Hoarding

Hoarding disorder is a persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them.

My “holidays” were spent cleaning the family house, so we could place it in the market. I spent 5 days of my life cleaning a two storey property, with my mother. It was definitely one of the hardest tasks I ever had to do in my life.

I love my mother, but I finally had to confront her about her hoarding habits, that are not full blown but they exist, and how this affects her and others. 😦 It was hard…

Her habit of keeping things, comes from a complex life experience but the keys trigger points were: 

• An upbringing in  extreme poverty. Portugal in the 40’s, 50’s was an extremely poor country.
• A mother (my grandmother) that already had the habit of keeping things.
• Not catching up w/ times and not understanding that if something is ripped, broken, etc the repair may not be worth it and it is better to get rid of the item.
• Access to space that allowed her to “put things in the garage, I’ll have a look later”.

I am definitely not an expert, but following my experience, hoarding doesn’t make anyone happy. It’s the bodys’ inability to deal with separation, to digest life events, to maneuver through life changes.

It’s a temporary measure (“put things in the garage, I’ll have a look later”), that piles and piles until someone “bursts” and says NO MORE! In this case it was me, out of the desperation of wanting my parents to have a better life quality  and not be engulfed by long outdated life habits. 

We did it, we cleaned the house in 5 days. We woke up early and put on a pair of gloves and masks and did it. Sometimes silently, digesting the old memories in silence. Sometimes raising my voice when I was not seeing progress made (I had a deadline) and asking why on earth we needed another blanket.

I took breathers and made sure I explained to her why something had to be thrown out or donated. 

My mother’s hoarding habits are not severe, but we had to clean the property of things over 30 years old. They now live in a nice comfy flat and since they moved I explain to them their lifestyle changed and that slowly they need to adapt and that they have to manage their new space. They cannot go back to keeping everything. 

I honestly think she is making a huge effort to understand this and adjust, especially after she saw the effect of the cleaning had on me and the hard physical labour we both had to put in.  I keep a positive outlook on this process, I think things will get better. 

I’m a very intuitive person and you may not believe in this or understand it, but this is my experience. When I was doing the deep cleaning I kept feeling a weight being lifted off  my shoulders, of all the old memories, bad and good experiences that we were releasing into the world/universe. As I threw away old school books, I was grateful for the good memories in that house, all the hard work I did in school, the shelter that house gave us, etc but now it was time to move on. I threw away old silverware and was grateful for all the food I ate in that house. I cleaned the garden and was grateful to have grown up in such a green place. But I choose to be focused on the future, that is so bright (I choose to believe).

I keep repeating “things don’t own us, we own them”, we have things to make our life easier and prettier and happier. If they are not doing any of this, maybe it is time to donate it, sell it, throw it away. 

So my advice that I follow and I give to you is, when you buy something ask yourself “do you love it?”, “is it useful?”, “will it make that person happy?”. If you don’t get a hell yes to one of these questions, put it back on the shelf, you don’t need it. Put the money on your pension fund 🙂

I love my mother. We are all humans doing the best we can, with the tools we are given. 

I am Franca and this is personal.