Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

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One of my parents is a hoarder and has filled up a 2500+sqft house with junk. It is so bad that there are aisles carved through the house so that they can get through it.

My siblings and I have been begging and pleading with them to sort this out for the past 20 years. We have offered to help. But they haven't, as said parent is "throw themselves in front of the car if we try to leave with anything" emotionally attached to this stuff and somehow maintains an inventory of everything, including how they bought it and how it made them feel.

Now they are getting old and infirm and are barely able to afford the house that they are renting, let alone put in the effort to clean it up. My siblings and I are going to be stuck with a quagmire where they only solution is to pay a professional to come over and clean out the house, and that will not be cheap.

I feel your pain. But they won't change. We cleared a house in a week, that belonged to a hoarder. It can be done. And requires a week, rather than years of pestering and agonising yourself.

Our neighbour died and the kids just paid not much for house clearance, which was a side line of the funeral parlor. For them it's a gamble as to whether they will find something of worth to make it worthwhile.

I have another slowly dementing relative with mobility issues. They need space, but will not give up piles of plates, and four knive blocks that litter their precious kitchen space. They don't even cook. It's impossible, and when I dare to help, it is just met with derision and scorn.

I chucked ten back issues of phone books/directories and have never lived it down.

It's important to note that anything too big for a vacuum cleaner to pick up off of carpet can, with a moment's practice, be picked up with a broom and a dust pan. Don't try to separate everything into boxes and trashcans by hand. It takes too long and it's hard on your back.

Importantly, if trash is a bulk operation, then the cost difference between keeping things versus throwing them out becomes more pronounced, earlier on.

I'm sure most of us have that experience of figuring out that our stuff isn't going to fit in the truck and/or car and all of a sudden things we really intended to keep become negotiable. Problem is that there are probably three other things you'd be more willing to part with, but they're already in boxes in the truck.

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