Home of a Hoarder

I am a person of stories. Anytime something happens in my life I just say, "well, now we will have another story."

Recently my mother and I helped out a family member clear out her house before it could be sold. She is elderly and living in an assisted living facility. Her daughter had been living in her house for about a year, then left.

We had to wear haz mat suits to enter the home. Seriously, you can buy them online. Oh... the wonders you can purchase online! So we trudge into the house, covered head to toe, sprayed with copious amounts of Deep Woods OFF, and I wanted to run screaming down the street. If you have never been in the home of a hoarder, you can not fathom the depths of this mental illness. All the shows on TV that depict the hoarder, don't do the experience justice. AT ALL!

We went in the back door first, straight into the kitchen. You know the little trays that meat comes in? The ones that have that little pad to absorb the blood and juices? Those were thrown all over the floor, the table, the counter, in piles, just by themselves, I even found one in a book case. WHAT?    That was my introduction to the great hoarding mounds that my mother and I waded into. Knee deep trash through out the entire house.  I can almost understand hoarding stuff. But TRASH? I don't get that! I can't wrap my head around how a person can live like that.

The bugs. Oh my, oh my, oh my, the bugs. As you can imagine, the meat containers being only the beginning, there where bugs every where. We emptied three cans of Raid all over that house. First walking through sweeping the spray in front of us. I was wearing a mask, because I was going in first. I didn't want to breath the bug spray, let alone the other stuff in that house. The smell was really weird. It didn't exactly stink. It was a really odd, sweet, rotting smell. After a few minutes I wanted to vomit, but at first, it was just a really weird smell. Back to the bugs. I can now recognize bed bugs. These things were huge! The size of a pencil eraser, only flat. Maybe they were feeding on the meat packages? The fleas were pretty big, and the ticks, and the roaches. They all looked like some growth hormone had been leaked into the home. Some toxic waste experiment gone awry. I was, however, very surprised there were no ants. I didn't see one. Hmm.... maybe the other bugs ate them? There was also a bunch of bugs in a pile I couldn't recognize. They were on a Bible sitting on the couch, it looked like an animal had pooped on it, then it melted. This pile of pooish stuff was covered with creepy crawlies. I had a flea attach itself to my suit at one point and it became a tug of war to get it off. He wasn't budging. I had to drown him in Raid and then pull him off. He was a strong little F**ker!!

Coke made a fortune off of this lady. There were at least 100 cases of 24 cans, strewn about the house. Empty of course. If we had collected all the Coke cans around that house (again, empty) I could have taken my family of five out to dinner, maybe even two. Of course I don't know what you can get for recycling these days, and they were probably all filled with bugs anyway. Maybe I should send a picture of the coke everywhere and into the Coke people. They could use it in their advertising, "even the mental love Coke." She had them lined up on all the window sills. Reminding me of frat boys stacking beer cans.

What other horrors did we see? I took lots and lots of pictures. I knew no one would really believe me. Sadly the pictures didn't even do the experience justice. There were dirty undies all over the bedrooms and bathrooms. Filled diapers. Yep, their were small children their at one time. Feminine products all over the floor in the bathroom. Yes, used and new. She had found the good silver and was eating with them. She never washed a thing, so I'm assuming that is why she went looking for it. There were dirty plates and good silver all over the house. Half eaten food that looked like it was still dinner for bugs. The biggest piles where next to the chairs. It looked like she ate, then just dropped them where ever, and there they stayed.

Strangely enough she only smoked outside. I'm so confused by that. She took a Waterford Crystal bowl outside and used it as an ashtray. It was really disgusting. It was filled to the top with butts and then got rained on and turned into tar soup.  Oh.. I almost forgot. She thought that raccoons were cute, so she fed them canned cat food outside the back door. When she left the family of raccoons knocked out a window to get inside and look for food. I thought it was cat poop all over the house, but it was probably the raccoons. There wasn't much food in the pantry, but what there was, the raccoons knocked to the floor. I guess raccoons can't chew open cans.

I'm sure my mother and I will tell the story of this house for many many years!

It is so sad what family does to each other.