The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter Read Online Free PDF

of bicycles, airplanes, pornography, empty prescription bottles, live birds, dead rats (carefully sealed in plastic bags), handbags, and even a collection of ten thousand cookie cutters. Hoarders are as diverse and creative as the stuff they collect.
▶ The Animal Rescuer
    Margaret was a Stage 5 dog hoarder. She started out with one dog, but her love for animals quickly made her the go-to person for strays. Margaret’s dogs had complete run of the house, chewing, eating, and marking anywhere they liked and sleeping in a pack on the beds. Her animal hoarding eventually extended to a few parakeets in a large cage and then to ten horses she kept in a barn behind the house. Margaret was unable to say no to any animal in need.
    The classic stereotype of the animal hoarder is the old lady with too many cats, like our client, Rose, whose thirty or so cats roamed freely through her house and garage. During the time I worked with her, every time I tried to breathe without a face mask I got a mouthful of fluffy hair. My crew and I found more than fifty dead cats and kittens; their dried-out skeletons were flattened under piles of clothes and boxes.
    Rose never noticed any missing pets because there were just too many around to keep track of. The decaying animal smell didn’t get anyone’s attention because the whole garage and house reeked of cat urine.
    Ironically, Rose wanted to protect and care for the animals, but her hoarding got in the way. The animals quickly became endangered simply because she couldn’t feed all of them regularly, change their litter, and provide adequate living conditions.
    It’s hard for a non-hoarder to understand why someone needs so many pets. In so many cases, it became clear to me that a hoarder overlooks the mess when the animals are a comforting substitute for human contact. An animal that loves and doesn’t judge might be the only positive thing in a hoarder’s day. And taking in animals that would be neglected otherwise gives meaning to the hoarder’s life. It can be really empowering to feel so important to the very survival of another living being, but even those best intentions go horribly wrong.
▶ The Information Junkie
    Rick, the college professor we met earlier, had twenty-five years’ worth of mail, magazines, and financial documents. A two-foot-thick layer of compressed paper carpeted the whole house.
    Every surface in Rick’s house was covered in mail. The living room was so cluttered with huge piles of paper and other items that we didn’t realize there was furniture in there until we cleaned it up. Rick had spent his whole career gathering, sorting, and sharing information, so for him to throw away that paperwork was almost sacrilegious.

    It is difficult for most “information hoarders” to let go of newspapers, books, or mail. Matt has learned that many hoarders know where a specific issue of a magazine or paper can be found.
    This is a form of information hoarding. Rick couldn’t bear to let information slip through his fingers, out of his control. Books, newspapers, CDs, magazines, photographs—basically any printed or recorded material was important to him. Information hoarders are usually people who have dedicated their careers, and lives, to education in one form or another. Many of them are highly educated themselves and work at top-level jobs in government, law, corporate America, or at universities.
    The average person will read the morning paper and then toss it into the recycling bin. Rick read it and then decided that the article on investing would be really helpful one day. Or he’d save a magazine with a gardening article for a friend. (Of course, the friend inevitably did not get the magazine.) Then there were the crossword puzzles—so good to take to a doctor’s appointment and work on in the waiting room. So each newspaper or magazine went into a pile. But the next day another newspaper went