When I was referred to Elsa through a friend of mine, her husband, Fred, was about to come home after an extended illness. He’d spent a long stay in the hospital with congestive heart failure, and then had been transferred to a skilled nursing facility.  As he had reached the Medicare coverage limit for skilled nursing care, the family was going to have to start paying out of pocket and they couldn’t afford it. So they planned to bring Fred home. Fred was 82, morbidly obese and wheelchair bound. Elsa was 78 and living in their small home with their two adult children.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, nearly one in five Medicare patients discharged from the hospital is readmitted within 30 days. One of the ways to avoid this is to ensure that the patient’s home provides a safe and healthy living environment.  For Fred, this meant having a clear pathway that would accommodate his wheelchair and a clean kitchen stocked with healthy food. What the social worker who inspected the house found however, was quite the opposite. This was a home of hoarders.

Cardboard boxes, papers, clothing and other items were in piles throughout the house and the kitchen sink was stacked with dirty dishes.  There was rotten food in the fridge, half empty take-out containers and bugs skittering around the counters. It was difficult for an average size, healthy person to move about in the home let alone a large, elderly, ailing man in a wheelchair.  The social worker said that Fred could not come home until the house was clean. Clearly, something had to be done about all the “stuff” in the house. And that’s where my team and I came in.

I put on my Professional Organizer hat, assembled a team of trusted resources (including the family, my helpers, a trash hauler and a psychologist who specializes in OCD and hoarding) and got to work. And work it was! It took us three weeks to get the place into acceptable shape. We filled an entire dumpster with trash. We filled a pickup truck with items to be donated. We moved countless boxes that had been piled throughout the house into the garage.  We finally got to the point where the social worker gave the family the “thumbs up” and Fred could come home, but she will be inspecting the home on a regular basis.

Compulsive hoarding is behavior “characterized by the excessive acquisition of and inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that cover the living areas of the home.” Hoarders tend to hold onto things that others might toss – old newspapers and magazines, for example. Their piles of “stuff” often render parts of the home inaccessible or unusable, as when a kitchen table is piled so high with papers it can’t be used for meals.  And at some point the hoarding becomes a health and safety hazard, as it was for Fred.

If you have an aging loved one who you believe may be a hoarder or living in an environment with a hoarder, it’s critical that you get the situation under control for their health and safety, and your peace of mind.  As an advocate for seniors and those who care for them, I provide a continuum of services, ranging from help with bill paying to making homes accessible and safe to downsizing and moving. Don’t let “stuff” get in the way of your loved one’s safety – call in a professional.