Jeffrey Avery & Associates specialists for house clearance in London talk about compulsive hoarding……..
Hoarders can often end up collecting items that many of us would find very strange. One of the common compulsions is to hoard items which look no more than junk to other people but are very special to the hoarder.
However, sometimes this can be taken to even more extreme measures, as a recent case in Florida highlighted.
It was recently revealed that a female hoarder had been storing the body of her mother in a storage unit in Clearwater, near to Tampa in Florida, for as long as 17 years.
The mother, named as Ann Bunch, was 95 when she died in 1994. The plan was for her to be buried in Alabama, but the funeral never occurred because her daughter, Bobbie Barnett Hancock, could not afford to transfer the body.
Ms Hancock stored the body away, and it was only discovered when she could no longer afford to pay for the storage unit and the items inside were going to be sold at auction.
It is not likely that she will face charges, and her ex-husband confirmed that she had a severe hoarding habit which probably played a role in her actions. Indeed, her home had been declared as unfit for habitation in 2010 due to the amount of items she had stored away inside.
Now the body has been taken to a chapel and it is thought that the preparations are being made for it to be cremated or buried.
For confidential advice call Jeffrey Avery on 0800 567 7769