Do you not have a rubbish collection service?

If you do, wait for the bins to be put out and go around putting your bags into any which are not full.

Hi Goldfish,

so sorry to read about this

are you able to walk?

do you have a trolley bag, maybe a grocery shopping cart with wheels, or a trolley to cart suitcases or something else with wheels that you could put the rubbish bags on and bring to a nearby place where you can throw the rubbish?

I have no idea how it works around your place so I do not know if there is any place you can throw things, maybe a bit further on?

or is there no one you can ask to come and help you with a car to throw out the trash somewhere?

maybe even some hired help with a car with whom you try to set up a deal to help you empty the house?

I am trying to brainstorm possible ideas…

Welcome to the forum Goldfish. I simply asked my neighbors nicely if I could put stuff into their bin if I had extra and we have a little deal that they can put stuff in mine when necessary when there is room. I found if you ask most won’t mind at all. Some of them even feel happy making sure the waste collector actually has to pick up a full bin as they pay for it.

I can’t think of anything that hasn’t been suggested yet, can’T stress compressing and recycling enough. Might pay off to dump it into your bin without a bag, or at least puncture the bag as air takes up a lot of space.

A bottle next to the pile of boxes my neighbor requires with her online shopping seems to do wonders for the motivation of the trash collectors to pick up her excess boxes.

All I can say. If you managed the strength and courage to bag it all up you will find a way to get it all out. It is a little bump, that slows you down right now, and I am confident you will overcome it!

Hi Goldfish,

I think what CQ has said is spot on!

Kim is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to anything in the UK it seems!

Now you know who to call next time! YEAH!

I never put anything in empty bins, that would tick people off for sure. Good you don’t have to do that anymore after you found that guy!

So 1 room is the goal? Bedroom I assume? So you can rest well?

Not sure hwo to get the ball rolling in Belfast, you could problaby just keep your eyes and ears open for people in similar situations.

Hi Goldfish76,

Welcome to the forum. I’m glad you’ve found this site & a community of people like us. I find it makes me feel a lot less lonely, and it’s so nice to have a place that is safe where people understand hoarding disorder & don’t judge me.

It is so easy to misinterpret things that are written on the net, without the benefit of facial expressions or voice intonation. Chaosqueen has been a valued member of this community since she joined in Sept 2013. In those FIVE years, she has written 2780 messages (so far!) sharing her journey, and being incredibly compassionate & encouraging to other people on the forum. Often when the forum gets “quieter” with less posting because we live busy lives, chaosqueen has shown up time & again to keep conversations going & offer support, humour, & just companionship for the journey to whoever is here. It is not an exaggeration to say there are times this forum might have gone under & become just a lonely echo chamber if it were not for Chaosqueen’s generosity in appearing here.

Studies show hoarding disorder affecting 4-6% of people in the US or UK. The rate is twice that of OCD. This means if there were an average, say, of 2 people per household, 1 in every 10 homes would have a hoarder. Lots of our neighbours are hoarders. Most of us hide our disorder, so chances are you & I both know a LOT of hoarders. Governments & health communities are unfortunately SLOW in making resources available. Being diagnosed in order to qualify for help is still very difficult in most areas, & I know here even if one could get a diagnosis, there would not really be anything hoarding-specific offered in help.

One group that has a big stake in hoarders getting treatment & help is firefighters. Their lives are put in jeopardy by hoards in burning buildings. In some areas, they are beginning to join with mental health people to get support groups happening or home safety inspections, without risk of eviction, happening. You could perhaps call anonymously to a firestation & see if they have, or have considered, any programs or coordination with mental health providers.

When I looked up hoarding resources in your area, here are 2 links I found:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/counselling/hoarding/northern-ireland

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/counselling/hoarding/nir/belfast

I am very grateful to Jasmine for giving us a safe online community here where we can support each other. Many of us have no “in-person” groups or resources yet.

Goldfish, so sorry I didn’t recognize you where new to the forum. I read your post as a follow up to something I’d not seen, and having been away for a bit wrongly assumed you’d joined and posted then. So first a proper Hello, and welcome.

Congratulations on removal of 30 bin bags, well done!

I can assure you you’ve misread and misunderstood Chaosqueen’s post entirely, and it could just as well have been her as me who made the suggestions that have been useful to you. Often pot luck who says something first.

It is so easy to misinterpret things that are written on the net, without the benefit of facial expressions or voice intonation. Chaosqueen has been a valued member of this community since she joined in Sept 2013. In those FIVE years, she has written 2780 messages (so far!) sharing her journey, and being incredibly compassionate & encouraging to other people on the forum. Often when the forum gets “quieter” with less posting because we live busy lives, chaosqueen has shown up time & again to keep conversations going & offer support, humour, & just companionship for the journey to whoever is here. It is not an exaggeration to say there are times this forum might have gone under & become just a lonely echo chamber if it were not for Chaosqueen’s generosity in appearing here.

Absolutely.

ChaosQueen is one of these dear, precious people, she has always been around, and always been supportive. I have immensely appreciated her wit, her humour and her direct ways, being remindful and showing tough love, being aware, cheering at times, laughing together at other times about our own weaknesses, sharing frustrations and being a strong shoulder at other times when there was no strength to laugh and tears and despair were reigning.

Totally.

As well as everything said above, when I started posting here years ago, it was going through a quiet time and often like the Marie Celeste. I tried to make a commitment to be here for others as well as myself.

I’ve had two very serious disasters in my time here that have left me AWOL for very long periods. On both occasions I’ve come back to find ChaosQueen has been one of the main people (along with others ) making it her business to try and ensure this board stays active and that no one arrives here new and afraid possibly for the first time in their lives say they have realized and vocalized that they are a hoarder, and they’re afraid overwhelmed, afraid, and hopeless, and then have no one there to acknowledge them when they finally managed to get it out.

There are others too (I’m scared to start naming in case I accidentally miss someone, but you all know who you are) who are also doing this either for bursts of time, or on off as best they can over time. Stalwarts of the board and deeply appreciated. Not a nasty bone among them. When something causes one to fall another will pick up the baton and hold it as long as they can.

Some of us can get very serious, dogged down, and overthink things and head towards gloom. CQ is often the one to offer a lighter touch at exactly the right moment.

It can actually be pretty exhausting reading each and every post for years trying to help each other alongside trying to deal with often massive problems of our own, and trying not to end up depressed as a result of it, and CQ has done far more than her fair share of ‘holding up the sky’ and I’ve never seen anything including posts on this thread to be anything but well intentioned, so please re read with a different mind set towards what you’ve assumed. you couldn’t be more wrong, and I rarely suggest anyone’s ‘wrong’ about anything.

It’s also important to remember that this site is international and an American ‘Yeah!’ Is a positive cheer leading type cry, (along with ‘Hell Yeah’ I think?) where a English one is a negative ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before.’ and I wonder if that’s what’s been misread.

There’s also a difficulty for some us who’ve amassed a lot of knowledge if others see us as experts, or gurus, (both words that have been used and caused me to go “whoa!”) we, and especially me, then frantically object that we’re not responsible, please don’t hold us to be, we may well get things wrong or give incorrect advice, and mustn’t be seen like this, it isn’t fair, especially as we have yet to overcome our own problems. Consequently, people learn to qualify any suggestions like those to avoid getting an essay on why not!

I think it can be easy for us to be expecting or fearing negative judgement, so see it where it isn’t, or not recognize that as so called ‘hoarders’ we all need to not do things that can exacerbate public perceptions of why we are ‘bad’ or should be controlled by others. Being desperate enough to stuff our rubbish into other people’s bins (and yes I’ve done it in the past too) is something that give’s the ‘general public’ actual issues with us, rather than their perceived ones, so it’s appropriate for all of us to remind each other over these things and say how we’d feel. It isn’t having a go.

BTW I’ve had the awful but actually funny with hindsight, situation of my next door neighbour who I knew was hoarding when she didn’t know I was,, stuffing my bin full of her stuff, when my own stuff was desperately waiting to go out at dead of night!

Of all the people’s bins to pick! De-hoarders dumping on de- hoarders!

Re being referred to OCD meeting; how very frustrating for you. I have to say I have found some useful OCD things that can crossover into some types or individual types of hoarding issues, from looking into OCD, but it’s stuff that is generally only interesting to those actively almost studying hoarding, rather than people needing immediate recognition and help of a very different condition that happens to have some small overlaps for some people.

I’m very glad Kaizen was here to respond to your post early, but for now am actually going to respectfully say think carefully about what you want out of it, with suggestions re the fire brigade and do your research before committing yourself. (This is very much the point of this board, we can hold very different and opposite opinions and views, and by talking about our opinions we can decide what we think may be a good or bad thing for each one of us and our different situations)

I’ll try and make a separate post later or possibly may have to be tomorrow or Tuesday, about ‘Task Force’ issues and fire brigade that seem to sadly be emerging from what was a good start.

Goldfish, please come back! No hard feelings what so ever! This place is helpful for you so please come and share! We need you and your personal story, we need to hear of your success and we want to celebrate it with you!