What is hoarding?
Hoarding is when people feel a very strong need to collect things. They can’t bear to think about parting with their things.
Over time, the collected items may take over the person’s house. The items may cover tables, beds, counters, and floors. Hallways and rooms—including kitchens and bathrooms—may get so cluttered that they can no longer be used or kept clean.
Publisher note:
This article is written from the heart. It is real and very open. It is an emotional read. There is a lot of practical advice. And a key insight is that you are not alone dealing with these issues.
Hoarding, clutter and properties with poor maintenance are being inherited with a host of problems and emotions. People are inheriting stress, emotional triggers, and little real value after loans and debts the estate owes. Add the cost and time to clean up the property the real value is even lower.
Here is wisdom shared by a special person, “My brother and I wanted the least amount of stress and aggravation while handling things…” Understanding this upfront can help the whole process.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences and emotional journey.
Note: not all photos are taken from this one house.
Insights from a real life inherited a hoarding house experience
We knew the day would come when our mother passed away. With that, we also knew the mess that we’d inherit. Yet, nothing prepared us for what we faced when we finally walked into her house.
Early on in our lives, as kids, the signs were there. The clutter, the collections of trinkets and stuff or even the “save just in case” items that could be reused or repurposed. However, not in our wildest imagination did we think the clutter would turn into hoarding like you see on the TV show.
To the world outside of the house, our mom seemed put together, nice and pleasant to the neighbors. Behind closed doors, lay a lifetime of suffering with mental illness and her inability to manage her life. She lived two lives leading to alienation of everyone in the family. My brother and I didn’t have a close relationship with her as adults. It was complicated. We tried, but for the sake of our own mental wellness, we kept our distance. She eventually cut ties with us completely. It’s sad, really, but that was the reality of the situation.
After hearing of her death, handling her estate would be our last duty as her kids (because we were taught that it was the right thing to do, whether we wanted the responsibility or not). We were forewarned of the condition and the state of the house. It was bad. The pandemic did her no favors into her hoarding behavior that no one knew about.
Under advisement, we hired an estate attorney to help us navigate the process of probate without a will. My brother and I wanted the least amount of stress and aggravation while handling things from the opposite coast. As much as we wanted to just take care of things and get on with our lives, probate was going to take time. Up to a year or more. The estate attorney guided us through the process and submitted paperwork on our behalf to the courts. Months after her death, we were finally able to begin the process. It took over 2 months to get legal administrative rights to even begin to access her accounts. The court papers and the death certificate are essentially the keys to the kingdom.
Our first trip back to her house in 20 years. It was a house I lived in as a teenager. Despite seeing pictures that were sent to us, nothing prepared us for what we saw walking into the house. The shock and horror of what the house looked like. It was everything you saw on the TV show minus the filth and pets (thankfully there were no pets). Stuff and boxes of more stuff everywhere, piled waist high. The stuff was anything from crafting and office supplies to electronics to clothes, shoes, papers, home goods, dry food goods, etc. There was only a small path through the house like a singletrack trail through the woods where there was barely a patch of floor to step on. The things in my room, the remnants of my childhood, a time capsule, untouched for 20 years while a pile of random stuff in what was the only open floor space in the middle of the room stacked to eye level.
What was the path to the kitchen and to the living room was overtaken by more stuff. How could anyone live like this? Who does this? Who blocks the door to get in and out of the house? Why is she buying all this stuff she doesn’t need? Just why? It was hard to comprehend the hoarding behavior that left the house a complete disaster. The shock of seeing the house in this state left no room to be sad or mournful. Of course, there was some sense of guilt, but that guilt should not be anyone’s burden. It sounds a bit cold, but this was a grown adult that made decisions that made sense to THEM. Mental illness caused this to happen. As irrational and nonsensical the logic of her behavior to the outside world, it made sense to her.
As much as we didn’t want to be in the house, the objective was to retrieve the personal belongings I wanted out of my room (that we could find and get to). There were still things that I wanted but could not find. You couldn’t move around at all. You crawled over stuff, created a space to get a few things, then have to fill it back in to create another spot to get a few more things. It was exhausting and suffocating at the same time. I was resigned to making my peace with it and say goodbye knowing I didn’t get a real chance to do so. Saddened, we left, and I said goodbye to my childhood. It was the last time we’d ever step foot in the house.
How do we even begin to get rid of the stuff in the house? Paying to remove all the stuff was not a real option. We weren’t going to go through the house. We had lives, families and careers back home. We had ZERO attachment to anything in the house (except for some of my things I couldn’t find). The goal was to not lose our own money while handling the estate. There were a lot of unknowns (like her financials). There was no paper trail to be found in a house consumed with stuff.
All decisions and discussions were made between my brother and myself as to the best way to manage things. It helped that we were on the same page and mindset as to how to go about it. We played on each other’s strengths and just took care of things. The tangible property needed to be liquidated.
First up were the storage units. Yes, the accumulation of stuff overflowed into storage units with more useless stuff. So useless it was obviously forgotten about since she never once accessed the units in the 30 years she had them. My brother’s childhood was in the storage unit, and he wanted the pieces of his own youth back just as I wanted mine from the house. Once we pulled out what he wanted, we were fortunate to be able to sell the contents of the units to a gentleman the public storage facility referred us to who buys this type of stuff to resell it. Again, like the house, there were brand new household items in the box, more junk, and other random things in the units. It was a relief to have one less thing to hassle with once we left town.
I had a checklist of items we needed to either find, verify, or take care of such as accounts (financial, service providers, etc.). The money and accounting part was “simple.” The house and the stuff were the trickier part.
My brother, out of curiosity, Googled “hoarder and realtor”. Up pops Dan Parisi’s website. We had no idea where to even begin let alone get an idea of what the house was worth in its current condition. While we were in town, Dan met us at the house. Friendly, genuinely nice and non-judgmental given what he saw in the house. “It’s not the worst I’ve seen,” while maintaining a professional demeanor and showing compassion for the predicament bestowed upon us. He gave us several different scenarios to help “deal with the house and the contents.” We declined at the time at any of the various options since we had no idea what the status of the house was nor the rest of the assets.
Our attorney gave us a couple of names of estate sellers in the area. We both knew there was value in the contents of the house. Mom liked nice things and there were things in the house that were brand new or barely used and still in the box. We needed the cash from selling the stuff to offset the expenses incurred so far. I researched the 2 names given and reached out to one of them. Told them the situation and asked if this was something they could handle. A walk thru was scheduled with our local relative to assess the job. Two walk throughs later, we hoped they would take on the job. They gave us 2 options: clean out which would have cost a significant amount of money or stage and hold the sale at a steep commission. Do the sale. We just needed the stuff sold and gone out of the house.
The estate seller was, by far, the one shining light during this process. It took them nearly 2 months to ready the house for the sale, but they found a treasure trove of goodies in the house that had significant value. As they cleared the house during the “discovery” phase, they set aside family photos, cash, and found all the things on my “wish list” to find in my room. It was a second chance to get back pieces of my childhood. I was happy and sad at the same time. They held the sale while keeping the best interests of both parties involved in mind. All of my correspondence with the estate seller was through email and from across the country. The estate seller showed a level of professionalism and compassion while being personable with an open line of communication throughout the process (start to finish). Over 90% of the lifetime accumulation of “stuff” in the house was gone by the time they were done. It far exceeded all of our expectations. Again, another happy and sad moment. Happy we’ve moved the process along. Sad (for me) that I’m saying goodbye to my childhood again.
During this time, they also discovered more issues with the house in a spare bedroom that hasn’t seen the light of day in 30 years. The value of the house was diminishing as a result. There was no money in the estate to pay for renovations (to which we had no plans to do) let alone pay for needed repairs to the house. The additional piece was finding out a reverse mortgage was taken against the house. We weren’t going to get much out of handling the estate except more disappointment and aggravation. At least, we weren’t going to lose money (we hope). In some ways, it wasn’t a surprise it was playing out the way it was.
The bombardment of investors/home buyers was a bit overwhelming. In the digital era, it seems everyone is in your business. On a whim, we picked one and reached back out to Dan. While we had a nice offer from the investors, we chose to work with Dan. We felt comfortable with him. His experience working with probate, the reverse mortgage issue, and a problematic house really made our decision easy. Dan made us a fair offer and assured us that he would work with us to make sure we were cash flow positive when all the dust settled. Within 3 weeks, we closed. And for the 3rd time, a moment that was bittersweet, I said goodbye to my childhood for the last time and finally some closure for both of us.
The lessons of the whole experience:
- Make sure you and your family members are all on the same page with how to handle everything.
- Create a checklist of tasks and the accounts in order to stay organized. There will be lulls in the process but it will all get done.
- DO NOT do this alone. The emotions will run high and low throughout the process. Again, if everyone is on the same page, things will go a lot easier. Delegate to more competent professionals to help wade through the legalities of dealing with the estate.
- Hire an estate attorney. The estate pays for them. While you have to front some money to get things going, you will be reimbursed (unless the estate ends up in the red, in which case, walk away and cut your losses, let the courts deal with it). Make your life easier. Let the attorney guide you through the legal process of probate especially if there is no will. This is not the time to DIY. You have your own grieving to do, let someone else point you to what needs to get done, then go do it.
- Keys to the kingdom: the death certificate and the court documents certifying you are the Administrator of the Estate. Both of these documents are needed to access ANYTHING (financials, service providers for the house, the house, basically anything your loved one had their name on). You’ll get the death certificate within a couple of weeks of the date of death. Getting the court papers depends on when the paperwork is filed and how long it takes the courts to process it.
- If you know there are high value items in the house (not furniture), hire a willing experienced estate seller to take on the job. If you choose to clear the house on your own or with help, it will take you months, if not, forever to go through everything. It’s not worth it. If you have stuff that has some sentimental value, take pictures of the item and then leave it. Whatever you may think has sentimental value or real value, just accept that you will have to let it go now. What are you going to do with it if you have it? What is going to happen to it when your time comes? Its ok to keep a few things that are sentimental, especially ones that bring good memories and feelings. They’ll help in your mourning process in some way. In the end, it’s just stuff.
- Determine the condition of the house. It will need updating at a minimum. It will need neglected repairs, most likely. Is there money to fix it? Is there money to renovate? No? Find a cash buyer who will give you a fair offer and experience in handling the particulars of the situation. In our case, no will, probate, reverse mortgage, and hoarding. Taking a hoarder house “as-is” to market probably won’t yield a lot of interested buyers even if you got a little more money than a cash offer. Time and money are not a luxury when managing the estate. It’s about minimizing your own stress and time spent on what is already a difficult situation. Make your life easier and be done with it.
- It is entirely possible to handle the estate remotely as long as you have a trusted local contact to help access the house. We made one in person trip to begin the process and retrieved our own personal items we wanted back. The rest was handled through phone calls, emails, and snail mail.
- Most importantly, make sure you take care of your own mental well-being during this time. It will be emotional at times and limiting the amount of stress and aggravation by delegating tasks to more competent individuals lessen that strain (like a CPA, an estate attorney, a realtor, an estate seller etc.).
A final Thought
No matter what the nature of the relationship with your loss, it’s not your fault or any other person’s fault for how your loved one lived their life. Guilt, anger, resentment, disappointment, maybe a degree of hate and shame…it’s all there, but allow yourself to process and grieve. All you can hope is that your loved one is truly at peace given the lifetime of suffering they endured.
