My dad won't stop building things in his apartment & filling it with "stuff". How can I let go of the stress this creates?

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My dad won't stop building things in his apartment & filling it with "stuff". How can I let go of the stress this creates?

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Dad recently moved to a retirement apt community; he has a nice large 1 bedroom apartment that my partner & I fully furnished for him. In the two months he's lived there he's managed to fill every bit of floor & cabinet space with misc. furniture he's been given & enough canned goods to feed him for another 20 years. His cabinets overflow with dishes & pots & pans he brought from his old house, even though his apts have a dining room and he gets 2 meals a day, 7 days a week. He loves the food & says they give him so much he has to get it boxed up to bring back to his apt. He has all this prepared food filling up his refrigerator, but insists on cooking more food. Before Christmas he decided he wanted a fireplace so he bought lumber and used power tools in his bedroom to build a mantel with surround down to the floor to put in his living room. I discovered all this after the fact & he was quite proud of his creation. Envision a mantel with surround & a big hole in the middle where a fireplace would be. He wants me to find him a "fake fireplace that will look nice in the space". After the initial shock I decided to laugh it off & let him be creative. A few days after Christmas I stopped by to visit and he's now extended his kitchen countertop along the wall 6 feet into his dining area so he'll "have more room to stack pots & pans". His apt is slowly filling up with so much stuff he's hauled from his old house & all these building projects that pretty soon it'll be so full it will be hazardous to his health.

We've had many discussions about keeping the apt picked up and neat (he has weekly maid service who vacuums & cleans the bathroom, but it's getting to the point there isn't much floor space to vacuum); he says he'll do better, but he continues to accumulate stuff... newspapers, magazines, two mounted deer heads that are over 30 years old (he wants me to sell them for him); tables are covered with stuff, his bed has clothes piled on one side and he just surrounds himself with all these "things". I'm getting close to telling him I won't come visit anymore because being around all this causes me a huge amount stress & worry. The apts are 15 minutes from my house and when we moved him there I envisioned stopping by frequently to visit, but the reality of who he is and how he lives is just so stressful & talking to him about it does no good. He has an excuse & reason for everything and he refuses to modify any of his habits. He's perfectly happy living there with all his stuff piled up around him; and now with his building projects I can only imagine what's next!

How can I let him be who he is, not let it upset & worry me about how he's turning his nice home into a "thrift shop", and also convey to him I can't come there if he's going to continue down this path?

Mental Health

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As far as your dad building things, he needs an outlet for his creativity. Being a mechanic for over 30 years, I can envision myself in the same situation. We're guys and this is what we like to do. Is there a senior center in the area that offers craftmaking or an organization that may make simple repairs to donated items for resale? As far as the hoarding, you might want to have an administrator at the community where he lives talk to him about the safety issues involved with clutter and power tool usage. They may be able to suggest a good, supervised craft program designed for people like your dad who want to stay busy. Let us know what you come up with because this is probably going to be the destiny for a lot of us handy guys. :-)

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Absolutely agree with rko - being a creative person myself, I cannot forsee a time when I will be happy just with a book (I have a lot of them, too, a lot of them are reference books that I really use a lot) or working a remote, I have to tinker, to build. Once in one town in CA where I lived there was a miniatures store (my particular deviant behavior is toward building models and stuff), they had an annex in which one could rent a table or space to build your own project - it was great because you could also associate and trade ideas with others of the same interests. Trouble is that all these projects take a lot of room, and are of very little real value (to sell, that is). The other problem I recognize in myself is that I think I collected and kept a lot of 'things' because 'things' equate to and show stability and security, this is the problem of a lot of people on the show 'Hoarders". It is hard to move them when they have the added weight of posessions and 'things'. I am now in the process (now that mom is gone and I am planning to putting the house on the lousey market maybe next year) of 'weeding out' and giving away a lot of my collections to those who I think will appreciate them the most. It is surprisingly difficult - I am learning a whole new chapter of what turns people on...

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Hi! Does your dad have dementia and/or has he always been like this? What did he do for a living? It could be possible that he is kind of hard-wired mentally to continue what he used to do. It is probably comfortable for him try to keep the feelings of who he is...that he is still able to do these things. I only mention this because my dad used to be an electrical engineer and has this penchant for not throwing "ANYTHING" away...putting things in little "six-pack-milk-carton containers". He was always very organized and had containers and boxes labled for every type of diode or transistor. He is 93 and has dementia...he lives with my mom who is 95. This drives her nuts because the stuff has spread throughout the house and into all the kitchen drawers, under the couch, into the bathroom....every where!!! I try to console her in explaing that it could be worse. If he was in assisted living he would probably die of boredom because what he is doing is comforting to him and his surroundings are familiar to him. (rather than sitting at a table putting buttons on a string or in a jar!!!! It used to upset us but instead of trying to change him we changed our own view of it. We now see that his happiness is foremost and that for now this is the way things will be. We dont know how long he will live, but it more important that we try to accept him as he is. The "stuff" can be delt with after he is gone. It is our concern that he is safe and when things accumulate on the floor we stealthily remove it bit by bit and he soon forgets about it. However, it may be more difficult in your case because of the "building"!!! As for the clothes piling up try helping him by saying you will wash them then hang them up for him. You probably have tried evrything though! If he was careless and no longer able to build without getting hurt thats a different concern. When I am watching my dad do his routine of going through the stuff he has collected I look at him with love in my heart and remember what a great, loving father he has been...and it doesn't matter that I'll have to clean up the messes he has made...Lord knows he cleaned up alot of mine!!!! Enjoy him while you still can, visit with him often, help him when you can and don't allow yourself to get upset....this will not last forever! Not sure if this was of any help....just be there for him and love him.

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PS - as far as observing how other people collect 'stuff', it is important to remember the creaky and old but nevertheless true addage that what is one man's trash is another man's treasure. Like lijoma's dad my basement is full of a lot of what would be to the casual or disinterested observer to be a lot of junk, but when I finally have to give up my workshop, most of it I agree can just be tossed. Bits of wood that look as if they may be useful someday, odds and ends that would translate into a miniature accessory (I once made a crystal chandalier for a room setting out of an old necktie hanging rack and some lampshade extensions, another one out of a couple of other old lamp parts and the metal rims out of an Ovaltine cannister - hard to explain..). Yep, it was junk, but it was, to my eye, usable. Giving up my workshop will be a wrench, but when it goes, all of the rest will go too. I am about half finished with a 1/2 scale model of "Tara", using the set from Gone With The Wind" as main inspiration. The whole thing still takes up more than 6 feet of space - I had to build a special table for it too). I think I may take it out to the country and throw cherry bombs at it and pretend that Sherman is marching through Georgia... But, it all has to go eventually, I recognize, a lot of people do not recognize this, but MUST hang onto the security of other, better days. (I do not think I have dimentia yet...) I am starting to lighten up now, as I think it will hurt less if I just do it one piece at a time. Try that with pots and pans, nuts and bolts, screwdrivers and wrenches (My dad was a terrible hoarder that way too - I guess I come by it naturally enough)

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Ok, so he's 89 years old. Good Grief, Charlie Brown, let him indulge in his creativity.

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N1K2R3 has a point - as long as he is content and clean and healthy and his environment is not dangerous to himself or others, why not let him have his security woobie? When he passes you will have some work, of course (lots), but think of the garage sale for other hoarders! I would not mind attending if I were not fighting the same thing!

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True DT, but my reason for writing was because I do fear he's going to stumble or trip over all this "stuff" he's collecting and building (in fact he did fall New Years Eve & Paramedics came - nothing hurt but his pride). Add to this collecting/hoarding his carpentry work and it just gets more interesting every week! I find that having a nice glass of wine after my visits helps. ;-)

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There you go, that is what I was saying - if his environment is dangerous past the point of sentimentality, then it is time for an intervention. Do what you have to do, then you can really enjoy that glass of wine, not just Need it! Good luck, and Bless you, my child! Is he lucid enough to really miss anything if it were just to 'disappear'?

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My parents are hoarders. My mother is worse than my father. It is a health issue. When I first came here, the place was almost impassible. Food was stacked to the ceiling. The refrigerator and freezer were so full they were unusable. There was food that was 20-30 years old. I had to battle with my mother about throwing the old food away. She felt it was still good as long as it had been frozen or not open. I wasn't willing to take that risk, so in the garbage it all went. She never used this food, just added the new food onto the top of it. On a lighter side of this -- I found one sweet potato pie from 1990 last year. I guess no one wanted that pie. Mom insisted it was still good. Yeah, right. Tossed in garbage.

Hoarding also mean you can't clean the house. It is impossible to clean a cluttered house without a bulldozer. So houses get nastier. It is also impossible to maintain a hoarder's house. How can you paint the walls if you can't even see them?

Cluttered houses are a tripping and a fire hazard. It is against the law to have a house so cluttered that an emergency crew can't come in if needed. It is against apartment codes far sooner than that, so residents can be evicted.

Unchecked hoarding is a mental illness that creates a health hazard. It also pushes people away. Who wants to visit a hoarded house? Hoarders often become hermits with even their own children avoiding them. Hoarding can become an unhealthy, lonely life. So if it is bad, it is definitely not something to ignore. (The maid can only clean what is not covered.)

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Hoarding is now classified as a mental illness. I guess it always has been, but now they've put it under the Compulsive-Obsessive category.
No way to treat it except professionally. Sorry. That's the way it is.

My dad won't stop building things in his apartment & filling it with "stuff". How can I let go of the stress this creates?

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