Freedom from Hoarding Disorder 2: Where I Was and Where I Am Now

Note: The articles in this series were originally posted on Better, like others on this website. But unlike the others, which I have slightly edited for this new context, I have decided to leave these just as they were. I’m putting at the top of each the date of original publication. Although they go back a couple of years already, I would still really appreciate your fresh engagement and contributions in the comments!

July 28, 2018

A few days ago, I posted about my recent understanding that I have hoarding disorder. 

I would like to share a bit more about my journey, both as a taking-stock of where I am right now on the path of recovery, and hopefully to provide some help and encouragement to others who might need it.

First of all, I’d like to note that I have self-diagnosed, and also I am performing a self-intervention! 😊 The data on people suffering from this shows that there is a higher prevalence of the disorder among people over 55 years old, and also that it gets progressively worse with time, in the absence of intervention. I seem to have gained insight and initiated the intervention at a relatively early time in the course of the disorder’s development. If you are wondering if you might also be suffering from this condition but are unsure, or if you’d like to make a change but feel overwhelmed and cannot envisage fighting it on your own or with just the help of your family and friends, please speak out and seek professional help.

My experience of living with overwhelming clutter starts from my childhood, around the time of my parents’ divorce in the mid 80’s, when I was about 7 or 8. 

I believe my mother is a fellow-sufferer: the apartment where we lived (my mom, myself and my younger sister), after my parents separated, always seemed to have more things than we could easily put away. As the years passed, the quantity of clutter grew and grew.

There is a visual guide widely used as a tool for hoarding diagnosis – here is a link to it. My childhood home, at the height of clutter, was at about level 4 to 5 as shown in the visual guide (the levels start from completely orderly at 1, with progressively more clutter up to level 9). Some of the areas in the apartment (pantry cupboard, balcony) were all the way up to levels 8 to 9.

My sister and I did do a lot of decluttering growing up, but the things kept accumulating, so that we rarely got under level 3. Many times we would manage to have the living areas freer than usual, and things wouldn’t look ‘thrown around’ all the time, as we would do our best to stack and neaten things up, but still, at all times, each space would contain a much larger quantity of objects than would comfortably fit in, and there would be things on every single surface.

In early 2010 I had been living on my own in that place for a few years after everyone else had moved out, and it was as bad as ever... when I met my husband and left everything behind, moved to Scotland, got married, and started a new life. But the hoarding followed me.

In Scotland, within about 3 years of having moved into our new three-bedroom house, I had filled our loft to the gunnels, and in the living spaces there was constant clutter on all surfaces, including floor space.

I will now skip over a bit of life-story to the present time. If anyone is interested to hear more, please ask! 😊

I’m happy to be able to tell you that right now, by working on my clutter problem for the past 2 years, our house is doing much better!! It is at level 2 as pictured in the visual guide, with some spaces at level 3 sometimes, temporarily, as work is being done on various parts of the house. However, there have been times when some rooms were at level 1 – which I’m hoping will continue to happen more often and for increasingly longer periods of time! 😄💕

Here is also a link to the diagnostic criteria for hoarding disorder. You will see some items at the end titled ‘Specify if’: each of them is a description of the different possible presentations of the disorder. Less than three years ago, I used to be under #1 and #3: ‘With excessive acquisition’ and ‘With poor insight’.

Right now, I am at #2: ‘With good or fair insight’, and one of the diagnostic criteria doesn’t even apply to me any longer! 😊 The third paragraph of the criteria says that if living spaces are clear it is only due to help from others: Nope! 😀 It’s me now. Any clear space that happens in our house is mostly because of me.

So happy to see the great progress, so excited to be working on restoring my mental health, so looking forward at having our house be the free, serene, relaxing space I dream of! 😊💗

I hope to be back soon with another part of this series. Here is one more link to another good description of the disorder, with evaluation guidance.