Recently I had occasion to witness a family who had a serious clutter and hoarding problem that they truly believed was due to the size of their home. As I walked through the rooms they were clearly cleaned up in preparation to sell the home, but there was a LOT of stuff. In the parents bedroom there were two very generous closets and each was filled with THEIR OWN clothing--they were not sharing space with their children. When I opened the cabinet under the sink, things came spilling out. This is where you keep cleaning products and tools--which doesn't change much with the number of people living in the house. Not to this extent, anyway.

It was my responsibility to alert this family to the fact that they owned too many things. That's a somewhat subjective quantification, but when you own 20 turtlenecks, 12 of them are the same shade of white, they are not part of a school or work uniform worn daily, and you are spilling over onto the closet floor--you have too many. I told them that things were going to be like this no matter where they lived because this was a matter of how they react and perceive space. When I said "No matter how much space you have", the husband finished my sentence--saying that they'd fill every inch. It clicked with him.

Subsequent to this, I stumbled across a site devoted to helping people overcome squalor. Squalor is a word that usually conjurs up images of rooms so filthy that the home is undoubtedly condemned... a toilet brown with dirt... a kitchen sink that you either can't see through all of the garbage or full of sludge. That is, without question, squalor. But squalor is scaled in levels. The images you imagine when you hear the word are level 5 squalor--the worst. These are the people whose children are often taken by the state for their own health and safety, their animals are taken away and sometimes even they are removed from their own home for their own health and safety until it can be remedied. Police, Child Protective Services and the Humane Society will do their best to put people in touch with resources for help, but ultimately it is their own responsibility to do the work that needs to be done.

That's what you picture when you hear squalor. You don't picture your own house, do you? But level 1--even level 2--squalor may apply to your home. The National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization created a scoring assessment used to define the level of squalor in a home. It's used primarily for organizing professionals to determine if they need to have additional training in Chronic Disorder and possibly additional community resources. You can find it at: http://www.nsgcd.org/resources/clutterhoardingscale/nsgcd_clutterhoardingscale.pdf

As I picked through the message board, I found common themes: depression, self-esteem, unstable childhoods and growing up in a similar manner (learning what they lived). Of course, not all of the people suffering in squalor fell into these categories. Some had seemingly no obvious reason to cause them to live this way. Many managed to get their homes clean, maintain it for a while and then fall back into some level of squalor. Others got their environment clean and continued on the message board to help others with ways to get their home clean and keep it clean.

It's important to understand that squalor is not about "just cleaning it up". It's an indication that something else has either happened, or is happening that needs attention and therapy. It could've been a single incident and it could be an ongoing condition--mental or physical. It may simply mean that you know no other way and need help to learn new ways of doing things. There are a lot of possible problems that could cause squalor. The key is to know that it is a problem that requires attention from a professional. Even at level 1 squalor there is great risk of quickly getting to level 2 or higher if the underlying problem is not resolved.