Hoarder junk can cause a lot of damage both physically and mentally. While you may not know it, this can cause you to be stressed out and have issues in your daily life as well. The mental toll that hoarder junk can take on a person is a great one and can get you tired out and wanting to not deal with cleaning up junk and letting it hoard all over your property. Keeping so many items i one small space can and will take it’s toll on a person. The physical aspect of it is that you may hurt yourself and fall with all of that junk and debris surrounding your living space. You never know what can be stacked up high and then fall over a you lean against it or gently brush it with your elbow. You can also be walking in your own property and have something very heavy fall against you or your foot. This type of action can seriously hurt you and incapacitate you. On the mental side of things, there can be an issue where you will have such stress from seeing all the junk and trash surrounding you that you might feel claustrophobia. This is the feeling when you feel like everything is closing in on you and you have no choice but to run out of the house.

If you have any of these feelings that happen to you, you should immediately contact a Hoarder Cleanup Services Company in Los Angeles that will help you overcome such issues.

I had quite a mess in my Los Angeles home from many years of neglect. I just couldn’t help it as i have a very rare and now seemingly trendy condition. What is this condition you might ask? Well it’s better known as being a Hoarder. In Los Angeles that can be a deterrent since so much of our times is spent being busy and on the go. being a Hoarder in Los Angeles is one of the hardest things for me to admit. When i hang out with my other actor friends they always want to come over to my place to practice our lines and i always have to make an excuse because of all the clutter, junk, trash that is hoarding in my apartment. I have many objects that i hoard like book hoarding, trash hoarding, even animal hoarding. I am done with being  a hoarder in Los Angeles and seriously need Los Angeles Hoarder Cleanup services to help me free myself from this condition. I have been seeing a therapist so hopefully this will help me out as well.

I tell ya, in Los Angeles getting Hoarder Cleanup can be a life changer and will help you clear out that clutter. getting rid of Hoarder cleanup is the best decision i ever made. I plan on starting my life all over again and never having my apartment being a hoarders paradise with trash and such.

Hoarding is not a problem that should be ignored or written off as “being messy” or “being unusual”. Here are five warning signs:

1. Collecting Odd Items, Junk, and Trash 

If a person goes out of their way to collect items that are broken beyond repair, serve no real use, or that are simply trash is a very large warning sign that someone is hoarding. Dragging garbage out of a dumpster or off a curbside and bringing it into a house is not normal behavior for any person.

2. Inability to Throwaway Items

Throwing things away is part of our every day life. We throw away garbage, trash, and broken items every day. But a hoarder often times can’t throw anything away.  They’ll make excuses, “Oh I’ll fix that toaster.” They’ll rationalize, “But this food isn’t spoiled!” And a lot of times hoarders will simply refuse to throw anything away. 

3. Distancing Oneself from Friends and Family

Hoarders often feel great shame about their hoarding behavior. They are often so ashamed of their hoarding they refuse to let anyone into their homes. Frequently hoarders cut themselves off from friends and family. And they’ll also use every opportunity to avoid having visitors inside their homes.

4. Collecting Too Many Animals

Does a person have a lot of cats or dogs? Ten or twenty? Do they all seem cared for or do they seem left to fend for themselves? Animal collection or animal hoarding is a very serious sign of hoarding. Animal hoarding should be reported to your local animal control or ASPCA.

5. Parts of a Home Become Unusable  

Hoarders can fill up rooms and rooms with junk and trash. Are their parts of a house that have been rendered unlivable and un-passable by accumulation of junk? This is a sure sign that you are dealing with a hoarder who has a very advanced hoarding problem.

If you need help with cleaning up after a hoarder or advice on where to go next click here … 

When I worked as a professional organizer for a junk removal service we were often called upon to do a storage unit clean out. More than once we would run into multiple units that had been rented by hoarders. More than once we encountered hoarders who were on the literal knife’s edge of destitution. They had spent their last cent on paying rent on storage units filled with junk. And even faced with the prospect of homelessness these hoarders would often struggle with parting with useless junk piled in storage bins.

Storage unit hoarding is hard to prevent and extremely hard to detect. Many hoarders use storage units to hide their hoarded junk so they don’t have to deal with the shame that comes from a junk filled home.  If you suspect that a friend or loved one is hoarding you should seek professional help for them. 

At first he tried to use his normal maintenance people to clean up the unit, but they really had no clue where to start. In addition, the filthy conditions made it truly unsafe for his normal laborers to work in. He was under pressure to get this unit cleaned out and ready to rent. So I told hi the best route to go is to call a junk removal service that specialized in hoarders junk removal. 

I know a lot of people who have encountered hoarding situations and try to clean them up themselves. And they soon get overwhelmed with the task at hand. When you are faced with the task of cleaning up after a hoarder there’s three reasons to use a junk removal company that has some experience cleaning up after hoarders.

1. Speed… Companies that handle hoarder clean up know how to clean up after a hoarder. They can clean out a hoarder’s home or apartment in a day. They usually bring enough trucks and manpower to handle this type of job.

2. Safety … Hoarding is dangerous. It is dangerous for the hoarder and dangerous for those charged with cleaning up after a hoarder. It is not uncommon for people to be hurt in “junk avalanches” where a pile of old newspaper or boxes comes crashing down. Also hoarding also creates filth and potentially unhealthy working conditions for clean up crews. Again, hoarding is a known problem to junk removal companies and they know the proper way safely clean out a hoarder’s home.

3. Psychological Health … Cleaning up after a hoarder is physically and mentally taxing work. People unfamiliar with hoarding face a cavalcade of horrors that can be emotionally scarring for a lifetime. This is why a hoarder clean up may be best left to professionals who are hardened towards the realities and horrors of hoarding.

Eventually my property manager friend did use a professional junk removal company adept at hoarders junk removal. After the junk was hauled away he discovered serious damage to the unit and is currently spending the next three months repairing and refurbishing the unit.

Hoarding is a compulsion to accumulate things. Often things of little or no value. Hoarders often have a difficult time parting with objects even though they don’t use them or don’t need them. Hoarding also causes significant stress and lead to delusional thinking about one’s possession.

While disorganization and “being messy” can be part of hoarding, being disorganized doesn’t  necessarily mean you suffer from hoarding.

One of more first experiences with hoarding was when I managed a apartment building in Northridge, California. It was about six months after the infamous Northridge Quake and I had to schedule inspections for all the units. I had this one tenant, a gentlemen in his late 30s, who absolutely would not allow us into his unit.  Eventually we had to essentially force an inspection and what we found was astonishing. A two bedroom unit stuffed to the rafters with collectibles, junk, trash, garbage. 

It took another two months of eviction proceedings to get that tenant out of his unit and weeks of hoarders junk removal and cleaning before that apartment in Northridge was fit to live in. 

So what do you do when you have a tenant that is a hoarder? First and foremost, inspect frequently and make sure your tenant is clear on the fact that hoarding is unacceptable. It’s harsh to say but tenants who hoard often don’t respond to mere suggestions that they should clean up. Oftentimes hoarders will only respond to threats of eviction. 

If you have a tenant that is hoarding and will not clean up you need to evict them immediately. Hoarding can do irreparable harm to an apartment unit if it isn’t dealt with. 

“It is six o’clock at night and I am watching the last junk removal truck pull away from a quiet neighborhood in Pacific Palisades. It is a small and wealthy community. My eyes are focused solely on the blue green dump truck disappearing over the horizon, towards the 405 and out of my life, but I can feel the eyes on me. Neighbors peaking out of their windows. Staring at me, judging me and my family. And inside I feel a deep pang of shame.

I never knew my Aunt well. I never knew her at all upon second thought. I saw her maybe three times in my adult life. The last time after I graduated film school at UCLA. Even in a family of oddball artists my family was one of the oddest balls. She was an isolated person who closed herself away from the rest of the world in her Pacific Palisade’s home. My aunt had done this ever since her husband (her second my “step uncle”) had died ten years ago.

I wasn’t shocked when my Mom called me and told me my Aunt had died. After a person reaches a certain age you begin to expect death. In the right sort of light you can see death waiting in the shadows and creeping around the corners. I was surprised however when I was tasked with cleaning up and clearing out my Aunt’s estate. I guess I received that honor because, being a film industry dreamer I don’t have a “real job” unlike the rest of my family, and I could take the time to do it.  

 I said yes. I didn’t want to but family obligation is a heavy thing to wear.

When I entered my Aunt’s house, the first person in my family to do so in maybe ten years, I realized I had crossed the line between family obligation into a whole other  world. The house was literally stuffed with, well, stuffed. Boxes were piled to the ceiling. Bloomingdales shopping bags and Macy’s shopping bags, filled with five year old new clothes, covered the living room. Maybe three feet high. The kitchen was even more of a horror. Appliances in various states of filthy and food in various states of decay covered the entire kitchen. The rest of the house … three bedrooms and a bathroom … were in mostly the same state. Mostly shopping bags filled with clothes and toys and random trinkets that had never been worn or used.

When I talked to my family about it, they refused to believe the obvious. That our Aunt, our crazy Aunt, was in fact a hoarder and that most of her behavior was either caused or the cause of her hoarding disorder. No one believed it until I took them to the house. Then it finally sank in.

Shortly thereafter it fell to me to find a junk removal company in Los Angeles that was qualified enough to clean out such an extensive hoard. We could have done it ourselves and a part of me felt like we were obligated to do it ourselves because we had so spectacularly let down my Aunt in her lie, the least we could do is help her clean up in death. But we didn’t. The shame and guilt swamped us and we pawned off the task to a company that tackled hoarders junk removal instead.

I stayed to supervised. I watched as that junk hauling company methodically cleaned out my Aunt’s house. And as I watched the last truck disappear in the distance all I could think was, We should have done better.”

Hoarding can creates piles of junk eight feet high or more. These junk mountains can shift or collapse if even the slightest thing is changed. It isn’t uncommon to find hoarders buried under an avalanche of stuff, suffocated or crushed to death. Fire is also an ever present danger for hoarders. Homes stuffed with clutter devolve into tinderboxes that can explode and burn. And once a hoarder’s home catches fire there is precious little a fire department can do to stop it.

HUMAN remains have been found under piles of rubbish at a home of an elderly woman, reported missing more than 18 months ago in Melbourne’s north.

Police searched the property of missing Fitzroy woman Phyllis Kelly in Little Charles St, after gaining permission from the Coroner.

 

The 82-year-old has not been seen since August 20, 2011, when she reportedly visited the State Theatre in St Kilda Rd just after 6pm.

 

A friend reported a phone call a month after Ms Kelly was seen but no one had heard from her since. Her bank account had not been used.

 

Officers and a pathologist discovered a severely decayed body under garbage piled metres high.

 

They found bags stuffed with garbage, material and clothes stacked to the ceiling with small walkways cleared through the rooms.

Hoarding can and does kill. If you have a friend or relative that is hoarding, get them help immediately. 

The faces of those with a collection or hoarding issue don’t match the TV stereotype either. As part of a panel during the day, four members of the western Massachusetts group shared their stories.

• Karen talked about how she used stuff as a buffer from people – to the point where clothes piled on her bed and table reached so high she no longer used them and basically lived and slept and ate on one sofa … then described how she realized she wanted people in her life not just stuff and how that turned out to be the first step of many small steps back from a hoarding disorder.
• The oldest of the group at 89, Lil described how losses of her patients to AIDs in the 1980s started a cycle where she started holding onto “things” to the point where others can now no longer enter her home. She has recently stopped adding new objects and now works in small baby steps to give away and clear collected objects.
• Carol calls herself a collector and confesses her challenges with getting rid of anything that has a personal meaning or represents who she is. “It may look like clutter to you, but I know where everything is!” she said. She has taken the first baby steps of sorting books, rocks, and other items into boxes to leave and boxes to stay.
• Star moved over and over again as a child, never having a “space”, and responded as an adult with a sense of needing to buy everything in the fear that if she didn’t, she’d never have a chance again. She recently began focusing on a professional goal and baby step-by-baby step removing the items from her collection not related to her core professional focus.