 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here. Ah, and welcome to The Kondo Insider, where you can get all your information on living and owning in the condominium community here in Hawaii. I'm your host, Scott Shirley, and I'm really pleased to announce who our guest is today. But first, let me point out that this particular guest, both Richard Emory and I, saw her speak at the HCCA seminar, and we're very impressed with her program. So we decided to invite her to participate here at The Kondo Insider, and I'd like to introduce our guest, Cynthia Arnold, who is the Vice President of Senior Move Managers, LLC, who is going to be discussing with us today the issue of hoarders. Yes. Thank you for having me. Oh, I'm glad to have you here. We'll find out if I have a problem. So first, before we get started, why don't you tell us a little about what you do in regards to this situation? Okay. So I run a company called Senior Move Managers and Declutter Hawaii. We basically help clients to declutter and downsize their stuff, and part of that is with working with hoarders. Most of our clients are seniors, some collect things, some have an abundance of things, and so those were the hoarders that we have worked with. Well, you and I were just discussing before the show started. I was wondering if there was a particular age group, and then I pointed out recently there was an article making the rounds in a number of magazines and such that the millennial generation refuses to inherit their parents' stuff. Yeah. That's what we get. And those would be the grandchildren of our clients. So they are like, no, I don't want anything. And I see it firsthand because the kids, the adult children, don't even want things now. So it's not only the millennials, but it's other generations. Well, apparently they didn't like the Brady Bunch decor and don't want to inherit. Yeah, very different now. So first off, let's start out with the simplest question, and maybe it's not the simplest. And what is a hoarder? Well, like we were talking about before, a hoarder is a collector, a collector of, but excessive collecting of things. And a lot of times they don't only collect one thing, they collect multiple things. So a lot of people when I ask them the question, do you know a hoarder? They're like, oh yeah, that's me, or oh yeah, that's my mom, or oh yeah, that's my sister. But it can be anybody. It can. It's a clinical disease, so it's called clinically disorganized individual. A lot of people who are hoarders collect things that what other people would see as useless objects. You collect a bunch of tofu containers. You collect every single one of them, every egg carton, every jack in the box cup. That's a little, that's obsessive, right? Well I can point out my late mother used to be in a retirement community in Maui, and after she was done reading magazines and books, they had a community area where you could leave that for other people. And at 10 o'clock she'd leave, you know, three books and a dozen magazines, and at 10.03 they were gone. And it turned out that they did have a hoarder in the complex, and she would wait for people to drop off their magazines and books, and she'd immediately go grab them up. Or even people that, you know, bulky pickup comes right, and he drives on, oh look, that looks great. Let me stop off and grab it. And one chair becomes two chairs, becomes three chairs, and becomes a whole two dozen of chairs. Now, you mentioned one comment about the definition of a hoarder disorganized. Can I qualify for that? You've never seen the top of my desk. Okay. Well sometimes there's disorganization and then there's hoarding is actually a mental disorder. So you can clinically get diagnosed for it. So how much, how excessive it is if it's just your desk or is it everywhere else? Well. Are you a collector of everything else? You and I had been discussing prior to the show that both myself and Richard Emory had had to deal with hoarders before in condo associations. And it's interesting, you know, my situation, the person was hoarding petroleum products, oil and gas additives and just stockpiling them in his condo unit. The one Richard had to deal with, it was all newspapers and magazines, floor to ceiling. Is there any type of hoarding that you see more of than, you know, like newspapers, magazines? That seems to be the one that I've seen most often. Yes. Newspapers, magazines is probably the most common that I see here as well. We have also had animal kind of collection of actual animals. And then, of course, what happens with animals after they use the bathroom? Not necessarily they're keeping them, but they're just not getting rid of it. And then it just gets excessive where it's everywhere. Other things are, you know, how they're storage units everywhere, not right? Yes. So people collect stuff and then keep it. I had a man who had 4,000 pieces of pyrex. Pyrex? Yes. Interesting. Pyrex. So, and I thought, wow, and he knew, he knew how many he had. He knew, he just said, I love to collect them. And now he's just trying to get rid of it. Well, I won't tell my wife because she sort of sometimes picks up some of this old pyrex at Goodwill or something because she likes it, but I won't tell her about that one. Anywhere he went, he found a pyrex container, he picked it up. He would order sets of it, so he has many, many, many sets. Well, so we now understand what a hoarder is and it doesn't necessarily mean it's just newspaper magazines. It could be just about anything, like you mentioned pets. And I'll just let you know that both my wife and I used to foster dogs for a rescue group on the Big Island, but we had to stop because we would foster and then not give them back. So before we got accused of being hoarders, we had to stop. We just donate to them now. All right. Okay, so we understand what a hoarder is. What type of categories are there for a hoarder? So actually with the CDI, with the chronically disorganized individuals, there's actually a scale one through five. So we're all one. It's not very severe. We do collect some things. You know, I must say I collect cups, but now I have to get rid of a cup when I get a cup. But we're all at scale one. And obviously as you get higher, like scale three is you need to go with a face mask already. Oh, by. And there's an abundance, you know, an abundance of things. Up to five would be a full hazmat suit. There's feces. There's food that has been rotten for a while. So there's a scale from one to five. From everybody is one up to extreme, which is five. Well, a lot of us are probably more familiar with hoarding now than maybe five, six years ago, because there's a show on about hoarding. Now, I'm sure you've seen that particular show. Is that extreme example or is that a typical example when they have that on? That's usually extreme because it's TV. They want to make it very dramatic. So but they do have support systems there to help that person. With the hoarder show, because I didn't meet the producers and some of the people, they do want to come to Hawaii. So if there's anybody who wants to be on TV, they do want to come to Hawaii, but it's the extreme cases where if they don't get this done now, they're going to be evicted. They're not going to have a house. They're going to be out homeless or it's attracting, you know, bad things around. So those are the extreme cases in Hawaii. We've had had cases where anywhere from one to five. And it's not publicized, but we have had cases like that. Well, now, now that you mentioned that they're looking for somebody, I actually have a friend who never throws away the bento containers. He washes them out and so he's got a pile of them on the counter, but they're not overrunning his unit yet. So, but literally he does not throw those away. He washes them out and keeps them. But what he does with them after I have no idea. Well, if he uses it or uses it. So my grandmother, we do keep some of she keeps some of those mental containers, but we have parties there probably once a month. And that's what everyone takes there to go food out all the leftovers. So in some cases, but if it's excessive, that's when it's probably more than it's needed. Sort of like it was a hard adjustment for all of us not to hoard plastic bags anymore when we're allowed to get it. Oh, yeah. But believe me, we've seen them. Oh, I have to keep all of these because they said they were going to get rid of them. But what are you using it for? Oh, nothing much just in case I need it here and there. So, yes. So what, in your opinion, are the common characteristics of a hoarder? So what we see is just somebody who says, oh, no, I need that because or oh, no, I'm going to use that because oh, I keep that. I'm just lazy or oh, I can't get it to the trash or no, it's good for this. I mean, we had a client with probably 300 Jack in a Box McDonald's paper cups, plastic cups, and it can be used for art and crafts for this and that. But it's an excessive amount because when you use arts and crafts, you don't need 300. So a lot of times it's having an excuse to keep it for something which they might never use it for that. Do you commonly see this as an issue with, say, a single person as opposed to a couple? Not necessarily. Our our single clients, it's probably because they're widowed or they were a child of somebody who they passed on. So hoarding actually starts from a loss of something. So like when a couple is married and the husband passes away, the wife is grieving and she and that's how the hoarding starts. We had a few clients that a mother passed away. They took care of the mom and somebody else passed away right after. And that's when the hoarding started so we can kind of look back at what incidents in their life has happened to start start this process of hoarding. That's interesting because I sometimes wonder if it's something that will eventually come forth as they get older or is it something that happened in their life that suddenly they now are starting to hold on to things that you normally wouldn't hold on to? Most times it's from something that happens. But if we have, say, your mom and dad or collectors and you've grown up with that. So sometimes our clients, children will end up being collectors as well or they might do the opposite. They might say, I don't want to be like my parents, so I'm not keeping anything. Now, in your experience with dealing with hoarders, you know, most of what the public is aware of is what they see on TV. And it's usually a single person living in a house or a condominium by themselves. But occasionally you'll have where they still have teenage age or children still living at home, also dealing with the fact that their mother is a hoarder and have you had to deal with that as well in your line? Or no, not on families. A lot of times it affects the grandchildren not being able to come over to Grandma's house and spend some time with them. And that's where we see it. Most of our clients are seniors. Yeah. So that's where we see it, where, oh, yeah, my grandkids never come over. I hardly see them. Well, it's sort of like I can imagine it can be pretty traumatizing dealing with somebody who's a hoarder either as an adult child or the grandchildren. And they have to wonder, why can't we go see Grandma? And they want to keep them away from that scenario. That also because of safety. Think about a three-year-old walking through all your things and then something falling and then it tumbling all over. So it's really about safety as well. Now, before we go to break, I want to ask you, have you had to deal with situations like both Richard and I have, where it's literally from floor to ceiling and there's just paths cut through? That's the scary part is when it's taller than me, I don't know what else is behind there or worried about if we're worried about going into a home for our safety, it's got to be harder. It's got to be bad for the client. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we're going to continue discussing the issue of hoarding, but we're going to take a quick break first. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. Welcome back to the condo insider. My guest today is Cynthia Arnold, who is the vice president of senior move managers, LLC, also doing business as declutter Hawaii. And we've been talking about the issue of hoarding. And I believe we have a couple of pictures of examples of hoarding that you can pop up there. Actually, it looks like one of those pictures is an after. Yes, that one actually is an after. I wanted to show all that dark black stuff. Yeah. That is obviously rodent and cockroach feces and droppings. And then the picture on the right, that's another house we had that also was a hoarder, but had other things living in their kitchens. Other things. Yes. And that's one of those things where you have to that's probably about a four. We had to go in with face masks. Oh, my. The one on the left had human feces in the house, in that part. As well. Yes. So that would be rated a number five, I would take it, hazmat suits and all. Oh, my. Was that the only picture we had? Or. Oh, no, there's another one. So those are ones like you asked if I can't see the floor. So both of those, we could not see the floor at all. Actually, the one on the left, you are standing on things about a foot high. So you weren't even on the floor. We were on the floor, correct. And then the one on the right again was was just piled. So if you can imagine somebody walking through that to get to a bed or to get to where they need to sit every day, if you touch one thing and all just piles down, you can be the domino effect. Really, you can be buried in it. So those would be good examples of where you're not only concerned about the resident safety, you're concerned about your own safety when you go in. Correct. And those were both condos. So it was one bedroom condos where they both lived alone. Nobody, you know, they were nice to their neighbors. But if they got buried in there, somebody might not find out. Yeah. Well, you know, and I think that's the example most people see when they think of hoarding is the pictures that we just put up there. But I think you brought up an extremely good point on the one that you had cleaned up and then you see what's left behind. So under all of that stuff could be things like mold, pest feces, rat feces. I know we hated to talk about it, but the fact that there was one incident, I believe, where you found the bones of the poor person's cats who she didn't know what happened to them. Correct. Yes. So we do come around finding things. And then we talked to the families and I go, yeah, she did have a cat. We were wondering, we hoped it ran away and found somewhere else. But yeah, we do find things. Yeah. Well, so now you've been notified either by family or maybe the condo association itself that there is a hoarder in the complex. How do you communicate with that particular person? So a lot of times we come out of no judgment. We're not going to judge them. We want to see what's going on. So we usually meet with the client and see what their answers are. So I always ask, oh, what can you tell me a little bit about what this is? Or can you tell me what these things mean to you? That way we can get a sense of what these attachments are and where they're coming from. And then usually they tell us a story and that's how I find out somebody had passed on or they lost their job or something like that. And I can then realize, OK, it's been about five years. So this is an accumulation of five years. And then how can we help them move forward? And a lot of times you can't tell a hoarder. You've got to get rid of all this stuff. Oh, I bet. Yeah. No, why do I need to get rid of it? Right. So we always come from that it's going to it's going to help somebody else. So there's a family situation and you want to see, you know, your grandkids and we use that don't, you know, your grandkids want to come over and spend time with their tutu and enjoy time with you. Let's clean up so that they can come over and enjoy more time with you. Well, what I've seen and have experience is the person who's hoarding usually doesn't feel like they have a problem. Correct. Even though you can't get in the front door because there's so much stuff, they don't see that as a problem. No, they'll even say, oh, no, come just push it a little bit like this. And you crawl under a little or you just climb over it here, put your foot there. I mean, they've got they know where to walk around everywhere. So there's it's not a problem for them. Well, and it's not just the sanitation issue. I'm sure that there's an also a huge increase of health concerns, especially in the fact that you can't even go in without wearing a mask. Correct. Especially in that one picture where it was all the cockroach and rat feces all over the place, hidden under all that stuff. And most times, I think because we've been doing this for so long, when you open the door, I can tell you that there's going to be something. So we have to make sure our staff knows, OK, I smell cockroach. I smell rat. I you know, there's something else in there. So then we have to be prepared. But we've also cleaned out a house and the client has been sick for so long and come to find out there is mold all over the place. And that's why she was getting so sick as a hidden underneath all that stuff. So a lot of times when you're dealing with the hoarder themselves, how did you get notified? Was it family member? Was it a condo association or vice versa? In the serious conditions, we are actually getting contacted by lawyers because something has happened where they're going to be evicted or the family is now going to sell the house. So you have to get it out. There are times we get calls from the resident managers and saying, please call this client because they need some help. We don't want to do anything really drastic yet, but can you go and talk to them? And that's actually solve some problems just by me talking with them and helping them through that. And then we have calls from family members. Well, it's interesting in the comments you just made after you said after talking to them. I sometimes wonder if that's part of the issue, too. Nobody talks to them. Nobody asks them, how are you? You need any help with anything and that sort of compounds the problem, probably. Because everyone looks at them as, God, something's wrong with you, right? Because you're a hoarder, something's wrong with you. So that's why when we come in, we don't have any labels on them. We just talk with them, see what's going on and get their story because they all have a reason, you know, although I am a hoarder, but this is the reason why. And we just want them to be able to be open up and feel comfortable with the situation. Because most times those people feel like they have to put a shield up because they have to defend themselves. Whereas we want them to drop the shield and be able to be open to see what really is the problem. I actually think that's probably a good reason for you, in particular, to come into those situations because I would imagine family members don't know how to approach that situation. So the barrier instantly goes up because they feel like they're being attacked by their own family. Yes, like, Mom, why are you keeping all this stuff? Does it make any sense? And, you know, just throw it away, it's just trash. So that's, yes. Well, I never said that to my mom, but she did have over 300 salt and pepper shakers. But they all fit in one display cabinet. So at least it wasn't scattered all over the place. So there are some organized, you know, you know, if you have a bookcase and you have 100 books in there, it's organized and it's compounded. It's when you have an abundance of it. Well, the other issue that comes into play since you mentioned books, I've actually seen this happen a couple of times, particularly if they're from grew up during the Depression generation or shortly thereafter, that some of these hoarders were actually hiding money in the books that they had on the bookshelf. Yep. And so you can't just go in there and start tossing things out. You don't know what's in there. Correct. We found stuff from $16,000 in cash. Oh, my. To $20,000 in gold bars. We found money in a couple hundred in books. Yeah. We've even had where they cut out the inside and put stuff inside. We found money in curtains on the bottom of the curtain. So, yes, as we go through and help our clients, we have to make sure that we're not throwing, literally throwing away money. Well, it reminds me of my late grandfather was part of the Depression generation. And although he had his money in the banks and stuff, we still, when we went to clean out his house and he wasn't a hoarder, would find old coffee cans in different places of the house. And we knew immediately to check those because, and the sad thing is it wasn't dollar bills or anything like that. It was pennies and nickels. Huge amounts of pennies and nickels. So, but you got to watch out for stuff like that. They could even have important documents that maybe they don't even remember where they hit them away. Correct. And that's where you have to worry about it, especially when dementia or other things. Yeah. So, let's, on the limited time we have left, let's talk about how you as the professional can go in and help. So, we go in and we assess the situation. Like I said, talk with the clients and see what needs to be done. Then we talk to all the family members or whoever's involved, whether it's case managers, social workers, daughters, sons in the mainland, wherever. And then we want to come together and help the person, help the client in that situation. From there, we can help them sort through things one-on-one. We can help them to dispose of it, to donate it, to sell it, and to pack it and ship it or move it wherever it needs to be. Well, that's another thing. You've got to go in there and figure out what is, what can be thrown away. And then you've got to also determine, well, what can be donated because there's worthy outfits out there that could use those donations. But then you also have to realize some of these things may have a value to them and you've got to figure out how to dispose of them that way as well. Yes, so we always go in and think, looking at what can be sold, then donated, then trash. Obviously, obvious trash we can throw out, but when it comes to things that, oh, well, this looks rare, especially people will collect things, right? Some of it is worth a lot of money, so we want to make sure that we can get it sold for the client so that they can make some money off of it. Well, it's that old saying, somebody's trash is someone else's treasure. So, and like you said, you have found situations where they've hidden things in other things. So it can be kind of, let me ask this, how long is the process to do all that? It depends on how much there is. So some of our bigger clients, we can't go every day and we can't go eight hours. We have to work with them slowly. So that could take a month or even two if so. Most of them, most of them there's a deadline, right? There's a goal, it has to be done by the end of the month or this and that. So then we have to work with them at a little bit quicker pace, but we always want to make sure that their physical and mental being is what we're thinking about. Well, I'm sure you've also run into situations where you start getting things cleaned out and then the next time you come back, they've added back in. That's why we can't keep the donation box there. We have to take it away or else we'll look through it and say, oh, I need that again. Oh, I need that again. Well, that's actually some of the examples they actually show on that show Hoarders where they are running behind the people decluttering their life and grabbing things and taking them back in. So that's gotta be a difficult job altogether for what you do. It is, and it's not necessarily gonna be done and then they're never gonna have that problem again. It's a habit and it's, like I said, it's a mental disorder, so they have to overcome that as well. Well, before we wrap it up here, why don't you again tell us where you're from and how we can get in contact with you. So I'm from Senior Move Managers and declutter Hawaii. I can be reached at my number at 808-221-8345. We do have a website. It's www.smmhawaii.com. Okay, great. Cause I'm sure there's a lot of them out there that still haven't gotten to the point of seeking help. So I'm sure you'll be in business for a while. Or until you start hoarding stuff. Again, I'd like to say Cynthia for being here as our guest here on the Kondo Insider. It's been my pleasure having you here and be sure to join us next Thursday for more interesting topics on being a Kondo owner or living in a Kondo here in Hawaii. Thanks for appearing on Think Tech Hawaii and thanks for watching the Kondo Insider.