23-minute read time.
Welcome back from the November holiday! I hope you had a restful and enjoyable Thanksgiving. I will return to posting today with a great interview I did with one of my fellow students in the JHU Master’s program. I thought this interview was particularly interesting because Kara is one of the few that I have interviewed thus far who wasn’t directly involved with hoarding, per se. Her family’s history makes for an exciting and unusual read, and I am thankful that she was willing to share it with me. As always, feel free to comment with questions, suggestions, etc.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
hoarding behavior, family dynamics, traumatic event, minimalist mother, hoarder aunt, Alzheimer’s diagnosis, childhood memories, safety concerns, emotional impact, research gap, consumerism influence, survival function, public shame, family interactions
SPEAKERS
Kara, Lillian Peck
Lillian Peck 00:00
Let me start recording. Before we start talking, I’ll let you know that I want your express permission to post this transcription and use you as a source for some of my material. Since it is my blog and not an official publication, I can always use a pseudonym, change your name so it’s only your first name, or use your first initial, whatever you’d like, for privacy concerns. When I upload the transcription of the interviews, I redact certain private information, like locations and ages, and anything that can connect you, just for safety reasons and also because of some of this content you don’t want people to find out about.
Kara 00:49
For me, it’s no problem. It’s okay. My mother and aunt are very old. Nobody is going to care at this point, so no problem.
Lillian Peck 00:59
Okay, perfect. So you’re okay with all of that?
Kara 01:01
Yeah, sure.
Lillian Peck 01:02
What name would you prefer me to use when writing about you?
Kara 01:07
Just Kara. If you want to change, do whatever, yeah, go for it.
Lillian Peck 01:18
What are your pronouns?
Kara 01:21
She/her.
Lillian Peck 01:24
Where are you from, and where did you grow up?
Kara 01:34
Well, both are from [REDACTED].
Lillian Peck 01:35
Which family member are we discussing today, or family members?
Kara 01:38
My mother and my aunt.
Lillian Peck 01:42
What are their names? I’m not going to publish their whole names, but the first name would be nice.
Kara 01:48
My mother’s name is Sigrid, and my aunt… they all had so many nicknames. We called her Yaya. I think her real name was Elizabeth.
Lillian Peck 02:07
You did mention that both of them are still alive today?
Kara 02:10
Yeah. Both of them, I should say, have Alzheimer’s.
Lillian Peck 02:19
When they were younger, did they work? And what did they do for work?
Kara 02:33
My mother had a PhD in physiology. Yeah, she was a serious student of everything. My parents are from [REDACTED]. They moved to [REDACTED] just before I was born, and that’s why I grew up in [REDACTED], and they lived there for 38 years before they retired and went back to [REDACTED]. Both parents were scientists, and my mother studied physiology. She was working on salt metabolism and using sheep study subjects. She was interested in that. But then she decided to have kids and stay home to be a mom.
Lillian Peck 03:20
Gotcha? Did the hoarding start during your life, in that house or environment, or was it after you moved out?
Kara 03:31
So, my mother was not a hoarder. She is the absolute opposite of a hoarder.
Lillian Peck 03:37
Oh yes. We discussed this. It was your aunt. So, how much time do you estimate that you spent in her environment? Your aunt’s environment?
Kara 03:45
Very little. It took me a long time to realize how bad of a hoarder she was. What happened is that when we went back to [REDACTED] to visit my grandparents and my grandmother, which is the house where my mother and her sister (she had two sisters) were living, we could go into all the rooms. We stayed in all the rooms except for one; one was always locked, and that was my aunt’s room. And we were just told, “Well, it’s her room. She keeps it locked, okay?” I never once thought of this room. Gradually, with time and years later, a second room became locked. That was my other aunt’s; her room was taken over by this aunt and became locked. This was still my grandmother’s house, and my aunt was living in a small apartment in the city where she didn’t have a space to be a hoarder. I visited her once, though, when I was 10. I think I stayed in her apartment, and it seemed pretty normal. It was crowded but not out of control. Years later, when my grandmother died, my mother and her sisters decided to keep the house. The aunt, who was the hoarder, kind of took over because she was a good gardener, and it had a really nice garden, and she gradually started filling it. I went there once, and I realized that there were just piles of newspapers in one of the back rooms, which was not locked. And they were being kept for what she thought were logical reasons, like “There is an article in there that I need to save.” It’s like, “So why do you keep the whole newspaper?” Things started piling up towards the ceiling, like cooking pots and pans and things that she bought on sale because they were just good sales. It got worse and worse. My parents would go there sometimes and try to sort it out a bit, saying, “Look, we’re helping keep this house. We’re helping to pay for this house as well so that everybody can keep it as a place to stay, but it has to be a place that you can stay. So you have to be able to get into it.” They found a sort of entrance room piled just from floor to ceiling with things.
Lillian Peck 06:19
Was your mother diagnosed with OCD, or was she just a generally meticulous person?
Kara 06:27
No, she was never diagnosed, and neither was my aunt. But what’s interesting about this case, I think, is that they are only one year apart. My mother is one year older than my aunt, and they actually both grew up in Germany just before or at the time of World War Two, and they were living in a part of Germany that’s now Poland. My mother must have been around five years old or so. And she tells this story now. Even though she has Alzheimer’s, she still remembers this really clearly. They were woken up in the middle of the night and told that they needed to just grab a bag of things, and that’s all that they could take because they needed to flee. They were fleeing, moving west into Germany two days behind the retreating German army and two days in front of the advancing Russian Army. They had a beautiful house there with my grandparents and lot of nice things, and they had to leave all of it. This has never been diagnosed. Nobody’s ever sort of said this is the reason, but I’m sure a traumatic event like that when you’re five years old, and my aunt would have been four, I guess, or I don’t know the exact ages, but I’m sure that’s sort of what triggered the reaction for both of them, that my mother just decided she didn’t want to be attached to objects. She didn’t want to have stuff to care about, to worry about, to potentially lose, whereas my aunt was the opposite, and she just wanted to have everything and hang on to everything that she could.
Lillian Peck 08:15
How do you personally define hoarding and the opposite?
Kara 08:22
That’s a good question. I don’t actually know. I know, like I’ve seen on TV, some of the hoardings that people do, and I’m not sure that my aunt was that extreme. But I mean, when you see like, two locked rooms and then a third and then a fourth, because they are piled from floor to ceiling with things, and you cannot physically enter the room – that seemed like a good definition important to me.
Lillian Peck 08:49
And how would you define your mother’s situation?
Kara 08:54
I always refer to her as a minimalist, and especially now, she’s just trying to get rid of everything. Every time I visit, she’s like, “Can you take some books, will you take some CDs? Will you take this vase? Will you take this cooking pot that’s used on a daily basis?” So my dad is arguing with her a lot because she’s trying to get rid of books that are his. And he’s like, “No, these are my objects. Like, I want this stuff still.” I always say she wants to die owning only the clothes that she’s wearing.
Lillian Peck 09:32
Wow. How early do you remember noticing their behavior or that their living environment was different? You kind of already answered this with the locked rooms, but how about your mother?
Kara 09:47
Yeah, that took longer because, obviously, when we were kids, we had stuff, and it all seemed pretty normal, and I think that came on probably a lot more recently. She never owned that much stuff. She never had that many clothes. She just didn’t care. She liked having one nice outfit, and that was enough. She had a lot of books that were always sort of different. You could justify having books. When people gave her stuff, she was kind of like, “That’s great.” And kept it for a while just to be polite and then tried to take it to rummage sales or the Salvation Army. The extreme getting rid of stuff has only been in the last 20 years, maybe 15 years. Maybe part of it has to do with retirement. They know this is the last house they’re going to be in. What are you doing with all this stuff?
Lillian Peck 10:56
What types of items did you notice your aunt hoarded, and what types of items did you notice that your mom likes to get rid of? You already mentioned both a little bit.
Kara 11:07
My mom wants to get rid of everything, simply everything. It doesn’t matter. Anything that she sees in the house. My aunt, well, a lot of newspapers and magazines, because she’d always send cards. She actually had really nice aesthetics. My aunt was always a fancy dresser, very obsessed with how she looked, meticulously clean and perfumed and all of this. But she liked collecting greeting cards because she would say that she was going to send them to somebody. And it was the same with newspaper articles, magazine articles. She’d say she read something interesting, and she wanted to keep the article, but it’s like, okay, then cut the article out of the paper and get rid of the paper. But no, she kept the whole paper. There were a lot of cooking pots, and I remember furniture and things that were on sale.
Lillian Peck 12:06
When you finally did go into her space, did you notice any safety concerns like fire hazard, structural damage, or pests?
Kara 12:16
No. Fire hazards, definitely, the stacked up papers wouldn’t have been good for that. To be honest, I didn’t deal with a lot of it myself, my parents went and my other aunt went and sort of cleaned it all up, mostly. I mostly just heard about it, but the bits that I saw were, yeah…
Lillian Peck 12:37
Did your aunt or your mother ever have any pets?
Kara 12:40
I don’t think so. I mean, we had pets when I was a kid, but when they were young, I’m not sure. There are some pictures of a dog and a cat. I think when they were really young in that house in Poland, so I don’t know what happened to them when they had to flee.
Lillian Peck 12:58
And in their adult life, did you have pets as a child?
Kara 13:02
Yeah.
Lillian Peck 13:03
So your mom wasn’t against animals?
Kara 13:07
No, no.
Lillian Peck 13:11
Before understanding hoarding and minimalism as a condition, what emotions or labels did you associate with your behavior and how has your perspective changed now?
Kara 13:21
When I saw these shows on TV about hoarding, I used to feel kind of mind-boggled, like, “How can this happen and not understand it at all?” After thinking about my mother’s and aunt’s sort of situation and kind of just recognizing for myself that it must have been triggered by this traumatic event that they had as a child, it gives me a bit more understanding. There’s got to be reasons behind all of this. You know, people aren’t doing this because they’re nuts. There’s some psychological trigger or something that might have occurred to them, and I’m sure they’re not necessarily aware of it. It gives me a lot more sympathy. It’s got to be something they’re dealing with, and it just manifests itself in hoarding.
Lillian Peck 14:26
So you visit your mom? Are you still in contact with your aunt?
Kara 14:30
No, she has advanced Alzheimer’s. There’s no point visiting her. She wouldn’t know who I am.
Lillian Peck 14:39
Before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, how had the hoarding affected your day-to-day interactions with her?
Kara 14:46
Oh, it didn’t really. She lives in [REDACTED].
Lillian Peck 14:50
How about with your mother before? When was she diagnosed with Alzheimer’s?
Kara 15:02
She actually never was. It’s either that or advanced dementia, one or the other.
Lillian Peck 15:10
How long ago did you start noticing the symptoms?
Kara 15:19
Oh, it’s been creeping up, but maybe six years ago, it started being a little bit clearer.
Lillian Peck 15:26
Gotcha. So six years ago was that, but she’s been trying to get rid of stuff for, you said, about 20 years. In those 14 years before her symptoms started, how did her minimalism affect you, and how did it affect your relationship with her?
Kara 15:45
It didn’t bother me too much. I mostly felt sympathy for my dad, who wanted to keep some of the stuff. It’s their stuff, and they can do with it what they want. But I guess it did upset me last year when I was visiting because there are certain things that we had as kids. We had some kids’ records and some stories on record, but I didn’t have a way of transporting them out of [REDACTED]. And my sister, who lives in [REDACTED], didn’t have a record player, so I told my parents to just hang on to them, and at some point, I’ll come and collect them once I figure out how. And I was looking for them when I visited, and I couldn’t find them. And my dad doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember them leaving the house, but my mother must have given them away, and we don’t know because of her Alzheimer’s. We don’t know who she gave them away to or where. So they’re gone, and that’s a bit distressing. I’m trying to sneak a few things out of the house. Not sneak. I could take anything I wanted because she’d be happy with that, but there’s still some stuff from my childhood there that I’d like them not to get rid of, and I’m a bit worried about that.
Lillian Peck 17:15
Have you ever felt conflicting emotions about your mom or your aunt?
Kara 17:25
Well, yeah, but probably for other reasons. It’s fascinating that the same event can trigger such completely divergent behaviors. It is really, really interesting.
Lillian Peck 17:49
Are there aspects of your family members’ behavior or personality that you cherish despite their compulsions?
Kara 17:57
Oh, definitely, yeah. There’s something kind of interesting about my mother, who wants to own nothing. Every once in a while, I would look around in my own house.The idea of getting rid of everything and just having a super simple life sounds briefly fascinating. I don’t think I could do it for very long.
Lillian Peck 18:29
What would your ideal resolution look like if your aunt or your mom were open to it?
Kara 18:47
I don’t know if there’s a resolution. I just wish somebody, like a psychologist or somebody who does research on hoarding and these behaviors, had been able to talk to both of them while their memories were still a little bit more intact. With both of them with Alzheimer’s, nothing that they say is terribly reliable anymore, and I think that’s a pity.
Lillian Peck 19:19
Did you ever try to find information about hoarding or mental health with your mom or aunt when you got a little bit older?
Kara 19:29
No, I never did. I probably should have. No.
Lillian Peck 19:33
It wasn’t your responsibility, you said.
Kara 19:35
I guess it’s sort of: it is, what it is, and what can you do?
Lillian Peck 19:44
If you were ever told this information, how did your family, including your grandparents, try to help or respect or clean your aunt’s room while respecting their attachment to the clutter?
Kara 19:59
I was never really told. My aunt was simply responsible for her room, and, yeah, she kept it locked. I remember my grandmother simply saying, “No, it’s her room. It’s locked, and whatever she does in that room is her problem.” So, cleaning it and doing whatever else was up to her.
Lillian Peck 20:20
So, did your family ever try discussing it with her directly or not that you know of?
Kara 20:26
I think my parents did. My father did mostly. But being the brother-in-law, he didn’t have much power to determine things, even though he helped by giving money to maintain the house and keep it when my grandmother died. So, from that angle, he felt as if he should be able to have some say. They tried to talk to her, saying, “You cannot keep collecting this much stuff. Like it is not okay to have all this stuff. What are you doing with it? Why?” They didn’t understand.
Lillian Peck 21:09
Did it cause disagreements in the family?
Kara 21:13
Yeah, I think so, yeah. Again, I wasn’t there then, so I don’t know the details.
Lillian Peck 21:25
What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about hoarding and minimalism, especially from people who haven’t experienced it firsthand?
Kara 21:36
Biggest misconceptions? I’m not sure. I’m not sure how people view that. I guess I haven’t talked to enough other people to know what they think about it all. I guess I was kind of open-minded to just not jump to conclusions about why they had that behavior. Only later, when I stopped and thought about the history of what they went through, did I realize there was a triggering moment when they were young, and that’s something that most likely caused it. So, I imagine that people jump to conclusions about why people are hoarders. I’m sure there are people who watch those TV shows and just say these people are nuts and don’t really give them a second chance or excuse or sympathy, I suppose, for whatever internal conflict they’re dealing with that’s caused them to be hoarders. I guess that’s probably one of the biggest [misconceptions].
Lillian Peck 23:06
Do you think that those hoarding TV shows are the most mainstream way to get information about hoarding nowadays?
Kara 23:16
Probably. That’s kind of the only place I’ve seen anything other than my aunt’s rooms.
Lillian Peck 23:27
How have your experiences shaped your identity, value,s or outlook on life?
Kara 23:37
I try to think about the stuff in my house. Sometimes I think I have too much stuff, which is still a lot less, I think, than a lot of people in the world. But I try to make sure that I don’t go too far in either direction. This goes either my mother or my aunt’s direction.
Lillian Peck 24:09
Have you ever experienced hardships with thinking about your family or dealing with your family in this capacity?
Kara 24:22
I can’t really say that I have.
Lillian Peck 24:26
At what point did you feel comfortable talking about your experiences with other people?
Kara 24:35
Oh, any point. I’d always told people that my aunt was a bit eccentric and collected far too much stuff and filled up her house. I don’t know when it was that this sort of event in their youth sort of triggered this understanding in me. It was a number of years ago, but ever since then, I’ve been happy to talk to people about it, because, again, I wish that some researcher or some psychologist or whoever it is that is doing studies on this kind of thing had been able to talk to both my mother and my aunt when they were here and analyzed it more and get that information out to the public a little bit more for understanding of this issue.
Lillian Peck 25:28
Does your aunt have any children?
Kara 25:30
No.
Lillian Peck 25:37
Can you imagine that it would be harder to talk about if it was the other way around, if your aunt was the minimalist and your mom was the hoarder?
Kara 25:47
I think it would be, and I’m not sure why.
Lillian Peck 25:57
I think there’s a sort of global public shame about it.
Kara 26:02
Yeah, and is that from TV shows, or is that just because of something else?
Lillian Peck 26:10
I think it comes down to misunderstanding, lack of research, and the fact that no one wants to talk about it. It is kind of a shameful activity. And I guess the research that is out there seems wrong. Like for example, the DSM-5 says that about 2.6% of people, at least in America, are hoarders, and that seems fairly low, especially because a lot of the people I’ve talked to already, some of my sources, have talked about multiple people at the same time. You know, their aunt, their friend, their mother’s friend, like they have multiple people in their circle that have experienced some sort of hoarding disorder, whether or not it’s like they have too much clutter or their house is trashed. So I think it’s downplayed a lot, and I think that has gone into the misconceptions about hoarding and misunderstanding hoarding.
Kara 27:29
I don’t think it should be so frowned on. Like when people’s yards go crazy and just it’s full of junk, like okay,it doesn’t look good. But ultimately, I think people sort of collect too much stuff, because it’s a survival function. It’s a kind of biology. It’s human nature. We need to have stuff so that we can survive.
Lillian Peck 27:57
I think it’s propelled even more by consumerism, and especially in America, capitalism and consumerism, just everything is always constantly an advertisement. So the urge to buy and collect and acquire is tenfold than what it maybe was 50 years ago.
Kara 28:21
Yeah, that is totally true.
Lillian Peck 28:25
I don’t have any more official questions, but I wanted to open it up and give you a chance to say anything that you didn’t get to say during the interview so far.
Kara 28:36
Um, no, you asked some really good questions. I’m only sorry I can’t give you slightly better information. I wasn’t there again. Yeah, my aunt, not having kids and being in my grandmother’s house, kind of did what she wanted, and that wasn’t too much interference.
Lillian Peck 28:57
But it’s important to listen to all voices. So, I appreciate you, and I’m glad you reached out to me. Is there anything you’d like me to keep out or change for privacy reasons?
Kara 30:35
Not really. The two of them have one other sister. She was much, much younger, though, and she was born years later, so she didn’t have any of this trauma, and she has kids, and she’s still kind of taking care of my aunt there in [REDACTED]. And it occurred to me that she’s the only one who might, if she came across this story, be interested in it. She could answer a lot of your questions. She knows a lot more about my aunt’s hoarding.
Lillian Peck 31:10
If you’re still in contact with her and would like to send her my information, feel free to; you have my email. But if not, I understand. But yeah, that’s about it. So if anything comes up that you think about in the future, feel free to email me or message me on our site. And if anything comes up that you don’t want to be included because I’m not going to post this immediately, I have to transcribe it and ensure all the quotes are accurate. Let me know. I don’t have that much interaction on the site yet, so if I do end up publishing and you read it over and you’re like, can you remove that? I’ll remove it. And likely, no one will have seen it yet.
Kara 32:35
Yeah, no problem. Yeah. I can share it. I can share it with my sister. My sister spent more time with my aunt. She did because she moved to [REDACTED] years ago and spent more time with my aunt. Once you post, I’ll share the link with my sister, and she can comment on whether what I said was accurate or if she has anything more to add.
Lillian Peck 32:57
Sure, that sounds great. I’m always looking for new sources. Thank you so much for your time and for reaching out to me. I’ll see you on the discussion boards.
Kara 33:10
Yeah, cool. That was good to talk to you. And good luck with this. It’s a great project. I think this issue needs more attention and more understanding so I applaud what you’re doing.
Lillian Peck 33:24
Thank you. I appreciate it. Have a good rest of your day.
