Clutter and Hoarding

Clutter Management

"It all depends on whether you have things, or they have you."

- Robert A. Cook  

How can VHA help with clutter?

VHA has worked with people who have clutter and hoarding issues for many years and know this is a challenge to address. 

People who hoard or have a lot of clutter tend to accumulate common items – such as clothes, newspapers, containers, junk mail, books, plastic bags and crafts – in large quantities. In severe cases, excess clutter can impact quality of life and even threaten the health of those living with the clutter.

We provide professional services to assess and support clients with clutter problems and help them reclaim their home.

Services include:

• An evaluation of home safety and functioning

• Assessing clients for change readiness and offering strategies to help them stay engaged in the decluttering process
• Understanding how the clutter started and creating a plan to address the source and barriers to decluttering
• Help connecting clients to organization and clutter removal resources

We’ve also created a toolkit—to be released in February 2011—with resources, strategies and organizational techniques to help manage hoarding and the effects of excess clutter. This toolkit supports:

• Clutterers and their families

• Health providers, workers in the social services, emergency personnel, and others who may encounter their client’s clutter problem in the course of providing other services and need guidance on how best to help a person with clutter issues get rid of items 

• Therapists, mental health professionals and clutter coaches who want practical tools to support their clients to address hoarding behaviours and excess clutter 

Funded services for hoarding and clutter issues are very limited in Toronto.  VHA is working with the Toronto Hoarding Coalition to advocate for better hoarding and clutter intervention services. 

For more information on VHA’s clutter management services, please contact:

Toronto: 416-489-2500 ext. 4649
London: 519-645-2410 ext. 5000
Email:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

We also customize workshops to suit the needs of a broad range of professionals working in the community who encounter hoarding and clutter on the job. For more information, please contact Nadia Hladin at 416-489-2500 ext. 1128.

VHA also offers an Extreme Cleaning service.