Cost of Hoarding Cleaning
At least once a day I get a call from a person in the Baltimore, Rockville, Maryland and Washington DC or Philadelphia area asking about how much it costs to clean up a loved one’s home due to hoarding.
It always makes me a little sad to hear the stories of loved one’s who suffer from this illness. Hoarding also known as squalor, is the uncontrollable need not to throw things away.
Although most people can not conceive why hoarders behave this way, I understand. Not only am I an owner of a hoarding clean up company I also suffer from OCD myself.
My issues are with the more traditional OCD concerns, but that doesn’t take away from my understanding how these people feel about not wanting to throw away things.
I wish there was a simple formula for pricing out the cleaning of hoarding situations, but as you can imagine each hoarding situation is different.
When I get call calls for hoarding or from hoarders themselves here are the answers to their questions on pricing.
1) The first question I ask is, is there animal or human feces in the house? Although this doesn’t pertain to all hoarders, there are those who will not even throw out food or their pets feces. This is an important factor in our pricing
2) Does the person in need want all items in the house removed? Many hoarder’s loved ones want to give their family member a fresh start. Usually I recommend in this situation that all items be removed, except what I call hard furniture. Hard furniture are sofas, TV’s wood furniture, etc. Obviously if these items are perceived to be of non use then they would be removed as well on the judgment of the person in charge.
3) Many times important papers or valuable items are mixed in with the other items assumed to be trash. In this case a ABRA certified employee with NOVA sensitivity training would be assigned to go through the home and organize the rooms in question. This person would divide all items between important valuable and trash. This process is more costly than just a flat price for removing all items from the home.
Included in all pricing is dumpsters for all the items considered non usable. The sign of a good hoarding clean up company is how they make the job appear as just an ordinary construction project, not an obvious glaring sign that a hoarder lived there.
Again remember that all situations are not a like. Asking your hoarding clean professional to design a custom plan to solve the hoarding issue is best. Please also remember that the costs usually doesn’t include wiping down surfaces except for broom sweeping floors.