Posted on 01/09/2006 6:22:49 AM PST by plain talk
A woman in Shelton, Wash., who was reported missing by her husband, was found dead under piles of clutter in their home, where she suffocated to death, according to police. Shelton Police Chief Terry Davenport said the home was so cluttered that police officers' heads touched the ceiling as they climbed over the clutter.
Authorities found the body of 62-year-old Marie Rose buried under clothes after 10 hours of searching. She reportedly suffered from a condition known as hoarding. Rose's husband believes she fell while looking for the phone in the house this week and suffocated. There were so many piles of items that the man did not realize she was dead in the home.
(Excerpt) Read more at local6.com ...
What boggles my mind (aside from the obvious) is that they all pick on each other about whose house is worse.
"Oh I know mine is bad, but you should see ______ house!"
I always want to tell them that just because your mom or whoever has a house full of crap doesn't make your house clean by default.
Don't worry about your son. This is normal at college. Kids are "pigs" until they have their own stuff or get married to a nice girl who demands that he straighten himself out. You have much hope for the future...LOL. Many have gone before him.
The husband started searching when he couldn't find his remote.... :o)
give them something to aim for?
HEHEHE...
I can relate to this woman. as a pack rat, It is hard to throw away things. Having a very big house w/basmenet & garage helps. So do frequent "throw out" moods.
Somewhere between PackRat & SUPER sick we cross the line I guess. AND WE ARE NOT THE BEST JUDGES OF WHEN THAT IS
My house is presentable but I do have my "rooms".. hahahah
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Funny. After she was forced to move to an apartment, my SIL started giving me tips on how to clean, and actually ran her fingers over the furniture to check for dust. We stopped going to her house for holidays, because it was so filthy. Among other things, the dog isn't housebroken.
LOL - that's probably true!
Our next-door neighbors had that problem. They lost their home and the new owner filled two commercial dumpsters, and made special arrangements with local trash pickup to make multiple stops to get the rest. It took him and a cleaning crew a week just to empty out the house.
I am a Flybaby, too! I am amazed how many of us there are on this thread!
I suffer from the opposite problem - the need to clean up other people's stuff :) My idea of fun is to bid on abandoned storage units and then throw away/donate/sell all the crap that comes out of them. I do about one every year, usually during the depths of winter. It's always a blast.
That's me! Although I do have tubs of scraps that are considerably smaller than a saucer...
Good luck finding the life insurance policy.
Love it !
All our family hoards to some extent - Aunt Nell was just a bit worse than the rest of us. My mom and dad were in the same house for almost 50 years. We got it cleaned out when they moved! The thing to do is to designate a spot for "trash", put a big tarp on the ground, and once a week have a guy with a truck come and haul it all away. Alternatively, you could rent a dumpster.
The thing is, there WAS a lot of nice stuff in there, some of which went to their new house and some of which found its way into the clutter in OUR house!
Hopefully we will sell dad's '62 Studebaker soon - we have three interested parties although nobody's brought us a check yet. THEN we can get the garage organized and have the Mother of All Garage Sales.
It's just amazing how people can live like that.
not all of us!
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Or put it out at the curb with a sign that says "free". It's amazing what people will cart off.
Actually, some of these cases go beyond hording and living like pigs, and occur from mental incompetence. My husband's great aunt and uncle actually had to have their town intervene and haul tons of stuff out of the yard and inside the house. The house was deemed as fire hazard as every room was floor to ceiling collections of everything imaginable. My husband can still remember as a kid (he's in his 50's now) that the only way into his cousin's upstairs bedroom was through a tiny path in the long hall closet because the whole upstairs hallway was filled with stuff. Their son now has guardianship and is responsible for them. It should have happened years ago.
I think maybe the couple in this article weren't exactly competent to be living alone either.
That is exactly how my MIL is. She has a stack of newspapers on her coffee table that are at least 2-3 years old. She works at a department store and buys clearance items with the intent of giving them to someone as gifts. The pile of bags is taller then she is (five foot two) and almost as tall as me (five foot eleven).
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