There Was A Window Here Just A Second Ago

Suppose you're driving down the street of a residential area. Lots of nice homes, manicured lawns, clean vehicles in the driveways and lots of full grown trees lining the road. This could be in almost any suburban town, it doesn't matter where exactly this is. It's just a nice neighborhood. Now let's drive down this very same street again, taking a closer look at things.

The homes might have drapes, others with vertical or horizontal blinds, others with pull down shades and still some might just have the curtains pulled back with the inside of the home somewhat exposed to the sunlight. You might see one garage that has a basketball hoop attached to it, and another with a bunch of bicycles in front of it. Perhaps there are planted flowers that line the fronts of some houses, and others that might have decorative shutters. Some homes are brick, others have siding.

During the various holiday seasons, you might see lights, lawn ornaments, door decorations or maybe a certain type of potted flower on the front stoop or porch. At night, some houses are lit up well, while other ones may only have one or two lights on inside. Others will look completely pitch black inside, or maybe the very faint glow of a night light will be able to be seen near a window. Like I said, typical street. Any street.

Most people would assume that spotting a hoarder is relatively easy. There's a certain flow of unfounded imagination that goes through a person's mind. The house looks sloppy and might be totally shut off from everything else. The yard would be in shambles and possibly filled with weeds. The person would be a total recluse and no one in the neighborhood would ever know who they really are, and perhaps would only see them on very rare occasions. If this is what you think classifies a hoarder, you're very wrong.

In only very extreme cases, where there are multiple psychological problems taking place all at the same time with a person, do hoarders intentionally become recluse. These people who become hermits and recluse type individuals are rare, and almost always have other ailments that are effecting their behavior. These are not typical hoarders.

Typical hoarders are usually well known. These people are often very active in social, religious or community type activities. They are normally well dressed, polite, well educated and have many friends. In my mother's case, she is almost always defined as a 'social butterfly'. She adores going out and being with her friends, participating in church and community activities, traveling across the country to visit friends and relatives...and so forth. She is not the type of person to be recluse or miserly in any way, shape or form, and if a person needed something, she'd go out of her way to help that person as best as she could. She is, however, a person with Hoarder's Disorder.

If you drove by the home I grew up in, it would seem like any other home on the street. Well manicured lawn, shrub bushes lining the front of the house and a nicely trimmed walkway to the side door that was often lined with small Pansies. The mail box was never over flowing with unread mail. The lawn was not filled with weeds. The hedges and trees were not over grown or untrimmed. During the fall, the yard was always kept nice. During the winter, the driveway was always plowed and the walkways were always shoveled. There was absolutely nothing unusual about the appearance of the home. From the outside.

Going inside of such a home is a completely different experience. You do not walk into what you expect. In fact, it's very much like walking through some kind of psychological worm hole that instantly takes you to a completely strange and very crowded world. From looking at the outside of the home, you would obviously notice the placement of the doors and windows. From looking at the inside of the window, you would stand in the middle of a room, scratching your head and thinking, "There was a window here just a second ago."

From the inside, you cannot understand how it's possible for any one to intentionally live in those conditions. You cannot understand how it is even mentally possible for anyone to find the least bit of sane reasoning for having kept so much stuff. You look at things and see nothing but piles of junk and items that you'd classify as garbage. You also are not looking at this home as a hoarder. You are looking at this home as the average person without the hoarding disorder.

Hoarders do not see junk, garbage or throw away items. They see gifts, sentimental items, items that could be used as written historical accounts and even items that they deem as being worth a great amount of money, even if that item is broken and completely unusable.

Newspapers and magazines are two items that many hoarders tend to keep piled up around the house, and more often than not will absolutely not throw out. To them, these are valuable sources of historical documentation and information that will be possibly required some time in the future. Photographs and pictures seen in these forms of media are important, and have great value to hoarders. I've even known some hoarders who will intentionally keep just the birth records section from news papers, just in case that baby grows up to be a powerful politician, movie star, entertainer or religious leader.

My mother is no different in this case. While the outside of her home never appears to be anything out of the ordinary, the inside of her home holds more valuable items than all the gold in the world is worth. She used to save sugar packets from all the places we ever went to, IF they carried the place's logo or name on the sugar packet itself. Matchbooks that carried logos or emblems on them were saved. Paper place mats from hotel restaurants were saved. Carry out containers were washed up and saved, especially if the container had the name of a fancy place on it. Paper shopping bags with prints and such on them that she found 'pretty' were saved. Every single piece of wrapping paper possible was saved, including all the bows, ties and ribbons that came on the package.

Again, from the outside, her home appeared to be nothing but a typical home. However, when it comes to hoarders, things are often not as they seem to be.

Next post... To Keep, Or Not To Keep.