Hoarders: new TV show

Cafe Society
61

I want to say one thing for hoarders - not to excuse their behavior, but just as a phenomenon. They often preserve everyday history in ways no “serious” person would ever do. Newspapers, records, toys, games, ephemera (calendars, ads, etc.) - and very occasionally, very rare things whose significance they have no idea of.

You have to wonder what the relatives are throwing out just because it’s not obviously worth money (and some of it surely IS worth money). Surely most of them are very far from loving old things, and indeed, probably pathologize all old things that don’t meet the layperson’s idea of antiques or collectibles.

62

I’ve wondered about that too, though from what I’ve seen on the show many of the houses/apartments are so filthy that there’s really no way to salvage anything.

Of course, I’ve been involved in something like you described…my mother inherited her great-aunt’s Singer sewing machine. Before it was handed over to us, I witnessed a relative of my mother’s cleaning out the drawers on the machine’s cabinet, throwing away what I later learned were the shuttles and such used by this great-aunt. My mother is still pissed at that particular relative for having cleaned out the drawers without permission.

63

I just got finished watching the most recent episode, with the 21-year-old suicidal kid and the cat hoarder. I was really, really over the kid’s histrionics, about 5 minutes into the episode. It also felt kind of exploitative of the show to air that, when he kept talking about suicide the whole time. (Additionally I thought his boyfriend seemed like kind of a passive-aggressive dickweed.)

As for the cat hoarders, I knew that a lot of people do hoard cats, but I’ll admit I was pretty shocked and horrified at the number of DEAD CATS in these people’s home. I mean, when you find out that your home is filled with dead cat skeletons and remains, shouldn’t that be a good clue that maybe you should not be responsible for keeping cats anymore? Also, I noticed in one scene that the animal control people kicked a couple of glass Coke bottles out of the way. Wow, glass Coke bottles. I haven’t seen those for 20 years. How the hell long was that crap piling up in their garage?! I will say that it was nice for a change to see a homeowner happily waving goodbye to all the crap and junk being cleared from their place, as opposed to the people who desperately insist that they have to examine each piece of trash before it goes out the door.

64

I felt so sorry for those poor little dead kitties. :frowning:

Not so much for the kid, even though growing up with that Dad must be tough.

65

:stuck_out_tongue:

Regarding the episode with the young man (forgot his name) and Tara - I felt bad for the young guy. I mean, I’d probably be unable to deal with him in person, but he obviously had stuff very wrong in his brain and was articulating it in ways that I could understand. For a lot of these hoarders I just want to throw up my hands after a while (the food hoarder, for instance), but for him I could really see that he knew he was being “crazy”, and I could also see some of the environmental factor behind his problem (i.e., Dad).

Cat hoarders: My WAG about their self-justification for not being self-punitive over dead cats is that they probably figured that the cats had a better (if short) life in their house rather than outside.

And I agree about Doug’s concept that some are collectors gone to extremes - some stuff can be valuable but you don’t know what will be valuable next… therefore everything can be valuable! The family with the schizophrenic father and daughter had the mom talking repeatedly about how much some of that stuff could be worth - as they pan to the shot of the snowed-over backyard with things strewn everywhere. Knowing how damaged things can get with time just from sitting in a mostly-dry basement or enclosed but not weatherproof porch, I can’t imagine there could be much that’s salvageable out there.

66

Well, Beware of Doug is definitely onto something, both with the idea that hoarders often perceive their collections to have valuable items in them, and also that there likely are valuable or at least semi-valuable items in with all of the junk. The problem as it seems to me is that for a hoarder, this idea, that there might be something valuable in there, can be incredibly destructive, and can lead them to never be able to extricate themselves from the “hoard.” If you have a house that is literally jam-packed from rafters to floorboards with stuff that is 99% trash, and you are convinced that there could be something of great value in there, how are you ever going to clean it out? You’re not.

Besides which, most of the things in the pile that may have once held value probably don’t now, just by virtue of having been buried in a pile of trash for so long. A pile of trash that in many hoarders’ homes will include food leavings, animal droppings, and just plain mildew and mold. The front page of the local newspaper from, say, the day that Nixon resigned might well hold value for some collector. But probably not so much, if it’s mildewed, in tatters, has coffee stains all over it, and smells like cat litter.

67

Oh man that 21-year-old was in a horrible lose-lose situation. I think his problem will never get better living with his dad (who is almost as bad due to his drinking - my god those hundreds and hundreds of bottles!) but I think his mental situation is possibly so bad that he might not be able to hold down a job and move out on his own.

And the dozens of dead cats! AAAAH! And the fact that some were so sick that they had to be put down anyway. :frowning:

68

There is a forum on the A&E site where some of the people featured on the show post. Jake said he has broken up with the boyfriend. He also claims his father has stopped drinking. :dubious:

69

I would really like for that to be true but I give it a :dubious: as well. Maybe seeing himself (and his “collection”) on TV was the rude awakening he needed to get help himself?

70

This thread is great inspiration for my planned project today: filing and cleaning up papers, in an attempt to see the floor of our study again.

I think maybe having huge piles of junk is surprisingly common because there are many causes. In my case (not that I’m any comparison to these people), I have a little “I might need that,” quite a bit more “ooh, shiny - must buy!” and a whole lot of “these insurance documents came in the mail, I need to review and store them, but I don’t have time now.” And of course, each time, I have less ability to deal with the filing and stuff because the pile of unfiled things has grown, and that has to be dealt with before I can really put something away. Actually, most of the clutter in my house results from things not having a handy home.

And then of course there are the people who devote all their time to other things and leave no time for routine cleaning, people who suffered real deprivation and can’t adapt to an environment of plenty, and the fact that it’s evidently easy to become actually delusional about the state of things (I’ve read animal hoarders are this way).

Now, I’ve got a friend whose house is pretty nightmarish. There are two couches in her living room, and yet only one spot to sit in, which she shifts around for guests by moving the piles of laundry, toys, and papers. There are piles of clothes and stuff everywhere, to the point that you do often have to edge around things. And yet, she shifts stuff around and keeps the areas relatively clean, just cluttered as hell, and she is constantly getting rid of stuff! I don’t understand, unless she’s just lying, how she can drop so much stuff at consignment, Goodwill, and other charities, and still have so much.

Though, come to think of it, she is a pathological bargain shopper. Like if she doesn’t buy it retail, it doesn’t cost anything, and should be gotten to have on hand for the future. She has given me bins and bins of outgrown baby clothes that are half filled with items that still have the tags on them.

I hope at least some of the people on the show get help. I used to be much more of a hoarder, and having reformed, I can attest to the pleasure of being utterly brutal in getting rid of things. Haven’t used it in a year? Chuck it. Or drop it at Goodwill if it’s too painful to “waste” it. Feels good!

I wonder if this would work for recalcitrant spouses and such - propose to move pretty much everything you own to a storage unit, excepting items in daily use. No lists may be made of items in there. If you remember an item and have an immediate use for it, the non-hoarder will fetch it for you. Anything you don’t even remember exists after 12 mos gets trashed, again, without you ever seeing it again.

71

Bingo. I do a lot of yard sale shopping, and realized early on that before buying anything, I needed to decide whether I had a place to store it. Otherwise, you wind up with a house full of bargain items that you have no place to put. Especially with baby clothes, it’s really easy to find them at consignment stores, yard sales, etc., for practically nothing, and often with original tags still on. When something is practically free, it’s hard to say no to it, especially when it’s a “useful” item like baby clothing. Or even coffee mugs, or picture frames, or whatever. But no baby needs three crates filled with clothing, you know? I think that’s the part that some people have trouble with. Just because it’s very inexpensive, and potentially useful, doesn’t mean you need 50 of them. I actually just re-organized my stored toddler clothing and jettisoned a bunch of size 4T stuff even though Whatsit the Youngest isn’t in a 4T yet, because I’d managed to accumulate WAY more 4T stuff than would fit into two plastic storage drawers. A 4-year-old does not need that many clothes. So the extras got donated.

72

I hear you. I love getting rid of stuff…throwing it out, recycling, selling, regifting.
I just wish the friend I mentioned somewhere upthread could feel good about it, but she says she likes the stuff even though she knows she has a serious problem. She has done nothing with either of her dead parents’ belongings because she feels that she would be throwing her own parents away if she let go of a single item that was theirs.

73

Latest episode:
Kerrylea, married to a semi(?)-hoarder, divorced from her first husband because of her hoarding - own two houses with stuff and need to clean the old one to sell it before both houses get foreclosed on. (There are two mortgages on each, for over $7000/month in playments!)

Lauren, living with a non-hoarder boyfriend Will. Lost her job due to disorganization. Probably depressed, as she spends most of her time lying around and not doing anything. Once called the cops to remove her parents (citing “invasion of privacy”) after they had come (with her knowledge) to help and finally realized what was going on and tried to deal with the mess. Parents and her losing-patience boyfriend are giving her one last chance.

I was stunned by Will’s quote to the effect of “If you find yourself with a hoarder, run” - I’m wondering if this predicts their relationship outcome.

Most striking was Kerrylea driven to tears over a missing shard of tile that was supposed to (someday) be glued into place on a front step. The cleanup crew member that described the problem was extremely diplomatic about his “uh, sure looked like garbage to us!” reaction, phrasing it gently.

Disappointing ‘results’ again, unsurprisingly.

(I went and threw away a bunch of magazines.)

74

I thought the worst part of this episode was KerryLea spending more than 6 hours in a row going through one bathroom. Talk about stonewalling.

75

And then two hours going through the garbage after a maid had been in there to sweep up and threw some stuff away.

Lauren trying to figure out how she could “donate” a bottle of nail-strengthening polish was pretty striking too. I can’t imagine how long it would take to clear out that place if each item had the same amount of effort devoted to it. This is why even though I consider myself an environmentalist, I will not hesitate at throwing stuff out if it’s going to take a serious amount of effort to find some place that can take and use it, and then in the future I try to mentally remind myself, if I’m going to buy something, what its eventual fate may be and if I really need it.

76

Sorry for the upcoming rant. I’ve been watching this show from the beginning, but Kerrylea’s story was the first to drive me to yell at the TV. All I could think of while she hemmed and hawed in the bathroom was, “you’re risking a hundred thousand dollars in profit over five bucks worth of crap!” (Note: I have no idea how much that house can sell for, but I’m hoping for her sake it has appreciated since she bought it.) I suppose all of the hoarders profiled so far were running great risks (of eviction, of illness, of isolation from their families), but Kerrylea was, for me, committing the most obviously disadvantageous act.

Caveat: I’m a bit touchy because I’m having trouble selling a property I partially own. I’ve been working so hard cleaning up and depersonalizing that I can’t imagine someone else refusing to do any of that. How can someone lose perspective to such a point that she’ll risk a house for the sake of not letting go of an empty shampoo bottle?

77

It can be very frustrating living with someone who is a slob. Especially if you are not.

My girlfriend’s family are classic hoarders. Quite frankly their house disgusts me. At first I thought they were just rennovating a room here and there or her brother was moving in or out or something. But over time I realized it was always like that. Nearly every room is piled high with crap no rational person needs.

Unfortunately it seems to have rubbed off on my girlfriend. She is incapable of recognizing when the appartment is a “mess”. She is also incapable of culling out old clothes or other stuff that she no longer wears. And she keeps bullshit stuff like bags or boxes in case we “need” them.

I think people in general have a tendency to collect and keep stuff that has no intrinsic value or usefullness to anyone but them - books, T-shirts, terrabytes of music, thousands of DVD, old knick knacks from vacations or whatever. But for some reason compuslive hoarders ascribe the same nostaglic value to every single scrap of shit that a normal person might ascribe to a vintage original Led Zeppelin concert T-shirt from the show where they met their future wife after she died in a horrible car crash.

78

There was something about Kerrylea that turned me off more than any of the other people shown so far. I don’t know why exactly. The way she was rude to the men helping to clean, the fact that instead of cleaning, her solution was to buy a second house :rolleyes:, how she allowed herself & her husband to get into foreclosure over those two houses and yet still won’t throw out garbage, and the whole thing with the maid cleaning up the bathroom. I didn’t really get what happened there. Was the maid service with the cleaning crew? Was it Kerrylea’s own maid? Why was she cleaning the bathroom if that was supposed to be done by Kerrylea anyway?

79

Eyebrows 0f Doom, you’re making me realize that Kerrylea reminds me of Nicole from Obsessed. Nicole constantly corrected her mother for pronouncing the “k” sound, and both her mother and brother for placing their hands in ways that annoyed her. While I normally sympathize with the behavior of people featured on these shows, both Kerrylea and Nicole struck me as being controlling, self-centered people who got satisfaction out of bending others to their will. I thought that Kerrylea’s talking down to the cleaning crew, especially about the broken tile, was power-tripping of the worst kind.

Speaking of the tile, why did nobody call her on this? You’ve had a nondescript tile fragment sitting out on a desk in a roomful of junk for who knows how long and you dare get upset when it goes missing? It was obvious from the video footage that the walkway had been broken for some time. If I were in her place, I’d be blaming myself for not fixing the walkway sooner and not storing the tile piece more carefully. I should stop, as I’m getting way too involved with this show. Oh well, at least it inspired me to tape an Allen key to the underside of the sofa it can be used to adjust. Let’s see that doohickey go missing now…

80

I can’t imagine Kerrylea having anyone in to clean previously - she must have been hired by the show. My WAG is that either the maid’s English wasn’t very good (it seemed like the woman directing the effort had a bit of trouble communicating to the maid what was wrong, though I may be mistaken; I had the sound down a little at that point) or that communication to her wasn’t clear.

Not that unclear communication was new there - I also interpreted her orders to the cleaning crew as meaning to trash the roll-top desk, not to move it outside and put it somewhere to keep.