By Betty Beier
Federation volunteer, Minneapolis

Several years ago, my brother called me to say he had just pulled 14 baby strollers - in various stages of disrepair - out of our mother’s basement. Lifting them into his pickup truck, he assured Mom that there was an orphanage in dire need of them. Then he ran them over to the town dump.

My mother was a pack rat. Another term is hoarder. Either way, she was a moderately severe case of what I now realize affects a lot of people.

Our mom died in 1995 at age 81. It took ten of us family members working for a week to fill up three 20-ton dumpsters with old newspapers, plastic bags filled with junk mail and sometimes important papers, empty shampoo bottles, used cottage cheese containers, old shoes, clothes, several television sets dating back to the 1950s, and mounds of broken toys. The local Salvation Army asked us not to come back after three trips. Cleanup was expensive (dumpsters aren’t cheap), exhausting and dirty duty (we all wore dust masks for the duration).

I say she was a moderately severe case. She lived alone after my siblings all got married. She didn’t collect cats or dogs like some hoarders do, so there was no stinky stuff. Her five-bedroom house was well kept on the outside, since she had neighborhood kids do yard work. But there was the traditional “goat path” inside to navigate from room to room.

How could the five of us adult children allow this to happen? We worried constantly about fire, since some of the clutter was stashed up against radiators. We’d make up stories to scare her into at least moving the crispy newspapers a few inches away from the heat source. We’d fill trash bags when she wasn’t looking, just to have her march angrily to the alley to retrieve her treasures. She would allow some used clothing items she got at garage sales to be donated to the needy, but only after dry cleaning. So we gladly paid for that. But this just scratched the surface. We ultimately just gave up.

Growing up, it seemed like there was always a lot of “stuff” in our house, but things got worse after Mom was widowed. Her treasure stash grew. We blamed it on memories of the Great Depression, when folks salvaged what they could. But not only Depression kids are hoarders. An estimated 10 to 30 million people hoard, including children, according to Twin Cities psychologist Dr. Renae M. Reinardy, PsyD. The numbers are up from an estimated 600,000 just a few years ago, an increase, she believes, due not because there are more hoarders, but because hoarding is being identified more. “It’s extremely common. It’s an epidemic,” she says.

Although my siblings couldn’t help my mom by nagging, scare tactics and whining, there may now be help for others’ families. I recently met a professional “organizer” who works with hoarders. She said that therapists are recognizing that hoarding can have many faces, from obsessive-compulsive disorders to a type of attention deficit disorder (ADD).

In addition to OCD, which Reinardy says comprises about 30 percent of hoarders, there’s ADD, dementia, perfectionism, depression, eating disorders and traumatic brain injuries that may lead to hoarding. Although research isn’t where she would like it to be, there is hope.

“There’s a common notion that hoarders are difficult to treat, but I haven’t found that to be true,” she says. “People need to know they are not messy or lazy. And lots of therapies are available. There is no cookbook approach.”

Reinardy says the first step is education. And a scheme that doesn’t work, she believes, is the forced trash bag approach. “You clean out the place and next week it starts again. It’s like doing someone’s algebra for him or her. The algebra gets done, but without education, the person still doesn’t learn algebra.”

In any case, solving this complex problem takes more than a devoted family using forced interventions. Take it from me, it doesn’t work. It’s too late for my own family, but today there are books, videos, websites and lots of help available. Here are a few resources.

On the Internet, a treatment provider’s list by zip code is available on the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation website:  www.ocfoundation.info.

While Reinardy is not taking new patients, she has been filming a one-hour educational video, which should be available in March. Check her clinic’s website: www.lakesidecenter.org.

Go to www.childrenofhoarders.org for specific information about children.

Recommended books include: Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving and Hoarding, by Tolin, Frost and Steketee, and Compulsive Hoarding and Acquiring: Therapist Guide (Treatments that work), by Steketee and Frost.

See www.webmd.com and put “Hoarding” in the search box for more general information.