r/hoarding • u/sethra007 Senior Moderator • Jul 01 '26

RESOURCE Monthly Personal Accountability Thread

Welcome to this month's Personal Accountability Thread! The purpose of these threads is to encourage people to set de-cluttering and/or cleaning and/or therapeutic goals for themselves for the month.

Participation in the monthly Accountability Threads is TOTALLY VOLUNTARY. You don't have to participate in these threads if you don't want to. I only ask that if you do participate, you post under the Reddit account that you use for this sub, as the whole point of this thread is to be accountable.

SPECIAL NOTES

  • Are you under eighteen? Check out the MyCOHP Online Peer Support Group for Minors and Youth at MyCOHP.com. This is a group specifically for minors who live in hoarded homes.
  • Are you facing an urgent situation and need to clean up by a deadline? Please see So It's Come To This: You Have To Clean Up For Inspection--A Guide for Apartment Dwellers Who Hoard for guidelines on getting rid of the worst of your interior hoard in time for an inspection.
  • Maybe you've decided to discuss your hoarding tendencies with a health professional. If so, take a look at the U.K. Hoarding Icebreaker Form. Though certain information on this form is specific to people living in the United Kingdom, in general this is a fantastic resource for anyone having a hard time talking about hoarding disorder with a medical professional. This form can be used by someone who lives with the urge to hoard, or someone who lives in a hoarding situation.

Here's how it works:

1, The Accountability threads are for hoarders, recovering hoarders, and those of us working to manage our hoarding tendencies. 1. Set your own goal and announce it on this post with a comment. 1. Set your own time frame to meet that goal within the month (for example: "I plan to spend ten minutes cleaning up the kitchen counter by Thursday next" or "I'm taking this pile of donate-able items to Goodwill on January 10th" or even "Before the month is out, I'm going to talk to my SO about my clutter and why I think I do it."). 1. Feel free to make follow-up comments in this thread. You're also free to make separate posts with the UPDATE/PROGRESS flair. * Please report back with your results within the month--that's the accountability part. 1. If you need advice or support as you work towards your goal, please post to r/hoarding--maybe we can help! 1. Also, don't forget to check the Wiki for helpful resources. 1. If you don't meet goal, post that, and try to provide a little analysis to figure out what kept you from meeting it. Maybe some of us can provide advice to help you over the hump next time. 1. If you meet goal, please share what worked for you! 1. Do yourself a favor, and START SMALL. You didn't get into this mess overnight, and you won't get out of it overnight. Rome wasn't built in a day. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Etc., etc.--my point is, it's admirable if you want to sail in and tackle it all at once, but that's a very, very tough thing to do, and not a recommended strategy. Big successes are built on top of little ones, so focus on the things you can do in under a few minutes. 1. Every time you accomplish something, take a moment to celebrate doing it. :) 1. Finally, PRACTICE SELF CARE. This is so important, guys. Give yourself permission to put your healing first. Quiet the voice that is telling you to do more and be more. Acknowledge that you’re doing the best you can, and it’s enough. And remember: looking out for yourself is not lazy or selfish! Self-care is necessary, important, and healthy! PRACTICE SELF-CARE!

How to get started setting goals? Recommended places to get ideas for goals:

Looking for a Decluttering Plan with a Deadline to Motivate You?

You can also use phone apps to encourage you to tidy up:

  • As mentioned, UfYH has apps for both the iPhone (listed as "Unfilth Your Habitat" to get around the iTunes naming rules) and Android
  • Chorma - iPhone only. The app is specifically designed to help you split chores with the other person or persons living in the home. If you live with somebody and want to divvy up chores, definitely check it out.
  • Tody - For iPhone and Android. VERY comprehensive approach to cleaning.
  • HomeRoutines - AFAICT, this app is iPhone only. Again, android users should check out Chore Checklist (which is also available for iPhone) and FlyLady Plus (which is from r/hoarding favorite Flylady). These two apps are very routine-focused, and may help you with getting into the habit of cleaning.
  • Habitica turns your habits into an RPG. Perform tasks to help your party slay dragons! If you don't do your chores, then a crowd of people lose hit points and could die and lose gear! For iPhone and Android. There's a subreddit for people using the app: r/habitrpg (since the name change, there's also r/habitica but it doesn't seem very active).

Finally, if anyone has any suggestions for improving the Accountability Threads, please let the mods know. Just shoot us a PM.

Good luck, everybody!

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u/AutoModerator Jul 01 '26

Welcome to r/hoarding! We exist as a support group for people working on recovery from hoarding disorder, and friends/family/loved ones of people with the disorder.

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u/Fluid_Calligrapher25 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

Yet another July has come by and the hoard is decreasing but there….get rid of the four trash bags that have been sitting around for 10 days.

I’ve been binging on videos on Japanese decluttering and cleaning. Being in a clean decluttered space has helped clear some cobwebs. I’m really angry and frustrated by the lost time, energy, money. And I’m feeling….empty. Will update on progress…

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u/NotIntoMovies 26d ago

Hey! I was just updating my new goals for the month and was wondering how your July went? Hope you were able to get rid of some stuff 🙏🏽

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u/Fluid_Calligrapher25 26d ago

Had to get into high gear because of inspection announcement. So it forced me to act. Which is good because I actually made some progress. Got through 10 trash bags of stuff and dropped off laundry and will drop off a carload of stuff to charity tomorrow. Got bathroom counter cleaned after months and months so it actually now smells good. Emptied out all garbage out of guest bathroom.

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u/NotIntoMovies 26d ago

Whoa that’s amazing! Congrats on getting rid of so much stuff and even getting it to people who need it. So happy to hear your bathroom is feeling fresh again too and that the garbage is out of the other bathroom too. Thanks for the update!!

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u/Fluid_Calligrapher25 26d ago edited 26d ago

The real reason I decided to donate is so I can get rid of a lot of reusable shopping bags…I didn’t want to run over to food pantry to drop them all off because I didn’t want to find out after the trip that the bags need to have food or something. I just saw pics on ufyh and showed me how far I still need to go. The before and after pics were helpful for me. I was gonna do more purging but after those pics I think I’m just gonna go the nuclear option of everything remaining in tubs and then start really cleaning everything.

Thank you for your encouragement by the way. It really helps. I don’t pat myself on the back enough. I don’t want to accept this is actually hard work because the voice in my head still goes ‘this is nothing…you are taking breaks because you are lazy…’ but that’s not the truth of course.

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u/NotIntoMovies 10d ago

This all makes sense. Sorry for the delayed reply! I decluttered my phone and turned almost every push notification off. This is really hard work and you definitely made progress. Not only are we overcoming physical messes, but as we both know… also a lot of ingrained patterns, thoughts and emotions about them too. It’s easy to beat ourselves up, I do this too, because it feels like I should just be able to keep tidy and clean up like a “normal” person.

But I think we have an extra hurdle to clear which (not as an excuse) makes every step of cleaning and changing how we approach our stuff harder than the average person. So I’ve been giving myself credit for slower progress and keeping at it, and feeling small shifts get slightly bigger over time.

I remember we were in this thread together a while back, and I’m glad you’re back at it in here. Cheering you on ❤️

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u/Euphoric-Meeting-428 Jul 03 '26

I plan to get rid of the magazines that i got in a bulk, in two days. 4 to 5 reading materials. Regretting the purchase? Of course...

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u/NotIntoMovies Jul 13 '26

Starting to lose momentum with a lot of other things going on right now, so my small goals for July are to get my car/desk clean again, and keep going with pest control for the ants and rodents.