Hoarded House Clearance | Compulsive Hoarder Warning Signs

Jamie Murray

2023-01-28

Quality fast and reliable service with a cracking bunch of lads definitely recommended

Bill Mitchell

2021-09-14

Contracted this company to clear the flat of my deceased mother. Two young guys cleared EVERYTHING out of the rented property, including furniture, carpets, ornaments, white goods and food/household products, politely, efficiently, and respectfully. Excellent service.

Charles winter

2021-05-21

The guys from Northern House Clearance have just cleared a house for me in Scotland. The house was packed not only with a lifetimes worth of memories, but all the clutter that goes with it. Within 2 days it was emptied down to the floorboards. A great job from a good team of lads. Highly recommended.

Graeme hatton

2021-02-24

An excellent 5 star service. Firstly the compassion shown due to the circumstances which resulted in having to use their services, not just on the phone but by the team who arrived, on time, to perform the job. Above all a friendly attitude goes a long way in stressful times. Professional from the start to the end of the day and due to the amount of clutter a second day was needed. I could not believe how much was cleared in just one day, it was as if the clutter had it's own clutter to clear. Hope that I never need to use them again, but if I have to clear another property they will be the only people that I call. Highly recommend them. G.Hatton. Cheshire.

Lorna Hamilton

2021-02-05

Fantastic service. Highly recommend. The team was so helpful.

Richard Foster

2020-11-26

The guys from Northern house clearing cleared my deceased brothers house which was in a state. They were very discrete and great guys very understanding at such a sad time. Great job guys thank you.

Xiu Yun Chen

2020-11-25

This is a good company would highly recommend these guys. Very efficent and helpful.

Laura

2020-11-05

Highly recommended. From my initial enquiry I found them to be efficient and professional and was given an immediate quote. On the day the guys arrived promptly and were friendly, helpful and thorough. I would not hesitate to use this company again and I would recommend to others. I felt in good hands and I, m very happy with the service I received.

Ruth Lawrence

2020-08-22

The team arrived bang on time and began work immediately. They continued for five solid days and completed the entire clearance of my late uncles house, which was a case of extreme hoarding over many decades. They even removed carpets, curtains and swept up so the house was ready for sale. They were exeptionally hard working, polite and charged a reasonable price for this incredibly difficult job. Terrific service, absolutely recommended.

Hoarded House Clearance | Warning Signs Of A Compulsive Hoarder

Many people believe compulsive hoarding to be an OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). However, people that suffer from an OCD may for example have a compulsion to continually wash their hands, but do not exhibit any signs of a compulsion to hoard. Because of this, and also because of the severe repercussions that hoarding has on people’s social lives, it is treated as an illness in its own right, having its own therapeutic treatments, and in some cases, a certain range of drugs that have proved successful.

Clearing a hoarder’s house? Northern House Clearance Company are compulsive hoarding cleaning and house clearance specialists – We are a fully licensed and registered company to clear, clean & declutter hoarded properties.

We are fully licensed with the UK environment agency (Environment Agency Waste Carrier License NO #: CBDU227420), as well as being fully insured to undertake hoarded cluttered house clearance, we are also members of AFTA.ORG.UK the Anti Fly Tipping Association

But as well as being considered as an OCD related condition, hoarding may also being linked to several other disorders including:

Depression
Anxiety disorder
Genetics
Impulsive disorder (Impulse buying and theft).

It is quite usual for those with a hoarding disorder to believe that they are the only one who behaves in such an irrational manner. However, this not the case, and it is thought that as any as one in every two hundred people in the UK alone are compulsive hoarders, and that in the United States, the condition affects more than two million individuals; furthermore, these are conservative estimates.

The hoarding compulsion can begin during childhood, or the early years of adolescence, but because in these early years the sufferer may be living with their parents, the compulsion is somewhat more controlled as the young person does not have free reign to be able to spread the clutter all around the residence.

As stated above, genetics may be a contributory factor but it is also natural for children to pick up habits and behaviour patterns from their parents, so often, the offspring of a hoarding couple may also pick up the habit by following the poor role modelling shown by their parents. It is however quite rare for hoarding to spread through a family, and more often than not, it is other outside family members that step in to try and help, or to report the situation to the appropriate specialists for treatment.

But what causes compulsive hoarding? Well there is no finite answer, but there are several conditions that can result in a person developing the compulsion. For example, a difficulty with data processing in the brain can bring about the urge to hoard. Some people can have a problem with categorising their possessions, and this can lead to a problem with determining which items are valuable and which are not. Other people have poor memories, and this can lead to a compulsion to keep everything within plain sight because they mistakenly feel it will make it easier to find. Of course the reverse is true when the amount of clutter becomes so great that clutter just obscures other clutter hidden beneath the uppermost layers. Then there are those who simply have problems deciding what to keep and what to throw away; the result being that nothing gets thrown away.

Misconstrued beliefs can also lead to hoarding. Some people form a strong emotional attachment to many or all of their possessions, and this leads to them not wanting to discard anything. Other people have a jealous, controlling feeling about their possessions, always wanting to know where they are, and not wanting anybody else to touch them or interfere with them in any way.

Emotional distress can also result in hoarding. Some people are so fixated about hoarding that the mere thought of discarding any of their clutter can cause severe distress and depression, and many simply cannot stop thinking about objects until they acquire them. There is also the fact that a lot of chronic hoarders will simply put off any decision making about discarding anything, as this temporarily makes them feel more comfortable.

The reality of chronic hoarding is that it is a severely debilitating mental illness. The quality of life that a chronic hoarder can expect is drastically reduced. The environment in which they live is unclean and unhygienic, and in the worst case scenarios the rooms and equipment within the rooms (kitchens, sinks, dishwashers, ovens, bathrooms, bath, showers, etc) are all unusable do to the amount of clutter that is stored in them.

Due to the nature of their illness it is virtually impossible for a chronic hoarder to rehabilitate themselves. It is usually left to outside friends or family members to intervene by persuading the hoarder to seek professional help.

A complete cure may not be possible, but with the right applied CBT (Cognizant Behavioural Therapy), the condition can be managed, and the amount of clutter drastically reduced.

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