Group helps hoarders, their family come clean

According to the A&E television series “Hoarders,” more than 3 million people in the United States are affected by hoarding.

Spokane resident Judi Manuel is one of them. In fact, hoarding almost cost Manuel her life. But the disorder also gave her daughter, Ceci Garrett, a new purpose.

In August, Garrett launched Adult Children of Hoarders Spokane – a peer-to-peer recovery and support group.

She and her mother were featured in a 2009 episode of “Hoarders.” On Monday, another Spokane-area resident will be featured along with two local professional organizers, Martha Goss and Cindy Vanhoff.

Opening their home to millions of television viewers proved painful for both Garrett and Manuel. “I had massive anxiety,” Garrett said. “Everybody I knew was going to know my secret and see how I’d lived and grown up.”

She knew her home in Maryland was different from her schoolmates’ houses. “We had a couch, but for nine or 10 years I didn’t see it,” she said. “We drove the hoardmobile – an Escort station wagon that could barely fit two people.”

The clutter was suffocating and embarrassing. “It was the biggest family secret,” Garrett said.

Hoarding isn’t simply about collecting or not cleaning – it’s a recognized psychological disorder. According to the Mayo Clinic, hoarding is defined as the excessive collection of items, along with the inability to discard them. Hoarding often creates such cramped living conditions that homes may be filled to capacity, with only narrow pathways winding through stacks of clutter.

Garrett married at 18 and moved to Spokane, but in 2009, she got a call that changed both her and her mother’s lives forever.

Unknown to Garrett, Manuel’s hoarding had grown so bad that she was confined to a small chair in her kitchen. She tied herself into the chair at night, so she wouldn’t fall into the piles of garbage that surrounded her. But one night, she fell anyway, and became wedged between two pieces of furniture. Her cell phone slipped beneath a pile of trash.

Seriously ill from massively infected open sores on her legs and feet, Manuel was able to push the alarm on a security necklace she wore around her neck. Emergency responders struggled to reach her.

Garrett speculates the sores were caused by bug bites that festered. For several weeks, doctors thought Manuel would lose her legs.

Upon arriving in Maryland, Garrett was unprepared for what she found in her mother’s home. “I hadn’t been in the house in 10 years,” she said.

Manuel had been without running water for two years, so she used adult diapers instead of the toilet. The used diapers piled up in toppling towers.

There was no question of her mother returning home. Garrett knew she’d have to move her to Spokane, but in order to finance the move she’d need to sell the house. Yet how could she sell a house that had basically become a landfill?

She contacted Matt Paxton who owns a company called Clutter Cleaners. When he saw Garrett’s photos, he asked permission to send them to the television show “Hoarders.” Within weeks, help was on the way.

Manuel, a former technical writer, explained her living conditions. “I was gathering things for retirement because I was worried about not having enough money. I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford craft supplies, so I bought what I could,” she said. “The mess of it was craft magazines, yarn, cloth and junk mail I didn’t put in the trash.”

But it was much more than that. Parts of her home hadn’t been accessible since 2003. The cleaning crew took out three tons of used adult diapers. Broken pipes caused water damage throughout the home. There was ivy growing inside the house.

Manuel settled into an assisted living facility in south Spokane. Eventually, her home was sold, gutted and rebuilt.

Garrett’s experience prompted her to reach out to other adult children of hoarders. She said, “I realized hoarding wasn’t just my mom’s problem – it was mine. Though I don’t hoard, I’ve been impacted by the results of that lifestyle.”

Dealing with a legacy fraught with feelings of shame and inadequacy strengthened her resolve and determination.

“I want to help other families,” she said. “Hoarding is a lot deeper than stuff – it’s a disorder that affects the entire family.”