Decluttering Tips for Hoarders

Do you find yourself collecting useless items everywhere in your house? Does it make your life
difficult? Do you rarely find any space to keep important things? Does parting with your
possessions haunt you like a ghost from the Canterbury house? If you’ve answered yes, to most
if not all of these questions then you suffer from hoarding. And we’re here to give you tips on
how to declutter if you’re a hoarder

How to know if you’re a Hoarder?

To hoard is to accumulate (money or valued objects, sometimes even useless items) and hiding
and/or storing them away. The behavior usually has a number of harmful effects on a wide
range of levels, including but not limited to: emotional, physical, social, financial, and even legal
problems for the hoarders themselves and their family members, especially their own children.

Compulsive hoarders are people who have a persistent difficulty throwing away or parting with
possessions, regardless of their actual worth or value.

Hoarders may exhibit the following traits:

● Inability to discard possessions

● Getting anxious when attempting to throw away items
● Finding it difficult to organize possessions
● Being indecisive about what to keep or where to keep it.
● Getting distressed, to the point of being frightened or feeling anxious when asked about
their possessions and/or collections.
● Being suspicious of others touching possessions
● Getting irrational fears of running out of an item or of needing it in the future and
thoughts like checking their bins for discarded objects.
● Having functional impairments, like the risk of losing living space, getting socially
isolated, experiencing financial difficulties, not to mention health hazards

Reasons for Hoarding and its Repercussions.

The reason most hoarders do what they do is because they believe that an item will be useful or
valuable, not in the present time but in the future. Hoarders may also get some sort of
sentimental attachment (to varying degrees) to their stashed away objects. Bereavement or any
other significant life event can trigger hoarders’ excessive compulsive behavior.

It is interesting to know that hoarding does often run in families, but it is unknown whether it is
DNA-related or not. Hoarders’ children are often perplexed helplessly by their parents' behavior.
They witness their family slipping away, one object at a time. All while being unable to do
anything about it. When parents acquire and accumulate possessions, their children, sadly, fail
to live a normal family life which is a substantial cost a parent with a distorted relationship with
objects has to pay.

On the flip-side, children might also become hoarders by stashing away toy boxes and toys. For
younglings the most note-worthy sign is their own emotional reaction to their possessions. They
will often live in a constant worry about them, so much so that it impairs their daily life and
creates tension with family.

How do you declutter if you’re a hoarder?

Here are some steps a hoarder can follow to declutter and lead a more organized life.

1. Minimizing Clutter

Decluttering your home isn’t going to help much if you’re going to continue to buy or
stash those items you don’t really need and have no place for. So the first step in
decluttering your home is to stop bringing in more clutter to your living space. Which
makes sense more than anything.

It is important for you to start developing the right mindset. Simply put, do not buy
unnecessary items. In short, only buy those items which are absolutely necessary. It is
often helpful to live simple and on little items. Remember, good things come in small
packages. Set small achievable goals and celebrate your victories.

2. Seek Help.

I believe it is crucial to seek help if you have a problem. The first step onto the way of
fixing one’s problems is acknowledging there are problems. There is nothing shameful or
wrong about asking for help from friends, family and/or professionals. So you shouldn’t
feel ashamed or anything. In fact, in doing this you become one step closer to your goal
and one step away from your problems.

In a wide variety of cases, you don’t have to go it solo. Unless you are some socially
inept outcast, you have friends & family that can come in for a couple of hours and help
you work on decluttering.

Even if they only do a single task, the help can make a big difference and goes a long
way when the task seems too big for you to tackle on your own.
 3. Set Small Goals.
While decluttering your entire home may seem too overwhelming, you can start one
room at a time. You can even break that down further into parts of rooms like closets,
beds or that table in your dining room. There’s no magical instantaneous way to declutter
the ENTIRE house. Make small realistically achievable goals so you can applaud and
pat yourself on the back when you complete them.

4. Use a visual progress-tracking method

It helps if you can take a photograph of the desired area before and after decluttering to
help keep motivated and make you feel good about what you have accomplished and
push you towards success. Nothing beats a clean clutter-free kitchen table or a shiny
brand-new-looking cellar.

5. Start With the Most Visible Areas

This will help you make a much more significant progress in as little time as possible. Or
at least make you believe so. By eliminating the most visible clutter you are left with a
clutter-free and refreshing environment where it’s possible to think clearly and to focus
on the things that truly matter. From then on, you can move to decluttering the lesser
visible areas until you eventually declutter the entire house. Out of sight, out of mind!

6. Try to Get Organized.

Sometimes, it’s possible to collect clutter unintentionally, for example: to-do lists and
public transport tickets. These tiny lumps of paper and obviously redundant items tend to
collect over time and past their general usage lifespan. Try to collect them all in one bag
so you can toss it away and not have to deal with the sight of spread out clutter.

In many cases, clutter is due more to poor organization skills or the lack thereof, than in
actually having too much. If you organize as you declutter you will know the things that
you have space for and those that you don’t. This also might allow you to figure out
which items you have more than others.

Ask Yourself These Questions

It’s very likely that we don’t know what to keep and what to throw/give away. To help you decide
what to declutter, here are a few questions you can ask yourself whenever you feel doubtful or
unsure.

1. Has this item been used in the last six months?

 2. Is this item necessary?
3. Is this item expendable?
4. What should I do if it needs to be replaced?
5. Will keeping this item make my life easier or harder?
6. Does this item belong here or somewhere else?

Conclusion
Decluttering your home is no quick task and it may have a steep initial curve.

As the saying goes “First steps are always the hardest”. But once you’re determined to start,
you’ll be surprised with how much difference it can make to your home and to the quality of your
life.

External links:

1. https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/hoarding-bas
ics
2. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/hoard
3. (a competing article with almost the same title. Remove if against rules.)
https://www.mytidycorner.com/decluttering-tips-hoarders-pack-rats/