We all have special things that we want to hold onto, our grandmother’s engagement ring, that old toy from our childhood, or a teenage diary. Some people are so reluctant to let go of things that it becomes a hoarding disorder, where there is a compulsive, emotional need to hold onto possessions. Edmund Trebus was a compulsive hoarder who was featured in the 1999 BBC documentary, “A Life of Grime”. Born in Poland in 1918, Edmund had a troubled life. He fought in the Second World War and eventually settled in a large Victorian house in North London where he married and had five children. He was a compulsive collector of discarded fridges, bicycles, building materials, and other junk, and ended up filling his garden and every room in his house with rubbish. His wife, who sat in a deckchair on the small patch of remaining grass in the garden, left him in 1981. By 1997 Edmund moved around the house by crawling through tunnels in the rubbish and was left with a small corner of the kitchen to live in. His house became invested with rats and the smell made life unbearable for neighbours. When the local council finally intervened, they removed nearly 400 cubic metres of rubbish. Edmund eventually moved out and spent his last years in a care home.
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