She cleans her dad’s hoarded condo after June stroke

Madison Lovelle, 40, has been posting videos while cleaning out her late father’s Oklahoma condo after he died following a June 2024 stroke. Wearing a hazmat suit and blue gloves, she says the task is equal parts grief and thousands of “tiny decisions,” and sh

When Madison Lovelle stepped into her late father’s Oklahoma condo, she didn’t just grab trash bags and start clearing space. She wore a hazmat suit and blue gloves, opened doors and windows for fresh air, and went room by room—starting with one corner of what had become a hoarded bedroom.

In a timelapse video shared online. Lovelle walked her more than 860. 000 Instagram followers through the day’s tasks. throwing away countless envelopes. plastic bags. and wire hangers. Her narration captured both the scale of it and the surreal friction of living with accumulated objects. She described seeing “piles on top of piles on top of what I’m pretty sure is a chair. or maybe a basket. ” and she said she was surprised to find a box of her parents’ engagement photos.

Those photos carried a story she didn’t grow up hearing often. Lovelle’s parents divorced when she was 2 years old.

“For the third morning, no one showed up” may be a kind of horror that belongs to disasters and delays. What Lovelle described instead was quieter. steadier. and still heavy: “Cleaning out a hoarded room is basically like making 10. 000 tiny decisions. while also processing grief. and occasionally arguing with a broken lamp. Because why is it hard to throw away a broken lamp?” she said in the video.

Her videos have drawn tens of thousands of comments, many from family members of people with hoarding disorder. Lovelle said she knows her father had been collecting things since her parents’ divorce. and she told reporters that as a kid she wasn’t allowed to get rid of anything—including dresses from when she was an infant. She said that experience pushed her to leave early. staying with friends during her high school years to avoid the clutter and the shame she felt at home. Later, she said she tried to get him help, but he was resistant.

Her father died in June 2024 after a stroke left him in need of constant care. Lovelle said she and her father were close, but the stroke changed how much she could see his home. She said the stroke was the first time she’d seen the home in 17 years.

She described the moment like it’s still in her throat. “He was upstairs, and he could not get downstairs,” Lovelle said. She said he begged her not to call emergency responders because he didn’t want strangers in his home. adding. “And honestly. I don’t know that they would have been able to get through there.”.

For Lovelle. cleaning out the condo has become not only a physical project but also a reckoning with what it meant to worry for years. “You worry your whole life that your dad is in there. He was living like that, and it killed me,” she said, through tears. “And all I wanted him to do was be safe and be OK.”.

After he passed, she said she missed him terribly. But she also described relief—relief that he wasn’t trapped in a body that “couldn’t keep up,” relief that he wasn’t in pain, relief that he wasn’t still living in the condo.

The hardest part isn’t only the debris. It’s the decision-making while grief is still active. Lovelle said she’s about 75% done with the physical clean out and. once that’s finished. she’ll pivot to remediation. She considered hiring cleaners but ultimately decided she needed to do the work herself. She described it as healing and as the “last act of love” she can do for her dad.

She’s also been overwhelmed by strangers’ kindness—thousands of people who reached out after she started posting videos.

“On the really hard days. when I don’t want to show up anymore. I have to because I have to make a video. Everybody’s waiting for an update,” Lovelle said. “What I’ve realized that’s been the most surprising is how many people actually have experienced this. It’s so much more common than you realize.”.

The story of one condo also connects to a wider issue that many families don’t talk about openly. It’s estimated that 2-6% of the population suffers from hoarding disorder, according to the International OCD Foundation. Symptoms are most common in adults 55 and older, and studies have found that severity increases with age.

The stigma around hoarding can deepen the emotional cost. While grieving, caregivers left behind can face the emotional, time-consuming job of cleaning out a loved one’s home—sometimes expensive, sometimes dangerous—while also dealing with guilt and shame.

“Hoarding disorder is more common than people think. ” said Anne Pagano. a clinical social worker and founder and executive director of the Hoarding Disorder Resource and Training Group in Westchester. New York. Pagano said people with hoarding disorder are often “very astute at keeping people from actually coming in” to their homes. which can hide health and fire hazards and keep loved ones from understanding the conditions of the living space for years.

Pagano said hoarding disorder is a mental health condition classified under obsessive-compulsive and related disorders. according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. She said it affects executive functioning and organizational abilities. and it often results in excessive acquisition of items and extreme distress at the thought of discarding anything.

She also referenced “clutter blindness,” a concept she said means some people with hoarding disorder “truly do not see what others see.” “It’s not laziness. It’s not being a slob. It is a psychiatric issue,” Pagano said.

Mary Dozier. an associate professor of psychology at Mississippi State University who studies hoarding. said hoarding disorder can start in childhood or be triggered by a traumatic event. She also pointed to genetic and generational components. saying. “Our parents teach us what to value. what to not value.” In her view. inherited hoarded homes can overwhelm caregivers so completely that “they. too. can never dig out of their familial hoard.”.

Even as Lovelle found engagement photos and kept moving through the piles. the emotional logic of the disorder kept showing up. She said she and her father only fought once—when she was in college. The fight was about the state of his condo. and Lovelle said he told her he’d call the police if she removed things without his permission.

“You can’t make sense out of it, but there was this connection to the stuff,” she said. She described how her father genuinely worried about items going in the trash and said it caused him a lot of anxiety.

Her cleaning also uncovered family history she hadn’t known she was inheriting. While cleaning out the home. Lovelle said she found boxes of property tax records belonging to her great-grandmother. who she never met. She said she deduced her grandfather must have kept those papers and given them to her father.

Lovelle described the moment she decided she didn’t want to replicate that pattern. “It was when I opened that metal box and saw my great-grandmother’s property taxes from 1959 that I was like. ‘You know. I do not want to do this to my son. ’” she said. “I think it’s OK that we start getting rid of a lot of this stuff.”.

Pagano said she works with families who need help cleaning out hoarded homes after their owners die. She said sometimes families don’t want to see the home at all and hire companies to purge everything. Other families wait years after a loved one has passed before entering a hoarded home. she said. citing overwhelm and trauma in addition to other emotions like grief. shame. and anger.

In those cases, Pagano said she tries to help families take the best steps forward, including talking to real estate agents, hiring cleaners, and uncovering a few items with familial or historical value to those still living.

Lovelle worked with a mental health counselor to confront the mess and the grief, anxiety, and emotions wrapped up in the house. She said the first time she went back, she couldn’t stop crying. She said she didn’t feel anger or resentment—only relief.

It’s not a quick fix, either. Pagano said families can make things worse if they respond to hoarding with removal without communication. She said the worst thing a caregiver can do to “help” a loved one is clean their home for them.

Pagano said she’s seen adult children wait until their parents are away, or book them a trip, then go in with dumpsters without asking to get rid of the items. She said that isn’t the way to go.

Instead, Pagano and Dozier suggested gentle, boundary-setting conversations that might encourage someone to address hoarding habits. Pagano offered an example of how to frame it: “Saying, ‘You know, I’d love to visit you. I’d love to have your granddaughter come over, but I’m uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s safe for her here, she can trip on things,’” she said.

Dozier said caregivers should ask about the person’s goals, especially as aging and retirement approach. She said they should consider whether the person wants to age in place or move to a retirement community—both options likely involving downsizing and decluttering. If the person wants to cook more, Dozier said, they’ll need clean countertops.

She also said caregivers should ask about sleeping, showering, and eating habits to understand whether hoarding has gotten in the way of using the bed, bathroom, or kitchen. She suggested caregivers visit the International OCD Foundation website for additional resources.

If the person is open to receiving help. Pagano said caregivers can try partnering with them and moving slowly through their piles. or hiring someone to work with them. She said she sometimes suggests therapy so clients can process the emotional baggage that can come up when going through their belongings.

She also reminded families that hoarding disorder has a high relapse rate. After a home is cleaned out, she said, the person with hoarding disorder should have regular check-ins with friends, family, or case workers to help prevent clutter from re-accumulating.

“Having that oversight or that supervision really is mandatory, or else there’s going to be a slippery slope and things are going to build up again,” Pagano said. “It’s not a quick fix.”

For Lovelle, the work continues in the only way she can describe it: one difficult corner at a time, while living with the people those piles once belonged to—and with the hope that showing others what it’s like might make help feel possible before it’s too late.

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