When you have a parent who collects things and can’t or won’t get rid of any of them even when it endangers their safety, you wonder why they behave this way. There are several thought processes that may  be at work here.

If your mother keeps everything, then she can avoid the anxiety of making a decision. She’s thinking “what if I throw this out and I need it some day”.

She may have developed extreme emotional attachments to her things. Her things are more like extensions of herself. If she was to get rid of the item it would be like  letting go of a part of herself. Her things re-enforce her identity. You may not value the little dress she made for you when you were eight years old, but for her it is a reminder of when she was young and vital and needed.

She might have trouble with categorizing. You, as a non-hoarder, see similarities and can group items together. Your mother, however, sees only the ways things are different and baffles you with the ways she creates piles of paperwork and other things that make no sense to anyone else.

So, what can you do? Start by listening. Engage your parent in a discussion where you listen more than talk. Let your mom tell you the history of the items and what she thinks she might do with them someday. Just let her talk without offering your own evaluations. You are creating a relationship hopefully based on trust.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Some people become pack-rats from excess buying. I have helped clear out homes where there were rooms full of stashes of unopened purchases…piles of them. They were acquired from shopping trips to the mall, mail order catalogs, internet shopping, and phone solicitations. For the people with this kind of hoarding it’s the shopping not the utilizing that provides the thrill of the kill. The unfortunate thing about it is that they can’t turn it off. They may go into debt over their heads in the pursuit of the relief for this need. Often, they hide the receipts for their purchases from their spouses, and possibly from themselves. What I have found most unfortunate is that when you try to help them recover some of their expenses by selling these items, they bring in next to nothing. If others want the items at all, they want them at bargain prices. In some cases the best I’ve been able to do is to get a tax deduction for them by providing a slip of estimated value to be signed by a receiver at Goodwill. As with all forms of hoarding, this compulsive shopping/acquiring behavior is beyond the person’s capacity to control. What is needed here is the family’s love and support for this person, some professional help from the medical and/or counseling field, and possibly someone trained as an organizer to work with people in this kind of situation.

Popularity: 31% [?]

There are very few letter writers these days. My husband,his sisters, and I enjoy reading old family letters. I especially enjoy the courtship letters that his parents wrote during the five years before they married. How different they seem from the people we knew as parents. They were so risk-averse in their maturity but during their courtship years they thought the world was wide open to them. We know the rest of the story, how the depression years changed any career plans into finding work, any kind of work. We know how they went from being pampered offspring of educated, upper-class families to becoming hard-scrabble tenants of marginal farm property in Maine where they wrested a subsistence living from the land and what jobs could be found. Their story is shared by many other people of their generation, but most of that generation has died by now, including my in-laws, but few if any have left such a treasure trove of family letters. Reading them has helped their children understand better some of the decisions their parents made and the impact it had on their own lives.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Have you ever thought of becoming a coach for your parent when he or she is faced with downsizing or even just bringing some order out of chaos? Here are four words to use with them as they go through their accumulations of stuff: no shame – no blame. Keep repeating it when you sense they are getting bogged down by the emotions that memories produce. No shame – no blame. No one gets through life without having some regrets. The mind tends to get hooked on memories that were negative or things that were left uncompleted. Casting blame or dwelling on guilt drains energy. Remind your parent that this is a good time to forgive someone else and forgive themselves. This is good soul work as well.

Popularity: 6% [?]

If you find making decisions to be difficult perhaps it is because you are a “maximizer”. To quote from the article  in Scientific American by Barry Schwartz, “We began by making a distinction between “maximizers” (those who always aim to make the best possible choice) and “satisficers” (those who aim for ‘good enough’, whether or not better selections might be out there). I find I fall in the maximizer category, always seeking more facts. It explains why I prefer to shop online from a small selection than be overwhelmed in a store. It may also go some way toward explaining why, as we age, we tend to keep stuff that, when we were younger, we  probably would have discarded. Perhaps we think there is more risk in discarding something  than in hanging on to it. I have far too many books and keep adding to the collection, but when it comes to selecting some to sell or donate I find it hard to part with any.Just seeing them on the shelves gives me the comfort of being with old friends. Whenever I meet new people and go to their home if I see shelves of books in every room I know I’ve encountered a kindred spirit.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Often, the heirs of a modest estate have made hasty decisions because of time constraints, and cleared out the contents of a parent’s home directly into a dumpster. Sometimes the results of this can be seen on Antiques Road Show where someone gets an appraisal of great value for something that they got for a song or even for free. I’ve wondered if the original owners have ever spotted something they let go and are now outraged by what the other person is capable of getting. It is very wise to get a professional appraisal of at least some of the items in your home before you start the downsizing process. Consider hiring an appraiser, on an hourly basis, to do a walk-through appraisal of the house, pointing out items that have strong resale value and discussing your options for the disposal of them. Even if you don’t plan to sell them, knowing the value can be of help with distributing them to family members. Tell the appraiser from the beginning what you want to do with the items because it determines the type of valuation he/she will put on the items. If you want to sell them, the appraiser might give you an estimate of what the hammer price at an auction might be. If you want to donate them to a charity, the appraiser is obligated by law to give you the “fair market value” of the items. If you plan to distribute them among family members, the appraiser would give you a value somewhere between wholesale and retail.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Popularity: 5% [?]