We've had the packrat thing, in triplicate. It's got so that I can't throw stuff out easily either, mainly because the problem can sometimes seem so insurmountable.
What we've done over the years, when dealing with the idiosyncrasies of our kids - we'd listen to their reasoning, then work to find a more satisfactory (however short-term and odd) solution.
For example, your problem, Terry - your difficult child said that
1) he didn't want to make a noise and disturb you;
2) he didn't have time to go al lthe way to the toilet;
3) he'd been asleep in bed and suddenly needed to go, urgently.
So let's analyse this. The not wanting to make a noise issue - night-time is when noises really carry. When you're going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, every sound seems like an earthquake. He may be very self-conscious about the sound he makes when going to the toilet, as well as ANY sounds he makes in the middle of the night. The sensible thing to have done, at least afterwards, would be to flush the bathroom basin by turning on the tap. But this makes noise, so he might have been reluctant to do this. Also, he wouldn't think of it because he's not really thinking of others (despite his protestation that he didn't want to disturb you). Once the pressure was off his bladder, he didn't have a problem any more.
So what can we do to answer his concerns?
He doesn't want to make noise; he doesn't want to go to too much trouble; he doesn't want to take too much time.
Here is my suggestion - buy a number of those plastic bottles they provide in hospitals for men to use when they're bed-bound. The deal is, he can use a bottle at night instead of trying to find the toilet (and miss) and certianly instead of using whatever other receptacle. In the morning, the bottle gets emptied and rinsed out.
The advantage to difficult child in doing this - it's a privilege, it means he has the convenience and the silence. If he complies, he gets to keep the use of the bottle. If he messes up, he loses the bottle and it's back to the midnight run to the toilet.
The other string to the bow is bribery (aka incentive, or positive reinforcement). If he has used the bottle, and NOT used something he shouldn't have, he earns an immediate (small) reward (for difficult child 3, it was generally a mini-box of M&Ms).
Any mess - HE has to clean it up. Not as punishment, but as consequence. He has to not only clean up his spill, but if it's been sitting there then he has to disinfect and deodorise it, as well as anything else contaminated.
Microbiologically-speaking, urine isn't that bad. It's sterile (until bacteria from the air get into it and turn it into ammonia). It won't bring the ants (unless he's diabetic). It's not going to give everyone food poisoning.
However, it does need to be cleaned up.
We rely on vinegar a great deal. The kids learned that I would insist on them cleaning up their mess in communal areas.
Some of the "fun" things my kids have don, in the same odd way:
1) difficult child 1 would swat blood-filled mosquitoes in his room (he slept on the top bunk) and refuse to clean the corpses off the walls and ceiling. He claimed that leaving them there was a deterrent to other mosquitoes. I had to repeatedly stand over him after handing him the spray-on cleanser and a cloth, and watch while he scrubbed his walls and ceiling. He also did this in the toilet (the air vent in the roof let mosquitoes in there).
2) easy child 2/difficult child 2 (and difficult child 1 at times, I suspect) would, while wiping themselves after using the toilet, sometimes 'miss' and get **it on their fingers. They would then wipe their fingers on the walls. WHY they didn't just grab some more toilet paper and wipe teir fingers on that, I could never understand. They both denied it but it could have been nobody else, so I made them take turns cleaning the walls with a scrubbing brush, on the grounds that it mightn't have been them THIS time but it had been them enough times in the past, when I had cleaned it up, that they owed me a lot of turns at cleaning. Making them clean it up was the only way they seemed to eventually get the message.
3) Some of all of the kids (never identified the culprit) would relieve themselves in various places in the bathroom (no toilet in there). The floor drain always smelled ammoniacal. So husband & I began to make the kids take turns swabbing down the entire bathroom floor after all the kids had had their evening bath. We'd go in and do the sniff test after the job was done, and make tem do it over, at least round the drain, if it still smelled. Interestingly, it was difficult child 1 who never seemed to notice the smell...
4) difficult child 1 was a shocker with personal hygiene, especially in the black period after breaking up with his first girlfriend (a long-term relationship). He wouldn't wash, he wouldn't change his clothes, he wouldn't brush his hair, he barely spoke. The hygiene issue was a big one, so I began going into his room when he was at school and taking whatever clothing and bedding I could reach, and washing it. He complained a great deal when I washed his bedding and/or pyjamas, because he said it didn't feel or smell right when it had been washed. It took time and a lot of effort, but slowly we got some improvement in there.
Now some practical tips; I've shared these before. When cleaning, anything of biological origin, especially if it contains protein, will respond to enzyme cleaners. Vinegar will also shift not only stains, but smells. For smells and/or stains, wet them with vinegar (buy cheap stuff just for cleaning - it doesn't have to be labelled "for cleaning" because often that stuff is more expensive). Then toss them in a heap for an enzyme soak (if you think it needs it). Then give them a normal wash in COLD water. Never wash biological origin smells/stains in hot water, you risk nailing the problem in place.
With the vinegar - it doesn't mattter if you splash it on and the garment then dries - the vinegar will stlll do its job because when it dries some of it still remains and will be reconstituted when the garment gets wet again, when being washed.
Next great product - those "oxy-action" ones. I use it with my regular laundry powder, or sometimes in a special stain treatment.
Third - a bar of soap in a plastic soap dish. I try to keep a bit of water in the soap dish so the soap is soggy underneath. Then for any greasy stains, or "ring around the collar" stains, you scribble on the stain with the soggy soap, like you're drawing with crayons.
Once we started doing this with the mess the kids made of their environment, plus the mess they made of their clothing, we began to see some improvement. It needed a routine, a lot of reminders constantly (not nagging) and almost walking them through it, to slowly see improvement. We're now doing this with difficult child 3. We monitor how long he has been wearing his current garments and tell him, "You've worn those jeans for the past three weeks, they're covered in clay, go put them in the wash."
Or, "I know you love that shirt, you've worn the same one all week, but if you don't want it to rot away, you need to look after it. So take it off, take it to the laundry, spray it with vinegar from the spray bottle, then put it in the laundry tub so it will get washed next laundry day."
We monitored difficult child 1 (and now difficult child 3) for BO. Where possible we make him have a daily shower (it used to be bath) and follow up with, "Did you put deodorant on?"
Next morning, "Did you put deodorant on?" and we watch while he pulls up his shirt to put the deodorant on his under-arm. We shopped around to buy a deodorant that had a high level of active ingredient and was in a delivery system he was happy to use. For example, boys getting underarm hair tend to suddenly stop using roll-on deodorant, because the hairs get trapped in the roller ball. Ouch!
If we detect BO and there's no time to shower, we insist on:
1) remove the shirt and any other undergarments. Spray them with vinegar in te armpit area and put them in the laundry tub.
2) Wash the armpits with a wet wipe (we keep a packet in each bathroom and in each toilet; we also keep a bin in each place).
3) Put on deodorant.
4) Put on a clean shirt.
BO will tansfer from body to shirt, and from shirt to body. If you put a BO'd shirt onto a clean, deodorised body, you transfer BO back to the body. And vice versa. And a kid who is reluctant to shower, won't want to waste a wash!
A lot of the reason they do all this gross stuff, is they like what they are used to. They don't smell their own bad smells, and often dirty clothing also feels softer and smells/feels familiar. They like sameness. You need to teach them to overcome this and to recognise 'dirty' smells.
It is amazing how far they can be taken down the socially acceptable road. I never thought that difficult child 1 would ever be able to live independently. And now he's married!
Mind you, I suspect his wife is now wondering what he does with his underwear. In my experience, what he does with his underwear is a mystery I was never able to solve. The few times I managed to find a forgotten pair of knickers in his room and herded them to the laundry, they fell apart under the shock of being washed. Socks - unbelievable! I gave them the full vinegar soak, then enzyme soak, then wash, several times over, each time watching the rinse water turn a deep, soupy greyish-brown. And still the socks would come off the clothes line, stiff as cardboard.
This is a tricky problem. Sometimes showing too much disgust or shock only makes the problem worse. You need to think laterally, to try to find practical solutions to the claimed reason for tem doing this (even if you know darn well they're just making it up). Call their bluff and show willing to find a genuine answer, to their non-genuine excuse.
One thing to hold on to, through all the wading through of nasty surprises - YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!!
Marg