How to Pack a Pack Rat

By Scott Boone

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

Packing for a move, even in the best of times, resembles organized chaos as you tear down and box up everything you own.  After a few weeks of preparation, you home starts to look more like an Amazon warehouse than a house.  This can add a lot of unwanted stress to an already difficult task.  However, if one or more members of your immediate family are what is known as “pack rats,” then the level of difficulty and anxiety associated with the move takes on a whole new dimension. 

The Need to Accrete

A human pack rat is someone who obsessively collects things.  Some of them limit their collections to a single item.  If you’ve ever known a person whose house was filled from top to bottom with Beanie Babies, you have had a close encounter with a pack rat.  Others are not so choosy, electing to keep anything and everything they come to possess.  I have known people who have never thrown out a single magazine, their homes becoming transformed into a kind of labyrinth. 

Image courtesy of flickr

My point is once a pack rat has nested, there’s no telling just what will wind up in their possession.  Or, how much, for that matter.  This is why it can prove difficult when it comes time to move these hoarders.  And I am not just talking about the amount of time and effort it will take to pack up and transport their belongings.  The problem with pack rats is that many of them have developed a deep emotional attachment to all their stuff.

Case in Point: I once had a girlfriend who kept the masonry that had been removed from her home when she had replacement windows installed.  When I asked her why she didn’t just throw the debris away, she told me, “You never know when you’re going to need something like that.”

Like many other obsessive compulsion disorders, the minds of hoarder don’t work the same as yours or mine. Some of them establish a need to accrete based upon a childhood trauma characterized by a scarcity of food, toys, clothes or even love, that causes them to crave these things later in life.  The condition can also be the result of an imbalance of serotonin levels in the brain.  That’s right, some people are born with OCD. 

Image courtesy of Pixabay

That being said, when the need arises to move a pack rat, this will necessitate not only having to organize and pack their possessions. There will also be the touchy matter of dealing with the anxiety that any impending move is going to generate. It isn’t at all unusual for a hoarder to become anxious or even combative when it comes time to move their possessions.  Unless you want to deal with an irate family member for the better part of a month, you need to have a plan.

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

As difficult as it is to help a pack rat pack, what can be even worse is to corner a rat.  What I mean by this, is that you need to sit down with your resident hoarder and discuss the matter well in advance of any planned move.  The worst thing you can do is spring the impending move on a pack rat.  Whether the hoarder is one of your children, or your spouse, the only way to avoid all-out war is to give them a chance to come to terms with the situation and offer a way to get the job done.  One of the best approaches is to discuss the move several months ahead of time, then ask them to develop a plan to move their belongings. 

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

While you might want to suggest they lighten the load by tossing out some of the things they have amassed that have gone unused for years, you need to make this their idea.  If you should suddenly begin to point out items that you believe would be better off given to charity or left at the curb, your intentions could quickly backfire by making these little used objects seem irreplaceable.  (Remember my girlfriend with the masonry fetish?)   Even worse would be to wait until your hoarder is away from home before trundling their stuff to the landfill.  What would you do if you came home to find your beloved pet had been taken away without your knowledge?  This is the same reaction that is almost guaranteed to occur if you abscond with part of a hoarder’s collection. 

Emotional attachments are extremely hard to break.  Once you understand and accept this, you are well on the road toward helping your resident pack rat move.  Since many hoarders also suffer from depression and other anxiety-related disorders, they tend to equate possessions as symbols of comfort and safety.  Therefore, by diminishing their collection, you might well wind up reducing their feelings of well-being.  What this boils down to is - You may or may not be able to get your resident hoarder to lighten the load without bringing on a major bout of depression. 

Image courtesy of flickr

With that in mind, Plan B can come down to having their cooperation in packing away their possessions in order to carry out the move.  The best way to accomplish this goal would be to have them box their possessions, then keeping their boxes close at hand until the day of the move.  It may even be advisable to use color-coded packing labels that keep the rest of the family’s belongings from intermingling with theirs. 

Several other pearls of wisdom are:

1.      Do Not pack a hoarder’s belongings unless asked to do so by them. 

2.      Set a reasonable deadline for all their belongings to be ready for transport.

3.      Allow your hoarder to supervise the loading and unloading of their stuff.

4.      Suggest a financial windfall if they agree to sell some of their belongings.

5.      Praise and reward your hoarder for helping get the arduous job of moving done.

While you might live with a pack rat, you will never truly understand what it is that drives them to obsessively collect.  It is only by accepting their needs and working with them to overcome their anxieties that you will be able to help a pack rat get packed.

If you want your move to be stress-free, call Scott Boone at Scott’s Discount Movers.  With over 4,000 moves, Scott Boone has handled moves of all sizes, including local and cross country. If you are looking to move your home or office, you can depend on Scott's Discount Movers to provide a stress-free relocation.