Matt Paxton Quotes & Sayings

For Wendy and Sam, the best rule was "everything has a home." We made a list of their main household items and where they went - for example, pill bottles in the bathroom medicine cabinet, laundry in the hamper, and food in the kitchen cabinets. This may seem like a fundamental rule that everyone learns as a child, but many hoarders didn't pick that up either because they grew up in hoarding houses themselves, or they grew up in traumatic households where finding a meal and avoiding a beating was a daily reality. Cleaning was the least of their worries. — Matt Paxton

Some hoarders choose to be alone because they have lost someone in the past. On the surface it looks like a hoarder wants to be alone, but the truth is the hoarder doesn't want to get close to someone else and risk another loss or death. — Matt Paxton

I've learned that for hoarders, every cleanup is a grieving process. We are asking them to say goodbye to items that are heavy with memories - some wonderful, some painful. But all are important and deserve respect. A hoarder finds safety in the hoard, in the stacks and piles, and he or she will grieve over the loss of those items when they are gone. The week after the house cleaning is usually the worst. Instead of being happy and enjoying the new space, hoarders go through a difficult process. They miss their possessions, which were their closest friends for years. — Matt Paxton

Hoarding isn't about how much stuff someone has, it's about how they process those things. — Matt Paxton

I've always believed that a hoarder house is a house full of quitting. To make a change, the hoarder has to stop quitting and start trying. The hoarder has to want to change...

When hoarders quit, they are cheating their potential. Every time they quit, they are taking a shortcut and they know it. The guilt builds, which is why hoarders can't allow themselves to quit again, not even once. Quitting on small actions eventually leads to completely giving up. — Matt Paxton

The hoarder usually has been avoiding emotions for so long that getting back in touch with them is scary and painful. We want hoarders to reconnect with their emotions, and expressing anger is often the first step toward that goal. Anger is a powerful emotion, but it is often better to vent it than to succumb to a more debilitating and paralyzing emotion like grief or fear. — Matt Paxton

For a hoarder, staying clean isn't really about bins and labels; it's about processing items that come into the house. A good organizer can help a hoarder develop methods for sorting mail, for staying on top of recycling, and for making sure donated items get to their destinations... The repetition of bad cleaning skills is usually what got the hoarder into trouble in the first place, so an organizer works on repetition of new, positive cleaning skills. — Matt Paxton