Hoarding and pest control

Part of a clutter rating chart in the
Compulsive Hoarding and Acquiring
Workbook.

Most of us know that one of the biggest obstacles to IPM is a cluttered account.  Clutter interferes with inspecting for pests.  It interferes with access to places needing treatment.  And it provides pests with abundant harborage.  When it comes to IPM and pest control, clutter is everyone's problem.  But what happens when clutter takes over in a home or apartment? You could be dealing with hoarding. 

Allison Taisey is a project coordinator with the Northeast IPM Center in New York.  She recently wrote about the hoarding problem on her new blog, IPM in Multifamily Housing.  Allison has been working with multifamily housing for several years and assisted with a multifamily housing training that I wrote about last year.  In her work she has encountered hoarding multiple times and has explored the connection between hoarding and IPM more than anyone I know.

Hoarding, she writes, is a complex disorder that involves problems with disorganization, collecting too many items, and developing an emotional attachment with those items that is hard to break. Hoarders cannot just "clean things up", at least not without help.  Many people have been made aware of the hoarding issue through the A&E television program "Hoarders".

I encourage you to learn more about this difficult issue by visiting both Allison's and the A&E site.  It's possible you may gain some insight into how to deal with the chronically cluttered apartments and homes you service. Any of you involved in servicing multifamily housing would likely benefit from subscribing to Allison's blog.  And Allison, welcome to the world of pest control blogging!