Hoarding Can be a Hidden Problem

In January of 2013, my sister Stella died suddenly. She had lived for 20 years in the basement apartment of my parent’s home, as a caregiver for my mother. Dad died in 2002, and Mom fell in 2009, breaking her hip and mostly wheelchair bound.

Over the years, Stella gradually took over more and more. In addition to her downstairs apartment, she spread into the rest of the basement, soon referring to all of it as “hers.” Then mom’s car was “hers,” followed by the garage, the yard, and then, finally, the house.

Stella was always full of fun, and my mom seemed happy, so the rest of us decided it was a good trade off.

As time went by, my mom relied on my older, retired sister, Sara to do her bills and take her to church. Sara disclosed to me that she thought Stella was taking advantage of Mom, as several checks started appearing in Stella’s name. Stella also used Mom’s debit card, and charges to casinos were on the statements. When asked, Mom said Stella’s Social Security checks were always late, so she lent her money. However, no repayment deposits were ever made to Mom’s account. My mother is kind but naive, never one to confront anyone. My other three sisters and I live within a few miles of Mom so we often checked on her. She never complained or said an unkind word about her living situation.

However, when Stella died, we had several shocks.

We hadn’t been in the basement for about three or four years. When we did, we discovered that the toilet had overflowed several times, seeping into the living area, ruining the floors. Mold was growing on the walls, and the space was generally uninhabitable.

Mom moved in with sister Penny at this point where she could visit with Penny’s in-home beauty shop clients—average age 80.

We decided to sell the house. I went online to find the builder who had put up a building next door. He made an offer on the house, planning to tear it down and put in town-homes. He wanted a closing date of August 12th as he needed to apply and get permits.

When we started clearing out the house, basement, and garage, we were stunned at what we found. Stella had been a hoarder! We found bags and bags of trash filled with random things. Old newspapers mixed in with food, family pictures, and important papers. There was no method to her madness. While Mom’s house looked tidy, Stella had stuffed mail, papers, pictures, and trash in boxes, bags, bins, and baskets. We had to go through every bag so important things would not be thrown out. In the garage, we found my dad’s family bible, more family pictures, tons of mildewed books and papers, mice droppings, and trunks filled with over 2000 salt and pepper shakers. Stella had loved thrift stores, and about 90 percent of the things we uncovered still had the price tags on them.

January through April, we went over every weekend to sort and clean. May though June we were there two or three times a week, and in July and August, every day. The majority of the work fell upon Sara and me. The Senior Citizen Moving Company we called ourselves! We lifted, packed, moved, and disposed of everything in the house, never leaving without a trunk full of stuff for thrift store drop off. A junk hauling company was hired to take care of the garage trash, ads were put under “free” on craigslist and freecycle, and a storage space was rented for a few months for bins of things my mom wanted to keep.

It was a horrible task, but despite everything, Sara, Mom, and I relived many good memories and had plenty of laughs as we cleared up the mess.

[Names have been changed.]

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