Stuff (31 page)

Although every possession seemed important to Amy, she drew some distinctions between her things. Krystal thought there were some things that mattered to her more than others, and although she couldn't part with any of them, she took better care of the ones that mattered. For instance, cluttering Krystal's house were boxes of notes from Amy's friends—"every note every friend ever wrote her in the history of the world"—each folded carefully into a tiny triangle. Amy's clothes, however, didn't matter to her. She couldn't get rid of them or give them away, but she usually ignored them, leaving them scattered about the room. Krystal doubted whether she would notice if any of them went missing.

Amy also saved mementos from every place she'd ever been. Krystal pointed out that she saved pictures that were out of focus or showed the back of some unknown person's head. When Krystal suggested that Amy try to get rid of them, Amy reacted strongly. "You know I loved that concert. How can you suggest getting rid of these pictures?" Just as we've seen in many adult hoarders, Amy's things seemed to be parts of her personal history and identity that she had to keep close. Krystal found it ironic that Amy fiercely guarded her third-grade spelling tests and blurry photos but had lost the "Life Book" Krystal had made for her. The "Life Book" contained all the information Krystal could find about Amy's biological family and her early history. It even contained her adoption decree. Krystal lamented, "She keeps stuff that isn't important, but the stuff that genuinely matters, she doesn't have."

These behaviors plagued the family even after Amy moved out. A few days before our interview, another of Krystal's foster daughters asked when Amy was coming for a visit. When Krystal said "tonight," the young woman spent the next few hours working in her room and came back to report. "I think everything is okay. I packed the things I really care about away in the back of the closet, and I put them behind all those boxes of books. And I hid all my hair stuff and jewelry."

Amy had another characteristic we often see in adult hoarders: the "just in case" syndrome. Wherever she went, she carried an enormous amount of stuff with her. Krystal noticed that compared to her classmates, Amy always had a bigger, fuller backpack or duffel bag. Our studies have indicated that people with hoarding problems believe that they need all the stuff they carry in order to be prepared for any sort of emergency. One of our clients always carried two shopping bags full of things other people might need—a comb, Band-Aids, a sweater, even extra shoes. She felt obliged to have these things on her person, or she would feel guilty and inadequate.

Chaos and disorganization typify hoarders. Many could probably function quite well if they could simply keep their stuff organized. As mentioned in chapter 10, our research has shown high levels of attention deficit problems characteristic of ADHD among adult hoarders. Although Amy was never diagnosed with ADHD, Krystal wondered in retrospect whether her behavior fit the syndrome. She was always losing things, and her room was pure chaos. Her difficulty focusing at school also seemed to fit. At twenty-two, she remained as disorganized as ever. Krystal recalled the last time Amy had come home for a visit. No one had been able to reach her for three weeks. Amy said she had lost her phone charger for a few days, and before that she couldn't find her cell phone, so she had missed all her calls. When Amy finished her explanation, Krystal handed Amy her driver's license.

"Where'd you get that?" Amy asked.

"Somebody mailed it to us. Why did they find it at Fenway Park? Give me a reason that your driver's license was at Fenway Park!" Krystal insisted.

"Oh, man, I took it out. Now I remember. I took it out, and I guess I didn't put it back."

It was her fifth driver's license. "ATM cards we can't even count," Krystal said. As Amy was leaving, Krystal asked her, "Amy, you forget something?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the other backpack."

"Anything else?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Your cell phone?"

"Oh, where is it?"

"You're charging it. It's over there."

When Krystal finished telling me the story, she let out an exasperated sigh. "If it wasn't so tragic, it would be funny."

Out of college and working, Amy now shared an apartment with several friends. It was not exactly neat and tidy, but it wasn't as bad as her room at home. Amy believed that smoking marijuana helped both her OCD and her hoarding. Krystal didn't like to hear about Amy's drug use, and she thought it was particularly ironic since Amy refused to try any psychiatric drugs to treat her symptoms. But Krystal had noticed a difference in Amy's hoarding and the chaos surrounding her since she'd started smoking pot. (Although there is no evidence suggesting that marijuana helps hoarders, several testimonials to this effect can be found on the Internet.)

I was in awe of Krystal's insight into Amy's problems and of the fact that she did not display any disappointment or regret about them. In our study of family members of hoarders, most expressed a striking level of frustration, disappointment, and hostility. Not so with Krystal. She described Amy as "my charming, beautiful, and sweet daughter." Amy's ability to learn how to live successfully despite her hoarding was undoubtedly due in large part to her remarkable adoptive mother.

Eric, a smallish twelve-year-old with thick glasses and an anxious smile, began having trouble with objects just before the third grade, when he was eight. At that time, he started to save the boxes things came in. Since then, it had been a constant struggle. He came from a family with a history of hoarding on both sides. His paternal grandmother filled her home and her car, making it impossible for anyone to ride with her. His maternal grandmother saved virtually everything and even hid money and savings bonds in the pages of old magazines stacked in her home. Eric's mother described her as "a world-class hoarder."

Eric hoarded three types of things, each for different reasons: Lego-related products, school papers, and mementos of special events. Playing with Legos was Eric's favorite activity. He spent hours by himself building or planning construction. He kept not only his creations but also the boxes, instructions, and packing material the Legos came in. Eric was proud of his elaborate structures, and his parents believed that creating them gave him a sense of competence in a world in which everything else was a struggle. For this reason, they were reluctant to push him to dismantle or get rid of his creations. Eric was intelligent, but he had to work extremely hard to compensate for a learning disability and a lazy eye that made reading difficult. His intense perfectionism and desire not to be seen as different made school tough for him.

Eric's Legos lined the perimeter of the family room. No one was allowed to touch or move them. Whenever they impinged on the center of the room, however, Eric's parents insisted on a cleanup. These were major events for Eric, who needed weeks to prepare for them. He insisted on doing all the moving and cleaning himself because he couldn't tolerate anyone else touching his things. Still, the cleanings were accompanied by major meltdowns. These were not temporary emotional outbursts that subsided quickly. Rather, they began with crying and screaming and then escalated, sometimes lasting for hours. "He will really let everyone know he's having a rough time," said his father. The episodes exhausted Eric, as well as the rest of the family.

Once, when Eric was younger, a few neighborhood girls came over to play, and one of Eric's Lego constructions got knocked over, perhaps by the girls or perhaps by Eric's cat. Eric erupted and physically attacked one of the girls; his father had to restrain him. After that, no children came to the house to play with Eric. When his brother's friends visited, his parents sent Eric to his grandmother's house, where he would fret about the safety of his things.

In the summer before the fourth grade, Eric developed some odd rituals. He began touching things in a peculiar way. If he thought he hadn't done it correctly, he would do it again, until it felt right. He gave no reason—just that it felt like the right thing to do. A short time later, at the fourth-grade Halloween party, one of his classmates got sick and vomited in the classroom. Eric became convinced that germs from the vomit had contaminated the school and anything associated with that day. He no longer enjoyed Halloween, and for a long time he refused to wear anything blue, the color of the shirt the boy who vomited was wearing.

Most problematic for Eric was that anything he brought home from school was contaminated with "school germs" and had to be kept separate from his treasured Legos. The Legos were kept in the family room because Eric's room, and much of the rest of the house, was contaminated with "school germs." School papers piled up in the kitchen and his bedroom. He couldn't throw them out because handling school germs at home was too upsetting. This saving behavior was less about hoarding than about a fear of contamination, an OCD symptom. As soon as Eric got home from school, he went to his room to take off his contaminated school clothes. When something got contaminated by accident, he washed it thoroughly. His father remembered an episode in which he washed a letter in the sink until it disintegrated. His germ fears and washing rituals were more serious problems than his hoarding and had a much worse effect on his life and that of his family.

Eric hoarded an odd assortment of things other than Legos. In the corner of the room in which his parents and I talked was a collection of things from his birthday party a month earlier—several balloons, a bathrobe, and a few other items. They had stayed there, untouched, since the party. The night before the party was tough for Eric. He worried that the people coming—only family members since he had few friends—would touch or move his Legos. But the day was a good one, and his party was a lot of fun. He got many presents, including the bathrobe, a book about rocks and minerals, a pair of jeans, and a shirt. Eric loved the presents but had no intention of ever using them. These things were now associated with his special day. It was as though they contained all the memories and feelings of that day. He was afraid that if he wore the bathrobe on an ordinary day, it would become ordinary, and its connection to the special day would be lost.

Eric's "special event hoarding," as his mother called it, reflected almost the same reasoning process as his contamination fears and exemplified the contagion effect we described in chapter 2. Just as any object associated, even remotely or symbolically, with the vomiting episode had "school germs," the bathrobe and clothes he received for his birthday were infused with good feelings and memories. Interestingly, though, these things could not spread the good memories. Instead, if these items were used on an ordinary day, they would lose their specialness and become ordinary. Eric's father convinced him to wear the jeans and shirt on Easter, but only because it, too, was a special day. His dad could not convince him to wear them to school, nor could he convince Eric to wear his bathrobe at all. Similarly, Eric became distraught when the dishwasher had to be replaced. The dishwasher, he said, reminded him of that special feeling he had on summer mornings in the kitchen with his mother. He begged his parents to let him keep some metal pieces from the dishwasher. They agreed, not knowing that he had secretly hidden several other pieces of the dishwasher in the yard. When his father discovered and discarded them, Eric had a meltdown.

Like many hoarders, Eric was easily distracted and had difficulty keeping his attention on anything but his Legos. Most likely he would have qualified for a diagnosis of ADHD. His mother described him this way: "He gets very distracted from one thing to the next. I'll ask him to brush his teeth, and he'll go from here, maybe five feet, pet the cat, another five feet, turn around, come back in, straighten out his Legos—you get the picture. Even if we're on our way to Toys "R" Us to buy a new Lego set, it's the same thing. My mother was like that." It seemed that Eric's foibles had been handed down from family members, although they may have skipped a generation. Last we heard, Eric's contamination OCD had improved with medication, and his hoarding was under control due to firm limit setting by his parents.

A friend of mine who tutors autistic children called me one day about a sibling of one of her clients. James was a beautiful child—bright, fun, inquisitive, and a wonderful conversationalist. But beginning at age two, he craved clutter. According to his mother, he only seemed happy when surrounded by things,
his
things. James was six when I interviewed his mother, and the family, especially his mother, had struggled with his addiction to things. He wouldn't allow his parents to throw out so much as a candy wrapper. Like many young hoarders, James had a host of other problems. He had worn thick glasses since he was just sixteen months old. He also had ADHD and what his evaluation team called "sensory issues" (perhaps a mild form of autism), which made school and getting along with other kids difficult.

James's room was cluttered but didn't look all that different from the room of a normal, if somewhat messy, child. Toys and stuffed animals were scattered about. James's hoarding problem, like Eric's, was not about how much he accumulated, but about his relationship with the things he owned. Chief among his troubles was his need to completely control his things. James's mother said that if anything was moved or touched, James would know and be upset. "Upset" was putting it mildly. His mother used the words "mournful" and "grief-like" to describe his reactions; it seemed to her that he felt physical pain. He complained to her once about it, saying, "Mom, my whole body hurts." What seemed to worry him most was that he wouldn't know where his toys were if other people had touched them. Not knowing was intolerable.

On a broader level, this discomfort applied to any kind of change in his environment or routine. James followed a set routine every day and got upset whenever it changed. Transitions between activities had always been a problem. Perhaps his things were comforting because they didn't change.