‘The stuff under the stuff’: People with hoarding disorder open up

The habit crept up on Kim

The habit crept up on Kim. She would arrive at garage sales as they were ending to pick up what remained.

“I’d load my car full of the free stuff on the side of the road: clothes, things that needed to be fixed, projects,” she told CNN.

It was only once things spiraled that Kim, 53, who asked to be identified by her first name to protect her privacy, realized she had a problem that was all too familiar: hoarding, a disorder that she’d spent years urging her mother to seek help for.

“I used to get very frustrated and say, ‘Mom, we’ve helped you clean out this room 10 times, and we come back three months later and it’s completely full of sh*t ,” she said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnolC48D_7U

“I learned about hoarding disorder when I was younger but somehow didn’t recognize it in myself.”

At first, Kim would pile the things around her bed and throughout her bedroom, eventually expanding into other areas of her home, including her living room and sunporch.

Besides the garage sales, she would collect stuff at thrift stores and stored goods she said family gave her “to hold and keep.”

Cre: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/09/health/hoarding-disorder-wellness