The holidays can be the happiest and the saddest time of year for many. If you find yourself faced with clearing a relative’s estate (no matter how big or small) filled with decades or a lifetime of clutter, the holidays can be a nightmare. If you’re dealing decluttering the hoarded estate because of the death of your loved one, along with all the (normally) mixed emotions and memories, you’re facing an overwhelming task at just the time of year when you should be celebrating with family and friends. If the loved one is downsizing to an alternative living situation, the task can be just as daunting. Many of our clients facing this situation had called us in a state of deep depression and anxiety, fearing that the task would be impossible with everything else they have to do for the holidays. This is perhaps the most desperate time of year to be managing the estate clearing of a hoarded home, and they badly needed someone to help them handle it. That’s where our compassionate and friendly team at Clutter & Hoarding Pros™ comes in. Rather than adding to your burden, we take it off your shoulders so you can prepare for the holidays with minimal interruption, knowing that the estate will be cleared, cleaned, and ready for sale or living within days, not weeks. If sale of the home is the goal, we can arrange a consultation with a company that will, at no upfront cost to you or the estate, remodel the home so that the selling price can be up to or over $100,000 more than it would otherwise bring. We all (I believe) face a bit of insanity during the holidays—shopping, preparing meals, making travel arrangements, decorating, etc., etc.—and handing over such a huge undertaking to a team of professionals experienced in clearing hoarded estates can clear your mind of the myriad added concerns such a task would involve.
We’ve “been there, done that” hundreds of times, and every time—literally—the families have been grateful beyond their initial belief. Not only is the burden and distress taken off their shoulders, but the sight of the formerly unlivable, awful house transformed into a clear, clean, livable state gives immeasurable joy. One of the nicest things about this process, especially at this time of year, is uncovering items that are in fine shape for donation. By donating to a worthy charity (and we have a list of our favorites), you get the feeling of helping those less fortunate at this “giving” time of year, and of knowing that some of your loved one’s hoarded possessions are going to a “good home.” (You’d be surprised how many hoarders we’ve helped have found this to be the most powerful incentive to parting with their possessions.) Of course, there will be grieving and sorrow if your loved one has gone, but let this holiday be a time of remembering them with fondness, not with horror at the seemingly insurmountable task ahead by trying to do this yourself. Let Clutter & Hoarding Pros™ ease the burden and give you both the time to share memories with your friends and family and the freedom to experience the joy of having your loved ones around you. Happy holidays from all of us at Clutter & Hoarding Pros™! We get so many calls from relatives of a hoarder who has passed on or must vacate their home to enter an alternate living situation—be it assisted living, nursing home, hospital, moving in with a relative, downsizing to a smaller home, whatever. It seems completely overwhelming to our callers to even contemplate clearing the home themselves—but they didn’t know where to turn. Just the thought of picking through the clutter seems impossible:
This is where Clutter & Hoarding Pros™ come in! Here are a few of the scenarios you might be facing if you need to clear a hoarder’s home:
You are not alone! We at Clutter & Hoarding Pros™ are your team, your task force if you will, ready to pitch in and handle the enormous tasks involved in hoarded estate clearing—and we do it in days, not weeks or months! We understand that this may be one of the hardest things in your life, and we make it as painless and stress-free as it is possible to be.
We’ve done this hundreds of times, so you can rest assured that your situation will be dealt with in a compassionate, nonjudgmental way, and you can look forward to a fully cleared home in as short a time as possible. That’s what we do. We have earned our excellent reviews and will strive to gain your trust and solve these overwhelming issues with respect, professionalism, and compassion. When a Concerned Third Party Contacts Us About a Hoarding SituationWe at Clutter & Hoarding Pros™ receive dozens of calls and emails each week from concerned third parties seeking help with a hoarder. These include neighbors, friends, or relatives--both local and distant; plus social workers, psychologists, adult/child protective services, and other care workers.
We are familiar with almost every scenario, and we've heard just about every story. That being said, every client is unique in his or her life story, reasons for hoarding, type of items hoarded, level of severity, and willingness to confront their hoarding and accept help. This is where concerned third parties usually come into the picture. Whether on a personal level—family, friends, neighbors—or a more official level—social workers and other care professionals—third parties are often the ones who initiate the process of looking for help and resources to clear a hoarder's home. Although we always strive to provide as much helpful information as possible to concerned third parties, we are not permitted by law to provide actual hands-on services for a hoarder unless the individual with the hoarding disorder gives us direct consent. If this isn't possible, we must obtain permission from a legal guardian with assigned rights of either power of attorney or conservatorship, which is done through an estate attorney and can involve a judge-ordered ruling. However, even without one of these scenarios in place—direct permission either from the hoarder him- or herself or from a legal guardian—we can provide you, the concerned third party, with a rich referral list of trusted service providers. You can share this list with the individual with the hoarding disorder in order to give them as much support and encouragement as possible to seek both mental health counseling and a remediation services such as Clutter & Hoarding Pros™. But if, as the third party, you do have either power of attorney or conservatorship rights, the next step would be to make an appointment for an in-home assessment. During this assessment, we will provide you with an accurate appraisal of the situation and best practices we implement in order to make the home quickly habitable—whether the final goal is to sell the home, to let the individual or family safely move back into the property, or to prepare items for an estate sale. We are here to help you navigate this difficult and often devastating situation, and we'll guide you in the right direction to get the help you need for the hoarder in your life. We can say with assurance that just about every hoarding situation includes masses of paper, whether bills, newspapers and magazines, junk mail, information that never got acted on or filed, offers, bank statements, you name it. This is not to say that people with hoarding disorder are the only ones who have trouble dealing with the overwhelming amount of paper that floods our mailboxes and our homes daily. However, in a hoarding situation the amount of paper is usually so huge that it literally hampers the usability of the rooms in the hoarder's home. We've all seen photos of "pathway" homes, where narrow passages wind through the clutter, much of which is piled to the ceiling. But paper hoarding can be even more disturbing to the hoarder if it's scattered around in, say, an office, where it literally "screams" at the hoarder to "pay attention to me!" This worsens the mental clutter that is the constant curse of those with hoarding disorder. The process of clearing paper clutter can be quite complex, because the type of paper is very important in the clutter clearing process. Newspapers, magazines, and junk mail usually—although not always—have less severe emotional hold on the hoarder's psyche than do, for instance, unpaid bills, personal correspondence, insurance or bank statements, etc.—paper that is directly connected to the hoarder. After working with the hoarder to enable him or her to be willing to part with the "non-personal" paper (newspapers, junk mail, etc.), much of the paper hoard can be cleared relatively quickly. Then comes the part where each paper must be looked at, until the hoarder feels comfortable allowing us to sort similar items. For instance, if we're uncovering lots of bank statements, we'll work with the hoarder until he or she trusts us to handle other types of statements, and the sorting can proceed much more quickly. In addition, much paper clutter consists of unfiled material. Although a clutter clean-out usually doesn't involve setting up new filing systems, or using existing ones, to file papers, this service can be contracted separately, as a part of follow-up remediation, with an organizer specializing in filing systems. Likewise, follow-up organizing in other paper-handling strategies, such as for storage of old records that can't be discarded, can be an extremely helpful part of remediation after the clutter clear-out. As overwhelming as paper clutter can be, it can be dealt with in a way that allows us to keep it under control. It's a learning process, one that affects our lives in so many ways.
Help for hoarders is more than just clearing out the hoard of possessions. With our help, the hoarder's home is cleared and cleaned during our on-site work. Then, for true hoarding remediation, the home needs to stay clear and functional afterwards. It’s estimated that 90% of homes that go through a hoarding clear-out slowly creep back to the hoarding state if no after-care is provided! Hoarding Disorder is characterized in large part by an impaired ability to make decisions. We know that hoarders have a difficult time deciding what’s worth keeping and what can be discarded without a negative impact on their lives. There is evidence that parts of the hoarder’s brain actually respond differently than those of non-hoarders! Here are three extremely interesting findings:
After the Hoarding Clear-Out
However, the improvement in decision making is not just an “on-off” process by which a hoarding clear-out magically flips a switch and enables the hoarder to make better decisions. At Clutter & Hoarding Pros, we are constantly on the look-out for the latest thinking on treatment for Hoarding Disorder so we can continuously provide better help for our hoarding clients. For instance:
At Clutter & Hoarding Pros, we support the ongoing remediation of and treatment for our clients—after we work with them in the hoarding clear-out phase—by helping them locate local therapists and other resources who can guide them through the recovery. There is hope for long-term remediation from hoarding with the right kind of after-care therapy and the support of loved ones! It would be difficult if not impossible to state the number of times we’ve heard from family members or friends of hoarders, or people who watch the TV shows: “Just go in and clear it all out—get rid of everything!” This is a very understandable response to what we see in a hoarder’s home. It’s usually filthy and hard to walk through or even get into, the space is unusable for what its intended purpose, it may smell awful and be highly unsanitary due to animal waste, but the hoarder who lives there doesn’t see it the way nonhoarders do. To them, there is value in the most insignificant piece of trash, and their sense of safety and of who they are, their very identity, is found in their possessions. Noted hoarding expert and coauthor of Buried in Treasures Randy Frost cites these typical causes for hoarding: "Hoarding is a complex disorder believed to be associated with four underlying characteristics.
A careful review of this information can enlighten us to the futility of having a junk hauling service come in and do what they call a "trash-out," just clearing and hauling away the contents of the home without taking the owner's concerns into account. If we think the hoarder will react the way we hope, we will be sadly mistaken. Hoarders do NOT simply accept that someone—anyone—has taken away all their “stuff.” To them this can seem as if they have been stripped of their identity, their safety, everything they hold valuable. It can be so bad that they go into a state of rage, depression, and despair, and simply repeat their hoarding behavior until the situation is the same as it was—and the trust they may have had for the well-intentioned “helpers” is destroyed. "Can’t Compulsive Hoarding Be Solved by Simply
Cleaning Out the Home? "No. Attempts to 'clean out' the homes of people who hoard without treating the underlying problem usually fail. Families and community agencies may spend many hours and thousands of dollars clearing a home only to find that the problem recurs, often within just a few months. Hoarders whose homes are cleared without their consent often experience extreme distress and may become further attached to their possessions. This may lead to their refusal of future help.” [Excerpt from the International OCD Foundation’s Hoarding Fact Sheet, available here] However, with proper care in the clean-out process, in which the client is treated with respect and compassion, in which the workers examine every item for potential value and are trained to listen to the client in a nonjudgmental way, a clean-out can proceed smoothly and less painfully. This is NOT something a trash-removal company is equipped to do. It takes years of experience dealing with hoarders in all manner of situations to accomplish this successfully. The clean-out doesn’t have to take a very long time if it’s conducted properly. A company such as Clutter & Hoarding Pros™, whose owner, Michelle Quintana, earned her Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology, has completed thousands of hours with hundreds of hoarders and knows exactly how to communicate and work with these clients. She and her team do not rush the clients or force them to give up their possessions until they’re ready, and they strive to create an atmosphere of cooperation and support. They work with municipal and other resources when necessary and champion the client with outside professionals. They also know how to educate both the client and family and friends who are willing to help their loved one recover. The vital role of a sympathetic, compassionate, nonjudgmental, yet firm and confident clean-out team paves the way for recovery by the hoarder, not a tragic repetition of the problem. Following is a brief summary of treatment strategies after the hoard has been cleared. Can Compulsive Hoarding Be Treated? Yes, compulsive hoarding can be treated. Strategies to treat hoarding include:
We hope that if you are, or are involved in helping, a hoarder, you will proceed with this information in mind to create a clean-out situation in which the problem can result in a successful recovery from this debilitating condition. Recently we blogged about the numerous resources for hoarding help available in Orange County; this month we’re focusing on resources for hoarding help in Los Angeles County.
Cleanup of a hoarder’s home is usually not the first step in remediation of a hoarding situation. The hoarder or his/her family or friends must make an initial contact with either a hoarding clean-up and clear-out service or a County hoarding intervention resource such as Adult or Child Protective Services, the Department of Mental Health, or one of the other resources listed below (websites and phone numbers are in the list below). Following are excerpts from the Hoarding Fact Sheet published by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Countywide Older Adult Programs [http://www.la4seniors.com/hoarding.htm].  ____________________________________________________________________________ WHAT IS HOARDING? Hoarding is the excessive collection and retention of things or animals until they interfere with day-to-day functions with the home, health, family, work, and/or social life. Severe hoarding causes safety and health hazards. The collection of newspapers, magazines, old clothes, and other items may cause fires, while animal hoarding can spread contagious diseases. It is estimated that older adults represent a significant number of people who hoard. WHY DO PEOPLE HOARD? The behavior of hoarding is seen in various illnesses. Frequently, older adults have been found to hoard for the following reasons:
INTERVENTION Hoarding is both a mental health issue and a public health problem. The hoarding behavior usually has been occurring for a long time, and hasty interventions will not resolve it. Interventions without the hoarder's cooperation can lead to the development of dangerous behaviors. It is recommended that intervention be collaborative, involving the older adult, family, and other agencies such as mental health professionals, adult protective services, code enforcement, building & safety, animal control, and criminal justice. Do’s and Don'ts for Intervention with an Older Adult Hoarder
The Danger of Hasty Intervention Negative results can occur when interventions are not carefully planned with a group of professionals with hoarding knowledge:
The Benefits of Planned Intervention It is recommended that intervention be collaborative, involving the older adult, friends/family, and other agencies:
Below is a list of standards used by the LA County Hoarding Task Force for LA Fire Code Safety & Evacuation Standards. [This is helpful in making an assessment of the person’s home prior to planning an intervention.]
WEBSITES AND OTHER RESOURCES
Finding a Hoarding Clean-Up CompanyYou're ready to call for help . . . you or your family has had enough with the clutter, and you know you can't clear it out by yourselves. So Where Do You Look for Help? Here are some initial pointers to get you started in your search for a nonjudgmental, compassionate hoarding clean-up company that can assist you in solving your hoarding disorder problems. First, the "Don'ts":
Do's:
When you have narrowed your choices to one or two hoarding clean-out companies, schedule an on-site assessment. (This should be free of charge.) The assessment serves two purposes:
Keep in mind that the lowest cost does NOT mean the best hoarding clean-out company for you. The team leader should have some experience in the mental health field and a compassionate understanding of the many reasons for hoarding disorders. The company should have relationships with community resources, such as code enforcement, animal control (if appropriate), and mental health services. Team members should have passed background checks. A hoarding and clutter clean-out should be a very positive, life-changing experience, and a way forward to a new life for you and your loved ones. Working with someone you like and trust is worth every hour and every penny you spend, and the process of selecting your "team" is crucial. If you have any other questions or concerns, we would be happy to discuss these with you. Please email Michelle Quintana, the owner of Clutter & Hoarding Pros™, and visit our FAQ page for more detailed information. This month we focus on the various forms of help available for hoarders in Orange County. The Orange County media has done a terrific job of covering numerous instances of home destruction, personal injury, animal abuse, and other heartbreaking effects of this very serious dysfunction. On our Hoarding in the News page on this website, we've reported many stories about the devastating effects that hoarding has had on families around Orange County. Here's a look at the help that Orange County is providing.
The Task Force has published a 237-page reference guide for professionals involved in providing help for hoarders in Orange County (click here for Amazon link). It's more than evident that these folks are very serious about what they're doing!
In a March 2011 Orange County Register article, reporter Ternyl Zarnow had this to say about the Orange County Task Force on Hoarding: "In one case a woman was hoarding as many as 50 cats that bred fleas that can cause typhus. In another, enough clutter spilled into the yard that rats and possums moved in. Underneath the house, overturned items collected rainwater where mosquitoes bred . . . "When [residents] can't get out of a house if there's a fire, it's time for intervention," explains Margaret Riley, a cofounder of the hoarding task force . . . "The task force represents the scope of countywide resources available to intervene or help a hoarder. Not only is it a model for collaboration, but it seems to include something you might not expect from public agencies—enlightened compassion." Later this month (April 30, 2015), the Southern California Veterinarian Medical Association (SCVMA) is hosting a symposium entitled "Unraveling the Mysteries of Object and Animal Hoarding," celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Orange County Task Force on Hoarding, in partnership with the Mental Health Association of Orange County. It is clear that help for hoarders in Orange County is front-of-mind for the many public and private organizations that provide physical, emotional, and mental help for Orange County sufferers of this debilitating disorder. We applaud their efforts and know that other counties are looking to Orange County for guidance in their efforts. So what's the difference between hoarding and just plain clutter?We're asked this question quite often—either by clients needing help with clutter clearing but who hesitate to admit that they are in fact hoarders, preferring to call themselves "messies," "disorganized," or even "collectors"—or by those seeking help for their friends or relatives. So what's the difference? For any situation requiring the clearing of clutter, we use the NSGCD Hoarding Scale as our guide. Simply put, it's a matter of degree and livability. The Hoarding Scale uses five levels of livability, 1 being functional and 5 being the highest degree of dysfunction. Below are very brief descriptions of the levels:
Most people with some form of chronic disorganization but not necessarily hoarding disorder would fall into Level 2, possibly moving into Level 3. Full Levels 3 through 5 do enter the realm of hoarding if the conditions are directly caused by the hoard, which is usually the case when we're called in to clear the clutter.
Fortunately for the true "messies"—disorganized but not hoarders—the prognosis is quite good if they work with an expert trained to help with the various forms of chronic disorganization, such as ADHD, OCD, traumatic brain injury, etc. For true hoarders, studies and research have found the two most effective methods in helping people with hoarding challenges, after the clutter has been cleared, have been NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) and cognitive therapy. By now we've all seen the TV shows on hoarding, and we watch as a home jammed full of possessions, both valuable and not, is cleaned out and redecorated in an hour. But what goes on in real life? Since 1999, we’ve cleared hundreds of hoarder homes, we have seen just about everything there is to see, and we understand how a hoarding clean-out works. More important, from experience, we’ve learned how to facilitate and streamline the process in helping hoarders and their families so as to minimize the stress and anxiety so often associated with these projects. First, the hoarder, a family member, or a friend calls us asking for our help. Our first step is to schedule an in-home assessment at no charge. It is absolutely necessary for us to meet with the parties involved, see the home, and make a thorough evaluation of the situation. One of the purposes of this assessment is to determine the goals of the individual—do you want a livable home environment, are you moving to an assisted living facility, has a family member died and left the clean-out to relatives, is the home going to be sold? These are just some of the variables that need to be discussed if we are to give an accurate estimate. If the hoarder is going to be personally involved in the clean-out, it is critical that we can make an informed judgment of how he or she feels about the project and how willing they will be to work with us. After the assessment, we can give an accurate estimate of the time and cost of the project. During that first meeting, we also see if we are a fit with the hoarder (or whoever is going to be in charge of the client side of the project). We have to be certain that we’re compatible and can all be on the same team. We can also discuss what other professional resources, if any, might be required—mental health professionals, municipal code enforcement, animal control—there are many resources out there that might be helpful in a given situation. The in-home assessment will also determine the number of team members needed. Once we've made our assessment, given our estimate as to time and cost, and come to an agreement with the principal parties, we schedule our start date. One of the most important aspects of our hoarding help and clean-out process, which is unlike less experienced clean-out companies and junk removal services, is that as we do the clean-out we carefully sift through the clutter to find items that are valuable, either monetarily or sentimentally, and that you, the client, wants to keep. We work to discard valueless items while making sure that you don't feel "forced" to discard things you really want. This process takes patience, practice, and experience. We’re fair yet firm when working with clients who start out wanting to keep everything; we know this is an extremely difficult process for some people, and we've had years of practice in helping hoarders become more comfortable discarding items that have no monetary or sentimental value. It's a tremendously freeing experience for hoarders to get in the habit letting such items go—it's a big part of the healing process, enabling you to maintain your new, clutter-free environment after the hoard is cleaned out and we’ve finished our part of the project. When the hoard is cleared, we then help organize what remains to create livable, attractive rooms that both you and your loved ones will feel comfortable in. If you have items you'd like displayed, such as collections, artwork, and other treasured items, we do that with you. We determine the best way to store and access important documents and, if desired, set up systems in kitchen, bathrooms, etc. so it's easy for you to get used to functioning in previously inaccessible or unusable areas. If desired, we stage the home for sale, arrange items for estate sales, set up filing systems, and fine-tune the organization of any other areas you request.
So, to sum up, this process takes more than an hour on TV! But it takes less time that you might think. Most projects are completed within one to two weeks. And just going through the process makes such a huge change in your mindset and behavior that, by the time we've finished, you have the tools and, if necessary, the professional resources to continue to maintain your new environment. Whew! We made it through the holidays (I hope!). Now it's back to “real life” and dealing with all the stuff we put on hold. Is clearing your clutter on your list of things to do in the new year? You didn't clear your clutter last year, despite your fervent intentions and repeated promises to yourself that you would somehow make your home more livable. You may have thought about having friends or family over during the holidays but never got your clutter cleared enough to allow anyone in. So now you’re faced with the same cluttered rooms, the inability to use your home as it was intended, and that strange combination of despair and comfort you get when you behold your cluttered home. Does this look at all familiar? Now it's a new year, and you might be vowing to yourself that you WILL clean this clutter. But you have all year to do it, so you don't have to start right this minute, do you? Well, yes you do. And I'll tell you why (and how). Why: Perhaps the most insidious and powerful reason folks who hoard or have extreme clutter problems don't ever seem to clear their clutter is that it's painful. It's as simple as that, whatever the underlying reasons: whether your attachment to the clutter is caused by trauma, loss, the feeling of security you get in your “cave,” your belief that you will use these items “one day,” you’re “rescuing” valuable items from being wasted, you can’t decide what’s valuable or not, or any of the other reasons folks accumulate a hoard of clutter. Facing, accepting, and changing our relationship with our clutter HURTS. It's scary and often paralyzing. Try this. Walk (or climb) into an area of your home that you haven't been able to use for awhile, perhaps the kitchen. Reach out and pick up the nearest thing to hand that you can lift and carry. Now take it to the trash, preferably out of the house and into a dumpster or trash bin, and throw it in. AND LEAVE IT THERE. Walk back into the house without looking back. Could you do this? Can you sit with the feelings for a few moments and just let them wash over you? Can you let the desire to go back and get the item from the trash well up inside without acting on it? No matter what you do now, you will learn such an important lesson about your relationship with your “stuff.” If you can resist the temptation to “rescue” the item, you have just taken the first step in clearing your clutter. If you can't resist, now you know the depth of your attachment. With a little more reflection, perhaps you can identify the underlying cause. This is critical information. How: In either case, there is a way forward. Keep in mind, it's been proven again and again that folks can't clear years’ (or a lifetime’s) worth of clutter alone. Thankfully, help for hoarders is out here. Clutter and hoarding cleanup services are available. Therapy is available. Clutter support groups are available. You are not alone. And it just means taking the first small step, as you just now did by throwing away one item, whether it's still in the trash or ended up back in the house. Now picture this: It may be hard to imagine a functional, clean, welcoming room such as this in your home, but please believe me when I tell you that this is possible, and in fact is a room we recently cleared for a client. You can have this too, with help, with some good hard work, and with a willingness to gain insight into your feelings about your “stuff.”
Let this new year be the year that you welcome your family and friends back into your life in a home that feels like a home. Hoarding has become a nationwide cause célèbre, with shows such as Hoarding littering (pun intended) the airwaves; and help for “object” hoarders, mostly focusing on hoarding cleanup of homes, is a fast-growing industry. But there is another dimension of hoarding that isn’t as widely known, and it’s doubly troubling because it involves the suffering of the innocent. That being said, recently there has been more media coverage about this disorder, and public awareness is in fact increasing. [See Smelly Scene; Rainbow's End; LAPD Online.] Let me be clear about this: Animal hoarding is a mental disorder. We’ve heard the party line: “They want to help the animals, they’re just overwhelmed.” Or, “They really love their animals, but it just got out of hand.” Well, that’s just not the whole story. According to HARC, the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium, animal hoarding is defined as: The pathological accumulation of animals, using the following criteria:
So, what to do? The situation requires more than just cleaning a hoarding home; the animals must be captured by professionals and either placed in shelters for adoption or, sadly, euthanized because of the severity of their condition. The owners are usually wildly reluctant to surrender their animals, believing that they are being well cared for despite evidence to the contrary.
The Animal Planet posted an interesting article called “5 Ways to Help an Animal Hoarder,” summarized as:
Further reading: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/people-who-hoard-animals http://animalhoarding.com http://www.examiner.com/article/what-is-animal-hoarding-psychological-profile-of-a-hoarder http://www.aspca.org/search/node?search=animal%20hoarding http://vet.tufts.edu/hoarding/abthoard.htm#A1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_hoarding Helping You Through Life Changes. As professional organizers and compulsive hoarding and clutter control specialists, we help many senior clients who are overwhelmed with clutter, often dealing with a lifetime of “collecting” in a home that’s been lived in for many years. Whether the clutter consists of furniture, mementos, paper, clothing, household goods, kids’ or grandkids’ toys, appliances, printed material (photos, books, magazines, newspapers), food and kitchen supplies, and, yes, garbage that somehow never made it to the trash bin, it is usually an accumulation of many years’ time. When Change Looms. Then, in the lives of so many seniors, something changes. Maybe you need to move because of health or finances, there’s a death in the family or a family member needs to move in, or in the worst case code enforcement requires a clean-out, suddenly you need to declutter. That’s when we step in. How We Work with You. Because we have no emotional attachment to the items cluttering your home, it’s easier for us to be impartial and therefore more able to help you make decisions on what to keep, what to donate, and what to let go. We can move quite quickly through the piles of clutter, always being respectful of your possessions and your space, but also firmly guiding you through the tough process of decluttering a lifetime of good memories, good intentions, and (often) bad habits. If relocation is necessary, we make sure that what you keep will fit into your new space, and we help plan that space to fit your new life.
Reaching Your Goal. The end result is almost always a mental and emotional “lightening,” a lifting of your spirits at seeing a clutter-free, organized space that was once so constricting and demoralizing. Although many clients, especially those with severe hoarding tendencies, view their clutter as “protection” against loss and grief, by actively making decisions about what to do with the clutter, they often come to see that they are just as safe in a clutter-free, organized space as in one stacked high with a lifetime’s accumulation of possessions, many of which no longer have any meaning. Scary But Worth It! Although it may seem terrifying and quite daunting, it IS possible to declutter even a severely cluttered home. We’ve done it over a hundred times, and we know what we’re doing. We’re nonjudgmental, respectful, professional, and discreet, and you’ll quickly see that working through your clutter is a life-affirming experience that will leave you feeling in control of your space and able to face life’s next challenge. |
AuthorMichelle Quintana Featured Service Information
• Hoarding Clearout Saves More than "Stuff" · Why Clients Hire—and Trust— Clutter&Hoarding Pros · Levels IV & V Clear-Out · Is My Loved One a Hoarder? • After the Clean-Out • Animal Hoarding • Decluttering for the Elderly • What Is a Hoarding Clean- Out? • Hoarding vs. Clutter • Hoarding Help in Orange County • Hoarding Help in LA County • How to Choose a Hoarding Clean-Out Company • Why a Junk-Hauling Service Is NOT What You Need! • Paper, Paper, Everywhere! • Are You a Concerned Third Party? • Estate Clearing for a Loved One—You're Not Alone • Clearing a Hoarded Estate During the Holidays • Where Do You Fit In? • Deep Cleaning a Cleared Estate • "That's okay, we have insurance . . ." • Planning to Sell Your Hoarded Estate? • In-Home Assessment for Hoarding Remediation-- Second Step to Success • Is Your Relative's Home Red-Tagged? • 7 Simple Step to a Successful Estate Sale |