20 Effective Tips to Control Chaos and Stop Hoarding

Hoarding is one of those problems that many people don’t give the amount of attention it deserves. That’s because it can seem at first as though this is something of an ‘amusing character quirk’. Or perhaps a ‘slight nuisance’.

We all know someone who hoards, and for the most part, we tease them about it in a fun and light-hearted manner. In fact, though, hoarding can be an extremely serious problem if it is allowed to spiral out of control, and in some cases might even be serious enough to ruin your life. This is a form of OCD – a serious mental health issue that will in most cases develop and worsen with time. Eventually, you can end up living in a space so untidy that it is dangerously unhygienic, or that you struggle to make your way to the bathroom!

And even if it never gets that bad, hoarding can make you disorganized, lead to trouble (losing things, not paying bills etc.) and prevent you from enjoying the space that you live in.

Fortunately, there are some simple things you can do to control hoarding. In this post, we’ll take a look at 8 of them.

1 Have a Big Clear Out

This might seem fairly obvious, but one of the best ways to get hoarding under control is to start with a big, serious clear-out. That means that you’re going to go through all your possessions and get rid of as much as you can. This might be difficult at first, but it will also help to ‘jump-start’ your de-cluttering process, so that you have a good starting point.

At the same time, clearing everything out in one go can help you to come to terms with this new approach to your possessions. It’s a little like tearing a plaster off all in one go – get it over and done with!

Another tip when doing this big clear out is to first get everything out and place it on your bed or another surface. This way, you can see the true scope of the problem. In many cases, that is enough to shock you into action!