Cleaning out a hoarder house can be very challenging no matter who you are. It’s challenging if you’ve bought a hoarder house and need to clean it out to make it habitable again. It’s challenging if you’re a hoarder who’s decided to make a new start in life and bring order to the mayhem. Whatever your mission, a hoarder house isn’t something you can clean out on your own. You’re going to need help if you’re going to make the space fresh, clean, and habitable again. 

Hoarder house cleaning is important because it goes far beyond simply making the house look nice again. It needs to be about making the space safe to live in again. One of the many reasons that hoarder houses are uninhabitable is because they’re filled with biohazardous waste that could cause serious health issues. 

What Is a Hoarder?

When someone is called a “hoarder”, it means that they’re a person who has difficulty parting with their possessions. The condition is a serious mental and psychological disorder that affects over 3.5 million people and is notoriously difficult to treat. Since they can’t get rid of anything, hoarders slowly create a buildup of trash, garbage, and junk on the inside and frequently the outside of their properties. After a while, the house becomes uninhabitable as the home descends into total squalor. Worse still, the chaos of a hoarder’s home can frequently extend to neighbors’ spaces whether the hoarder lives in a private home or in a multifamily home.

Why Is Hiring a Professional Hoarder House Cleaning Service Important?

Hoarder house cleaning companies know the challenges involved in hoarder house cleaning and how to deal with them. In addition to being very unsightly, hoarder houses are actually dangerous to live in. Not only are they fire hazards due to the sheer amount of clutter in the homes, but they’re also filled with dangerous biohazardous waste. 

Biohazardous waste is waste that’s filled with pathogens, the microorganisms that cause diseases in humans. It’s found in material like blood, human waste, bodily fluids, rotting garbage and other items that are commonly found throughout hoarder houses. A brief exposure to a tiny bit of biohazardous waste can cause illness and disease, so the sheer volume of biohazardous waste in a hoarder house presents an urgent health issue that needs to be resolved immediately.

Professional hoarder house cleaning companies like ours safely remove all biohazardous waste from the home. Biohazardous waste must be disposed of properly to help protect the community at large. In California, the collection of biohazardous waste Is strictly regulated, and it must be followed to ensure public health and safety. If a hoarder house is not clean properly, the spread of disease is very likely. 

What Are the Basic Steps Involved in Hoarder House Cleaning?

Every hoarder house is different, so each house will have its own specific plan regarding cleanup. The basic steps for cleaning hoarder houses, however, are pretty much the same. 

Assessment

Initially, we’ll go in and assess the situation. We’ll take an overview of what needs to be done in that home. We’ll be able to see which rooms require the most intensive work, and we’ll be able to see what kind of waste is located in each room. Once this step happens, we’ll be able to establish a workflow.This snapshot will give us an idea of the scope of the cleanup that we’ll have to do.Once we figure out exactly what needs to be done, we can lay out a plan of attack. 

Proper Gear 

Protective clothing is very important when it comes to clearing out hoarder houses as the risk of contamination from biohazardous waste is very real. Our protective gear will include items like respirators, disposable gloves, googles, and disposable shoe covers. Additional protective gear may be required for sites that have excessive levels of biohazardous waste. 

Proper Supplies

We’ll also make sure that we have all of the OSHA-approved cleaning solutions, disinfectants, and deodorizers needed to properly clean and disinfect the space. These solutions meet the requirements of OSHA’s Blood Pathogens Standard. This standard protects workers who will be exposed to any sort of bodily fluids or blood, a huge possibility in hoarder houses. 

Remove Trash

We’ll clear the house of all trash, collecting and packing up biohazardous waste into the appropriate bins. 

Clean

We’ll wash down and disinfect the house using our cleaners and disinfectants. We’ll attack smells with deodorizers or special machines like ozone generators. 

As you can see, the hoarder house cleaning process can be very intense, and it must be handled properly to ensure that the final result doesn’t simply look clean but is free from all contaminants. 

Give us a call if you want to get started cleaning out a hoarder house in Hidden Hills or if you simply want to talk.