The question I am trying to understand; How can people function like that? The smell alone would be enough to make one gag.
Apparently it's a mental illness. My grandmother was a bit of a hoarder but not quite to the degree of the pictures I'm posting. I think some of it might have to do with her being born towards the end of the Depression, probably didn't have much growing up so she didn't wanna throw anything away ever. The spare bedrooms in her house ended up just being "storage" rooms. That's fine if it's organized, but it wasn't. I remember multiple times as a child, my mother and aunt taking my grandmother out for a day or two while my grandfather and my cousins and I tore those rooms apart to get them at least somewhat clean. If she had known what we planned she would've wanted to supervise, and if she had supervised we wouldn't have been able to get rid of much. It would last for a little while before the the rooms gradually descended back into chaos again. Towards the end they had like three or four rooms full of junk, plus the attic, plus two sheds, plus the yard. It was just cluttered with tons of random shit. Most of the common areas were fine-ish, kitchen, dining room, and bath were all adequately clean, there wasn't rotting food or animal feces or anything lying about, but still. I really don't know how they let it get to that point.