Anybody else watching this tonight? It’s part of the Medical Mysteries segment on the show. A friend of mine, who hoards and clutters like crazy, is the one who sent me the link. If you saw her, you’d never suspect that she lives in a landfill of a house.
I’ve got the Tivo set, but I’ll probably end up watching it as it records.
I’m fascinated by people who compulsively hoard. Especially the people who have six million cats in an itty-bitty house. I only have the one cat, and I love him dearly, but there are times when I think having no cats might be nice – like after he’s just horked up his dinner on a freshly washed silk sweater. I can’t even begin to imagine how people live in a cat urine palace.
The half of our house that isn’t currently empty for an expansion/remodeling looks like a hoarder hovel because of all the overflow stuff. I can’t imagine how someone lives like that long-term.
I don’t get it either. My friend and her mom always had the tendency, but it didn’t get really bad until about seven years ago. That was the last time the house got cleaned, I’m sure. :eek: She hangs clothes on the doorways and cupboard handles so she can reach them,since she can no longer reach her closet. You can’t walk through the living room except by way of a very narrow path. Open the linen closet and you’ll find a serving tray. Peek in the den and you find boxes of stuff that should be in the kitchen. Open a drawer and you discover dozens and dozens of twist ties, napkins, plastic lids, plastic bags and so on. Hotel toiletries from years past pile up in the spare room. And so on.
It’s all very depressing. I can’t imagine the condition of the carpets by now, let alone how much dust is in there. I have not set foot in that house in several years.
The naked obese Mexican guy was a little freaky. Until one of his doctors explain it I though the bag of flesh coming out of his thigh was his scrotum :eek: .
But did you, like I, laugh your ass off when the Mexican doctored implored John Quinones to “touch it!”, and he did?
Unfortunately, I also know someone who is a “hoarder”. She knows her house is a disaster, but she once admitted to me that it “hurts” her to part with stuff.
I don’t think very many hoarders actually like living in messy houses. I think it just becomes a vicious cycle for them and they don’t know how to break the cycle once things start getting out of control. In the case of the person I know, she is disabled and is physically unable to do much housework, so it’s easy for the junk piles to add up fast, and for things to get disorganized as she runs out of room for stuff.
Realistically, I know she is at the point where she physically can’t handle the massive project of cleaning it all herself (and neither can I!), so I’ve offered to hire a professional cleaning service to come clean things up, but she’s too embarrassed to let strangers see the mess. That adds another layer to the problem, since she’s hesitant to let repairmen or handy men see the house, and so a lot of repairs around the house are neglected. I worry a lot about what will eventually happen, since I suspect it will keep getting worse.
My brother-in-law is one of these. He has the narrow path through the rooms, too, but he carries it a step further. Nineteen years ago he decided to redo the kitchen. He had the sink and counters torn out, but he couldn’t decide on a new replacement. He still washes his dishes in the bathtub. Six years ago I had a job interview in his town, and he offered to let me stay at his place instead of a hotel. We had moved out of town the year after he had the kitchen done, so I had no idea he still hadn’t replaced the counters and sink. I was shocked as he led me though the house via the narrow path in the valley of clutter, but especially when he led me to the room I would stay in. It was completely empty and spotless, except for a mattress on the floor and a wardrobe near the window. When I got up to do my makeup for my interview the next morning, I had to use my towel to clean a tiny spot on the now-opaque with some crust mirror so I could see myself. Yet he was completely functional in this environment. I can’t imagine how someone could live like this.
I wish I would’ve known about this show - I would’ve loved to see it. Does anyone know if it’s coming on again?
My sister is like this. A somewhat sompulsive shopper, her house is not just filthy, but if you try to throw away a stack of old magazines She says, “Don’t throw that away. There are recipes in there I might want!” I lived with her for a while, and it wasn’t so bad then, because I did straighten up and throw stuff away, but once I moved out it got call-the-health-department bad. She finally moved out and left everything behind, but her new apartment isn’t much better.
StG
I didn’t see the show…did they describe it as a form of OCD?? That’s how I have always viewed it, the people who hoard can’t help it.
Our neighbor is a textbook case. Great guy, great neighbor, would basically do anything for us we might ask.
His back yard has a high wooden fence so you can’t see in unless you go sneak a peek. He’s got piles of scrap metal, about 50 broken down lawnmowers and other garden equipment, other junk like boards and pipes. He also has a garage back there that is full of who knows what. My husband has caught a glimpse a couple times when he’s worked on lawn mowers for us. He even keeps a pile of leaves he has raked up througout the year…it’s about 8 feet high!!! Leaves!!!
But it’s his house that creeps me out. A couple months ago he asked us to try to help him sell some stuff on ebay…he said he would provide the packaging if we would post them, etc. Fine. Well, what he brought over was boxes of stuff that were numbered and cataloged!!! And several of the boxes he brought were numbered in the 500’s!!! So I imagine he’s got thousands of boxes just piled high in every room of his house, with a little path going through. All of this stuff is junk he found on the roadside. We know anytime we need to borrow something for yardwork or to work on a car, etc that he will have it.
I feel bad for him sometimes because he knows he’s got a problem. A couple times a year he will tell us that he’s getting rid of lots of stuff, but he never does. I think it must give him some sort of comfort to have all that stuff around him.
Here is the web page for the show - ABC Primetime
Interestingly what I read is that they are seeing it’s actually different from OCD.
Who knew?
This is exactly like the friend I mentioned. She talks a couple of her guy friends into coming over to do odd jobs and repairs but won’t allow any strangers in. God forbid that a major appliance should ever go belly-up. I shudder to think how much worse it will get in the coming years.
I also wonder how many people have this condition. We’ll never know for sure, since it takes place behind closed doors, and very often the hoarders are not disheveled-looking when they’re out and about, so you never can tell.
I’m reviving this thread to see if anything has changed in recent months. Somehow, I doubt it.
The friend I discussed is watching her house slowly fall apart from mess and neglect. Water backs up or drips, the light fell from the front doorway, carpenter bees are working on the back gate, and a huge pile of junk is still sitting on the patio. As I said, I will not go into the house, so I can’t even imagine how much dust, dirt, mold and creatures must be in there by now.
I can see why she never wants to call a handyman or plumber in. They’d probably refuse to work in the mess, or else they’d report it to someone as a firetrap.
It’s all very sad, and there’s little if anything we (her friends) can do that we have not already tried.