alone. I have to have another human.

 

[I love roses]

I had promised I would call a junk removal company before and set a time limit. But he came up with a believable excuse. You won’t believe this! But his truck broke down where he couldn’t haul anything off. We used the only mechanic in town and the mechanic got in trouble for city tax evasion. So the city made him get a real job. His truck had an electrical problem so it took a whole year for the same mechanic to work on it in his spare time along side his other 100 customers. Not almost a year mind you! A whole year to fix! So we had no way to haul off anything. This guy sucks me down! Nice guy! Easy going, but a vampire blood sucker!

 

[I love roses]

I understand he doesn’t really function. I accept all parts of that but not the hoarding. So I don’t want it to sound like i dig degrading my husband. We have managed to have community acceptance and everyone seems to like him. He is a kind and helpful person with what he is able to do. He does indeed have something mentally organic or neurological he can not help. We don’t know what that is. He does exhibit strong adhd and ocd but he has more issues than just those. The junk is security for side money in case I was to abandon him I feel or for hard times. He sometimes sells stuff off to antique shops and he sells metal. His whole family hoards actually and has some self destruction in the process, like unrepaired homes. The trash is a smoke screen so I can’t be involved. Now I’m making this part up but, subconciously that is my guess. When he was younger and worked as a contractor which I had to force him to do, he only hoarded minimumly and was more organized and it was specific, like Dvd’s he built shelves for or collectible toys and he had a small junk line down one side of the house. So early in the marriage, I did not know he had this problem. He didn’t go berserk until I became disabled and lost my job and income. Finally I got disability. So we have half the income we had. When I quit work he wanted to stay home, too. Now he is almost too old to work so I just tell him he has to work for his blow and go money. I was too disabled when he was younger to fight over it. In the beginning of my disability my entire health failed it and was a very dark time. I just had to go on psych meds and pain killers a while and be a vegetable.

 

[I love roses]

You still can tell him you are hiring a clean out company. They can do it all in a couple hours, while you sit there and tell them what to take and what to keep. You are not powerless, nor a victim. Don’t let yourself fall into those damaging mindsets.

Pray I can even find someone. I live in a low population area where many people will not come.

 

[Mary Anne]

I had promised I would call a junk removal company before and set a time limit. But he came up with a believable excuse. You won’t believe this! But his truck broke down where he couldn’t haul anything off. We used the only mechanic in town and the mechanic got in trouble for city tax evasion. So the city made him get a real job. His truck had an electrical problem so it took a whole year for the same mechanic to work on it in his spare time along side his other 100 customers. Not almost a year mind you! A whole year to fix! So we had no way to haul off anything. This guy sucks me down! Nice guy! Easy going, but a vampire blood sucker!

How far away from a real city do you live? You make me realize my fantasies of living rural have some problems. No one around has a truck and possible youngish strong men with muscle to do this labor???