Hoarding and squalor

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I have struggle with keeping the out clean. I gave up on trails a month or two ago and this week a friend of mine came and we did some major work. One room is completely clean, another is in decent shape leaving two more rooms to go. The kid (Aspie, 11) is enjoying all the room and some of the fun stuff we have rediscovered.

The problem is that he doesn't get the concept of getting one thing out and putting it away. We have looked back at the picture from before. (I am documenting my progress elsewhere.)

I am just not getting the idea through to him. Does anyone have an idea on how to help him understand?

Beats me!

This has been an ongoing issue with my 12YO SS, who has AS. The kid picks up EVERYTHING he sees on the ground. Pencils, candy wrappers, hair bands, old kleenex (gross!).

Yesterday, saw a little shiny something poking out from under his dresser. Lo and behold, PILES of picked-up-off-the-ground junk. Enough to fill a whole bedroom garbage can.. which is exactly where it all went.

Our concerns here are twofold. 1)Hygiene. It's. just. nasty. Seriously, old bloody kleenex. chewed-on pencils. The grodiest stuff. 2)As SS gets older, people will inevitably be less forgiving of this kind of habit. Sometimes he picks up things that someone will obviously be looking for later. A calculator, DS game and stylus, watches. He's eventually going to be labeled a thief.

We have attempted, ad nauseum, to explain these things to him... to no effect.

If his executive is as bad as mine it is not a question of getting it. He probably does get it.

any physical organisation requires an equivalent mapping in your head. You just take it for grated that other people are able to do that.

My son is a hoarder too. In his room we let it get to the point where he couldn't stand it anymore and begged us to help him clean it. He lived with it just fine until last week. So he knows what before is like, and now he's living in after. He loves after much better. He has a container that he's allowed to keep his "treasures" in which are things that have importance to him but mean little to others. It was a great compromise. It's not stashed somewhere where he feels like it needs to be hidden, but it's not overtaking his room. We talk a lot about if we kept absolutely every tiny little thing we felt we couldn't part with, we wouldn't have room to live in our house. That part he understands but he needs helps along the way. He doesn't have a lot of gross things in his room though because the only thing he can bring up is water. All the other good/drinks stay downstairs.

I would say SS most definitely could Executive Dysfunction. He is SOO disorganized. Can't keep track of anything, forgets everything. Everything.

Oh, we've tried the "special things" jar/bag. EVERYTHING went into it, to the point it was jammed and overflowing. And he just kept stuffing more in.

We also have the no food or drink allowed to the room rule.. but he sneaks this. He sneaks things in order to hoard.

The thing that is so frustrating is.. is there anything that we can do to truly deal with things like this in him? If it does occur simply because his brain is wired differently, what can we as parents do to deal and help? Or do we just wait til he gets sick or in big trouble for taking something that doesn't belong to him?