Living in the hoarder's basement

Ever since I've been in the nursing program i would get emails from our advisement center about employment opportunities. There was one particular one that I got quite often about an elderly couple looking for someone to rent their basement apartment and take care of the wife sometimes. Rent was only $500 and included utilities and a washer/dryer. We always thought it sounded like a pretty good deal but we were always a little hesitant. Finally, last November, after our apartment went up in price for a second time, we decided to look into this basement apartment.

I called the elderly gentleman and he seemed so excited that someone was interested. We went to look at it that day. The only downside we foresaw was that it was in Pleasant Grove which is about 25 minutes from Provo. He also warned us about the "mess" in his backyard, which we didn't think much of. When we got to the house, it was definitely "messy". Looking back we should have realized something was off, but we just sort of brushed it off. We really liked the apartment but were a little hesitant. The elderly gentleman was quite pushy though and before we knew it we were signing a contract.

Almost immediately after leaving we got a very bad feeling about all of it. But being the nice people that we are, we didn't want to back out and let the guy down. Derek was sure that they were hoarders, and the more I thought about it the more I thought it could be true too. We tried to keep in mind how much we liked the apartment so we didn't have to think about how worried we were about the whole ordeal. We moved in the next month. Within a few days of living there we had confirmed that they were hoarders...What did we get ourselves into?

Here are some of the reasons we knew they were hoarders.

1.  The night we moved in we had to get into two of his storage units off of our apartment. They were both filled to the ceiling with furniture and other items. Somehow we were able to fit his old mattress(we brought our own) into one of them after moving a bookshelf to the other.
2. We found out that his garage is FULL of scrap wood that he keeps "just in case". He claims he uses it to fix furniture, which is one of his hobby's but wow. 
3. There are also two large storage sheds in his backyard that are full also.
4. There house is scary. There is stuff stacked up everywhere with little tiny walkways. We often would hear a large crash and think, "Oh, there went a pile of stuff..."
5. The kitchen was really scary...I helped him do dishes once and found silverware that had been in the bottom for a while and it was molding...blah, so gross. 
6. Upon talking with the ward we found out they had come several times to take stuff to the dump when the city was threatening him. They also told us that most people that live there don't last more than 3-6 months. That is why we never received callings I guess. 
7. Every night before trash day, we would see him raiding other people's trash for who knows what...Oh and we figured out that he was going through our trash that we would put in the same bin as his...kinda freaky. 
8. Oh and did I mention the smell? I don't know how we missed it at first, but wow it was bad. We bought air fresheners to cover it up but it didn't really help. It's a good thing our noses adjust after a little while or it would have been unbearable and it almost was anyways...yuck
9. And I could continue on and on.

We tried really hard to help him get rid of stuff. We even went through one his storage rooms off of our apartment and got him to get rid of extra couches, REALLY old food storage and some board games that had mouse poo all over them. This gave us a little hope that we could actually help him. Most other times we would try to get him to rid of stuff he would always have some sort of excuse for needing it. It really took a toll on us. We started looking for a new place to live so we could escape the craziness. 

The husband was the one who needed help, not the wife like the ad had said. Since I have CNA experience it wasn't too big of a deal for me to help him every once and a while. That was until his wife got jealous of me...She thought we were having "relations", oh dear...She even started yelling at us in the floor vents...it was very creepy. Sometimes she would yell while the baby was sleeping and wake her up, I was getting so MAD. I guess she was having some mental health problems, probably related to the hoarding. We kept praying for something to work our and finally it did. We found a great place in Orem for a good price and it has a washer/dryer. We moved in March and are so much happier.

We feel bad for this couple. We really wanted to help them, but we realized that it wasn't our responsibility. They weren't really ready to change yet either, which makes it even harder. We realized that it was not a good environment for our sweet baby girl to be in. Being in a messy environment really takes it's toll on you too. It is impossible to feel the spirit, which just makes life even harder. We have gotten better at getting rid of stuff we don't need and to keep our house cleaner because of this whole experience. We definitely realized why we were so hesitant and got such bad feeling about it. I don't think we regret doing it though. We are grateful for whatever help we did give them. We are still on good terms with them(well the husband and least, we're not sure about the wife...), which is not always the case I guess. We are much happier now and look back on the experience almost like a bad dream.