Diogenes syndrome: giving the home back to life
Behind the accumulation there is a person — often a parent, a neighbour someone loves. Our job is not to judge: it is to sort, empty, sanitise, and hand back a home where life can resume.
Step by step
Sort first, discard second, sanitise last
It all starts with the sorting, and it is never rushed: identity papers, money, jewellery, photographs and keepsakes are searched for and set aside following the family's or guardian's instructions. A life does not go into a skip — it gets sorted, then what must go goes, through the right waste channels.
Then the decontamination: surfaces cleared then washed and disinfected room by room, pests reported and treated if the accumulation brought them in, odours treated in depth — see our dedicated treatment. The home gets its floors, walls and air back.
Restoration closes the job, from the final deep clean to the small extras useful before re-occupation or re-letting. Depending on the case, we coordinate with the family, the guardian, the landlord or social services — each in their place, without exposing the person.
Hoarding: families' questions
When possible, their part in the sorting — even symbolic — helps the intervention be accepted rather than endured. We adapt to what the family and carers judge bearable.
The first call is the hardest
After that, everything becomes a sequence of ordered steps. We know them all.