Hoarding is a subject I get many emails about, and I also get asked a lot about it in talks – usually by the concerned friend or family member rather than the person themselves. Although many people call themselves hoarders or say they have a problem with hoarding (the terms are very over-used!), the vast majority are not hoarders in the clinical sense, which is a very sensitive and specialised area that needs to be handled with knowledge and care. My focus in my work has been more on people who are someway stuck or lacking the right mindset or information but ready to move forward, and from experience I’ve seen that many of us fit this category at one point or other in our lives.
Help With Hoarding
As a general note, despite the good intentions of worried loved ones, unless the person themselves is on board and committed to decluttering and letting go the process just doesn’t work and can cause more harm than good. Leading by example always helps, but please respect that there is usually deep-seated trauma behind hoarding that needs to be addressed by the right professional expertise.
If you would like to learn how to help yourself or friends or family who are more in the “a bit stuck” than the “hoarding” category, please check out The Declutter Academy, my professional decluttering and organising training (live version in Ireland here and online version here), that teaches you my uniquely-specialised, cutting-edge approach to working with clients and running a decluttering business, including the many myths and confusions around the vast field of decluttering.
If your friend or family member has a hoarding condition, please see here for details of my Understand Hoarding online course through which I guide and support you in the management of this delicate, complex and sensitive situation.