Is anyone here an expert on hoarding?
For some reason I have run into about 4 people here just recently that are hoarders. I'm trying to understand.
Two of them do not fit the profile that you see on the hoarder TV programs. Both of their houses and filled to capacity but they are clean and everything is organized. They are just full clear to the ceiling.
One house looks like one you see on TV. She has become so isolated because she doesn't want anyone in the house. And she is constantly paranoid that someone will see the inside and turn her in for having a house that is really unfit for human habitation. Now, to make bad matters completely worse, she has a raccoon in her attic that is systematically tearing the house to pieces. It's way beyond awful.
The other one may just be a bad housekeeper.
I'm beginning to think that there are really a whole lot of people out there that live in houses or apartments that are filled to the brim.
I have OCD so I really do understand what it's like to deal with that level of high anxiety. But hoarding doesn't seem to really be the same kind of OCD as I have (when mine is bad I check things over and over and over). When my OCD gets bad I can go on high dose Prozac and that will back it off. But I'm afraid these people are so afraid of being condemned for their awful houses that they are afraid to even tell anyone.
Is it more than OCD? I really feel sorry for these people. Their lives are really a mess, literally and figuratively.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Here's to strong women 
Three of the houses were, surprisingly, occupied by 2 people -- married couples -- and I found that kind of bizarre; TWO people, and neither wants to keep a house clean?
Years ago, a friend and I bought a baby stroller at a flea market as a surprise for a couple with a new baby and no money. We showed up at their house unannounced. They did open the door enough to get the stroller in, and to give us a quick glimpse of the inside. OMG. They had a baby and a toddler. The floor was covered with dirt, animal feces, old pizza slices, paper trash, you name it. Furniture was covered as well. It was so filthy that it was horrendous. The smell was overpowering. I truly don't know how a person lives like that. This was the classic TV hoarder house. IIRC, social services finally got onto them because the toddlers weren't even getting their diapers changed, and someone saw raw, bleeding sores all over the kids' bottoms. 
Another couple had one member (the husband) who was mentally ill and physically ill, and he demanded that nothing be thrown away, it was all his stuff, etc. The wife was a dear friend of mine, and I was never allowed near her house because, I assume, she was ashamed of it. Years later, after we had lost touch, I heard that she had been widowed, reconnected with her college sweetheart, sold her hoarder house, and moved in with him. She is living happy ever after, and I bet her new house is as neat as a pin.
The third couple both seem to be hoarders. I am friends with the woman and did not know they were hoarders until I was invited in one day. She works long hours and hubby is retired -- he cooks dinner every day, but obviously does absolutely nothing else. She does have many antiques and things from dead relatives, but -- they have been 'remodeling' their house for 20 years and have old paint cans, sawn lumber, plumbing pieces, etc. all over the place, in addition to dirt, trash, smelly cat boxes, etc. There is no place to sit except in one small room she uses as her bedroom/TV room. She admits she can't get rid of anything that a relative has left to her, and that her hubby has mental issues and he never finishes any projects. She seems to be mentally overwhelmed by the idea of picking up anything, and she happily spends 12-hour days at work.
A fourth house belonged to a single elderly man who was quite intelligent but obviously totally unable to do the simplest thing to care for himself. I assume that his wife, who had died about 15 years before, had literally taken care of everything for him, because he could do absolutely nothing. His was also a classic hoarder house -- rats, cockroaches, piles of trash, paper, old food, buckets of garbage, etc. stacked to the ceiling. The garbage was so deep that it had to have been accumulated over many years, so it wasn't just a matter of him getting old and not being able to take care of business. I got a frantic call from one of his friends (who was disabled) one day, saying he had been unable to reach him. The friend wanted me to go over to his house to see if he had fallen or died in that mess. I couldn't get in, so I called the cops and told them the situation. They broke a window and looked under all the piles of crap, trying to find him. They were appalled at the condition and told me we should try to get him into assisted living (he could walk, but was rapidly going downhill). I had to tell them that we all had been trying for years to get him to do that; I even called social services to check on the conditions, and they visited him, but becuz freedumb, they couldn't do anything about someone who wanted to live like that. Nice. We found him in a hospital -- he'd fallen in his yard and had been taken away. That's when we realized he was going downhill mentally, too, and he was persuaded to stay in a rehab place, theoretically to get well so he could go back to his house. (Never gonna happen.) When I visited him in rehab I was asked to help him go through his mail. The poor man couldn't even decide whether a Pizza Hut coupon should go in the trash or not. He died a few months later.
The fifth house belonged to an engineer and his family. They lived out in the middle of nowhere; their driveway was lined with -- get this -- old airplanes, old army vehicles, etc. The house was very neatly filled with stacks of newspapers to the ceiling. Small paths were laid out so you could, say, get to the kitchen, where the only thing not stacked with papers was the stove. Another tight path led to the living room, where you could sit on the couch, but that was all. You could sit there and stare at the pile of newspapers about 2 feet from your face. Amazingly, the stairs to the 2nd floor were clear, as was the landing, and the kids (who were all A+ students) lived up there. I always wondered whether they kept their rooms totally neat or whether they were complete slobs, too.
Like the people on the show "Hoarders," most of these people just couldn't throw things away. They had some sort of attachment to the stupidest things -- rotting food, paper, cardboard, dog shit, newspapers. I CAN understand the attachment my friend has to the antiques from her dear grandma and aunts, but that has snowballed past just a few antiques. Maybe she feels overwhelmed? Maybe her hubby refuses to get rid of stuff?
The newspaper house was the only house that was a bit different; they didn't keep everything, just newspapers. And they must have been doing that for 20 years, because the house was not small and it was FILLED. Except for the narrow aisles. I have often wondered whether that place went up in flames one day.
Some people seem to stop hoarding when they take OCD meds, but that's not universal. Other people just seem very lazy or afflicted with such problems as ADD or ADHD which interferes with their ability to start/finish jobs of any kind. Some are afflicted with dementia and refuse to move to assisted living. What I don't understand is where the attachment to trash and junk comes from -- that seems to be a specific feeling that many hoarders share, and it can be felt by people who seem mentally OK at first. How the hell can you form an attachment to a rotting pumpkin? A piece of dog shit? A box of old Tupperware?
