OP here - oh I have no plans to spring into action to save her from herself at the last minute. I have offered to help donate many times. If she calls at the last minute, DH and I will take a car load to Goodwill or help her load up a truck but that's it. She and her husband - both of whom are perfectly able to afford and arrange to rent a truck from Home Depot can deal with the rest. She can afford the fines and this may be what it takes for her to get rid of the stuff.

OP, make some calls to find out the costs and options (at least one will take donation-worthy stuff to Goodwill) of College Hunks Hauling Junk, 1-800-Got-Junk, etc. It sounds as though you're going to need to spring into action in a few weeks.

Also, be prepared for her to be mad at you. That's a given unless you remove yourself from her life entirely, which may be a way you decide to go.

*unhealthy

why can't you tell her point blank that she very likely has a diagnosible problem and you can't pretend that she doesn't her relationship with stuff is very healthy and she needs someone to tell her so, so that she might get some help. She doesn't own her stuff. her stuff owns her and she needs to see that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's nothing you can do to help her overcome hoarding. She needs professional help. So the question is, "What approach works best for you as far as dealing with her stuff?"

If she offers you stuff, tell her you don't have room and will throw out anything she gives your family. "Goodwill won't accept it. If you sneak it into the car somehow, I will throw it out when we get home."

She sneaks, then asks, "How did you like it?"

You, "I threw it out, just as I said I would."

Her: Wailing and keening.

You: "I told you that's what I'd do. I did it. Would you like to talk about something else, or should I hang up/go for a walk? I'm done talking about this."

I agree with all of this.

I think that since you sound like a nice person who loves her, you have one more very explicit conversation about this with her.

1) You will accept 1 birthday gift and 1 holiday gift per child per year. Anything beyond that is either getting dumped or donated, immediately.
2) If she sneaks items into your children's backpacks and tells them not to tell you, she no longer has access to your children, period. Anyone who encourages a child to lie to their parents is untrustworthy.
3) You will not help her to donate things. You need to remove yourself from this situation entirely.

She will be upset about this, but that doesn't change the reality that the above is the right approach.

What's wrong with helping her donate things?

It doesn't seem like she wants to donate her stuff, but why would it be bad if OP were to make a couple trips to Goodwill to help her out?

This is a person with a mental illness. If you give her an inch, she will take a mile. I suggested that OP needs to be entirely removed from the situation. No to storing stuff for her. No to accepting the gifts. No to assisting the relative with getting rid of the existing items. That is just a recipe for her getting more stuff and then expecting that the OP would bail her out again. There is no reasoning with her. She will not understand logic. She will not understand compromise. It is an illness.

Oops meant to write "OP here" . The 14:15 thread is from me, the OP.

Read up on hoarding--this is pretty classic behavior, including the asking about items she gave others, because of the severe attachment to things. I recommend, "Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things."

If you are ever going to convince her to give things to charity or anything else, you'll need to do it through the lens of her own distorted thinking, not logic as it seems to you. And that's very, very hard. You might find that it's not worth the personal emotional cost to dive that deep into her way of thinking--it may be better to simply say no and even to limit visits to her house with the kids rather than be involved in the situation.

What's the long term outcome here? You say she has storage on someone else's property...is there a deadline? Is there anything of actual financial or emotional value to salvage? Because it seems unlikely she will complete the task on her own--and there are companies that specialize in hoarding clean-ups. Realistically, if she's legally required to get her stuff out of a place she doesn't own, that's where this is headed--and she may face paying thousands for it (or else the property owner will).

OP - on the long term outcome since she knows that she will incur thousands in fines and she can not stand to spend money on anything, I think that eventually she will get rid of it. She has plenty of money and she could rent an actual storage unit off property to keep everything. She can't bring herself to pay for a storage unit though and says that she is getting rid of everything unless she can find some way to get around the code violation for which there really is no way around it. Its pretty clear that her units are not on her property and she does not have the space to move them onto her property.She did get an extension but that should run out by the end of the month.

We have been clear that she can not move her storage units and stash to our property. We have been clear that we will happily help her take things to Goodwill or the dump but will not take any of these home. She has been trying to sell things to other relatives and gives some things away to relatives that she perceives she wants something from or who she perceives does things for her (ha, ha lucky us).

She perceives that these items and storage units are worth over 100K. This is completely delusional. An old bra that you probably got at a garage sale or thrift store 30 years ago is not worth $60 because the full retail cost of a new one from a higher end brand is $60 -but this is how she thinks. She wants $60 for it or $60 worth of some favor in return which is I guess why she keeps rejecting efforts to get it all to a charity and be done with it.

I'll just keep declining and offering to take it to Goodwill. It is not a good idea to pretend we want it and then throw it away or donate it in secret. This will only bring a avalanche of stuff along with extreme anger when she finds out what we did. She will look for it. She'll also see these gifts as coming with strings. I'm more than happy to help a relative throw things out and chip in the physical labor to do it. I'm not OK having to maintain a huge facade that we somehow have this stuff hidden somewhere in our small house and that we are now in debt to her for all these things.