Practical or Emotional help or both

Both my parents are hoarders and I myself can sometimes feel myself slipping into the habit.

I would say emotional support is what is needed. Practical support just does not work, or at least it hasn't in my experience. When I start to hoard it is because I have formed an emotion attachment with the things I'm keeping. I know they are taking up space, making the place look untidy and creating an obstacle course. I know I'll never use them and they are better of gone. Yet I can't bring myself to get rid of yhem because of that emotional bond. Sometimes it can feel like losing a friend.

Both :)

Reason being people get emotionally attached to things where as people need to realize it's not the things that matter but the people!

We have started valuing things more than we value people. If only we have this kind of attachment with people things would be so different :)

One should also understand that all those unused things sitting might be of great value and importance to a needy person so might as well give them away- either they belong to us or to somebody we love greatly.

Speaking for myself, I tend to giveaway the things I haven't used in 8 to 9 months no matter how dear to me. That also helps me greatly to "move on" from alot of things- good and bad and also create space.

My mother has been an extreme hoarder since I was probably, 10 years old. Now I'm 30 and I recently helped her move into an assisted living complex .. I found boxes w/things still wrapped in newspapers from 1990! We moved twice before, so that means she's had boxes of things she never unpacked! After I moved on my own, things got worse. She started ordering things off the internet that she never opened or put together. She basically made room from the front door to the kitchen and leading to her bathroom and bedroom. The rest of the house was full of junk. It was a mess to move! I think a lot of it is emotional. She grew up w/money, her first husband had money, and by 1980, everything fell apart. She met my dad, but he was just a farmer, and then she had me in 1985 .. money became tight. Then my parents divorced in 1990 so she had to manage on her own. And that is why I have a lot of problems .. she drilled in my head since I could count to 10 and read the alphabet, "don't rely on a man and you must always depend on yourself" .. which is contradictory b/c she became a hoarder after everyone she depended on left her except her children .. So it is all a mental issue w/hoarders.

Emotional help first, then possibly practical things...
My parents are hoarders. Seeing this up-close is heartbreaking, there is an emotional context that isn't really publicized about hoarding, it's a mental disorder. There are lots of ways hoarding happens, but I think one of them is isolation and need for love, or inability to see love and thus turning to objects as a way to comfort themselves and feel important, My parents are wonderful people, but they have no tools to be functioning in society due to paranoia, severe guilt, severe depression, anxiety along with a laundry list of assuming the worst perfectionism/ narcisssim and xenophobia, If I'm as honest as I can be about it. Getting out of the house, feeling better about themselves as people would be my first base, building social skills, or confronting broken ways of thinking about society, themselves, and others would be my first thought. There's got to be a cushion for the inevitable fall when they let go of the objects, (if they do), so they can re-build their lives better than before