And I'm scared, I'm not scared to have someone help me I'm scared to let someone in my apartment. They're coming next week and I'm not really sure what to do. Do I help them or do I point out what needs to be done do I put on music, how much do I tip them. Hopefully my therapist can give me some advice on what to do because I have no idea what to do.

Writing this while heading home because I need to put this somewhere. I can’t stop chastising myself for not being more headstrong and getting it full. It’s getting picked up in two days and she’s too weak to put much else in there herself. I live too far away to come back and she has no one else to help and so much stuff that will fill up another skip bin. There was a huge pile of mdf kitchen cabinets I could have put in there, but I was frustrated by the spot she chose to have the skip bin put and said “those ones will go in the next bin which we’ll have dropped closer, because it’ll take too much time this time”. But then I got all distracted trying to help her with bank stuff and trying to give her a clean pretty bedroom. Those boards will take up so much room next time we have a bin. It’s so much money and time. Each skip bin is minimum $400 and it’s going to get towed away with so much room left in it. Because I was pissed at her and being stubborn. In the last situation where somebody should be stubborn, it’s literally getting rid of the junk after all these years.

She’s at very high risk of returning to a DV relationship and is so mentally fragile right now and I just wanted leave her with a better situation but I spent too much time on silly shit. And I can’t seem to stop feeling like I’ve seriously fucked it all up. I asked her to send me photos of the bin because I feel like I’m overreacting and wanted help curbing my anxiety she just responded with “yes it’s extremely empty, and I’m trying to get to the work” which kind of does the opposite.

I don’t know how to approach such a difficult task when I need to be methodical and disciplined, and that causes her to feel judged, which causes conflict, which takes me off task. It’s like I constantly end up in a position of emotional caretaking and am so exhausted that I can’t think clearly about the situation and base my actions on that.

my issue is, i also struggle with hoarding. i hoard perfumes, plushies and especially clothes very badly. yet, i have this conflicting issue where i always feel like i have too much yet not enough at once? i find myself not knowing if i truly like something or not. i find myself being able to throw away/donate things to “hold more space” very easily. i feel overwhelmed yet underwhelmed constantly.

I guess I’m just posting for emotional support. No one in my life can understand what I’m going through. I’m angry, afraid and so deeply sad, my heart feels like it’s literally breaking.

Things devolved for my mom several years ago. She had a traumatic brain injury then a stroke in her late 50s, she seemed to recover okay, she could still drive and stuff. She started having difficulty managing her condo. Growing up, we lived in an impeccable house. But her place started gathering clutter over the course of 10 years after her initial tbi, and she didn’t seem to notice or care. There was no shopping addiction at that point. But eventually the neighbors kept calling saying she was unwell and needed help. She was overwhelmed and begged for me to help.

I dug her out of the condo and got her into a really nice set up in an assisted living place. I thought if things were taken care of for her, she could go back to normal, have a good last chapter. That’s all I wanted for her. But then the shopping addiction happened. She had put my name on one of her bank accounts, and I could see how quickly she was spending money. I begged her to stop, but she dismissed me and wouldn’t give me power of attorney and I had no power to intervene.

Within a year she was asked to leave the assisted living place because of hoarding. I was fed up and said I wouldn’t help her anymore. She paid an exorbitant amount of money to move into a 4 bedroom rental. That was a year ago. That 4 bedroom is now completely filled.

Last month, I discovered that she has spent all of her money. She spent $400,000 in the last year alone. She has spent her entire life savings, and now has nothing. I have traveled to her state to see the home and try to figure out what to do with her, because her lease is up in September and she can no longer afford the rent. I am so overwhelmed by this house. She has fleas from the cats, and her legs are all bit up with flea bites. She is wearing dirty clothing. Her house is filthy - not only is there a lot of stuff, there’s food on the ground that she doesn’t even seem to see. Amazon boxes that have never been opened. So much random stuff that makes absolutely no sense, like she bought a kiln and a hookah, among other thousands of random things. She gets confused by her phone, she has like no attention span when I try to get her to help me figure her situation out. I think she has dementia.

Of course I’m angry. I yelled at her today, trying to get her to see the logic, and then I came on this sub and understood that there is no logic for her. This is a serious mental illness and yelling isn’t going to help. I also feel compassion for her, I can’t imagine what this must be like for her. And I feel so so so sad. My poor mother is living in filth and there’s literally nothing I can do about it.

Realizing what she had done (she says she doesn’t have memory of spending the money, despite the house full of crap) she finally gave me financial power of attorney. I will take over her small Social Security income to pay her bills with and give her whatever monthly allowance is left over. I will again dig her out of this and move her into a smaller place that she can’t do as much damage in, also there’s no more money to spend. Initially, she agreed, but today when it came to talking about having a company come in and getting rid of all her stuff so she could move, she told me she will file a restraining order against me. She said she can figure it all out on her own, but of course she can’t do that on her own.

And even though I will do this again, I know this is not going to actually change anything. She’s still going to live in filth and not take care of her self. I can’t live with her to take care of her because my mental health is not good, and I will not survive that. I can’t figure out what agency could help her. I think I have to just let her destroy her life, and that’s really hard to do. My mother who was beautiful, well put together, worked as an attorney making good money and lived in a beautiful house in an upper middle class neighborhood. She is now going to move into a trailer park.

I’ve never felt more heartbroken in my life. I cry myself to sleep every night.

ETA: i’m seeing some notifications of comments that are not appearing when I try to open them, so I can’t respond. One comment was talking about finding social services and elder care professionals. I have no idea what social services can help this situation. I have called an elder care nonprofit, and they just talked about Adult Protective Services. I don’t know what APS would do, where they would take my mom, etc. I have researched all kinds of ways to address this situation, and I haven’t found anything. People always say call some sort of agency, but I can never get specific information. So if somebody knows a specific organization that can take real steps with me, please send me a message.
Also, I am trying to get doctors involved, but it’s difficult when I’m not at the actual doctors appointment to provide information that she won’t provide herself. I live in a different state and I can’t be with her most of the time.

Hi, I’m new here. I’ll try to keep it short and sweet but also give some background. I am UK based.

So my father is a hoarder however it didn’t really impact us as he was pretty absent through childhood. My mum the complete opposite.

My sister is an absolute hoarder. This is where I need the help. For years and years as a family we have tried to help declutter and clean. It has taken me years to build up trust enough for her to let me get rid of things and not have her permission for every single piece of paper and it is only me that she will allow to do this. She has a fair few underlying conditions both physical and mental. I am diagnosed ADHD she is undiagnosed but very obviously ADHD. I have spent countless days and hours decluttering a room only to return a few weeks later to it being bad again and it is SOUL DESTROYING. She has a teenage daughter and I have my own children. It’s hard for me to find time to help now as it’s unsafe for my children to be there most of the time. Currently she’s made a fair bit of progress although most of the things have been moved to her room and she cannot access her bed or wardrobe.

I have congratulated her on the epic achievement she has made however this is severely impacting her daughter’s mental health. Me and her made a start on her room and she got rid of a lot of stuff. I don’t think my niece is a hoarder as she litteraly was happy to just get rid of so much stuff. I think her room is cluttered as she’s a victim of circumstance in this situation. I guess I’m asking what physical help can I try to find for her? I know hoarding in a mental illness. What would a diagnosis achieve? She already takes medication for anxiety etc so would a medication help her declutter? I don’t really understand. I also know she would not attend therapy. I reached out to a charity but they weren’t really what I was looking for. She also paid a company for a while to come and declutter and clean but it was soooo slow going it was pointless.
We even applied for that tv show as at this point there’s so much stuff that it needs to be all taken away and sorted and then brought back in. Presently it just gets moved from room to room 😭😭.

Anyway I’m sorry for rambling and I hope this makes sense. Also is there any help for kids living with this in the UK? My niece doesn’t have social media and I don’t think she has Reddit but I think it would be nice for her to see she isn’t alone. I worry she’s vulnerable and an easy target for predators due to where she lives and her home life. Thank you

Hey everyone. I am the 26 year old adult child of an extreme animal hoarder. I want to make this post to kind of gather my thoughts about my mom's animal hoarding since I only just recently started unpacking this in therapy.

Growing up, I remember we seemed to always have pets, but I just remember having a normal amount of animals. Like a couple dogs and cats, maybe a guinea pig. It seems like as I got older, the amount of animals my mom had at a time increased. While it was difficult to pinpoint when my mom's animal hoarding got more extreme, it wasn't impossible. Up until I was 11, we had rented places and always had a landlord, so there were restrictions on how many animals we had. When I was 11, my parents bought a house and the property it was on, meaning they didnt have to follow the rules of a landlord. The house was just outside of the town too, so we had very few neighbors.

She slowly got more dogs over the years, and we had an amount of dogs in the double digits. When I was 15, my sister developed an interest in reptiles. So my mom decided to get rats. And then, she ended up finding my sister's bearded dragon interesting. Pretty soon, it seemed like any reptile, amphibians, rodent or bird that fascinated her, she had to have.

At this point, it would be pointless to try to pinpoint when we got which animals, because there were SO many. I'll just put a list below of all of the animals we owned. And just so there is no confusion, most of the animals on this list were owned at the same time.

-Dogs (30 by the time I was kicked out at 18, 50 by the time I went no contact at 23)

-Cats

-Chickens

-Ducks

-Rabbits

-Peacocks (I'm dead serious, and we had 4 of them at one point)

-Pigeons

-Pot belly pigs

-Cockateils

-Parakeets

-Chinchillas

-Guinea Pigs

-Rats

-Turtles (several different kinds)

-bearded dragons

-Uromastyx

-several different kinds of geckos

-frogs

-Iguanas (yes that's plural, we had 2)

-Degu (I cant remember if this was a rodent or reptile, I just remember the name of the animal)

I'm sure there are some I'm forgetting but one I didn't include in the list because it needs more context is mice. My mom owned mice. But not from a pet store, oh no. These were house mice in our cupboards. During the winter she would catch these mice alive, take care of them until spring, then have my dad drive a mile down the road to set them free.

She also raised live bugs for the reptiles, so if we include them we can add these three to the lists

-Mealworms

-crickets

-Dubia Roaches

This post is already really long, so I feel like I dont really need to go into much detail of how bad the flea problem was and how much the house stank. It was very dudty and dirty, so I felt like seasonal allergies were always flaring up. And although it was animals my mother hoarded, the house had the appearance of a house with a thing hoarder because of the items needed to take care of them. We got so many animals we didnt even use the living room as a living room anymore.

I need to know if anyone else who had animal hoarding parents ever have parents take it to these extremes before.

Late last year my hoarder parent had a fall at home and got trapped in a collapsing pile of magazines, fortunately found by a neighbour with spare keys who'd invited them for dinner and got worried when they didn't show, a stay in hospital ended up in transfer to a care home for probably the rest of their life.

The house is full and it's not small house, I'm not going to trouble you with the pictures, but they had to get enough stuff out of the house to get a path through to get said parent out. I've been spending half my free time since the incident trying to get some clear space so we can begin meaningfully clearing while keeping hold of anything actually of interest. It's coming up to a year now and my patience is fairly thin.

That's the background.

This morning I got a call complaining about some item or other being missing and being thrown away into a care home as an easy option, and I absolutely let rip about the consequences of their own actions and driving everyone away by preferring to have the stuff over the family relationships.

Which comes back to the original question, the hoarder has been forcibly separated from the hoard. I have now given them an earful about expecting anything other than going to a care home based on their prior behaviour, consequences of their own actions, failing to maintain the house in a safe condition, preferring their stuff over a relationship with me etc etc. Has anyone found any good can come of this or can I just expect more resentment?

Edit: Thank you all for your comments, I suspect as many of you said it will just wash over and be forgotten. There was a lot of crying but there always is when I say the "H" word directly.

I am a child of a hoarder. I moved into my grandma’s house to escape the hoard (even though the hoarder parent, mom, did the same thing, we share a bedroom) as I can’t afford to live on my own on my income.

I’m not allowed to bring pets with me. We have two dogs and a cat, but one of the dogs (and the cat) is mine. I went home the other day to bring some of my stuff to my Grandma’s house, and I couldn’t bare seeing my dog in the state she was in. Because of the hoard, the infestation of fleas is impossible to remove. She is a golden x Labrador so she has longer fur, and although I bought flea treatment for the animals, it hasn’t worked. She has chewed her paws through to the skin because of the fleas constantly biting her. She also cowers when I leave.

I got Winnie (my dog) when I was 15, and she was meant to be a mental health/autism “support dog”, but we never trained her. Now 7 years later, I know I have to do the right thing and find somewhere else for her. The only problem is that she is aggressive with strangers and dogs she doesn’t know on her walks, so I don’t know if the kennels will take her.

My mom went for a job interview recently (she hasn’t worked for 26 years, also she didn’t get the job) as a receptionist at a vets, a job she did about 30 years ago. She was asking one of the receptionists questions as she was waiting for her interview, and she was learning about “pet plans”. She told me when she got home that in the moment she thought to herself “I don’t know anything about that, I tend to just let my animals suffer and die”.
None of our pets ever had regular vet visits, just when they were puppies/kittens. I don’t think my dog has ever even been to the vets. As part of my mom’s hoard, she used to own a “pet shop”, which consisted of 100 animals in a garden shed. How they stayed alive, I don’t know. I know she loves the animals, but it’s almost like they’re more for her comfort. She doesn’t seem to understand that they are living creatures who do suffer and who do feel.

I know it’s not about my feelings, and that I need to find a new home for Winnie, but I can’t bare the thought of her thinking I’ve abandoned her, or how long she might be in the kennel, or never getting to see her again. I feel bad that I didn’t do more over the years. I have contacted people about her, I’m awaiting further contact on the next steps due to her aggressiveness towards strangers and other dogs. I think about the other dog too, who isn’t suffering as much, but how they will miss each other and not understand. I just hope I’m doing the right thing. Thank you so much if you read this far.

So, my mother's hoarding extends to her yard and continuously planting fruit trees, bushes, flowers. A lot of really beautiful plants but once they are in the ground they are neglected and never maintained or trimmed. The yard is so overgrown it is unusable now. She has a greenhouse, also unusable because a grape vine got in and completely took over. The entire greenhouse is filled to the brim with grape vine to the point you cannot open the door.

My brother lives with her and hoardes cars, car parts, guns and refuses to clean trash he will remove from his vehicle and leave in the yard.

So, predictably, with so many food sources around, raccoons moved in. Several generations of raccoons. My brother has removed 7 from the property and released them 30 miles away. He has trail cams set up to monitor this. Last night, the trail cam picked up a raccoon in the live trap, with 4 other raccoons surrounding the trap, trying to free the trapped one. Heartbreaking. So about 12 raccoons, probably more. This isn't a large property, it is in a residential subdivision on a typical lot, luckily most of the jungle is hidden with trees from the road.

Also on the trail cam is a very large beautiful wild cat. A lynx or a bobcat most likely. He is prowling the yard every night.

I feel like the situation is getting out of control and someone is going to get hurt. Or my small dogs. I hate this so much because I love my family. But when I bring up cleaning up the yard a bit, removing the trash, trimming the apple and other fruit trees to make them more manageable, removing the grape vines completely (none of this fruit has ever been consumed by humans) I get screamed at.

My brother does not think they are there because of the plentiful food and just need to be eradicated. I know he wants to shoot the cat but other houses are way to close to shoot in the yard.

My mother just likes her backyard and can only see black and white- either let it grow wildly out of control or bring in the bulldozers.

It is just so frustrating. And terribly sad to see these poor raccoons, who obviously have deep connections to each other torn apart and relocated in a strange area.

I, (46,F) am having some weird issues with my mother (69) lately. The past 6 months she has become obsessed with my schedule. She wants to know my days off, my hours, if I have a dr appt will I have the whole day off?

I should probably x post this with raised by narcissists as well, because she does have boundary issues. For some reason I could foresee this and I have told her I work 6 days a week with a long commute. (I’m actually a housewife now on a VA pension) because I knew she would have the expectation of being her personal driver/companion on call 24/7.

We aren’t close. We don’t get along great, never did. Suddenly all her years of abuse and terrorizing,humiliation, hoarding,and lies are all forgotten about she can’t remember that. And she acts as if only I could quit my job I could be her bff?

I’m at the point that I’m starting to get paranoid. We live in the same town, so if I bump into her at the store or in traffic I know I will get an interrogation about why I’m not at work, why didn’t I tell her I had the day off…like she is entitled to know about every free day I have. I am feeling controlled even though we aren’t even in the same house.

I cant talk about things with her. I scored tickets to the Wicked musical. I can’t tell her about it. I will get interrogated about how much it cost, did I have the day off, why didn’t I bring her instead of husband…I feel like a grounded adult that has to sneak out.

Anyone else deal with this?

i wish i could have birthday parties at my house, have my friends over for halloween, for game nights, or even just to hang out. i feel so trapped and i just wish i had a normal house and life. i don’t blame my mom because i know she dearly loves me and shes been through so much pain especially over these past years of my life, but i feel i’ve lost a part of myself too. i just wish everything could be different. i don’t know how to open up about this to anyone. how does it feel for you all?

Does anyone else have a sibling who is also a hoarder, on top of having hoarding parents?

Today I was selling old kids clothes on Marketplace and wanted to be sure that I wasn't getting rid of things that could still fit.

My brother had previously taken a shirt out of my sell pile that, according to the size tag, was too small for him to wear.

Keeping this in mind, when I went through the closet today, I pulled out the coats and things that were too small according to the tags. I asked my 3 siblings if those items were too small.

Had the smallest try on a coat. Way too tight, wouldn't zip.

Asked my brother to try on this item that was his. After putting it on, he complained about how it was obviously too small. Reminded him of the time he took out a shirt from my sell pile (it was recent, just several weeks ago), either ignored or disregarded that.

He said "I want to donate everything we own (or something to this effect)." His room is a hoarder nightmare. There are tons of stuffed animals, dirty clothes strewn across the floor, tons and tons and tons of trinkets, toy trash that he wants to keep, toys he doesn't play with or display (still keeping), outside crap, and a shitload of cheap toys and other doodads.

I try to be sharper on donating things because they are incredibly lax. My mom will go through donate bins and pick stuff back out. My other siblings wanted to donate a toy that they didn't want, but mom told them to keep it because it was new. It had sat in the package for several months at this point.

Yes, he has gone into my room to take toys for himself, despite having this massive amount of toys that, crucially, he doesn't have space for.

He doesn't want to get rid of most of his toys, despite them causing an issue.

I went into his room to grab old clothes to wash from the two dirty clothes bins he has in there, he complained to mom that I was going in there. I was literally cleaning his room by giving him a space to put dirty clothes. Some of these items are 3, 4, 5 sizes too small.

His room and spaces are easily the worst regularly used rooms in the house.

TL;DR- My hoarder mom and addict/hoarder dad both seemed to have very high expectations of me growing up, and even now. My mom is still a hoarder and I do not take kindly to some of her parenting “critiques” or input, now that I am a parent myself.

My mother is a hoarder. I think she has been her whole adult life, but she let it really take hold after her and my father divorced (I was maybe 9) and she had to work 3 jobs.

Even though our house was spacious and clutter-free and kind of empty actually from what I can remember (toddler ages to maybe 10 years old?) I remember my dad telling me he had to always hassle my mom to get rid of stuff and she would buy “bargains” often. I guess it was just one of their many sources of conflict. idk. My dad is not here anymore for me to hear his side of it, but he was abusive in multiple ways anyways.

Now that I am a mother myself, to three little boys, I just can’t fathom some of my parents’ choices. And while I try to give them grace and think “they were doing the best they could with what they had” I can’t help but snap at them sometimes. My dad passed away 11 years ago now, but I was snappy at him when he was alive too. As much as he complained about my mom‘s hoarding, to my surprise he was actually a hoarder too! Every space in the condo he had when I was in elementary school immediately after their divorce was covered with stuff. Mail, tools, first aid supplies, coins, knives and sharpening tools, and all of his stuff was clean and sterile at first. I remember him getting on to me to keep my room and bathroom clean, and they were spotless down to the sparsely filled closet, and toys put away in the dresser drawers. I even had matching bed sets on the top and bottom bunk. But the rest of the home was a different story- it was in disarray and told stories of addiction and sadness.

My dad died in his home, with many rooms of his home hoarded and unusable. My mom still lives in her own hoarded home. I’ve seen not one, but both of my childhood homes succumb to the hoard. I have moments of hope because my mom will start to get rid of things, but it’s never enough if I’m honest. And I love her with all my heart, she is an amazing lady and the hardest worker I know, and the most talented cook! But I’m still snappy at her. And I’ve noticed I get VERY snappy when it comes to something to do with my parenting (especially since she has lived with my 2 adult brothers who never left the nest, until my older brother moved away just last month at the age of 38).

One example where I didn’t get snappy but I felt internally like I could have snapped at her is the following phone call we had:

me: oh gosh I just can get past this tingly sore feeling in my breasts, I’m so tired of it.

mom: you need to pump?

me: well yes and no. it’s because I’m not pumping anymore, I’m weaning and have been for the last couple weeks

mom: *gasp and shocked voice* oh no why?!

me: what do you mean why? Because I’ve been pumping for 6 months and I’m tired, dont have time anymore to sustain it, and i only have one set of pump parts left... (also for more context here, i pumped with a hand pump, my hand veins were wild for a while hahahhah)

mom: oh….no…. No….that’s not good…. hmm

and if I wasn’t so compliant, I would have hung up on her honestly lol and i know that’s childish. But she didn’t breastfeed me for six months and I know she didn’t pump for 6 months for any of her kids. So why does she act like I’m not meeting some invisible expectation? Her response lacked empathy in my opinion.

Other examples of me explaining how one of my children might have an ailment or rash or SOMETHING. And she will start repeating “oh no, that’s not good. You really need to take him in. Like right now. seriously this can’t wait. Omg. have you scheduled it?“

I asked her last time “why do you do that? I just told you X is sick and I’m taking him to the doctor and now you’re doing this panicked talk telling me over and over again repeating yourself in different ways that I NEED to do something I already told you I’m doing. Why do you do that?”

She said “Oh, to really impress on you and reinforce that it needs done.“

and I told her “I know from experience that if I do that to you, you get VERY annoyed with me, you shush me and tell me to “stop”. So please, if you KNOW you don’t like it done to you, then DO NOT do it to me. Fair?” And she was just awkward after that. No real response to my statement or me saying asking “fair?” … just kind of a grumble and move on to the next topic.

All is fine and ”normal” now, no further confrontation or discussion with her, but are there any other children of hoarders out there feeling similar things now that they’ve become parents themselves?

Every room that I walk into exhausts me, and as they say, “1the body keeps the score”1 I can see it physically in my mother, who just seems bedraggled all the time. All the weight of aspirational failure. The quilting supplies never used, the Martha Stewart kitchen utensils to prepare meals nobody was coming for, the Christmas dinner serving sets that didn’t even fit our family vibe and also sat collecting dust in an overflowing China cabinet. Buying and accumulating things for an imagined existence completely detached from reality.

Just trying to keep my mental health in place as my wife and I wade through it.

There is a few hoarders in my family, especially with clothes and sale items. I moved out, try to keep less stuff because Im tired of having a cluttered space. The problem is, they clutter my space regardless. They panic about crazy scenarios and buy me items for when those scenarios happen. If anything is in the sale, especially when its a branded item, it MUST be bought. I then get dumped with them. I cant reject them as im then called ungrateful and stupid for not accepting these useful bargains. Christmas/birthday is terrible. So much clutter. Replicas of items bought as spares. So much stuff I dont even like.

Ive tried requesting a small few times that will have a higher cost so they wouldnt buy me loads of cheaper items, but it doesnt work. They'll get clutter regardless and also deny my request for a few items as " X number of gifts is not enough".

I am filled with guilt for trying to donate or resell clutter ive given as it feels disrespectful to give things away. I feel guilt for over consumption for not being able to use all the items im given. I feel i cant buy items I actually want because I have too much stuff already. I dont know what to do

I want to be sure before I'm posting here a bunch more.

I feel a bit like an imposter since some of y'alls stories are a lot worse than mine.

House conditions:

Garage is unusable. Covered in empty cardboard boxes, 3/4 to the ceiling in place. Was cleared out halfway several years ago, but has since been filled with furniture. Only accessable thing is the lawnmower.

Toy room has toys covering the floor and every spot.

Parents room has clothes piles from knee to chest high with paths sometimes showing the floor. Walk in closet has knee high clothes, old clothes, shelves, miscellaneous items, shoes.

Hallway always covered in clean clothes unless I fold them.

No pet fur at any point due to no pets in the house.

One HP has Macross modeling kits, likely 10k+ worth retail. A lot of these are unbuilt. They cover 1 room, chest high storage and a full shelf and table, with one spot open for assembly. The basement is about halfway full of these kits. Same HP also has partially filled the office space with these same kits.

Difficult to access office printer due to objects in the way.

Attic is completely empty.

Basement is unfinished.

Several unfinished projects (basement, setting up game console for playroom, moving dresser for Jane, fixing closet to hang clothes, unfinished crafts, building street fighter arcade machine)

Basement used to be a lot more cluttered, I partially cleared it out a few years ago. Currently being restuffed with camping supplies, chairs, and other items.

A lot of DVDs that we use on occasion. Dozens of them, yet we only use around 10 of them consistently (holiday movies.) At least 3 copies of Elf. Neither will get rid of the vast majority / any of these DVDs.

1 shower and 1 toilet have been unusable for over a decade and a few years respectively.

Parents bathroom counter had not been cleared in so long there was green stuff growing on it. Nasty. Took me and a sibling a few hours to clear a counter. Is slowly being brought back to it's old state.

We have a dresser that has sat in the garage for years. Jane has had a dresser that has been broken for longer. The closet hanger is supposedly broken as well. When folding clothes for Jane, clothes is put in a pile in front of the dresser. This pile is about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the dresser.

Had 4 broken lawn mowers at one point. These have since been trashed.

Laundry room is covered in clothes. Has been cleared at least two times from what I remember, has gone back to the way it was.

Several bins of dirty clothes around the second floor.

More books than can fit on the bookshelves we own on the house.

There is working water, HVAC, and electricity. House does not have termites, roaches, mice, rats, etc.

Possible HPs John and Jane

John has all of the toy kits and hobby things.

Takes only a little time to mess up often used spaces (leaving trash around, papers, etc.) Takes years to fully ruin large cleanings (like basement and garage clear out.)

No significant attachment to obvious trash.

HPs will joke about cardboard boxes in garage.

Jane has a hard time letting go of food. Does not like being asked about donating food pantry stuff (has used Covid as an excuse for why keeping all the food is a good idea.) Pantry, extra shelf to right of pantry, identical shelf outside of pantry, fridge and freezer are not enough space to hold all of the food. There are 6 of us.

Jane does not like being asked to donate things. Too tiring / annoying. Has consistently disliked this for several years.

John will not get rid of his old college textbooks for his medical degree because he might need the information in them one day.

Downstairs closet is currently unusable. Filled knee to hip high with new paper towels, camping items, and coats. Has been cleaned to emptiness before.

Jane will leave trash in random places, even disgusting trash that does not belong on countertops.

Jane wanted to keep party hats and streamers for another party, despite us not really having space for it. These supplies ended up being cut up by a sibling for crafts.

John grew up with a things hoarder father.

Jane grew up with an extreme minimalist (threw good things away when angry) animal hoarder.

There is a large, stressful clean before holidays that we host. Lots of cleaning before Thanksgiving, Christmas, and sometimes Easter.

John will occasionally trash a lot of things in a space, usually during a big clean. These items are actually thrown away.

Jane claims that we have more hobbies than her and other people have more crafts than she does, comparing herself to people who have rooms upon rooms of fabric, acting as if this is the baseline for fabric crafters.

Each blame the other and the kids for the house not being clean.

Neither parent has been diagnosed with BPD or NPD, nor do I suspect them of having these conditions. Jane had depression and ADHD.

Please help me not feel crazy / overreacting.

Ask for more details if you need clarification.