Living with a hoarding disorder or sharing space with someone with a hoarding disorder can be very stressful. People with hoarding disorder experience constant difficulty discarding items due to a perceived need to just keep them around. It often gets intense to an extent of getting distressed during a hoarding cleanup by jiffyjunk.com or having the thought of removing them. This means accumulating excessive loads of useless junk and clutter in your home; ultimately affecting your ability to function in your space. You may be wondering what the negative effects of hoarding disorder are. Or how you can fix them before it is too late. We have identified them as follows:
Limiting Of Space and Obstruction, Which You Can Solve With Hoarding Cleanup
Hoarding disorder can make you indulge in excessive shopping. This is only to acquire more things. And this is even when you already have other useless items in your house or storage. As a result, you will slowly limit your usable space to a tiny living space and narrow walkways. Even if you have a big house, hoarding can progressively create a cramped living space for you and your family.
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The limited space will not only affect you but also the other people sharing the space with you. For instance, there could be a child or a disabled family member who wishes to have space to move around. With junk all over, causing narrow pathways, the inconvenience and obstruction will be difficult, even for you! To remedy this situation, you need to organize a hoarding from time to time. This is to avoid cramping up your living space. By the time your countertops, desks, storage units, and stairways are full of useless stuff, plan for a hoarding cleanup.
Health and Safety Hazards
What comes to your mind when you think of a congested house, office, or living area? It is obviously dust, grime, cobwebs, pet hair, and so on. Since so much junk accumulates, cleaning around is difficult. Common air irritants such as dust cannot go away entirely. Even if you vacuum frequently, there are food particles and drinks that spill in hard-to-reach areas. Hence, fungus, mildew, and unwanted pests breed. This often leads to the space being stuffy and unsafe for the inhabitants.
Some of the clutter may fall off causing injuries, slipping, tripping on items, and even falling to an extent of developing serious medical conditions. In addition, you and the other people in that space could develop breathing problems like asthma, headaches, and allergies. Worse still, the obstructions can render some key sanitation areas non-functional, thereby compromising your hygiene standards. To avoid this, you need to organize additional storage of unused items in a storage container, basement, or extra room. If you cannot safely organize or fit your items in separate storage, then you should do a hoarding cleanup.
Damages to Floors and Walls
Clutter and junk come in all manner of forms. There is the bulky stuff, the small but corrosive, and the heavy but useless stuff. While you keep accumulating these items, have you ever thought of their effect on your house? Imagine the cumulative weight of all these things you are keeping in that spare room. Or the scrapes and corrosion that some may cause. Your house flooring can get compromised and give way, especially for wooden floorboards. On the other hand, your floors or walls could get smudged or corroded by leaking liquids. These are from some items like batteries and engine parts.
You should store unused items in a storage unit away from your house. This is especially if they are too many to avoid damaging parts of your house. Alternatively, you can do a cleanup to prevent the infestation of pests that are attracted by clutter or use a non toxic carpet moth killer treatment. Hoarding cleanup will help you prevent the destruction of other sections of your house by these pests, mildew, and fungus.
Mental Exhaustion and Conflict
If you think that hoarding cannot cause mental exhaustion and conflict, then try asking spouses and families of those with a hoarding disorder. Whenever people live with someone with a hoarding disorder, conflict, frustration, and hostility are bound to build up. While the hoarder keeps going on spending sprees buying unnecessary stuff, or piling up junk and clutter, it takes a toll on others. The living conditions become worse with every passing day, as more and more items are kept and tossed around.
If the hoarder does not heed requests to de-clutter and do a hoarding cleanout, it breeds conflict and frustration. In the end, hostility ensues when anger makes the other person act out. They destroy or discard the items without consent. The family conflict can get very intense and even destroy the relationship. This is while causing mental exhaustion on the hoarder and the other people. To avoid this, it is good for family members to share their feelings. The hoarder should also take note of their concerns. If you realize that hoarding is creating issues, seek help from a therapist or peer support groups.
Final Thoughts
Depending on the range of the disorder, be it mild or severe, hoarding may cause you and others physical and emotional problems. Sadly, when you have a hoarding disorder, you may fail to realize it. This is until you get to a point where the effects manifest. Quite often, by the time you feel the effects of hoarding, so much has gone wrong. And you may have hurt yourself or your loved ones. Therefore, you should be on the lookout for situations such as the ones above. This is to avoid self-destruction or conflict with loved ones.
