apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Just when you thought it was safe to go home again.... Making all messy apartments look good and hailing a new term (for us): compulsive-hoarding syndrome, or disposophobia, Kathleen Fifield's article, The Closet Case, in this month's Elle is a scary, must read. The story of Ron Alford, the founder of Disaster Matters, a "crisis management" company, and the growing number of (mostly) women that he has had to dig out from terminally chaotic and clutter filled apartments. For example:

Julie told me she couldn't remember when the room had gotten so bad that she'd had to close the door and bar everyone - from her boyfriend to the cleaning woman - from ever stepping foot inside. For the past few years, she hasn't even gone in; she sleeps on the couch.

Within the room is a proliferation of mold. When we peek inside, its splattered like black paint along the walls and ceiling.

Yuck! And it gets worse. Ron Alford tells horror stories and calls this room "chump change." Along the way, Fifield examines the roots of disposphobia and even links it to anorexia, mapping out statistics that say disposphobics are 75% women and the tendency often starts during one's 20's and gets worse with age. If all of this is true, then consider this article a hallmark, parallel to the rise in obesity consciousness within the past five years. Hoarding is the obesity of our homes, and it is out of control. MGR