My genius uncles decided to install a pellet stove in my hoarder grandmother's house. I'm scared!

[NickB79]

Guess what I found the last time I went over to visit her last weekend?

If you guessed "a pellet stove surrounded by, and even covered in, junk" you are the winner! There are stacks of old papers, rags, clothes and random furniture all within a foot or two of the stove. There was a frakking phone book and old sewing machine on top of it!

Thankfully, she hasn't started it up yet for the winter. Instead, she's been using up some old firewood she still had in the basement from last season in the wood stove. This is only SLIGHTLY less dangerous, seeing as she has to navigate down a steep flight of stairs in a 100-yr old farmhouse and through a basement just as packed with junk as the upstairs of her house. She's 83 years old!

I knew the moment my dad told me they were installing a pellet stove in her house this spring, it would become a fire danger. The thing put off amazing amounts of heat when they first fired it up in March, which would be perfectly fine in a house inhabited by a normal person with a healthy respect for the dangers of fire. In the hands of someone who hasn't thrown away a scrap of anything for the past 50 years, and who relies on pathes built through the clutter, it's a disaster waiting to happen. I told them to put in a propane stove, but they insisted on pellets because it was cheaper to feed.

I'm so scared she's going to start a fire this winter and be trapped, I'm having nightmares about it. I've spoken to my dad, aunt, and one of my uncles about it, and only my aunt seemed concerned like me. The family has given up on trying to clean her place for her, because she keeps restocking it with garage sale finds, and I live 3 hr away so I can't check up on her regularly. No one wants to call Adult Protective Services because, since she's such a strong, independent woman, we're afraid she'd lose the will to live if put in a nursing home and just waste away.

I don't know what to do in this situation. If I were a rich man, I'd either install a propane furnace for her or just move her in with us, but I'm not and I've already moved my mother-in-law into our house to help her. Can anyone here think of an alternative that I've missed?

[InvisibleTouch]

1. I wonder if you could build an "airlock" around the stove...

...kind-of a screened section that can be accessed by a screen door, and is made of wire mesh or chainlink to let the heat out, but to keep the clutter from piling up right against the stove. Just a crazy concept, perhaps, but that's what came to me.

Also, what does your grandmother say when you talk to her about the potential fire hazard? I don't advocate taking people's hordes forcibly away from them, as I'd hate to see her lose her "stuff" at that age, if it gives her such a sense of pleasure and security - but can you make it clear to her that she absolutely must keep a clear zone around the stove?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. You can't reason with a hoarder. You will have to do something about the clutter.

My mother was a hoarder and you could not reason with her. She would drag trash bags back from the curb so we wouldn't throw things away.

When I started throwing stuff away, she came outside and started growling at me like she was possessed. I figured out a couple of months later that she was so stressed out at me throwing away her junk that she dissociated and another personality came out.

I had to wait for her to die to clean out the house.