Hoarding

Today, I heard (here) about a woman who died some while ago in her home, but who wasn’t discovered until just recently. Why did it take so long to find her? It was because the woman was a hoarder, and her house was so stuffed with things that no one noticed her body for the longest time (until her husband finally noticed her at the bottom of a floor-to-ceiling pile). Even a few police searches with dogs turned up nothing. I should mention that along with all the things, there was an odor.

A woman who knew these people insists that the police must not have done the search right because the dogs ought to have smelled the body. However, she implies that she was never actually in the house, so her skepticism doesn’t count for much.

At least, it doesn’t count for much with me, because I have a sister-in-law who is a hoarder, and from experiencing her apartment I know that it is perfectly possible for the odor to have been so bad that not even police dogs would be effective.

It is hard to convey in mere words the huge psychological and emotional impact of dealing with the junk from a hoarder. One knows ahead of time that there will be lots of things in the apartment, but one thinks, “It’s a small apartment. There can’t be that much.” And then one gets inside, and the first thing one thinks is, “We need a bulldozer to clear out all this stuff.” The idea of moving it by mere hands is too depressing, partly because it will take forever and partly because it's junk that one doesn't even want to touch. The junk might include anything, such as a dirty litter box (even though she doesn't have a cat) or spoiled food or, well, I don't even want to think about it. Just imagine her rooting through a dumpster, and you'll get the picture. A small path through the clutter will allow one to walk, but that is all. The rest of the floor is covered with huge piles of junk, some of it rotting. Once my wife and I were watching the news, and we saw a story that talked about an apartment in Chicago that was so dirty that the children were removed from the parents’ care. We both had the same reaction: “That’s not so bad. You can see the floor.”

All of this is mental illness, obsessive-compulsive disorder, I guess. It’s really too bad that my sister-in-law – let me call her B – has it in this form. If B were compulsively neat, her life would be much better. As it is, she often gets evicted from her apartments, and no reasonable person can blame the landlord. Once when she got evicted, she tried to get her stuff out, but the other tenants wouldn’t let her in. A cousin was there to help, and she asked why they wouldn’t let B in. One of the tenants said, “She threw a brick at my head.” The cousin asked B in as non-judgmental a way as possible (so as to get an honest answer), “B, did you throw a brick at his head?” “NO,” she shouted. Then she added, “Anyway, it missed.”

And with that story, I’m through blogging for today.

Comments

[Peg]

I have a relative who is a hoarder. Her mom purchased a new house for her to move into, and "start over" again. Alas; in short order, the new house was as horrible as the previous one had been. It is a terrible mental illness.

As a Realtor, I've had a few times that I've either sold homes owned by hoarders, or met with them. These poor people are utterly divorced from reality. At times, you are unable to enter some of the rooms; they are filled from floor to ceiling with stuff.

I sometimes think I am a bit OCD - but yes; thank goodness it isn't of the hoarder variety!!

[John Pepple]

I congratulate you, Peg, for actually being able to sell homes owned by hoarders.

By the way, I hope that you as a philosopher enjoyed the brick story. I laughed at that for quite a while when I first heard it. I still laugh at it.

[Peg]

Oh, yes - indeed (brick story).

Reminds me of a bridge story, which I hope I can translate to non-bridge players. When you play tournament bridge, you have a "bidding" process where you describe your hand and hope that you and your bridge partner arrive in the right spot. As it is a competitive game, you and your partner are always warring with the other partnership, each trying to "do right" for themselves, as the other pair does what they can so you do not.

One of the rules of bridge is that everything must be accomplished through bridge language and system. Extraneous acts like making a face, taking a very long or short time to take an action, etc. is not allowed. This imparts information, and if someone inadvertently does this, the partner is not allowed to take advantage of the information gleaned.

So, one day I was competing with my partner, and one opponent thought a very, very long time. Her partner then took an action based upon that thinking. We called the director (like an "umpire") and he said to our opponents, "Did this player take a long time to make her call?"

"OH NO!" both answered. "Totally in tempo!"

The director shrugged; it was "he said/she said."

Our bidding continued - and, lo and behold, my partner and I got to a superior spot because of this! Then - the recriminations began.

"Why did you big again?" inquired the one who had thought so long. "They had not arrived at the top spot."

"Well," responded the other. "You thought so long, I thought you had something extra."!!!!

Class: dismissed.

[John Pepple]

Yup. I don't understand it entirely, but when the partner admitted that "You thought so long," that contradicted what they had said before.

On a slightly different note, I was once playing Clue with family members. When I make a guess of the three cards, I make sure I've already got two of them. If no one shows me anything, then I know that the third item is one of hidden cards.

But this time I accidentally made a guess when I had all three of the cards. Naturally, no one showed me anything. I was thinking that that was just about the dumbest thing I had ever done, but it turned out that it fooled other people into thinking that one or more of those cards were the hidden ones. Knowing me, they naturally assumed it was an intelligent guess. It was all pretty funny.