My mom has been a hoarder for most of my life. Newspapers (and at one point, VCR tapes) are her primary collection, but now it's anything. Cats too, sadly, which I've had to intervene with. The only thing she is able to let go of easily is rotten food (not if it's canned though). There are slim paths throughout most of the house, but the upstairs is more open since her mobility is limited. She will use a piece of trash (e.g. any kind of container, an empty saltine box for instance will become a 'container') to contain more worthless stuff.

I hate it, of course, and I've been very resentful for most of my life. I do love and care for my mom though, which makes things harder. I was neglected as a kid and suffered through years of bullying in school due to her failure to care for me. My teeth were pretty ruined by the time I was 12 and braces were unthinkable; of course we had a lot of money for newspapers and magazines. I became an alcoholic eventually, and I think that was exacerbated while living with my mom (I live elsewhere and I'm in recovery now). I have forgiven my mom's neglect. I think she was very depressed and didn't take care of herself either. I've always thought my mom's hoarding began as a result of trauma but I really don't know.

As a child, no social life was possible and our house was constantly being condemned. We (her kids) learned to fear the knock on the door and any kind of other authority figure that is normally a positive presence in life (doctors, teachers). Some relatives, like my Aunt, actually enabled my mom's hoarding (by helping her get storage units for stuff) and blamed us children for not 'helping' with the house more. I can never forgive that. Our dad eventually left her (in a romantic sense, he's been around as a physical presence, but emotionally absent) and gave up on influencing his kids. I think he always expected us to fix our mom's egregious mental issue so in a way I feel I disappointed him too, and also blamed for the issue.

I come home for the holidays, because I love my mom, and it always takes a week for me to adjust to the living space. In the meantime I feel depressed, overwhelmed, and hopeless. It requires quite a lot of flexibility to get to the stove. The hoard always gets worse, I fear the floors will eventually break in some areas of the house. My mom has limited mobility and she has reduced her living space to just a few feet in either direction and due to the conditions of the house, she has a skin condition that will probably never go away until she changes the way she lives.

Luckily this year she is letting me clean the kitchen and seems okay with me throwing some stuff out. It's a huge job though. There are mice in the kitchen so I am cleaning through a lot of filth. At this point, even if my mom wanted things to be different, she can't make much progress due to her health, age, mobility, and energy levels. Sometimes, she seems aware of her problem and wants to change, and then other times it seems like she regresses back into deep denial. It's frustrating.

I have carried a lot of guilt, shame, worry, and stress throughout my life due to her hoarding, and it seems unfair to me to come into life with such baggage. It's affected me greatly. I hate when people talk about the show 'Hoarders' and trivialize it into motivation to clean. That show doesn't really do anything to help hoarders or the stigma against hoarding. I also wish more research was done on hoarding.

My mom is elderly at this point and eventually I will have to live with the fact that this person I love has spent the last twenty years of her life in these conditions when she could have had so much more. She is social and friendly now, and she flourishes around other people, but sadly has mostly lived in isolation due to her hoarding. I will probably always wonder if there was more I could do.