All homeowners face challenges in paring their possessions prior to a move and getting their homes ready to show to prospective buyers. However, if a member of the household has a hoarding disorder or even just severe or moderate clutter, the challenges can be much more complex.
When the decision is made to sell a home and relocate, but disorganization is intense, family members, friends and even real estate agents often call on my guidance as a professional organizer.
Hoarders and Moving
Recently, I was asked to describe the best strategies that real estate professionals could use to “convince” hoarders to eliminate their hoards and declutter in advance of listing a home for sale.
Unfortunately, the solution is not quite so simple. Because hoarding disorders are not based in logic, using logical persuasive arguments to encourage drastic downsizing will have little to no effect. Actually, I should say it will have little to no positive effect; in fact, people with hoarding disorders might feel anxiety, distress and even hostility when feeling pressured to let go of their possessions.
There’s not a real estate salesperson on the planet who can induce a hoarder to make such drastic changes unless that person truly desires help and is willing to get therapy.
In most instances, people with hoarding disorders often lack insight and are unaware their situations constitute serious dangers. I always suggest that the first step is to have the client meet with a qualified mental health specialist. Only a medical practitioner can properly evaluate an individual and help create a strategic plan to move forward.
Such a plan will likely include both therapeutic counseling to work on the individual’s psychological issues and the forming of a team to meet other complex needs, including decluttering and dealing with practical issues. Even with a plan in place, progress will be slow.
While the therapist works to help a hoarder make cognitive changes, professional organizers begin by instituting procedures based on harm reduction. This concept focuses on tasks that reduce the risk of danger to the individual by decluttering areas of the home that present a likelihood of causing injury. Blocked entrances and exits are cleared, as are obstacles preventing access to windows, stairways and pathways to essential areas of the home, like refrigerators, kitchen sinks, toilets and any other blocked spaces.
To find a qualified professional organizer who specializes in helping people with hoarding disorders, one should start with the website for The Institute for Challenging Disorganization.
Downsizing A Crowded House
Of course, not all homeowners with extreme amounts of stuff are hoarders. While the process for readying a home for listing is less fraught and can proceed more quickly, it may still be challenging.
In these cases, I always start by managing client expectations. Our first telephone conversation allows me to set the stage. I’ll say something like, “I hear you’re selling your home and your real estate agent tells me you have a lot of stuff in your house. Is that accurate?” The client’s response gives me the opportunity to evaluate how they perceive the type and amount of possessions and their level of willingness to make changes in order to transform the home into a space ready to be shown to potential buyers.
Once I’m certain that the client is committed to the process, I’ll ask, “Are you agreeable to going on shopping probation?” This allows us to acknowledge that the first step has to involve bringing no more non-essential items into the home.
For example, this might mean that at least until the house is sold, bulk shoppers can’t go to Costco anymore. All bulk purchases must be eliminated, because those large packages take up space and make storage spaces look less…spacious! Instead, I urge clients to purchase only absolute essentials in smaller, more manageable amounts.
Once we’ve stemmed the tide of new items coming into the house, we work to reduce the impact of possessions already there. For example, we might vacuum-pack bulky items like down jackets and coats, down-filled comforters and puffy, fluffy pillows.
Maximizing the appearance of available space is only part of the plan. I also strongly encourage safely storing family photos, personalized mementos and anything with an identifiable cultural, religious, or political reference. While these are the kinds of items that personalize a space and make a house a home, they strongly identify the home as belonging to the people already living there. Unfortunately, that makes it almost impossible for prospective buyers to envision themselves at home there.
Going through the process of preparing a home for listing has one strong advantage. The same steps of reducing the influx of new acquisitions, decreasing the footprint of bulkier items and packing away personal mementoes will help simplify the actual Moving Day.
