Cleaning a Hoarder’s Home is Not for the Faint of Heart

If organizing a hoarder’s home, you’ll find a lot of clutter of course. Mixed in with the clutter, you will probably find some of the following:

• Filth and debris
• Fecal matter – from humans, pets, mice, rats, etc.
• Bodily fluids
• Excessive trash
• Expired food
• Odors
• Mold
• Mildew
• Insects (bedbugs, maggots, weevils, spiders, ants, etc.)
• Pathogens carried in water, food, and air. A pathogen is “An agent that causes infection or disease, especially a microorganism, such as a bacterium or protozoan, or a virus.” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pathogen)

Cleaning a hoarder’s home is often called “Gross Filth Cleanup” by those who do this professionally. Gross filth properties are residences, businesses, or other areas that present significant hazards to the health and safety of anyone living or working on the premises. They include, but are not limited to being full of trash, newspapers, old clothes, cans, food, food wrappers, human feces, rodents and their droppings, urine, live and dead animals, etc.

Serious Health Hazards

Dust, mildew, mold, asbestos, rodent droppings and fecal matter (human and animal) can contribute to serious illnesses if proper precautions are not taken while cleaning the hoarding site.

Rodent droppings can carry viruses (such as the Hantavirus), which may be fatal. Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) is a deadly lung disease transmitted by the urine, feces, or saliva of infected rodents. Humans are susceptible to contracting the disease from breathing the virus in aerosolized form, found when stirring up dust during sweeping. HPS was first recognized in 1993 and although rare is potentially fatal. Rodent control in and around the home remains the primary strategy for preventing the Hantavirus infection. (Source: http://www.amdecon.com/aptmanagers.html)

The odors that spread throughout the house, into furniture, carpeting, or fabrics are intense and very hard to remove through normal cleaning methods.

Rotting and exposed building materials (such as asbestos), broken appliances, expired medications, and other byproducts of hoarding behavior all pose their own set of hazards.

Hiring Specialists

Because of the dangers inherent in cleaning areas of hoarding, it is often impossible to do a thorough cleaning without professionals trained in decontamination and odor removal and following the legal requirements of cleaning out a property that may contain potentially infectious materials.

Depending on their training and services provided, these professionals are known as Decontamination Specialists, Bio-Recovery Specialists, Bio-Hazard Specialists, and usually work in companies that deal not only with hoarding cleanup but also with other issues like crime scene cleanup, suicide clean up, auto/industrial accident cleaning, decomposition and death, bacterial decontamination, and hazardous waste removal services, to name a few.

Sometimes an area must be completely decontaminated before clean-up process begins.

The DIY Approach

Considering what you will need to stay healthy on the job, what supplies and people should be involved, where you will take the items (whether donated, discarded, recycled or stored), and who will do that work is an important series of options to consider before beginning the job.

The website, Children of Hoarders, has an extensive list of cleaning resources that have been contributed by those who post to their forum and have had personal experience doing so.