6-minute read time.
* Disclaimer: This story is based on my experience as the daughter of a hoarder and as a journalist hoping to dedicate my career to the research and communication of mental health disorders like hoarding. Any discrepancies or incorrect facts are simply because my experience might differ from someone else’s.
In one of my recent interviews with a fellow adult child of a hoarder, my interviewee used a unique term. “Hoarder homeostasis,” they said. Thanks to their background in ecology, my interviewee adeptly gave a name to the conundrum of their parent’s behavior, and solved a puzzle floating around in my head for years while I grapple with my mother’s hoarding.
As my interviewee described, hoarder homeostasis is the need to make hoarders happy. In the biological and ecological sciences, homeostasis is a phenomenon, an automated process, of maintaining a stable environment despite changes. If homeostasis can be maintained, the organism will live. If not, death ensues.
But HOARDER homeostasis is more complicated than that.
My definition of hoarder homeostasis is the behavioral state in which a hoarder maintains stability in a cluttered or disorganized environment. They resist changes in their environment, even when the accumulation of junk and possessions interferes with their ability to function, their daily lives, and even their health. The clutter, the stacks of items that reach from the floor to the ceilings, and the inability to see the floor through the hoard is normal for them—not just normal, but comforting. Changes, such as a family member cleaning or decluttering, can disrupt their sense of safety, provoke strong emotional reactions, like anxiety, distress, or fury, and destabilize the person. Attempting to clean a hoarder’s den can sever relationships as the hoarder might feel as if you have broken their trust and invaded their home. If you take something away, even a small bag of trash, the likely consequence is that the hoarder will bring more items in to soothe themselves, maintaining this “homeostasis,” all the while reinforcing the hoarding behavior.
As a child of a hoarder, I have firsthand experience telling you that it is impossible to maneuver, clean, or otherwise TOUCH a hoarder’s piles. The piles could be full of literal trash – used tissues, rat-infested bags of rice, old newspapers from decades earlier, and the hoarder will still be attached to the items. It’s a mental health condition that is impossible to wrap your head around if you are not the afflicted individual; it’s impossible to see through their eyes, impossible to judge the world as they would. It’s like asking yourself to walk a mile in their shoes, but the shoes are meant for a giant.
During high school, the near bane of my existence, the most brutal years of my life so far, I tried with all my might to fight against my mother’s hoarding. I tried to fight the homeostasis, but ultimately, the hoarding prevailed.
I remember holing myself off in my room most of the time, my one safe space that I kept almost pristine. But one day, my friends invited me to a hike and offered me a ride to the trail. At that point, I was 16 or 17 and didn’t have my license, albeit a car. I gladly accepted the offer. Anything would be better than having to ride in my mother’s car, which, like the house, was filled to the brim with new possessions, rotting food forgotten in the backseat, and junk covering up the seats. The seats smelled of mold and must, the seat belts were buried under the mess, and you had to smush your legs up against the dashboard because there was no room near the floor. So when my friend pulled her car up to my house, I happily scurried inside of it, rushing to my temporary escape.
As expected, the hike was great, but the drive back was a nightmare. Well, not the whole thing, but the final two minutes. As we drove through the familiar streets of my neighborhood, my friend Tina* asked me to come inside to use the bathroom. My heart plummeted into my shoes. I fumbled with a shitty excuse, claiming that my mom didn’t like anyone coming inside due to my dog being sick. Tina shrugged her shoulders and said she didn’t mind and would avoid my dog, a perfectly normal response for someone who had to urinate. I remained firm, too embarrassed to tell her the real reason why, trying to hide the knot in my throat and the tears welling up in my eyes. I even recommended she go to the 7-Eleven down the street to use their bathroom. It would have killed me to tell her that I live in squalor. Beyond my shame, I was worried that she would tell her parents, and they would call Child Protective Services. I hated the hoarding, but love my mom.
I exited the car in a frenzy, rushing inside and promptly sobbing my eyes out once I managed to push the rubbish aside and shut the door. My mom wasn’t home, and after my breakdown finished, I vowed that I would not let myself be put in that situation again. I started cleaning.
Because I had no access to real money or hoarding resources, my version of cleaning was throwing items into black garbage bags and shoving them into the basement of our home, kicking the bags down the stairs, and watching them tumble into the darkness. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but at least I could have friends over to use the bathroom.
If my mom had been home when I got back, there would have been a screaming match as there had been for years and years before. She would have threatened to kick me out to stay with my father, her ex-husband. Maybe she would have broke down in tears. I don’t know.
I didn’t clean the house in full until two weeks later. When my mom discovered my behavior later in the day after the deed had already been started, she was upset but reluctantly accepting because I wasn’t getting rid of the shit for good. She vowed to bring bags up from the basement to go through one-by-one, but never did.
She didn’t need to bring the mess back upstairs because she brought a new mess in. After I cleaned the house in its entirety, it returned to its previous state and looked as it did before, just with a fresh layer of junk. It didn’t even take a month.
That, my dear readers, is hoarder homeostasis.
* Fake name to maintain anonymity for the individual.
