Back in early July, I received a message on LinkedIn from Graham Ainsley, a social worker from Greenwich Council, asking me if I’d written anything about language used about hoarding/clutter. I said I hadn’t, but that they were both words that make me go hmmm… Our LinkedIn chat led to a Teams call, then a chat in person at the council offices a couple of weeks later, and then to me presenting at a conference there last week.

As it turns out, it’s not just the word ‘hoarding’ that makes me go hmmm… but much of the associated language.

Here are (some of) the thoughts I shared.

The hoard

Words create images in our minds and in our media.

We see it with the dominant media images associated with the word ‘migrants’ (crowded boats), ‘expats’ (laptops by the sea… I’ll leave you to reflect on the difference between a ‘migrant’ and an ‘expat’ – that’s a whole other blog post!) and ‘social care’ (wrinkly hands).

The images associated with ‘hoarding’ are of stuff. 

Piles and piles of stuff.

And never any people – other than maybe the odd arm in a rubber glove or figure in a biohazard suit.

A picture tells a thousand words.

This is a story about stuff.

Not people.

The dictionary definition of ‘hoard’ (as a noun) is “a store of things that you have saved and that are valuable or important to you”. [1]

When we look at the language in the ‘hoarding’ literature, there’s a fascinating continuum of synonyms for the noun ‘hoard’. There are the terms that imply “valuable and important”, such as “collection”, “possessions”, “treasure”, “belongings” and, well, “valuables”. Then there are the terms that imply the opposite. “Clutter”. “Mess”. “Rubbish”. “Trash”. “Junk”. “Waste”.

“Things that are not needed”.

“Things that have little or no value”.

“Offending items.”

All these terms carry assumptions and judgements about value and importance.

And some, like “things that most of us would throw away” and “ordinary things that other people would get rid of” subtly suggest you’re different – not like other people, not like the rest of us – also exposing assumptions and judgements about your value and importance.

What do we call them?

Because you’re not like the rest of us, we need a way to describe you.

To describe them.

What do we call them?

And what a wealth of choices we’re faced with. “Hoarders”? “Hoarding cases”? “People who hoard”? “People who compulsively hoard”? “People with hoarding tendencies”? “People with a hoarding disorder”? “Those who suffer from hoarding disorder”? “Adults who display hoarding and self-neglecting behaviours”? “Individuals who demonstrate hoarding behaviours”? “Those who display hoarding behaviours”? “Those with hoarding behaviours”? “Individuals who struggle with hoarding behaviours”? “Individuals with hoarding problems”? Those with hoarding problems”? “People with lived experience of hoarding”? “People with lived experience of hoarding behaviour”? “People with lived experience of hoarding challenges”? “People with lived experience of hoarding difficulties”? “People with lived experience of hoarding disorder”? “The chronically disorganised”? “Sufferers”? “Particularly challenging and complex cases”? “PwHB?”

Argh.

We do love a label, don’t we? Once you have a label, we know the right box to tick. The right team to refer you to. The right pathway. The right service.

We know who you are.

You’re one of them.

And we know all about them.

We use labels to identify you, while simultaneously eroding your identity and extinguishing our curiosity.

We talk of being person-centred, yet we centre on the stuff and miss the person.

Who you are, were, want to be.

What you can do, could do, want to do next.

What’s happened to you.

What matters to you.

What you care about enough to act on.

We see ‘the hoard’.

We see ‘them’.

We don’t see you.

“I never felt like a person with social services. I felt like someone who hoards.”

– PB [3]

The response to the ‘what do we call them’ question is sometimes to “ask them what they want to be called”.

If you asked me what I want to be called, I’d say Bryony.

We already have pretty nifty identifiers. Our names.

And there is, as Elly Chapple reminds us, one label we all share.

Human. [4]

Let’s start there.

The behaviour

I haven’t tackled the ‘b-word’ in a blog post yet but, guess what, it’s another word that makes me go hmmm…

The dictionary definition of ‘hoard’ (as a verb) is “to gather or accumulate”. [5]

When we look at the language in the ‘hoarding’ literature, again there’s a fascinating continuum of synonyms for ‘hoard’ as a verb. The action. The doing. Again, there are terms that imply “valuable and important”, like “collecting” and “saving”. And there are loaded terms that drip with judgement and blame. “Excessive acquisition”. “Excessive accumulation”. “Unhealthy accumulation”. “Disorganised living”. “Chronic disorganisation”. “Failure to discard.”

Further stigmatising phrases like “lazy”, “indecisive” and “poor insight” appear. And the dismissive suggestion of “lifestyle choice” – a term also applied to poverty, obesity, addiction and homelessness. Lifestyle choice, or political choice? Personal failure, or systemic failure?

Much of the literature is keen however to emphasise that “hoarding is NOT a lifestyle choice”, but “a recognised mental health condition”.

A “mental health issue”.

A “mental health problem”.

“Hoarding disorder”.

“It’s now recognised as a mental illness … I think the hardest thing is being labelled. I don’t wanna be labelled [pause] I think there’s a great stigma attached to that”.

– VI [6]

I haven’t tackled the word ‘disorder’ in depth in a dedicated blog post either yet, but I have written a number of times that the word (along with other ‘d-words’ like deficit, difficulties and divergent) implies deviance from what, or who, is ordinary. Typical. ‘Normal’.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘disorder’ as “a state of untidiness or lack of organisation”, with synonyms including chaos and disarray.

Ironically fitting.

A disorder of disorder.

Argh.

Many websites quote the same definition:

“A hoarding disorder is where someone acquires an excessive number of items and stores them in a chaotic manner, usually resulting in unmanageable amounts of clutter.”

Excessive.

Chaotic.

Unmanageable.

Clutter.

“Hoarding disorder can be diagnosed when there is no other illness to account for the problem.”

I’m fascinated by the number of organisations that note the stigma around ‘hoarding’, while using language that perpetuates the stigma!

The flip side of the ‘you have a problem’ diagnosis is the recognition of ‘hoarding’ as “a coping method”. “A survival mechanism”. The consequence of bereavement loss sadness grief anxiety fear distress abuse abandonment neglect.

“A trauma response”.

What’s happened to you, not what’s the matter with you?

“I never really felt they got much beyond the “you’ve got a problem”, sort of thing, to find out actually what it was and how they could help”.

– PB [7]

The protocol

So how could they (we) help?

In writing this blog post, I looked at 20 different local authority guidance documents about ‘hoarding’. Protocols frameworks policies procedures that “outline how the council will assess and manage hoarding cases”.

These documents contain numerous references to multi-agency forums and multi-agency approaches. Vulnerable Person Panels (VPPs) and Complex Persons Panels (CPPs). Clutter scale ratings and risk assessments. Action plans and timescales. Intervention and monitoring.

They list “things to look for” when “assessing a hoarding case”, including whether rooms “are not used or unusable for the purposes to which they have been designed, because of an excess of clutter?”

And several acknowledge the issues and challenges “hoarding cases” create for workers and organisations.

“Hoarding has been identified as a growing problem that has potentially serious and costly implications for housing providers.”

“Working with people who hoard can be very time consuming and stressful for staff.”

“Dealing with such cases is complicated and time-consuming.”

Not only do you have a problem, you also are a problem.

None of the protocols frameworks policies procedures I looked at mentioned understanding what matters most to people, or what’s happened to people. There were mentions of people understanding “risk” and “the impact and consequences of their behaviour”, but no mention of understanding people. None mentioned kindness or compassion, and while there were references to belongings, none talked about the importance of ‘belonging’. Only one referred to listening, and one to being curious.

Alongside ambitions to create “multi-agency pathways” (you know how much I love a pathway!), these documents aim to guide practice to “create a safer and healthier environment for the individual” and “develop creative ways of engaging individuals in the process.”

‘Safe’ and ‘healthy’ are both tricky old terms, aren’t they? Deceptive. Subjective. In determining eligibility for care and support, local councils are required to “consider whether the condition of the adult’s home is sufficiently clean and maintained to be safe” – “a habitable home environment.” But the Care Act 2014 statutory guidance is also clear that “professionals should work with the adult to establish what being safe means to them and how that can be best achieved.” [8]

Recent research illustrates “the complex, and often seemingly contradictory, nature of hoarding: participants appeared to view their items as problematic, but also protective.” [9] One participant in the research talked about “their possessions” as “a fortress”, “like a sort of security net” while another said they “felt trapped by the stuff”. [10]

Regardless of how we interpret the term, “too often we focus on ‘safety’ as a destination, not as a “basic foundation” – an essential element of people’s wellbeing but one that matters little without other elements. As Lord Justice Munby famously observed, “what good is it making someone safer if it merely makes them miserable?”” [11]

Open Future Learning posted recently that “safety is essential. But if safety becomes the destination instead of the foundation, we’ve missed the point entirely. People with intellectual disabilities deserve lives that are not simply protected they deserve lives that are joyful, ordinary, messy, meaningful, and unmistakably their own.” [12]

We all deserve lives that are joyful, ordinary, messy, meaningful, and unmistakably our own.

Gloriously Ordinary Lives.

But how can we know what a good life looks like if we haven’t asked?

And while I’m all for creativity, the ambition to “develop creative ways of engaging individuals in the process” reveals an agenda, which is essentially to get you to do what we say. To engage in our process. To follow our pathway.

To help us achieve our outcomes.

And we blame you if you don’t. You “struggle to engage in treatment” and “have poor treatment compliance”.

“Refusal by hoarders to engage with professionals or other intervention poses a challenge to progress.”

As I’ve written previously, ‘engagement’ is something we do to people, at a fixed time, for a fixed purpose. There’s no sense of an evolving, organic, long-term relationship, where trust is built and where genuine, human connections are made. [13]

There’s no sense of us engaging with people. Being present. Listening. Understanding.

Being curious.

Being human.

These documents are about doing, not being.

Process, not people.

“Again look at the question: ‘how do we get people to engage?’ With respect you don’t get ppl to engage. You listen to what they care about enough to act on, and then support them to work with others to do what they care deeply about. It’s not about getting ppl to do what we want.”

– Cormac Russell [14]

The solution

In social care serviceland, there are some basic equations. People = problems. Carer breakdown = respite. Hoarding = deep clean.

There are multiple terms used to describe this solution.

“Deep cleans”. “Blitz cleans.” “Crash cleans”. “Decluttering”. “Getting rid of items”. “Throwing away”. “Removal”. “Discarding”. “Clearance”. “Disposal of the hoard”. “Decontamination”.

I don’t know about you, but lots of those sound quite threatening to me?

These solutions are invariably sold as “dealing with your issues”, “dealing with your problems”, “dealing with your clutter”, “reducing hoarding behaviours”.

“My experience of it is almost like being bullied into it … that approach doesn’t work well with me. What works better is a kindness approach. A gentler approach. A more human approach … I haven’t found that really.”

The research I quoted earlier found that participants “noted that interventions focused on clearance seemed pointless if they were still collecting” and described how “hoarding interventions offered often focused on clearing items, rather than on understanding their difficulties.”

“Decluttering” and “deep cleans” rather than understanding you and your life.

Delivering a service rather than developing a relationship.

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So, the language of hoarding makes me go hmmm… because it reveals the way we put classification before connection.

Services before relationships.

Doing before being.

Process before people.

When we start with the stuff, we see hoarders (them). We see mess. A problem to be fixed. And problems require procedures, and solutions. Services. A ‘deep clean’. “Dealing with your clutter”.

But if we flip the narrative, we start with people, not stuff.

Us, not them.

We see what is probably (no assumptions) a response rather than a mess (no judgement). We focus on what’s happened and what matters rather that what’s the matter. Instead of starting with a protocol, we start by listening, and our primary aim is understanding and supporting you, rather than decluttering “your environment”.

We might call this being ‘strengths-based’ or ‘person-centred’ or ‘trauma-informed’ or ‘relational’.

I prefer to call it being curious and being human.

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References

[1] Hoard, Collins Dictionary

[2][3] ‘A more human approach … I haven’t found that really’: experiences of hoarding difficulties and seeking help, Megan McGrath, Amy M. Russell and Ciara Masterson, Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, Volume 52, Issue 1, 11 September 2023

[4] Elly Chapple Founder #FlipTheNarrative, Elly Chappell, Twitter, 2024

[5] Hoard, Collins Dictionary

[6][7] ‘A more human approach … I haven’t found that really’: experiences of hoarding difficulties and seeking help, Megan McGrath, Amy M. Russell and Ciara Masterson, Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, Volume 52, Issue 1, 11 September 2023

[8] Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, GOV.UK, Updated 22 July 2025

[9] Help for hoarding?, Megan McGrath, Amy Russell and Ciara Masterson, Cambridge Core blog, 22 November 2023

[10] ‘A more human approach … I haven’t found that really’: experiences of hoarding difficulties and seeking help, Megan McGrath, Amy M. Russell and Ciara Masterson, Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, Volume 52, Issue 1, 11 September 2023

[11] Words that make me go hmmm… safe, Bryony Shannon, Rewriting social care, 9 March 2024

[12] What if intellectual disability services measured success by how often people made a new friend, Open Future Learning, LinkedIn, August 2026

[13] Co-production: words that make me go hmmm…, Bryony Shannon, Rewriting social care, 1 July 2023

[14] Again look at the question…, Cormac Russell, Twitter, 16 April 2022