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I need some advice on house decluttering.
Someone who lives with me is a hoarder and he has hoarded so much shit that things are spilling out of storage and you can't even open the store without things toppling over. This needs to be fixed ASAP because its reducing the quality of life of everyone in the house, and money is being wasted because things we have have to be bought again because they can't be found! Seriosuly, it's so bad that it's sometimes just easier to buy something than find it again, but that only compounds the problem.
I have talked him into fixing it, and now a world of struggle awaits me. I would straight up trash 50% of the shit. He is ironically ultra adamant on knowing exactly where each thing goes and wants to inspect everything carefully before I can trash it. He also want's the location of everything in an excel sheet so that this will prevent this problem from occurring in the future again. We concluded that this will take 24-48 hours of mental and physical labor.
I am willing to give that time, but the task is going to be so psychologically draining that I am just considering hiring out some professional "home declutterers" and paying them a grand or so to fix the problem once and for all (pessimistically until next year). Seriously, I don't care about having to pay for it at all as long as I don't have to face the arduous task of having to argue about as to whether to keep or throw a random light bulb from 20 years ago, and do this literally hundreds of times over. He isn't sold on the idea because he thinks we will do a better job in categorizing things according to our needs.
What do I do? A day or two of mental strain is hardly the worst position in life, but I don't even know why I am NOT looking forward to that day so much.
My own best solution is to hold things for no more than twenty seconds, and take digital pictures of anything I still want to hold before throwing away (or putting aside for the eventual yard sale). Then I can browse the pictures at leisure, or even put them on a slideshow background set on my computer to auto-shuffle.
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Bluntly, hoarding is a person-problem, not a thing-problem. The piles of crap that get in the way of living are a symptom, not the problem itself. With time and effort, you can clean up the space--though as you've already experienced, even negotiating that is exhausting, much less doing--but the piles of crap will return unless your family member takes serious steps towards finding a management strategy to address the underlying issues that push him into hoarding.
I'm emphasizing this aspect rather than the practical/mechanical side that others have covered, because this
is a giant red flag that he's not cooperating in good faith; those stipulations are absurd. I believe you've made the point that getting rid of some stuff is inevitable and something he can't control, but he can make the cleanup process painful enough for you that less will be thrown away, and it will be longer before you try again when the mess comes back. On some level, I think you know this, and that's why you're dreading the process.
I wish you and yours the best in solving this situation.
His brain is screaming in the pain of loss, and trying to communicate that pain while there’s still a chance to relieve it without full despair.
Let me explain. The absurdity of the stipulations are a workaround for the pain of the disorder. Hoarding is a compulsive, disordered behavior, and I believe it is driven by the neuroscientific reality that human brains, ordered and disordered, automatically create relationships with everything we touch.
I know that each of my own piles is a sort of mental map of the unfinished plans I had for everything when I put it down there, and that throwing those things away as a pile would be truly painful, as all those unfinished behavior loops are cut short without regard for my need to touch the objects once again, even if just to say goodbye and let go.
I’ve discovered that digital photos suffice for neurological “ownership” of any objects I still own only for nostalgia. However, if I remember I had any plans for them, I still must find an amicable end to that relationship or suffer a deep sense of loss.
Clutterers Anonymous exists for a real biologically driven reason.
I don't dispute that decluttering is deeply psychicly painful for a hoarder--that is certainly true. The thrust of my point was aimed somewhat differently, however: has @f3zinker's relative accepted that he has a serious problem, and it's not the mess itself? Assuming that Clutterers Anonymous follows the usual 12-step pattern, the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem, and it's not clear to me that the hoarder in question has reached that point.
"I need to touch everything before it leaves" strikes me as a reasonable desire under the circumstances, though it may or may not be practical. "I need a tracking document in Excel for every physical object, and that will solve matters" is a take that I find very suspect, though--it seems much more like heel-dragging obstructionism, not just coping.
I don't know the person in question, so perhaps my impression is unduly pessimistic. Based on the description, though, I think it's worth asking whether the hoarder is onboard with the necessity of change even on an intellectual level, or not. If he's just being compelled, that mess is coming back.
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I've been through this more times than I'd like to admit with family members
-- As hours pass your judgment will weaken. Sometimes resulting in saving things in the evening you would have purged in the morning; sometimes throwing out huge piles of stuff in the evening rather than going through it. Keep this in mind. It's an emotionally draining process, especially for the hoarder.
-- say no to containers. No Rubbermaid, no foot lockers, no endless filing cabinets. Some are good, obviously, but too many and you just have an endless maze of nested junk.
-- Start by clearing one area, then use that to stage each successive area. If you try to do every area at once you're likely to overwhelm yourself with the lack of progress.
-- Question the degree to which your relative actually knows he owns this stuff, sometimes the kind thing is to throw some of it away without him knowing. Not too much where he'll catch on, but just a little to ease the process along as you go. You're protecting him from himself, he can't emotionally handle this.
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