Re: The Hoarder Diaries

Mac,

My mother also was a hoarder. She survived the Depression with very little, so that was her excuse for it. She could have opened a convenience store in our cellar, she had so many cans and boxes of food that would last for a while, along with stacks of light bulbs, paper towels etc. Our cellar was like that ever since I could remember. Once, after I'd moved away and was visiting, I went down there and took pictures as friends in Colorado didn't believe me. They did after they saw the photos.

The dementia caused by strokes made it even worse, though. When we finally got her out of the house and into a care home, it was time to clean out the house. We had to sell it in order to pay for the care home. She had limited funds (as did my siblings and I). We found an excellent facility that charged over US $7000 a month, but they would take federal government monies after Mom ran out of cash. (We'd found another good place that was only $4500 a month, but once you ran out of money, that was it. You were out. Alas, the one county facility had an 18-month waiting list, and we didn't have that sort of time.) In order for the federal government to take over payments, though, we'd have to prove that Mom had gone through all of her assets, including the house. Therefore, it had to be cleaned out and sold as soon as possible. The problem was that you could barely walk into and through the house for the stacks and piles of stuff.

We did what we could, but it was obvious that it would take months, literally, of full-time work, which we couldn't do. We had full-time jobs and we had a deadline for getting the house ready for sale. We wound up hiring professionals to deal with it. They were used to doing such things. We went in and procured items that we knew we wanted and we knew their location. And then the pros came in. Their fee came out of what they salvaged and were able to sell, so we didn't actually pay them anything out of pocket. We had first dibs at everything, though. My sister took Mom's big freezer, and my brother took the washing machine as his was on its last legs and Mom's was newer and in better shape. I couldn't have anything big like that, of course, as I couldn't afford to ship it. I have photos, some books, letters, a bit of jewellery -- little things like that.

In a way, though, I wish I could have spent the time going through everything myself, if only to have more personal closure. Do tell us the yard sale stories. And I must say that one night, when my sister, brother-in-law, Ian and I later started going loads and loads of old photos that Mom had kept in albums, bags and boxes, it was very, very therapeutic.

{hugs}

Ellen