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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]They were important to your parent, but they did not have the cognitive ability to find them again or remember where they were. [/b]I'm glad you got them back, OP.[/quote]

This is the wrong thing to say to a child of hoarders. Signed, a COH[/quote]

PP you replied to. Why?

I am the wife of a hoarder. I know my husband cares about the stuff he cannot sort. Hoarding is a mental illness that is linked to anxiety, autism and ADHD. The person does not have the executive function to sort through their stuff (ADHD). They are irrationally attached to their material things and cannot let them go (autism). And when they are pushed to get rid of most of it, and keep only a small fraction, they get incredibly emotional disturbed (anxiety).

I would appreciate getting your side of things, because to me, living with a hoarder, it's quite clear.

[/quote]

Both of my parents have been hoarders since I was a child. They divorced when I was in my teens and each of their hoarding got progressively more severe when they went their separate ways. When my father died recently, I got to see the extent of the damage that hoarding did to my childhood home, having not been inside of the house in decades. Bugs, mold, structural damage from leaks. The house will have to be torn down and everything inside of it thrown away.

The house wasn't anywhere near this bad when I was living there. The hoarding started as piles of papers lying around, clutter on various surfaces, the house not being quite as clean as it should be. Eventually it progressed to a couple rooms in the house being non-traversable from junk and boxes. This had an enormous effect on me as a child. I developed allergies and breathing issues from the dust. I was too embarrassed to bring friends into the house. I became obsessed with keeping my room clean and minimal as a response to the chaos around me.

You can try to come up with explanations for the psychological reasons behind it all you want which is fine because you're an adult and at the end of the day, it's your choice to tolerate that kind of living environment. Children don't have a choice though and it's unfair to subject them to that. [/quote]

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