How do you know if you suffer from compulsive hoarding disorder? Clutter becomes hoarding or compulsive hoarding disorder when you have dozens or hundreds of the same object. The question is when does clutter...
The question is when does clutter become hoarding. Let's take the example of animal hoarding. If you have one dog or one cat, why would you need a dozen cats? So where is a line? How many cats are enough? How many newspapers do you want to stack up? The other day, I sat down on a client's bed and my head was hitting the ceiling from all the newspapers and magazines she had stacked up on it. It was an 8-foot ceiling in an apartment building in Manhattan. Many people accumulate clutter. That doesn't mean they necessarily suffer from compulsive hoarding disorder. The difference between ordinary clutter and compulsive hoarding is one of degree. For people who suffer from compulsive hoarding disorder, the clutter in their homes has gotten so bad that it significantly impairs their lives and causes them a great deal of distress. There will be parts of their homes, or in the most extreme cases, their entire homes, that cannot be used for their intended purposes.
Ron Alford, Managing Director of Disaster Masters, a company that specializes in cleaning out apartments that have become "utter disasters", says, "The question is when does clutter become hoarding. Let's take the example of animal hoarding. If you have one dog or one cat, why would you need a dozen cats? So where is the line? How many cats are enough?" Animal hoarding is probably the worst kind of hoarding. A person who compulsively hoards animals will have so many animals that he or she will be unable to care for them properly. The animals will often become sick, and may even die. The house will become filthy, in some cases so badly that it has to be condemned.
"How many newspapers do you want to stack up?" Alford asks, "The other day, I sat down on a client's bed and my head was hitting the ceiling from all the newspapers and magazines she had stacked up on it. It was an eight-foot ceiling in an apartment building in Manhattan. No joke. So we were sitting on her bed but the floor was five feet below my butt. I am the first guy who has been in her apartment in twelve or fourteen years, and she has been living there for thirty-five years."
Alford says, "If you have bags or boxes of stuff stacked up in the corners and hallways of your house, or the dinning room table or the kitchen table is loaded, or the cabinets are loaded, then you have a problem. Cabinets in a hoarder's home are generally full, but strangely enough, some people who are visual learners don't use their drawers and cabinets. Sometimes there is absolutely nothing in drawers and cabinets and everything they own is out where they can see it. I am one of those people. I learn visually. When I redesigned my kitchen about twenty years ago, I designed it to be a 'Velcro kitchen'. I have everything on the walls from the counter top all the way up to the ceiling. All the dishes and everything over the sink are like a European design. I designed a six-foot wire rack with two levels so that when I wash the dishes, I just put them up and they dry right in their racks. I built it because you could not buy one like that. So one thing you can do to help with clutter is to have visual stuff out, but it needs to be well-organized and managed. Otherwise it becomes a real nightmare."
