* * *

Are you a hoarder? Do you know a hoarder? Talk with others about dealing with hoarding in our Community Forums.

* * *

Mary Thompson owns 750 hats, nearly 400 pounds of jewelry and enough books to fill every floorboard-to-ceiling shelf in her Omaha home.

Before she reached out for professional help 16 months ago, the numbers loomed even larger.

An extensive silverware collection covered countertops, cashmere sweaters crammed dresser drawers and boxes of knickknacks laid claim to most of Thompson's floorspace. It was nearly uninhabitable.

Yet, until then, Thompson didn't seek help.

“I never really considered myself a hoarder. I called myself a collector,” said Thompson, a tax accountant. “That's how I justified it.”

Hoarders excessively save items that often are of little to no value and find it exceptionally difficult to part with their possessions. Health professionals estimate that between six million and 15 million Americans are hoarders. The advent of two television programs centered on hoarding, a problem usually hidden behind closed doors, helped raise awareness.

“Unlike someone who appreciates some things, (hoarders) appreciate everything,” said psychiatrist Amy Schuett of Nebraska Methodist Health System. “They can't weed out differences.”

Hoarding is not officially recognized in the current edition of psychiatry's diagnostic manual. However, many psychiatrists link hoarding to anxiety, depression and other mental disorders characterized by rigid thinking and difficulty making decisions.

“Every decision has to be a right decision,” Schuett said, including the decision to throw something away.

Recent research suggests hoarding also might be related to a feeling of insecurity. A University of New Hampshire study found that people who feel secure and attached to others place less value on their possessions than those who feel less secure.

Ellen Hankes, a professional organizer who worked with Thompson, said her experience with hoarders is in line with the study. Hankes is the only professional organizer certified to work with hoarders in Iowa and Nebraska. The majority of her clients are single women over the age of 50.

In this regard, Thompson, 69, fits the mold. Unlike other hoarders, however, Thompson's two daughters, Becca Thompson and Leah Baker, both live nearby and visit regularly.

Thompson began collecting in elementary school. She mailed in coupons to redeem free travel posters in the fourth grade and started thrift-store shopping as a 12-year-old with her mother.

It was not until she was married with children that she truly hoarded.

Baker remembers four “rooms of shame” in the family's Iowa home. “(They) were stuffed to the point that you couldn't get into those rooms,” she said.

After Thompson and her husband divorced, she moved in with her mother. “She was a collector,” Thompson said.

To Thompson's daughters, their grandmother was a hoarder, too. Maybe, the sisters said, it runs in the family.

“The potential is there,” Becca Thompson said.

Baker, nodding, finished her sister's thought: “But let's be clear: My house does not look like this.”

Mary Thompson relocated again in 1987 to the small, three-level house in Little Italy where she now lives. It was listed as a condemned duplex. As she renovated her home, her collections — and the space for them — grew.

“It's just one of those things where you start gathering things together, and if one is good, two is better. Six is even better. Eight, nine, 10 …” Thompson said.

Thompson slept on the floor because she couldn't fit a bed inside her house.

Seventeen chairs crowded the kitchen, but only two offered seating — Thompson had stacked things on 15 of the chairs. The floor couldn't be vacuumed or the furniture dusted because Thompson's collections hid entire surfaces.

Baker wouldn't bring her four kids to visit because she feared for their safety.

“I don't blame her,” Thompson said.

And every Monday during A&E's “Hoarders” program, Becca Thompson would phone to say, “Hey, mom, your show is on.”

Eventually, Mary Thompson listened to her daughters. Breaking from traditional hoarding patterns, she nominated herself to appear on TLC's “Hoarding: Buried Alive” in October 2009. She hoped to prove to her daughters that she didn't have a problem.

“I honestly and truly didn't think I had enough stuff,” Thompson said.

Then, to her surprise, TLC producers called. They told her a camera crew would arrive in Omaha to film the next week.

“If you want something fixed,” Thompson said. “You have to admit something is wrong.”

“I said, ‘OK, I have a problem. It's time to quit. Let's start over. Let's do something about it.'”

During filming, a New York psychiatrist and Hankes, the certified organizer, worked with Thompson to help her part with her possessions.

“We have to find out what's important to the person and what their motivation is to make changes,” said Hankes, who continues to work with Thompson.

“This isn't something I do to them. I don't clean while they're gone. It's not successful to clean up in their absence or without their participation.”

Now things don't come into the house — they go out. “We shop at mom's,” Baker said.

Since Thompson's episode, “Paralyzed by Clutter,” aired last year, she has parted with truckloads of her things. Some she trashed. Others she donated. Still more was sold.

The first thing Thompson surrendered? Twenty-five boxes of books.

“I made up my mind that I was not going to let this stuff get in my way,” she said.

Nine months after TLC's visit, Thompson rented the Bancroft Street Market, 2702 S. 10th St., to sell what she no longer needed. “People would drive by and think a store was opening,” she laughed.

On Friday, she'll begin another three-day sale there.

“It's a work in progress,” Thompson said.

Becca Thompson said, “This collection didn't happen overnight and getting rid of it isn't going to happen overnight. The fact that she's not adding to it and is still purging? That's definitely steps in the right direction.”

Clearing a hoarder's home of its clutter can take years, said Schuett, the psychiatrist.

“The misconception is people can just change, that they're lazy,” she said. “That's not the case.”

“It's very engrained in their personality and therefore very difficult to overcome.”

Mary Thompson estimates she has cleared out 50 percent of what needs to go. Her daughters say 30 percent.

Whatever the amount, it's progress, they said.

Her kitchen now has two chairs instead of 17, and neither is covered with clutter. Her bedroom has a bed. And the second level's narrow walkway is clear. To date, the area is Thompson's crowning achievement.

It's where she entertains.

If someone comes over and sees something they like, “I can't get it in their hands fast enough,” she said. And, “I've stopped shopping.”

In fact, two thrift stores where she regularly shopped before she appeared on the TV show have since closed.

That, Thompson smiled, is purely coincidence.

Contact the writer:

katy.healey@owh.com

« Live Well - Health & Medicine

Share