I wonder just how those cats died. (My son’s guess: Suicide?) I guess if they were already ill, they might have hidden themselves away like cats do… I’m sure they didn’t starve. Could something have fallen on them?
I was also struck by Augustine’s lack of gratitude.
This weekend, I went to visit my grandma and mom, who live together. Mom says things are really getting out of control in Grandma’s bedroom (I didn’t look). But I offered a couple of times to come over and help her sort things. Grandma declined, citing the time someone threw away a bunch of her eight-track tapes(!). When Mom suggested that the church could probably get some use out of the organ that Grandma hasn’t played in years, Grandma got downright pissed off and we had to change the subject.
I don’t have any problem with Grandma keeping her precious possessions, but I suspect she’s drowning in junk mail, old toiletries, and knick-knacks. I hope if I keep offering to help, she’ll take me up on it sometime.
I had the same thought about the furniture and carpet/drapes. At a minimum it needed steam cleaning. Even then I’m not sure I’d want to sit on that sofa. Especially after seeing the heavily stained mattress they threw out.
Yeah, but the neckbeard. Seriously, the neckbeard. Not a good look on anyone, man.
Did anyone catch Augustine scarfing down a raw hot dog while sitting on the front step? It summed up the episode.
Is that what she was eating?? I thought she had a breadstick! :eek:
I like the caption stating that the children fear she will get evicted and have nowhere to go. I think it’s more of a case of them fearing of where she will go i.e. to live with one of them!
Technically, there’s no such thing as a raw hot dog. The meat product inside is precooked. You can eat a hot dog cold out of the fridge without any ill effects (not that you’d want to).
I doubt it. This lady got her final chance. The kids are even getting her house repaired (or maybe the Hoarder show is paying for repairs?). If she messes up again, I see a nursing home in her future.
I bet her asthma clears up now that she’s not living in filth.
Respiratory illness is my guess. That house was disease-ridden.
She’s mentally ill. She’s just not seeing the world in the same way we do.
The show did say at the end that she was getting some in-home therapy, so at least someone’s keeping an eye on her.
I realize that, actually. My oldest daughter used to love hot dogs right out of the fridge when she was, like, five. My hubby would kind of freak out over it, but I’d reassure him that it was really fully cooked, and she wasn’t going to get sick from it!
Still, my :eek: at Augustine sitting on the porch chomping a cold hot dog is that’s the kind of thing a little kid or a mentally ill person would do, so it really kind of summed up a lot of her problem. . .
Reminds me of taking care of my late Dad. Alzheimer’s and a colostomy is a *very * bad combination.
I’ve never seen this show, but after reading y’all’s comments went to the A&E site. There’s a deleted scene from this ep. What was so bad they couldn’t air it?
My hoarding acquaintance (who had the chance to be on this show and turned it down) knows she’s got mental issues, knows she needs treatment, knows it’s serious. But she won’t do anything about it, though she can well afford to. She’s going to end up being the crazy old lonely lady on her street who can’t bear to part with her piles of crap.
This show is like watching a slow-motion train wreck. I’m not sure putting people’s mental diseases on full display is a good idea, especially since that doesn’t seem to be the focus of the program, getting people help.
I saw one earlier this month, from last season, where the family had their kids taken away because of the mess. The kitchen was unbelievable. They had a beautiful home, but the woman is picking through what was thrown out and holding up a kid’s shirt, saying, “This is a perfectly good shirt.”
Then why wasn’t it in your son’s closet? He obviously didn’t need that shirt.
In the end, six months later, she still had 1400 boxes worth of stuff and her husband was divorcing her because it was the only way he could get his kids back. I wish they would explore more of the mental issues and how the people got to this point rather than a vicarious “oh my goodness will you look at that mess” sort of approach.
I agree. I felt like this episode was all about the yuck factor and very little about featuring someone who could turn their life around.
I agree as well, ivylass. I would probably watch a full night of that family and what happened. I just wanted to hug the son and tell him it would be OK and that his mom really is sick. I almost cried when he opened the toy box and found the toys that hadn’t been moved since the mess started piling up when he was a toddler. I can imagine how angry and hurt the daughter must have been to watch her little brother be abandoned and hurt and knowing that you have to now raise a child.
I really don’t know what I would do in that situation - have the mother committed? Walk away and worry that she is dead and no one noticed? I just kept thinking “those poor grown up children” and living with such a toxic and mentally disturbed mother that was not nurturing, but basically a burden.
I’d like to see a follow up. I told someone today that we could probably start the countdown to the explosion of emotions from the son as he seems to have bottled everything up and shut it all off - I think one of the counselors said something like that at the end.
My heart just went out to that family and their situation. And I will fully admit I have watched episodes just to PALATR and because I do love to watch the transformation of a shitty nasty house into something neat and clean. But then again, I’m the one that said I wanted my toilet to be prepared for emergency open heart surgery should the situation ever arise so I am a little disconnected from the hoarders anyway. I have sometimes felt a bit superior when watching it (“Well I would *never *live like that”) but that episode last night really drove the mental illness aspect of hoarding home for me.
I see your point, and I don’t disagree. However, the time to seek long-term counseling and help for this kind of mental illness is before it reaches a crisis-point, and this show seems to focus on the crises: clean up your yard or go to jail; you’ve got a week to clean up your house or lose custody of your kids; stuff like that.
I do prefer the episodes that have a psychologist or psychiatrist on-board, and am always please when the fine-print at the end says the subject of the show is following up with therapy, etc.
Amid all the filth, did anyone else notice how clean Augustine’s fridge was? At least on the outside. Since they never opened it, I assume there was no problem in there, but I also seem to remember there was no electricity. I guess there wasn’t anything in there, but the outside was so white in comparison to the rest of the house.
I agree that Augustine should be in an assisted living facility where there is a staff that cleans and makes sure the trash gets thrown out. That house should be razed no question. I’m sure her asthma will go away now.
I went to a day-long workshop for folks interested in becoming professional organizers. We spent a good bit of time talking about hoarders, but the conversation began with the leaders of the workshop saying that you won’t get that many as clients, because they don’t seek help until there is a crisis such as eviction. Of course, this only makes working with them that much harder. I don’t know a lot about how television producers find candidates for their shows, so maybe with a little effort they could find hoarders who are not facing a crisis–but I imagine it would be much easier to find those that are in crisis, by talking to social workers, etc.
Well, not only is it easier to find the ones who are in crisis (it’s my understanding you can also contact the show through the website if you or someone you know might be a good candidate for an episode), but the crisis situation makes better drama, too. Better entertainment.
I watched this episode online last night, and I’m not sure that Augustine was a hoarder. I mean, yes, she kept stuff, but she didn’t express the same attachment to her trash and other things that the other hoarders had expressed during the previous episodes. She didn’t seem to have much of a thought process about her “stuff” at all, that I could tell. She didn’t really grab many items from the enormous pile of filth that they shoveled out, didn’t have stories to tell about why she needed to keep this or that (there were a few, but very few in comparison to others), and didn’t get upset as she watched the proceedings.
I do think she is extremely ill in some way. Some of her behavior was very similar to the behavior in many of the very mentally ill people with whom I worked when I was a clinician. But I don’t think her problem was hoarding.