The Vine: April 27, 2012
"No offense, Vine, but you smell kinda funny."
My younger sister is about to have her first baby. I am thrilled for her and have been very supportive — gave her all my baby gear, lots of advice (mostly when asked for, heh), threw her a shower, etc. We have very different interests and lifestyles, so we have never been super close; nevertheless we get along well and see each other fairly frequently.
The problem: Sis’s husband has hoarding issues — his parents are hoarders, and he has shown symptoms of the same anxiety disorder for a while now. Sis is a poor organizer and is not too partial to housekeeping herself…which is a bad combination when paired with BIL. It used to just be really messy, but it has snowballed into a disaster. As in, the house was piled sky-high in places and there were just little paths through the piles. We learned this about a year ago, shortly before she became pregnant. We didn’t know it had gotten so bad.
Sis has been telling us they “are working on it” and didn’t need help. My mom has been up to her eyeballs in other major work/life/elderly-parent crises, and believed her. I was focused on my mom and my own baby, so I let Sis alone about it, too. Then about six weeks go, Mom finally went over, and…it’s still awful. Better, just a bit, but not a place where you want a baby to live.
Mom and I have been helping them over the past few weekends. It’s unimaginably filthy. Crap everywhere (literally — they have a ton of animals, and the carpet is beyond disgusting). The smell is foul. The bathrooms and kitchen have not been cleaned in probably two or three years. The piles are definitely smaller…but they are still everywhere. And it seems like as soon as I unearth one spot, the next weekend, other stuff ends up there all over again. They have no clue how to organize things, and they both have ADD on top of it, so they never complete an area.
To top things off, they do not get the seriousness of the situation. I look around, and calculate the fact that Sis is having a baby in two weeks, and I start to panic. But Sis and BIL are beyond nonchalant about it. They are acting like it is totally normal to live this way, and nothing is wrong. It’s like they don’t see it. Actually, if it was just the piles, I don’t think I would be so upset. It’s the absolute filth of the place that riles me up. The idea that they are perfectly content to live in such a skin-crawlingly disgusting environment frightens me.
I could go on but I am sure you get the idea. Here are the issues, as I see them:
1) It is NOT safe or sanitary to have a baby in that house. Especially once he starts crawling. (EWWWW!!!!)
2) Mom and I can clean it all we want, but it’s unlikely that it will stay that way unless Sis and BIL get serious help.
3) Sis and BIL are in denial about it so they won’t get help.
4) I have my own house to keep up with and have no desire to take on cleaning and organizing for my sister on a permanent basis. Not to mention the amount of time this would take me away from my own two kids. Not acceptable.
But 5) there is a BABY that will be living there. How on earth can I leave a child to live in that filth???
Frankly, I don’t see much changing. I think my mom will end up over there pretty frequently keeping things in order. And my mom is stressed out enough as it is. I can’t let her shoulder the burden of my sister’s house without helping.
Someone is going to say in the comments that i should call DFACS. But, I think Sis and BIL are going to be very loving, good parents, other than their disaster of a house, and I have trouble with the idea of calling DFACS or some such agency that is going to take their child away. That’s a horrible thought to me. It’s not something I would do without exhausting every other avenue.
I guess my question is, what’s the best way for me to handle this situation? What is appropriate where the child is involved? How do I set limits? And what should those limits be? I know this is going to be an ongoing issue…I am trying to figure out what to do.
I Am Thankful That My Junk Drawer Pales In Comparison
Dear Junk,
I didn’t know where to begin with this letter — the hoarding, the underlying mental-health issues, who’s going to help, can anyone help — even without the idea that a newborn is coming home to that environment. Add in a baby, who crawls and puts things in his mouth…not only is it a bad situation, it’s an emergent one.
So, I took a chance and forwarded your email to Matt Paxton. If you don’t know Paxton from Hoarders, you may remember him vaguely from a certain poll that he won (…aw, poor Chalmers), and he mentions TN occasionally on his podcast, 5 Decisions Away. He’s an extreme cleaning specialist who, just from long experience, is going to have better insight into what works and what doesn’t with a family dynamic like this.
To my grateful relief, he addresses your letter on this week’s episode, #27 (“The Sure Thing”); you can also download/subscribe for free on iTunes. The answer begins at about the 1:08:30 mark. If you haven’t listened to 5DA before, understand that it’s not rated G; I mention this because there’s a running gag involving a pearl necklace that gets a callback right after the letter portion. “Oh, I love jewelry!” Yeah, it’s not…that. So. Just so you know.
But even if that breed of crassness is tough for y’all, give Paxton’s answer a listen anyway. He has suggestions about social services that I wouldn’t have thought to make — and most of the episode is listener mail, so there’s a lot of useful responses to other listeners that might help also. (There’s also a note from a TWoP reader a few minutes before this letter; Paxton thinks TWoP is hilarious, but I don’t think he knew the connection. Semi-circle of love! Hee.)
Anyway, I hope Paxton’s answer helps you out, and maybe the readers have some experience with trying to navigate a hoarder sibling that they can share.
Tags: Cory Chalmers death is not an option Hoarders kids Matt Paxton the fam TWoP
I wouldn’t call DFACS, I would call the fire department. Seriously – they decide when a home is a severe fire hazard, when fire fighters or emergency personnel could not fight a fire inside or get to an able or injured person inside the home. Or a baby within the home.
It seems to me that the evaluation of the FD, saying the house was a hazard might make it easier for you and your mom to take other steps such as calling in other experts and other organizations, without threatening to take their soon to be baby. Maybe the FD report or threat to close the house would help them see that therapy and action were needed ASAP.
@Junk I’m so sorry you are having to deal with this. We have an issue with this in our family and we’ve had a really hard time figuring out what to do. I’m going to listen to the podcast answer and see if there is anything else we can do here.
We did the entire house clean for our family member and to be fair this is more of a dirt/cat shit/minor hording issue vs a piles to the ceiling actual hording issue. It was so hard for us re: the child in the situation but she herself is always clean and has clean clothes etc… and there is a limited amount you can do if you don’t actually live there.
Good luck and again I’m sorry this is adding stress to your life.
The folks on the podcast are absolutely right – CPS does NOT want to take kids away from their family. They will work with the family to make the home safe – if it is as bad as it sounds, it might start with an initial removal until the place is habitable, but the goal of all Child Protective agencies is to reunite the child with their family as quickly as possible. Go ahead and try to get some therapy and organizers etc together, but if that place isn’t cleaned up by the time the baby starts crawling, you have to put his or her safety above everything else. I hope it works out for them!
Yeah, my first thought was that DCFAS would be the go-to place not to take the baby away, but to coordinate the help that Sis and BIL need in order to keep the baby. Social Services are often a patchwork of agencies, so it’s a good idea to have a SocServ professional to help guide you through the bureaucratic maze(s). You don’t have to do this on your own, is the point.
This reminds me of a previous Vine letter in which a sister was writing in about this exact situation, except the kids had been born, were toddlers, and were living in filth with the little boy clinging to every visitor and crying to be taken away. It only gets worse.
I agree with every part of the podcast, except I would emphasize the therapy even more deeply and rescue those poor animals–BIL sounds like an animal hoarder on top of everything else, and those dogs don’t have the life–well, of a dog.
But seriously, this is a situation where you need professional, organized help. CPS isn’t supposed to be a punishment, it’s there to save kids who are in untenable situations. You love your sister, and she’s a good person. But sometimes being loving and good cannot cut it, especially in such a high stress, snowballing mess.
On the therapy note, don’t be surprised if BIL’s issues stem from loyalty, in part, to his parents. They lived this way, and part of him may feel that “cleaning up his act” is a rebuke to them. It may not sound logical to you or me, but the brain isn’t logical a lot of the time. Your sister’s ADD and personal issues are feeding into it as well–she may feel nagging or disloyal to her husband if she brings it up.
Be prepared to spend money and time, but towards a goal, not in a series of endless triages. You know that saying “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans?” It goes the other way, too. Life happens even when you’re flailing to make it through another day. Figuring out how to make a few plans can’t hurt.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t listen to the podcast because I’m at work, but I do have some experience both with CPS and with a family member (many family members) hoarding type behavior.
First off, I think you know this, but if your sister and her husband do not acknowledge that this is a problem, it is never going to get better. You and you mother could call in a cleaning crew every week and sanitize the entire house top to bottom and it would just start all over again once you left. There is a high correlation between mental illness and and hoarding behavior. Does your sister or her husband get anxious whenever you try and throw something away? Do they sneak things back into the house that you’ve thrown away? Do they hang onto things that most other people would naturally throw away? All those are signs that this could be due to a mental illness and not just lazyness/bad cleaning standards. If that’s the case, they really need to get mental health assistance. You’re not going to get anywhere if there is an untreated mental disorder. Someone with an untreated mental health disorder is not going to see the light or listen to reason, because in their mind, the way they are doing things makes sense.
Second, CPS does not always automatically take kids away. There is a difference between a messy house and an unsafe house. I have seen babies be left with their parents in appallingly dirty conditions. In general, CPS is going to give the parents a chance to improve the situation before resorting to taking the children away. That said, I do think CPS should only be a last resort if your sister and BIL are not actively working to improve the situation. I mean, you really need to think here. If your sister fights you every step of the way, and sees nothing wrong with her behavior, what else are you going to do? You can’t force her to provide a safe and health living environment for her child if she doesn’t see anything wrong with things the way they are. CPS can, and maybe it would be the wakeup call she needs to get her act in gear. It also might be the catalyst for getting her or her husband mental health help if that is what is needed.
Third, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I deal with this with my mom. She does keep things clean/sanitaryish which is good, but our house has been such a mess for as long as I can remember, to the point that I had a very stunted social life as a child because I was so very embarrassed to let anyone see my house. I do wonder what would have happened had anyone noticed or called CPS. Both my grandma and great aunts houses were similar (and horrible to deal with on thier deaths), and from what I can tell my uncle, cousin and brother all have varying degrees of hoarding type behavior. Whenever I notice it in myself, I try and keep it in check. It’s rough, and frustrating dealing with a family member that has a problem they won’t deal with, but since in your case there is a baby involved, I do think you need to do the best you can for that child.
I come from a long line of hoarders and fully expect to become one myself someday. From what I have read, the behavior kicks in when someone has had a massive loss, like a family member. (Or recently on In Plain Sight, one of the WITSEC people became a hoarder after losing her entire life because she had to go into hiding.) Has anything like that happened to your BIL? They just get to the point where they can’t let ANYTHING go–they don’t have control over human beings leaving, but by god, they can hold on to their shit.
I haven’t listened to the podcast, but if there are animal feces indoors on anything approaching a regular basis, the animals need to go – they are not being properly cared for, and it is creating a health hazard. Please consider calling animal control or animals cops (whatever you have in your area) if your sister and her husband will not voluntarily let go of the animals.
Right. Can someone define a “hoarder”? Because my parents- depression babies both- will not throw anything away until it has passed any semblance of usefulness.
So far, this has been manageable because they live in a very large rambling farm house with many acres of land in NH. However, they have both just retired, and are both freaking out about “not having a job” so I worry this hoarding behavior will get worse. Note: they can pay their bills on Social Security and investment income ALONE, they have no mortgage, they have a sizable amount of savings, and three loving children who have steady careers and salaries who won’t send them to a Dickensian nursing home.
Nonetheless, there are peanut butter jars filled with nuts and bolts in what used to be my bedroom. When do I start to be concerned?
I don’t want to diminish the situation, which certainly isn’t good but… People have been raising babies in dirt huts for thousands and thousands of years. Raising babies in tropical climates where rats and roaches and huge flying bugs are just part of life. Our American fixation on spic-and-span sterile environments is fine, but this baby isn’t going to be in grave danger anytime soon from an unclean environment. To me, there is no need for the ‘this baby is being born in two weeks and the house is filthy’ panic. Instead, the letter writer and her mom need to focus on getting sis and BIL to see this is a problem, rather than focusing on going over there and futilely cleaning bits of their house up. I don’t know what it’ll take to make them see the problem — an intervention? Books / articles about hoarding, etc? But to me, that’s the key.
Our American fixation on spic-and-span sterile environments is fine, but this baby isn’t going to be in grave danger anytime soon from an unclean environment.
I’m with you as far as people, not just parents, over-sanitizing their lives — but the implication here is that companion animals are pissing and shitting inside the house. You can’t really have an infant crawling on a rug that’s spongey with cat piss, first of all, because that is unhealthy; second of all, if these people can’t be shifted to see to their pets’ toileting, you have to wonder how they’re going to handle the human child’s needs.
I mean, I had the same dirt under my fingernails for the entire Carter presidency, and I didn’t die, so I hear you on that point, but it’s feces…and it’s not JUST the feces. It’s a fundamental inability to cope with basic household responsibilities, which are about to increase by a power of five with a small baby in the house.
I have to give a +10,000 to Sars on her last point. Yes, people have raised kids in huts for thousands of years, and yes, fixation on cleanliness can be overdone, but those people who had kids in filthy huts? They also used to have 10 kids so that 2 of them might survive to adulthood. Crawling around in animal feces is a huge risk for all sorts of parasites and unpleasantness. From cat feces alone, you’re talking about E. coli and toxoplasmosis (which is one reason why pregnant women are often cautioned not to change litterboxes at all, or if they must, to use gloves) never mind the fact that uncleaned cat urine = ammonia = very bad for humans, especially little ones. Not. Good.
Karen, I’m far from being anything resembling a medical expert, but my understanding is that someone tends to be considered a “hoarder” if their home has become unsafe and/or unsanitary due to their inability/unwillingness to get rid of things. But, yeah, there’s also such a thing as having too much crap (witness the cello my sister hasn’t played for fifteen years crowding my mom’s office).
@karen – just reading all the stuff about hoarders made me curious enough to do some research. Apparently the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization created levels of hoarders, based on how bad the situation is (Paxton in “5 Decisions Away” mentions them now and then.) If you google it you’ll find all of the levels listed, this article had very simple descriptions of each http://tinyurl.com/7j4o574 . From what I’ve read, someone with a “clutter problem” is a level one. Someone who can’t sleep in their home anymore because of all the junk and filth is a five, but that’s a really simplified summary.
My heart goes out to anyone going through a level 4 or 5 situation. It’s interesting to read about if you’re not dealing with it personally, but I’m sure it’s nightmarish to live through, and I’m glad it’s better recognized than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
The thing about raising babies in dirt huts for thousands of years is that the infant mortality rate was really really high for thousands of years. When they figured out that letting babies crawl on shit-covered floors was a bad idea because of germs, the number of babies who survived toddlerhood skyrocketed.
There is a world of difference between “eating some dirt is good for you” and “feces in your belly never hurt anyone.” Junk appears to be talking about the latter.
Karen – hoarding is the excessive collecting of items along with the inability to throw them out. so, if say your dad has collections of nuts and bolts in your room, but also uses them when projects come up, then that wouldn’t be hoarding. Hoarding differs from lazy cleaning or inability to organize in that the hoarder will get anxious at the mere thought of throwing anything away. It’s about control, not resourcefulness.
Hmm, @Emily, I agree that modern day environments can be over-sanitised but the people raising the babies in ‘dirt huts’ probably experience levels of child illness and mortality that we would find unacceptable in the West. I mean, it’s not that common for a child to die from toxoplasmosis (from animal faeces) but it can happen.
As @blahblah pointed out above as well, there are social issues. When you live in a way that most other people find peculiar and grubby, then your children may grow up physically healthy but they may be socially ostracised. It would be horrible to feel you could never invite anyone back to your house.
It will also make other adults reluctant to visit, cutting down on the support for the sister and limiting how many ‘Mum friends’ she can make, further isolating the family. It will also constrain the relationship with the cousins, as the sister’s hardly going to want her kids playing somewhere she considers filthy.
All in all it seems kinder in the long run for the sister to try to get professional help, even if it causes friction in the short run.
Karen: Start to be concerned when the house starts inching towards “fire hazard.” My grandma was one hell of a Depression baby, but her house was always navigable. A couple markers of pathological hoarding are (a) collecting literal trash and (b) the house is un-navigable (stacks of things getting in the way, making it hard to push past, etc.) But note that I am not any sort of doctor, so…definitely get their doctor(s) involved in their life, too, if they aren’t already. In a “things to look out for in the future” sort of way. Re: too much time on their hands, can they volunteer at their church or anything parallel?
I agree with Wehaf re: the welfare of the animals. They’re not as urgent as the child (sorry, animals-are-people people!) but they are still pretty freaking important.
Emily — Basically, what Sars said, but I want to re-emphasize the point about feces. That’s the kicker here. Dirt’s dirt, but feces is why “You have died of dysentery” is a catchphrase.
Yeah… part of me naively wonders if this could be fixed by doing first a whole family pre-baby house cleaning day (or have it professionally done) and hiring a cleaning service for how many days a week might be necessary. Is that not a viable option? (or are we talking so dirty between tuesday and friday that no cleaning lady would get the job done???)
My brother isn’t quite a hoader but he’s very lazy about cleaning/keeping his room and stuff tidy. He doesn’t like to throw things away and hates when I go into his room to clean. We pay someone to clean once a week and that keeps the house livable enough…
I’m not trying to sound harsh but “loving, good” parents don’t subject their children to environments like this – selfish patents who cannot see beyond their own needs / wants / disorders do things like that. Your sis and BIL need help. That child’s health and welfare will be at stake.
@L re: the whole house cleaning and cleaning service. That is a good idea, if the family could afford, and if it was just a matter of housekeeping gone awry & too daunting to tackle, but if there is a hoarding issue, it’s not going to solve it. My dad’s family tried that with my mom when they went on vacation once. From what I understand they did a very good and thourough job of organizing everything and here’s what happened. She came home, freaked out and started calling them over and over wanting to know where everything was. Not quite the grateful,gracious response my aunt was expecting, and the house was back to it’s usual state within a couple of days.
The real red flag for me here in this story is the animal mess. My mom is pretty bad, but our animals have always toileted appropriately, if they have an accident in the house she cleans it up, and she’s actually pretty good about other household cleaning. Plus, once animals start to go in the house, it’s pretty hard to get them to stop, that house is going to need a complete carpet/pad replacement, and even then, the animals might still instinctually try and go in their spot. If it was just about sister not knowing how to clean, she would be welcoming her families assistance and working as hard along with them, not so blase as to let them clean then mess it up again as soon as they step out the door.
L: For people who hoard and don’t get help to address the underlying issue, you could throw away everything they own and in two weeks the house will be covered with piles of accumulated junk again. You’re also talking about a couple that is perfectly comfortable will accumulated animal waste in the house. If this were just a situation where they didn’t like to vacuum or pick up their socks, that would be one thing. That is not where this couple is.
Jennifer–I think that stress does kick many hoarders into gear, but I don’t think a stressful incident is requisite. I’m on the low end of the hoarder scale–still in the socially acceptable end, fortunately for me–but I’m definitely there, and I had hoarding behaviors from near-infancy. There’s also some evidence of a genetic component, so BIL might not just be mirroring his parents, he might be feeling the same attachment they did.
@Amy- “I’m not trying to sound harsh but “loving, good” parents don’t subject their children to environments like this – selfish patents who cannot see beyond their own needs / wants / disorders do things like that. Your sis and BIL need help. That child’s health and welfare will be at stake.”
This is pretty exactly what went through my head reading the letter. I mean, my boyfriend’s house is pretty cluttered, and dishes don’t get done with alarming regularity unless I do them myself, but his cat goes in the litterbox, there are not piles of newspaper and trash everywhere, and he does clean, just has a lot of clutter.
I think the red flag for me was: “Mom and I have been helping them over the past few weekends. It’s unimaginably filthy. Crap everywhere (literally — they have a ton of animals, and the carpet is beyond disgusting). The smell is foul. The bathrooms and kitchen have not been cleaned in probably two or three years.”
Two or three YEARS??? Oh man. I really, really hope your sister gets the help she needs. It sounds like a really unsafe, unsanitary environment for any human, much less a pregnant or newborn one.
People have been raising babies in dirt huts for thousands and thousands of years.
I spent the first six years of my life in one of those dirt huts, and my mom made sure that flies were killed, rats were kept out, and floors were swept every day. Even in the third world we knew that feces and babies don’t mix.
It really does sound like there’s a mental health issue at play here, so you have to tread carefully. I would start by bringing up the cats/toxoplasmosis angle, as it’s something that all cat-owners face, and may be less likely to trigger a backlash.
I think the letter Jen is thinking of was mine. Update is that SIL and husband got divorced (what a shock) and she moved here with the kids. She is still an appalling housekeeper (not a hoarder, but really neglectful and filthy, including the pet problem), and needs serious mental health help that she isn’t getting, but at least there is a ton of family here to help support the kids. One of them is special needs–at the time of my letter writing, one of my biggest concerns was that he was on all kinds of tubes and medical equipment in that house!–and he gets state services that keep him spending a lot of time in his caretaker’s home. The other one is now in middle school, and spends several nights a week with grandparents or over at friends’ houses. CPS actually WAS called a couple of years ago (not by us, but by the older one’s elementary school, because he was regularly showing up filthy with no lunch or money) but they didn’t do anything in the end. We did manage to convince her to get rid of one dog and all but one cat, which is mostly outdoor, so the pet-feces-in-the-house problem is generally lessened compared to before.
So…the upshot is that you can try, but you can’t force adults to become different people or even get the help they need if they’re not willing to face it. You CAN give that baby as much love and support as possible, and do your best to get the basic, most dangerous aspects taken care of (Tanya’s idea about the cats/toxoplasmosis is a good angle to start with) and just do your best to ignore the rest of it. I know you love your sister and don’t want her life to be a train wreck, but ultimately she has to accept responsibility for her own shit….or live in it. All you can really do is be there for the kid when it needs you, and give it some kind of normalcy.
Ok never mind then… I think this level of messiness is beyond my imagination capacities… on a horrible note:
Whoever talked about raising children around rats reminded of this real story I heard recently from someone who works with families that live in those conditions regarding rats and baby(it’s way too too horrible to spell it out). Let’s just say that if her friend thinks the house is that dangerous, calling child services is the least she should do…
@Kay, I’m with you. If you haven’t cleaned things in years, that’s a problem. I forgot the take the trash out immediately after throwing away some food and then proceeded to be away from the apartment most of the weekend. When I got back the place smelled – and I promptly took the trash out. If people are not cleaning their house for years on end, that’s a lot more than “I forgot” or “I felt lazy this weekend.” And that’s definitely not a safe environment to bring a newborn into. Not only do kids crawl around on the floor and put things in their mouth but babies don’t have the strong immune systems that adults do – babies are going to be compromised a lot sooner than an adult would be. I’m frightened for that kid.
Kids crawl around and if there are mountains of stuff, it can fall down on them and cause injury. I just don’t believe that somebody who can’t even manage basic housekeeping (clutter control and animal waste) is really going to grasp what needs to happen to make it safe for a baby to crawl and toddle around. I know some would minimize clutter as a nuisance, but sometimes it contains things that aren’t hazardous until a tiny child gets ahold of them. What are the odds that they can childproof a chaotic, disordered pit of a house?
I’m also sad for the social ostracism component here. Kids don’t ask to be born into bad situations, and a house that stinks of animal waste definitely is one.
The previous poster who talked about rats made a great point. Our news had a story about a newborn who had to be removed from the so-called home because rats had gotten into its crib and nibbled parts off. Anyone who works with hoarders can tell you that the longer you ignore the condition of your home, the easier it is for vermin to get in and become a real problem. If you can’t even see the walls/floors because so much is stacked up, then you can’t see where nature is finding its way inside. While it’s one thing for adults to take such risks, children cannot consent to any such thing.
Junk, I respect your need to tread lightly here, but your sister and BIL, lovely people though they may be, are just as dangerous to that baby as drug addicts or alcoholics would be. They are too deep in their own disease to care for someone else and that just won’t work with an infant.
I grew up with addictive parents (and I believe hoarding is a form of addiction) and I really wish someone had stepped in. We were mostly clean and fed but we lived in constant uncertainty and were emotionally isolated. Your niece or nephew will be too, kids want to be loyal to their parents, so no one breaks the silence. You love your sister and tell her that, but love her enough to get her the help she needs, and enough to protect her baby from danger.