Hoarder vows to change after home was ravaged by fire - which was made worse by clutter

Barry Tordoff, 76, began hoarding a range of car parts including engines and car doors and electrical tools but never realised how bad his obsession had become. He lost everything when his £250,000 one-bedroom bungalow in York was ravaged in the blaze in April this year after his clutter caught fire.

Now Barry, a father-of-two, has vowed to change his ways after being forced to spend Christmas in a caravan.

He said: "I've definitely stopped hoarding - the fire has brought home what I was actually doing. It creeps up on you - so you don't realise what's actually happening. You get to a stage where you look round your house and think 'oh my God, where do I start?'

"You don't know where to start, so you just don't start and try and forget it and hope it will all go away. That's being stupid though because it won't go away. The fire has really brought it home."

After the blaze, Barry moved into a caravan that had no water and electricity, on his drive. Now, he's living on a nearby caravan site and even though he will be spending Christmas there, he's 'happy to be alive.'

Barry said: "I'm just happy to be alive. The smoke alarm woke me up and if I hadn't woke me up, then I would have been dead. I'm very happy to be still here. But thanks to my two lasses, my house is getting renovated brilliantly. I know I won't be home for Christmas but it will be right and it will be get done - it might be next year but I don't care."

In the last two years, Barry has re-connected with his two daughters, Jane, 54, and Karen, 51. The pair first found out about the retired engineer's hoarding when they visited his home for the first time and they were left 'shocked.'

Karen said: "We had only seen him a couple of times before the fire. When we first saw him at his home, we were made aware regarding the serious issue of hoarding and we just thought oh dear. It was quite a shock.

"We went into to his house to see him and we were walking down the corridor but it was like an alleyway, you couldn't get into the bathroom. The room was absolutely full of stuff but he had cleared up for us because he was a little bit embarrassed and nervous. But it was horrendous."

She added: "He wasn't very house proud to begin with but we realised he was unable to clean the house as he didn't know where to start. He wouldn't have been able to start cleaning the bathroom as there wasn't any room with everything he had accumulated over the years."

Karen, of Bradford, said almost everything in his home has been destroyed and now they are fundraising for it to be renovated.

The admin assistant said: "We found out it was going to cost £80,000 and we were like a deer in the highlights. We have decided to tackle it little by little but it's going to take years. Things are slowly improving and my dad can see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel now. Throughout it all, he's said that if he didn't lose everything then he wouldn't have ever got on top of his hoarding."

Barry and Karen are now speaking out about the disorder, hoping it will reduce the stigma and help others.

Karen said: "I think it's such a taboo subject, there's some embarrassment with it. I've even felt embarrassed that people think we've let it get to this stage. My dad feels embarrassed and said he would never let anyone in because they would see it wasn't nice how he was living.

"It's such a taboo subject because people don't want to talk about it as they might think you're dirty or just need to clean up and get rid of the stuff. It's not like this - the things that people hoard are their security blankets but it's so sad."

Barry's daughters are raising money to fund repairs to his house after he was refused an insurance payout due to a paperwork error.

Visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/dads-house-fire-repairs? to donate.