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Q: How Can I Help a Hoarder?

We have a family member who is a hoarder. She desperately needs help and has allowed us to try — but only if we stay within her very strict and unproductive guidelines. The clutter is getting serious, and overwhelming

2 Comments: Q: How Can I Help a Hoarder?

  1. On a side note, I am quite shocked that so many people have only stuff they could buy again any time, Ikea furniture, plastic toys, clothes and so on. A lot of that is not even worth donating. Don’t they have a sense of history or culture in a greater world outside their living space?

  2. I can part with anything if I know where it will go. I can not tolerate, for example, antique furniture or art being crushed in a dumpster. ADHD makes it extremely hard to sell things. Selling would not be about the money but about finding a collector or someone who wants the item.

    I am keeping my great-grandmother’s letters, because no one will value them if not me. Some of them I will use in projects (I have some training in historical research), and some can be donated to an archive of historical journals. Original documents and rare books I am allowed to keep unless someone wants them. When I die, someone else can throw them away, it’s only paper.

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