Help Trash Friends to Help More People

Hi! My name is Trash, but some people know me better by my government name, Adrian Hadlock, and I am the Owner of Trash Friends! We are a Trans-owned and operated company, based in Chicago, that offers a wide range of home & mental health services including cleaning, decluttering, organizing, body doubling, handy services, donation pick-ups, and more! We specialize in neurodivergent clients, particularly those with hoarding behaviors, depression, and ADHD. We use sensory-friendly cleaning products to accommodate the needs of our clients with Autism who are sensitive to scents, and set aside $5 from every service to cover the cost of our Trans employees’ legal name changes and associated fees.

I am incredibly passionate about my career and went into this line of work because for the majority of my life, I had severe issues with hoarding disorder and chronic depression nesting. While I have now learned how to manage it, it is still something I struggle with on some level.

I am always honored when a new client feels safe enough allowing me or an employee of mine into their home, especially considering that more often than not, it is the first time they have invited anyone into their home in many years. I really admire anyone who is brave enough to reach out for help in the first place, and also willing to be vulnerable enough to allow someone else to see their living conditions. Something I certainly would not have been able to do myself.

Unfortunately, because of society’s lack of awareness and understanding of the issue, and the incredibly inaccurate and misinformed opinion that issues with cleanliness and clutter are a moral failing, as opposed to what they truly are: Simply the way in which symptoms of neurodivergence and mental illness manifest in the home. Since there is so much shame around this specific topic, no one who struggles with these issues feels like they can talk to anyone about it, so no one realizes how incredibly common it actually is. Anytime a client tells me that they are feeling nervous or apprehensive about allowing me or one of my employees into their home, which is very common, I share a part of my own story with them so they realize I really do understand because I have been there myself. I never tell them the full, uncensored story of my lifetime of personal experience with cleanliness and clutter, because it is incredibly long, and is a very brave and vulnerable thing to do- and unlike my clients, I am neither of those things. But I know how important it is to spread awareness so other people going through this know they are not alone, so for the first time, I am going to publicly share my whole story, and tell you how Trash Friends came to be, before I explain how we would like to use any funds we are able to raise to put towards the company and our various efforts to help the Trans, Queer, and neurodivergent communities.

The tagline I always used in all of my advertisements for my cleaning services, since I began doing this work five years ago, was, “No matter how “bad” it is, I’ve seen worse!”. At some point I made the decision to make it even more accurate and honest, and expand it to, “No matter how “bad” it is, I’ve seen (and probably lived in) worse!”. People seem to think I must be exaggerating when I say that, but it is absolutely true; I have only on a very few occasions, gone into living conditions that were more severe than ones I have lived in, and even on those few occasions, it was not by much.

In my adult life, I have spent many years consistently sleeping on top of piles of clean laundry sprawled out across my bed because I didn’t have the energy to fold it, have not been able to use my tub for incredibly long periods of time and barely been able to access the toilet because the entire bathroom was filled with bags of dirty laundry- most of which my dog had urinated on- and yes, my apartment did have a strong odor because of it. I have ruined countless sinkfulls of dishes because I would repeatedly set a bunch of dirty dishes in it and fill it up to “soak”, then left them in there for over 6 months, which caused many long-term, massive fruit fly infestations and a truly unnerving amount of maggots. One time my tub stoped draining but I was not able to let maintenance in to fix it due to the state of my apartment, so I showered standing on a step ladder over a tub full of brown, dirty water for about nine months, and just used a bucket to scoop out water as it got close to filling up the tub. Up until just a few years ago, or for the few years that I had roommates and kept my mess contained to my room, I was never able to allow anyone inside my apartment- the greatest stretch being about 5 years- which lead to the end of some relationships and caused me to become incredibly isolated. I lived in constant terror that a landlord or someone else from the building would come into my unit unannounced, and one day that did finally happen. Maintenance stopped by without any notice while I was at work, and I got a letter from the rental company detailing what they described as the “absolutely disgusting” state of my home, and threatening to evict me if it wasn’t cleaned up immediately. I certainly do not have to tell anyone who has also had that experience, just how violated and worthless I felt, or the incomparably intense shame, embarrassment, and terror it made me feel.

One of my parents also had hoarding disorder, so I grew up in a severely hoarded home. My parents clearly had no idea how to even begin to address the truly unbelievable amount of clutter, and it continued to pile up throughout my entire childhood; Instead of even attempting to take on what I know from personal experience was a seemingly insurmountable task, they built a new house and the same day it was finally ready to move into, we each packed a box or two and left every single other thing we owned in the old house. Truly every single thing- including all our furniture, electronics, clothes, food, and dishes. We lived in the hoarded house until I was 14, and up until the day we moved into the new one, I never ate a single meal at the kitchen table in my own home because it was completely covered and piled a few feet high with mail, and papers, and magazines. I also never ate a home cooked meal in my home because our kitchen was so cluttered, it was not accessible; We exclusively ate out, ordered pizza, or had TV dinners. I always ate on the floor or at the couch with a TV tray. Most of the couch was being used simply as another place to keep more mail and magazines, and when you sat down on it to eat, or try to relax, the giant pile of them would all come sliding down on top of you. We had a beautiful fireplace that we were never able to use, despite my unrelenting begging to, because it was stacked all the way up with I can’t even imagine how many years worth of newspapers, a lot of which were undoubtedly older than me. The top of the dresser in my parent’s bedroom was stacked at least 4 feet high with t-shirts. We had a massive mouse infestation, which was particularly extreme in the attic, and made it so that it was unable to be used. I slept on the top bunk of a bunk bed, and the ceiling was uncomfortably close to my face- or maybe it just seemed that way, all things considered. All night long, every single night, I could hear an entire hoard of mice, comparable in size to the hoard of clutter throughout the rest of the home, very loudly scurrying around the attic, shrieking, and violently scratching at the attic floor inches above my face. I was terrified that one night they would manage to scratch their way through the floor, which it certainly sounded like they were desperately trying to do, and hundreds of mice would suddenly fall on top of me while I laid in bed. It made it so that I was only ever able to fall asleep once I reached the point of complete exhaustion. I still have very vivid reoccurring PTSD nightmares that I have had since childhood, of hundreds of mice scratching their way through the ceiling above me, and waking up to being completely covered in them. Obviously, I was never allowed to have any friends come over to my house, or host any sleepovers- I pleaded with my parents for many years to let me, not understanding why they wouldn’t. I was very desperately lonely throughout my childhood, and did not have much opportunity to socialize. On a few occasions we did host parties on the property, but no one was allowed to come inside our house to use the restroom, and had use the neighbor’s instead. My mother even built numerous storage sheds on the property, including one that was particularly massive; Certainly much larger than our house. Very shortly after each shed had been built, she would somehow have already managed to hoard it up to the point that you could not even get inside. Her hoarding even extended to the yard, and occupied a sizeable chunk of our 10 acre property. She had acquired a truly impressive amount of mostly large, antique farm implements, and old cars, particularly ones that were models from 1949- the year she was born. It was an incredibly frequent occurrence for people to drive into our driveway, thinking it was some sort of museum or roadside attraction, which always greatly offended my mother. When she informed them that it was not, and was a private property, they would usually ask if they could drive around our large driveway that looped around the property anyway and look at all her stuff, sometimes even offering her money to let them.

Around 8 years ago, when I was 26, my own hoarding issues finally became apparent to me. I had already accumulated a rather excessive amount of belongings at that point, but had lived in much larger apartments with roommates for the past few years. When I decided to get my own studio, I had far more items than I could reasonably fit into the space, and I already knew that, but for some reason, just couldn’t seem to let go of any of my belongings. I remember sitting in my new apartment the first night I moved in; It was absolutely packed full and stacked high with boxes of things that I didn’t even have the space to unpack, or put anywhere, but I still was determined to not get rid of anything. I truly just made the decision that night that I was going to live in a room full of boxes until I was able to afford to move into a larger space, knowing that would be, at minimum, an entire year; At the time, that felt like the far easier, and much more preferable alternative than having to let go of any of the objects I owned, despite the fact that I could not even see them, but I would at least still have them. It got even worse when I started working full-time as a props designer for theatre; I would buy large amounts of props for a show and at the end, I was responsible for taking them all away. But I couldn’t get rid of them, even though I didn’t know why, so they just became a part of my hoard. In addition to that, despite already owning far too many items, and not having enough money to pay my bills, I would go to thrift stores every single day, sometimes even multiple times a day and bring home at least two bags full of more things; Some that I did not even particularly love.

Only a few days before everything shut down due to COVID, I finally got sober after being in active addiction since I was a teenager. When everything shut down, including all of the theatres, I lost all my work, and even the AirBnBs I had been cleaning on the side got turned into long-term housing for college students who were kicked out of their dorms due to the pandemic. When I was finally trapped in my depression nest and surrounded by my hoard, and stone cold sober for the first time in 15 years, I realized I could not live like that anymore. I could not have afforded professional help, if I had even known that was something that was available at that time, so I did all the research on hoarding, and what caused it, and how to treat it, that I possibly could and I just tried using all the tips and tricks and techniques that I learned on myself and began working on decluttering and cleaning my apartment, sometimes for 16 hours in a single day. I was unemployed for 6 months and took full advantage of that time to try to get things to a comfortable state. It ended up taking not only that entire 6 months, but a great deal more to get it to that place.

In September of 2020, as I continued to work on my own cleaning and decluttering, I finally got a job on an app that was like Uber for housekeepers. I was visibly Trans at that time, and was very concerned about going into the homes of strangers who may be transphobic. I decided to stick to taking jobs in neighborhoods with high populations of Queer people, and only continue to work with the ones I was able to find. Working in so many people’s homes, I realized how many people struggled with the same issues I did, and they often told me they had had many different cleaners come and immediately leave when they saw the state of their home. They usually followed it up by mentioning they were about to just give up entirely when they finally found me. I realized being unable to find a cleaner who was willing to work for them made it impossible to receive the exact type of help they needed the most, and I learned very quickly I much preferred doing those types of cleanings over simple maintenance cleanings in homes that were already perfectly clean and tidy. Not to mention, I had many years of experience doing those exact types of cleanings from the many times over the years that I had periodically managed to thoroughly clean my own space. I also began having a lot of clients ask me if I would be comfortable working for them outside of the app. That built up my confidence enough to finally recognize I could probably advertise my services independently, as well as the fact that I specialized in cleanings most cleaners were not willing to do in order to get more of the type of work I enjoyed the most and had the most experience and skill in. I decided to advertise through Queer Exchange, and to also always mention in my ads that I was Trans, in order to work within the community and also attract clients who were Trans or Queer, and just as nervous to let a stranger into their home who may attempt to harm them because of their identity, as I was to go into a stranger’s home who may want to harm me because of mine.

I worked incredibly hard for many years, sometimes 10-12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week- even sometimes for a stretch of 12 or so days without a single day off. During most of my cleaning jobs, I would listen to audiobooks, or podcasts, or lectures about hoarding and related disorders; Hoarding is my #1 special interest, and after spending every waking moment for more than 5 years doing, or listening to, or watching, or reading about, or otherwise learning about hoarding- it is difficult to tell where the workaholism ends and the special interest begins. Many of my clients began asking me if I thought that I could help them declutter, and I knew I could since I had done it for myself, and had become a self-taught hoarding expert, so I began doing that for them, too. In the beginning of 2024, someone contacted me specifically about helping them to declutter and mentioned that their therapist had recommended me, which gave me the confidence that I could begin to advertise that service as well, so I did. I enjoyed decluttering even more than cleaning, and wanted to pursue doing it full-time. Throughout that summer, between juggling all of my cleaning clients and my growing caseload of decluttering clients, I was incredibly overwhelmed with business and recognized it was beginning to be too much for me to handle on my own. I did not want to abandon all of my cleaning clients, many of which I had been with for nearly 4 years at that time, especially considering I knew it would be completely impossible for them to find another cleaner who specialized in what I did and was also Trans.

On September 1st, 2024 my first employee started, and Trash Friends was officially born. Many people wonder- which came first, my nickname or the name of the business- it was my nickname. And no, it has nothing to do with my career, but is a nickname a friend gave me about a decade ago because as a huge John Waters fan, I of course attended Camp John Waters and bought a hat specifically to wear at camp that said “TRASH” and loved it so much I began wearing it all of the time. Since the very beginning, we have been absolutely overwhelmed with business, and consistently have far more clients requesting our services than we have employees able to fit them into their schedules. We have needed to hire at least 2-3 employees every single month to attempt to keep up with demand. Currently, we have 15 employees, 6 of which are full-time, and we are, as usual, in desperate need of more ASAP. So far, every 3 months that we have been open, we have doubled in business. Recently, we have begun to get requests for a truly overwhelming amount of very large jobs that require multiple workers. We have also added tons of new services that we have learned a lot of our clients are in need of, or services that fit within our scope that specific employees have the skills and equipment to perform and have offered to provide.

When we opened only 9 months ago, we were “Trash Friends Queer Cleaning Company”; The idea was that I would do all of the decluttering jobs myself, and my employees would just do cleanings. I very quickly had to shorten the name to “Trash Friends” when the company began offering SO much more than just cleanings. At the end of 2024, I officially passed off all of my cleaning jobs to an employee and began decluttering full-time in 2025. I had enrolled in school to get a PhD in psychology and become a clinical psychologist specializing in hoarding behaviors, but by the time classes began the first week of January, I immediately had to drop out; I realized not only did I not have enough time to attend college and run the business, I also certainly would not have enough time to run the business and work as a clinical psychologist. Less than a full month into the year, I had to start training employees to also offer decluttering services because there was too much of that work for me to take all myself. By the beginning of February 2025, I realized the company had already become so busy that I would have to stop working in the field and stay home full-time to run the business, because simply running the business had become a full-time job. And in May, I realized running the business had become 3-4 full-time jobs; I hired someone to do all the scheduling full-time, and officially promoted Devon, who has been helping to run the business since March to Branch Manager and have him take over many of my other duties- they will officially begin those roles in mid-June.

While the truly incredible growth of the business in only 9 months has all come as a huge surprise to me that is honestly pretty unbelievable and not at all what I could have expected in my wildest dreams, it is a testament to how very many people struggle with cleanliness and clutter. The absolute most shocking milestone, and biggest honor the business has achieved so far, was winning Best Home Cleaning Service 2024 in the Chicago Reader. The nomination period ended on November 4th, just barely two months after we opened; And the voting period ended on December 31st, only four months after we opened.

I am grateful beyond words for the massive success of Trash Friends; My life’s goal is to help as many people in as many ways as I possibly can, especially those with hoarding behaviors. And now I am in a position to help 15 times as many people as I could when it was only me doing this work. I am also in a position to help people who are in need of work- including visibly Trans people; I know from personal experience it is virtually impossible to find a job, let alone one where your name and pronouns will be respected. And because we have been forming partnerships with other businesses and organizations, I can help connect people with any resources and services Trash Friends is unable to provide.

While I certainly hope that the company’s success and growth continues at the rate that it has, and it has been overwhelming in amazing ways, it has also been overwhelming in a lot of ways that are very stressful. I have had to pull at least one all-nighter once a week since October to catch up on work that has to be done and I can never find enough time to get accomplished. For about two months, I have oftentimes had to pull two all-nighters every week and I truly work all-day, every day, even on “days off”- about 140 hours per week total- which is absolutely too much and has been horrible for my mental health, but despite that, I still do not get nearly everything accomplished that I need to accomplished in a day, let alone have time to work on larger projects that are also absolutely necessary such as getting information ready for the website, advertising, working on preparing additional training materials for employees, applying for grants, etc.

I have SO MANY employees that are capable of helping with the workload and WANT to help with the workload but no matter what help I can afford to pay for, it is absolutely never anywhere close to the amount of help I truly need to keep from working myself to the point of complete exhaustion and the brink of insanity. Despite all the incredible success of the business, I am absolutely NOT rollin in it; I pay my employees an actual living wage and believe in giving them raises that are a bit larger than 25 cents per hour, so I am not making a massive cut of the profits like a lot of business owners that pay minimum wage. I am also committed to providing our services to anyone who truly needs them; We would love to get funding for this (yet another thing I desperately need to have the time to work on but don’t with all the things I absolutely have to do each day just to keep the business running) but currently, I pay for that out of my own pocket. And with the more paying clients we get, the more we get who cannot pay, usually at least one per week; While we work on finding some long-term funding for this, it would be incredibly helpful to have at least slightly less of it come out of my pocket.

We absolutely want to keep up with demand so we don’t have to turn anyone who needs our services away and can make sure we have the availability to schedule people who urgently need last-minute appointments, such as people who find out they have an apartment inspection in a few days and will be evicted if their apartment is not cleaned. However, hiring new employees is intimidatingly expensive, and is not always something I have the funds to cover when I need to and really struggle to cover that cost. The start up supplies for a new employee costs around $250-$300 per employee, and I am bringing on 2-3 each month, sometimes more, so that’s about $1,000 per month just for new employees to be able to start working- not including the additional $1,000 or so I spend on buying the rest of my employees supplies they are out of. It would also be nice to be able to afford better vacuums, and be able to have more specialized cleaning equipment like carpet cleaners and steamers, which we currently are only able to obtain if an employee just happens to have their own already, or we find one for free. We also have employees that have experience in providing services we do not currently offer which we could offer if we were able to get the equipment for.

One of the bigger expenses that is incredibly high-priority and has been for a very long time but I have not been able to afford is a cargo van. Currently, we have to rent them from U-Haul which is incredibly costly; We have to charge clients that need large pick-ups done an additional $125-$150 or so to cover the cost of the rental. I also do sometimes have to drive out to the suburbs to work with a client that has extreme hoarding behaviors that *I* personally really need to be the one to address; Even a ZipCar rental is about $150 for the day, which is also something I have to charge the client for. I would love to be able to *not* charge clients so very much for vehicle rentals to make prices more accessible for them. I do not plan to buy a brand new one, but the lowest costs I have found are still around $2,000, not to mention the insurance payments for that.

We also owe our website designer $2,000 for designing the website; Luckily, they have been very generous and are allowing us to pay off that cost over time, however, it is certainly a large expense to pay off. I had arranged to do free decluttering with someone in exchange for designing the website, but unfortunately, there was no movement on the website actually being designed and we did really, desperately need for a website to exist. I would also really love for our logo to have a little make-over; As you can see on the main picture on the crowd fund, our logo still reads “Trash Friends Queer Cleaning Company”, when it was shortened to just “Trash Friends” several months ago now. After that, it would be very beneficial for advertising to have shirts made for employees and get a wrap for the cargo van. I have not done much looking into what it would realistically cost to get T-shirts made for all my employees and since we hire new employees so frequently, the cost for that will certainly raise considerably by the time we get there. A wrap for the cargo van would cost about $5,000-$8,000. The wrap would be a REALLY huge expense, but I know a lot of other businesses owners with large work vehicles they have had wrapped, and they said it is without a doubt the #1 way they find new business.

I desperately want to be able to offer additional training for my employees, particularly new ones; Having a 4 hour training session on cleaning skills alone costs about $200 per employee when that is needed, I also pay employees who do decluttering training for that. I definitely do not want to ask anyone to do work, training included, without paying them for it, but even the training we currently provide is a huge out of pocket expense. It is *sufficient*, but I really want all my employees to have the exact same, extensive training and skills and knowledge I do and there is quite a lot I have to teach them, and would really love to, but it would be very costly to do so.

We would also really love to further expand services and community building initiatives. I don’t want to give away everything we are working on, however, a lot of those things require specific licensing, or training, or equipment or some combination of all of those things. A couple of things I will give away is that I desperately want to put together a specialized biohazard team, but the training for that is many hundreds to many thousands of dollars per person. I tried to get a job as a biohazard cleaner for a very long time; Those companies claim to hire and train “anyone”, but the truth is, they will not hire women or AFAB people because they do not think they are mentally or emotionally strong enough for the job; I know that is not true, and would love to give women and AFAB people the opportunity to pursue that career. I also would really love to establish some sort of volunteer branch of Trash Friends to take on some of the free cleanings so we can heavily advertise and provide a whole lot more of those for the many people who need it; Even registering a non-profit is $500. I also really want to offer weekly peer support groups for my employees and have an employee with experience doing that; This can be an incredibly emotionally draining job, and causes a lot of compassionate fatigue. Myself and all of my employees deal with a lot of very good people who are in incredibly depressing, dire, and often unjust situations- it is very difficult to cope with that and it takes a toll on your mental health, particularly when you are an incredibly empathetic person like myself and my employees. And I know for me, with my lived experience with hoarding, sometimes running into certain things at work can be triggering and cause flashbacks, and I suspect that is also the case for my many employees who have the same lived experience. We’d also really love to be able to periodically host events for the community; A lot of our clients have said we should and that they would love that, and we would also, but that costs money we do not have. We would love to be able to connect people who struggle with the types of issues we address, as well as members of the Trans and Queer communities, all of whom often feel very isolated and alone.

It would be really great to be able to take out a loan to help pay for some of these things but unfortunately, I have been incredibly low-income/no-income nearly all of my adult life, and my credit score is pretty rough because of that. I’m also very hopeful we can obtain grants and funding; One of my employee’s partners has experience with that, and I want to be able to pay them to help with that. We- and I, personally- would be incredibly grateful for any donation you are able to make, no matter how large or small; It would truly make a huge difference and give us the ability to help even more people in even more ways. Our amazing and thoughtful website designer also has set up a way to make reoccurring monthly donations on our website, where you can also learn a lot more about Trash Friends, our team, and the services we provide. www.trashfriends.com