COMPULSIVE CLEANER LOVES A HOARDER

I see junk hounds on the news media.
I sometimes have an unpleasant run in with one.
I don't get along with them because of my tendency to compulsively clean.
As a house cleaner, one of them kicked me out for all time.
Both in my home and elsewhere, I've looked on them with annoyance.

I lost my soul mate. He died in my arms. He was my opposite and so many ways.
This crisis is one of the worst I ever had because I'm elderly and I don't think I'll be able to regroup. The friends we had from thirty years ago are either dead or have health problems.

This being I loved more than anyone was hoarding junk all over the house.
He got livid when he found us cleaning.

Even when my daughter asked me to clean her room after she left, I turned and found him staring at me with evil eyes. "Don't clean anything unless I'm standing right there." I had to stand up to him. "She has asked me to clean up her room.". As he argued, my heart started racing with annoyance and extreme stress.

The same being who was grating on my nerves used to give me back rubs that were priceless. With him being gone, my back neck and shoulders aches all the time. I loved his eye contact during conversations and the sound of his voice. I liked his easy sense of humor. As he got sicker and sicker, I admired the way he shouldered the devastation of his illness.

I found mail from sixty years ago still cluttering up the closets. The belongings of that occupant still clutter up an entire corner of one room. He would not let anyone clean or put away the things that relative left even though he hated that relative. That relative abused him.

The piles of trash and dust in his room are combined with precious things that I would never throw out. For this reason, the painfully slow cleaning process is completely rational.

There are other piles of junk that when I clean them and wash the empty place remaining, I get re- traumatized.

In times past, cleaning a messy room made me happy. When he was still alive, the places I did clean left me in a good mood for days.
Now the piles of junk I'm removing are making me feel distraught.

My grief is already deep enough since his death turned my head around. I all the sudden see all the times when I didn't think about him. I suddenly realized a day after his death that I treated him as if he would be around forever. I threw a fit when I saw how many videos and pictures I had of me and now many nature pictures I had compared with how few there were of him.
My anger at him dominated our home in the months before his passing. My temper fit about the clutter all over the house was justified and yet my outrages dominated everything. This is in part because I was exhausted from taking care of him in a house full of junk with no place to put things.

I'm learning from this what junk hounds go through when someone cleans up their mess.
Now I'm living in their shoes from one hour to the next and now I understand them from more angles than just what you learn on a news program.

My obsessive compulsive cleaning still goes on in the kitchen, bathroom and porch.
It goes on in other people's houses.
In other parts of the house, the junk is keeping me company.
I loved the being who left the junk and cleaning it is obliterating his presence.

In a normal home, they create this warmth with pictures on the wall and decorations.
It seems ludicrous to think that a pile of trash or old bills would keep you company and create a feeling of warmth. Old mail and old bills are supposed to fit in a closet or drawer.

Each time I clean a place, I feel like I'm destroying more and more of him as if death had not already
made me lose everything he was. I'm afraid that someday this will just be a cold empty vacant house.
Someone will walk in and want to buy it and there will be no trace of him.

Moved to the Grief forum.

It's really hard to throw things out when a loved one dies. When my mother passed away, she had a house filled with stuff- bit hoardy. Lots of things she never threw away. In going through them, I found myself having to toss things that had meaning only to her. Letters, personal effects. And yes, it feels very much as if you're just throwing someone's life into the rubbish bin. As if you're erasing them. You can't keep everything; but it's a bit heart-wrenching, even so. Every time I get rid of a little more, I just have to make myself do it. I've begun getting rid of my accumulated things, a little at a time. The older I get- I'm not elderly, but I'm not far from it, either- the more I want to reduce and just let go of stuff. Have some control over what happens to my junk, before I die, I guess.

I'm sorry for your loss and the challenges you're facing with your loved one's hoarding. It sounds like you're going through a lot, and the process of cleaning can be emotionally taxing. Take care of yourself during this difficult time.