By the time he reached 17, there was no room for Geoff Johnson at home. His mother started compulsively hoarding when he was a young boy, refusing to trash anything; unable to fix anything. In his senior year, 1995, it was too much: he moved out. Now, two decades later, he and his younger sister Jennifer McShea have returned to the family home in Omaha, Nebraska  - and nothing has changed. Geoff, 37, had visited his mother but only stood outside before picking her up to spend time elsewhere. Jennifer, also 37, returned just twice, on the advice of her counselor, to confront the deeply-embedded shame she felt. But when their mother passed away following a 12-year battle with breast cancer in 2013, the house was handed to them. Finally returning to the meticulous havoc, they were inspired to create a moving photo-series with their own children to document the reality of being a hoarder's child. Scroll down for video . Life as a hoarder's child: Geoff Johnson returned to the home of his mother, a compulsive hoarder, 20 years after he left and created a moving series of images about his uneasy upbringing. He did this by superimposing shots of his son onto images of the trash-ridden home in Omaha . 'No place for a child': His younger sister Jennifer, also aged 37, joined him as they confronted their past after their mother died of breast cancer in 2013. Jennifer's four-year-old daughter is superimposed onto a shot of the bathroom which has not been touched since they left in 1993 . Geoff, a photographer, wanted to picture his son and Jennifer's daughter going about their daily lives among the trash - as they had done years before. But the crumbling house is so unsafe, and their feelings still so raw, that they opted to use Photoshop and superimpose the children onto the images. Regardless, the highly realistic results strike an uneasy feeling that Geoff says was so difficult to come to terms with. 'It is difficult to describe the feeling of shame, the fear of embarrassment that you have growing up with a hoarder,' Geoff, who is still based nearby in Omaha, tells DailyMail.com. 'People would say "why didn't you just throw things away?" It's just not as simple as that. Hoarders have a deep-rooted sense of attachment to things and it seems crazy but they have a sense of order. 'My sister and I would try to throw things away, but if anything even moved our mom would get very upset. 'Going back was an emotional experience. 'When we were kids, I would only ever open the door by a crack when people came by. We never had people over. 'It's a complex issue': Geoff said people have since asked him why they didn't just throw things away. He said the issue was deeper than that and his mother had a deep-rooted attachment to every little piece of the havoc. But as a child it was difficult to understand . 'Sense of perspective': Jennifer said the pictures have helped her to see that the home she felt so uncomfortable in was no place for children . Jennifer's bedroom: Jennifer made clear that she did not want the children to enter the crumbling house, which is  filled with mold, as it is unsafe and also occupies a difficult emotional space for her. She wants her daughter to know that she would never put her in that situation . Breaking point: Geoff moved out when he was 17 in 1995 when a pipe burst during the winter. 'There was no heating and I had to be responsible. It was the hardest thing I had had to do in my life up until that point and I couldn't take it any more,' he said . 'Things would break and never be fixed. We didn't have a working refrigerator - we would leave food on the back porch in the winter, and get a cooler in the summer, but that would break too. 'I had to leave in January of my senior year because the pipes broke. It was so cold, there was no heating, and I was just 17. It was the hardest thing I'd had to do in my life up until that point; to be the adult, be responsible. It was too much for me, so I left.' Jennifer was already long-gone by that point. Just 19 months younger than Geoff, she left when she was 15 in 1993, to live with their father in the same village. She didn't return until she finished college in 2001. 'I was going through counseling, and discovered that the house was a big part of the issues I was dealing with,' Jennifer, based in Florida, told DailyMail.com. 'My counselor said I should go back, and take friends to confront the feeling of embarrassment. It was that feeling that people didn't know about that side of our lives. We never let anyone in, and then we left it behind. Feeling of shame: In this image (left) Geoff is recreating the way he would hide behind the door when people came to visit, and never let people come to visit. Jennifer returned to the house when she finished college on the advice of her counselor to confront the feeling of shame . Unmoved: They photographed the scene completely untouched when they returned to clean it up after their mother passed away . The moment they returned together was important for them, they said. They both knew what each other had gone through as kids . 'The first time I stepped in there, the memories washed over me. It was hard. My mom wasn't there, but she had given me permission to go. 'My two friends came in after me, they were supportive and gracious, but I could tell they were also taken aback by it all.' A few years later, she returned again with the man that would become her husband. And finally, in 2013, she and Geoff returned together. 'It was a really important moment for both of us I think,' she told DailyMail.com. 'To be there with someone who knew what you had gone through. We could talk about memories, and now that we're both parents we could reflect on how it affected us. Placing their children in the frames was a cathartic experience that, Jennifer says, helped her fully understand how she had been affected. 'Seeing my own daughter sat there in my room, even though she wasn't actually there, was a really big thing for me. 'You see it from an outside perspective: this is no place for a child. 'I don't think we really knew at the time. For children, it is an enormous, complex, emotional concept to get your head around.' The pair made clear that they continued to have a relationship with their mother until the day she died. It was the house, however, that left them with such difficult feelings. 'My mom worked hard, she had multiple jobs and children. I don't blame her for that,' Geoff says. 'But it was difficult for us.'
Geoff Johnson and Jennifer McShea both grew up with a mother who compulsively hoarded things . Refrigerator didn't work, trash piled up, but nothing was fixed. It left them with deep-rooted feelings of shame . Two decades after they left, their mother died and the house was passed to them . They have revisited and created a photo series, superimposing their children onto photos of the house to show the uneasy sight of youngsters growing up in that environment .