My mom probably has borderline personality disorder. She's also a hoarder. As I was a child, I watched our home go from just a spare bedroom being filled to the brim with stuff to the entire thing slowing being taken over with stuff. My parents stopped sleeping in their bedroom together when I was somewhere between 6-8 years old. They each slept on a different couch in a different room until about 5 years ago (so about 25 years of sleeping on couches). My dad still sleeps on the couch. My mom has churned things around a bit (churning is a term used for the way hoards convince themselves they're cleaning when they're really mostly just shifting the piles of shit around) and so their bedroom can now be slept in, so she sleeps there (when one of the rooms with couches got too hoarded to get to the couch, my mom started sleeping in my old bedroom for years, which was also hoarded, but the bed was right next to the door, so she could crawl over stuff to get on it).    

As I've gotten older and my mom can confided in me more, and actually asked for my help with certain things, I've realized that one of the major facets of her being in a sense of emptiness inside. She doesn't have a sense of self the way that most people do, and so she fills her life with stuff and control. Because she can't fill herself up emotionally, she would be controlling, manipulative, and abusive to those around her, because having them do what she wanted filled up that emptiness a bit. Temporarily. But I've come to see that part of why she got increasingly controlling during my childhood was that once she'd established a certain level of control for awhile, it was the new status quo, and it didn't fill her up anymore. So she had to get more controlling, to be more filled up. She also had to get more stuff, to feel more filled up.    

These days, I think in part because of therapy, her behavior (and her home) are better than they were before. Neither is great, but they're also way better than they were. The house is less hoarded, in that now there are (I think) two rooms (not counting the kitchen) that it's possible to actually move around in (versus having just a little pathway into it OR being so hoarded that it's literally impossible to get into, because a pile of shit eventually had a landslide against the door, so it's literally impossible to get in there now). Two rooms out of a 4 bedroom house that also has a dining room, a game room, a laundry room, and a living room. Oh, and two attics (it's a split level), a large basement, an outdoor, 2 story, shed that is on property, as well as the (two, I think) off-site rental storage units that she has to store her stuff.    

I think she feels a little less empty, or at least, has learned to survive and be somewhat happy (I'm not sure that she feels happiness in a way that I understand) with what she has.    

She still buys a shit-ton of stuff. Back when email was transitioning from a newfangled thing to something companies were starting to take seriously, my mom asked if I let her link my email address to her QVC and HSN accounts (those are TV shopping networks). I did, in part because I was curious as to what/how often she bought things from those places. The answer was: near-daily. Anything in the world from gadgets that swear to make your life easier like the slap-chop, to discount 1000 count thread sheets, to the "exclusive" jewelry that is often sold on those channels, to holiday decorations...nearly anything.    

The weird thing is, my parents also still have a large amount of money for retirement. My mom controlled the finances (in part because my dad is legit horrible at that and famously bounced 10 checks in one day once), and she did save a lot of money. Plus, my parents were state employees, so they have great pensions/health insurance for life.    

I think part of it is because my dad worked 2 jobs his whole life, and has very, very little desire for material possessions, so nearly all that money went to her, as well as her own salary. My dad, FTR, is still greatly a cypher to me. He worked two jobs because he can't really handle not working. Even being retired for 10 years, he still has several part-time jobs. Sometimes I wonder if he's a highly functioning autistic. He's not emotional, he doesn't speak much, and when it does, it's about his favorite subject (war, which he can still tell you incredibly specific details about every major battle in every American war), or the cats, or the weather (which he's also obsessed with). He's never really asked me about me, and though he clearly cares about me very much, he's just not able to make an empathetic connection.    

On my parent's wedding day, he vanished for 2 hours between the wedding and the reception. Turns out, he went "home" (his mom's home) to read the paper, because it was Sunday, and that's what he does on Sundays. He goes to church (the wedding was in a church and involved a church service), then goes home to read the paper, then eats (which is when he headed back to the wedding reception).    

So it could be that my mom married him in part because he was someone who would put up with her shit, in that he honestly didn't understand 99% of it as shit. And he kind of has his own (far more benign) shit going on.    

These days, he "handles" her by walking out of a room if she tries to pick a fight with her. Or ignores her entirely. He no longer tries to logically engage. He also mostly lets her do what she wants, but if, say, she and I were fighting because she was being a crazy bitch, he won't listen to her. He'll say she was wrong (honestly, even before he actually knows what happened, he'll just say "you're wrong") and walks out of the room.    

The last thing I'll say is a quick retouch on what I said in a different thread. Growing up, her family was dirt poor. She had to share a bedroom with two sisters. All her clothing was either hand-me-downs or clothing she made for herself (her family took in sewing to help pay the bills, so she learned to sew very well at a very young age). As long as she lived at home (and especially before she stopped growing as a child/adolescent), she was fully expected to pass on all her clothing to her youngest sister, either after she outgrew it, or a year or two after she got/made it (The eldest sister was a lot older, nearly a decade, and so moved out fairly early on, and was more of an aunt-figure to her younger sisters). My aunt (the younger sister) has talked to me about how angry this made my mom. She "accidentally" ruined a number of things, rather than pass them on to my aunt. And my aunt wasn't a jerk about it, she always made it clear that my mom could borrow back anything at any time and/or that the "passed down" clothing was something my aunt wouldn't wear at all, if it was special to my mom & she wanted to keep it for herself.    

While my mom's childhood definitely wasn't awesome, and there was physical abusive in it (both grandparents believed in hitting/slapping/beating), from what I've been told, she wasn't singled out for any particular abuse, nor did her sisters grow up to be hoarder. Neither of them are BPD, though the younger is bipolar and has been on Lithium for 20 years to keep it under control. Both her sisters are weirder than the norm in some ways, but they're generally emotionally healthy people. Both her sisters have also said the same thing that I've come to think about my mom, that it's always seemed like there was something about her that was empty and can never be filled. Thus the name Empty Ellie.