The House That Held Everything: A Family's Hidden Hoarding and the Secrets Left Behind

Author:   Eileen Stukane
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:  

9781538199275


Pages:   184
Publication Date:   22 January 2026
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

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The House That Held Everything: A Family's Hidden Hoarding and the Secrets Left Behind


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Full Product Details

Author:   Eileen Stukane
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Rowman & Littlefield
Dimensions:   Width: 14.60cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 21.80cm
Weight:   0.353kg
ISBN:  

9781538199275


ISBN 10:   1538199270
Pages:   184
Publication Date:   22 January 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Reviews

Eileen Stukane's heart-in-throat account of entering the toxic hell of her deceased cousin's floor-to-ceiling-cluttered, stench-emanating house -- which she had once known as elegant and orderly -- is the beginning of a mystery that she probes and solves in this exquisite, un-put-down-able book. She and her sister Ellen go through every one of the thousands of items in the house: discarding, appraising, sifting the gold from the dross: a herculean, heartful task that took a full year. What makes a hoarder? What clues exist in the house, hidden under the thousands of ""dust-blanketed, hard-to-identify objects"" that preserve memories of her aunt, uncle and two cousins? What does one do when one finds a hoarder in one's midst? She takes on the pathology of this disorder -- with empathy, stringence, and love. -- Sheila Weller * Author of Girls Like Us; Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon---and the Journey of a Generation * Eileen Stukane has written a thoughtful and sensitive memoir that is a cautionary tale of unbridled attachment to objects. Over the course of a year, she and her sister cleared the hoarded home of a loved one. In the process she uncovered and then discovered what lay beneath the mountains of stuff: isolation, loneliness, and suffering. Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, ABPP -- Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, ABPP * Digging Out: Helping Your Loved One Manage Clutter, Hoarding, and Compulsive Acquiring * Why can’t you let go of that old, chipped mug? What hold does it have on you? And why do those worn shirts, long past their prime, feel impossible to give away? In The House That Held Everything, Eileen Stukane inherits more than a home—she steps into a hidden world thick with dust and silence. Batteries, Nutcracker dolls, model train magazines—these aren’t just forgotten objects. They’re fragments of lives, locked in time. As Stukane navigates the hoarded rooms of her family’s past, she becomes a kind of forensic soul-searcher, who uncovers buried truths one artifact at a time. What begins as a simple inheritance unravels into a haunting exploration of memory, identity, and the things we hold onto without knowing why, until now...the powerful bond between people and their possessions fills the air in The House That Held Everything. -- David Zinczenko * #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zero Belly Diet and the co-author of the Eat This, Not That! *


Eileen Stukane's heart-in-throat account of entering the toxic hell of her deceased cousin's floor-to-ceiling-cluttered, stench-emanating house -- which she had once known as elegant and orderly -- is the beginning of a mystery that she probes and solves in this exquisite, un-put-down-able book. She and her sister Ellen go through every one of the thousands of items in the house: discarding, appraising, sifting the gold from the dross: a herculean, heartful task that took a full year. What makes a hoarder? What clues exist in the house, hidden under the thousands of ""dust-blanketed, hard-to-identify objects"" that preserve memories of her aunt, uncle and two cousins? What does one do when one finds a hoarder in one's midst? She takes on the pathology of this disorder -- with empathy, stringence, and love. -- Sheila Weller * Author of Girls Like Us; Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon---and the Journey of a Generation * Eileen Stukane has written a thoughtful and sensitive memoir that is a cautionary tale of unbridled attachment to objects. Over the course of a year, she and her sister cleared the hoarded home of a loved one. In the process she uncovered and then discovered what lay beneath the mountains of stuff: isolation, loneliness, and suffering. Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, ABPP -- Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, ABPP * Digging Out: Helping Your Loved One Manage Clutter, Hoarding, and Compulsive Acquiring * Why can’t you let go of that old, chipped mug? What hold does it have on you? And why do those worn shirts, long past their prime, feel impossible to give away? In The House That Held Everything, Eileen Stukane inherits more than a home—she steps into a hidden world thick with dust and silence. Batteries, Nutcracker dolls, model train magazines—these aren’t just forgotten objects. They’re fragments of lives, locked in time. As Stukane navigates the hoarded rooms of her family’s past, she becomes a kind of forensic soul-searcher, who uncovers buried truths one artifact at a time. What begins as a simple inheritance unravels into a haunting exploration of memory, identity, and the things we hold onto without knowing why, until now...the powerful bond between people and their possessions fills the air in The House That Held Everything. -- David Zinczenko * #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zero Belly Diet and the co-author of the Eat This, Not That! series *


Author Information

Eileen Stukane, an award-winning journalist in New York City, enters the world of hoarding disorder in The House That Held Everything. She has covered women’s health and family stories as the author of The Dream Worlds of Pregnancy, co-author of four women’s health books, among them Listen To Your Body, and as a contributor to national publications. Here she focuses on the mysterious and deep connection between humans and their objects.

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