The TV Show 'Hoarders' can be motivational to most people.

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The TV Show 'Hoarders' can be motivational to most people.

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Started 2 years ago by derekmartin81
Latest reply from suzjazz
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derekmartin81
Member

A&E has a show called 'Hoarders' that is great to watch whenever you're feeling blue about your current uncluttering project. No matter how out-of-control things get at our house, I can watch an episode of Hoarders and be relieved that we don't live like some of those people.

The show is interesting when you listen to the people's stories. A lot of them start out by keeping things around because "they may become useful sometime in the future". Over the years, it turns to an illness as they grow more and more unable to throw stuff out. Each episode tracks what seems to be an intervention that one's family gives to the hoarder. They bring in a large truck and cleanup crew to clean house. One episode even featured the lady climbing into the back of the trash hauling truck so she could sort through the trash and try to justify keeping some stuff.

Many of the episodes end up with a lot of stuff being put into a self storage unit to get it out of the house. I am biased to that idea since I've managed a self storage facility for over 6 years now.

Posted 2 years ago #
katewilson
Member

Oh my goodness~ I just watched an episode of the show for the first day today online. It was almost unbelievable to me! The people on that show are not simply disorganized. They have actual mental disorders and they need treatment. I feel badly for them, because they do not want to live that way. I thought watching the show would help me feel better about my mess, but after seeing an episode I realize that my disorganized home cannot even compare to the homes on that show. I'm unorganized, but I have never lived in unsanitary conditions the way the people on the show do.
The worst one was Jill, a woman in her sixties that kept rotting food all over her home. She had food that had expired two years earlier, that she claimed would still be good to eat. Obviously she is very mentally ill and needs help to realize that her thinking is dangerous to her health.
It was fascinating to watch the show, but also a little stressful for me. It's like a trainwreck: I don't want to see things like that, but I couldn't stop looking.

Posted 2 years ago #
PJ Doland
Forum Admin

If you haven't yet seen the show, you can watch full episodes online at the A&E website.

Posted 2 years ago #
Laetitia in Australia
Member

You can only watch full episodes if you're in certain countries - it wouldn't play for me (Australia).

Posted 2 years ago #
Kaz in Oz
Member

Yes, we've only just managed to get Clean House on pay TV this week. Life of Grime (from the UK) is pretty garphic and just tells it like it is, not a makeover show at all.

Posted 2 years ago #
EraserGirl
Member

try youtube.. many shows are there in pieces..they may be too.

Posted 2 years ago #
reyecat
Member

definitely inspiring...

It's scary when you can see some of those behaviours in people close to you.

Posted 2 years ago #
Sheryl
Member

Yes, it sure is. My mother-in-law's house could rival some of the houses on that show.

I once tried to clean her dining room table off so they would have a place to eat, and all she would let me do was shift a few things around. The piles and mess were back, and even worse, within a few days. She had a kitchen fire several years back caused by piles of papers and books around her stove.

One of my brothers-in-law went down in her basement once and found a cache of almost thirty rolls of very old aluminum foil. He suggested she get rid of it, and she went ballistic - threw him out of the house...

We live in dread of cleaning that house out after she passes. :-(

My sister-in-law lives there with her, and I'm wondering if we're going to discover that she's as much of the problem as Mom is.

Posted 2 years ago #
reyecat
Member

wow, sheryl.... that's very sad... I'm sorry.

Is there such a thing as a hoarding intervention? That can't be safe for your MIL or SIL.

Posted 2 years ago #
Sheryl
Member

Well, as much as my husband and I and one of his brothers & his wife would love to do that, it's a very large family and unfortunately, we wouldn't have the support of the rest of his siblings. For many reasons, we've come to the conclusion that it would be an exercise in futility.

When we go over there, we do keep an eye on things like clutter around the stove and anything else that could be an immediate safety issue.

After my father-in-law passed away two years ago, I was completely surprised when she actually asked me to pack up his clothes and donate them to the thrift store. However, NOTHING could be thrown out - I couldn't even suggest it. I took bags and bags of stuff out of there, but it didn't even make a dent in the piles.

The bottom line is, it's their house and their stuff, and unless they ask for help, there's only so much that we can say and do.

Posted 2 years ago #
Claycat
Member

I was watching some of the episodes, and the disorder is really sad and pitiful. I understood the confusion and memory connections that some people were talking about, because I have that on a much smaller scale with paper memorabilia.

In one episode, a therapist was talking to one young woman about being more selfish, but I thought she was being too selfish. She was clinging to all of her mess and alienating her boyfriend and parents. She seemed to be totally self-absorbed. Her name was Lauren, and it didn't appear that she was having a good outcome to her situation. She hadn't worked in a year. I don't know who was enabling her to continue like that without losing everything.

I found it hard to continue watching these people, because it was so depressing.

Sometimes it seems like losing their stuff to foreclosure or fire would be the best thing to happen to them, as long as they weren't hurt themselves.

I don't know what the solution is.

Posted 2 years ago #
EraserGirl
Member

There is no such thing as hoarding intervention. Clinical hoarding needs years of therapy and usually anti-anxiety medication. I tried to 'help' a friend for many years. I cleaned her mess a couple of times a year...but she and her family just keep recreating it. They were also in denial that this was a problem. We are no longer friends.

Posted 2 years ago #
Claycat
Member

I lost a friend that way, too, EraserGirl. She wasn't so bad at the beginning, but she decided to redo the rooms in her house. She stacked all of her things in the middle of the living room and dining room, so she could get to the walls. She started stripping paint and wallpaper. However, she keep having interruptions, and it would be harder and harder to get back to work. She had redone the basement, which looked great, so mostly she and her family lived down there. She started working on the kitchen, too. Pretty soon every available space had dirty dishes stacked on it. Eventually, there were only paths through the main floor of the house. :(

I tried to help her a few times. She had good intentions, but she couldn't overcome the sheer enormity of it. Eventually I couldn't stand the pain of seeing this. Later I moved out of town, and we lost touch.

She had so many books on clutter and organizing that they had become clutter, too! No reflection on your book, Erin! I'm buying your book as soon as I get some extra money!

Posted 2 years ago #
mayhem
Member

That show gives my wife nightmares!!!

Posted 1 year ago #
chacha1
Member

I agree it's motivational in the worst-case-scenario, looking-for-clues kind of way as in, do I actually think this way sometimes?? I'll bet most of us do have those "I can use this someday!" moments that make it very hard to give things up.

When my grandma was dying, my Dad and I were at her house and cleaning out just the fridge, freezer & pantry was so sad and depressing ... ancient fossilized leftovers, no way would they have been safe to eat. ... She had not-terribly-advanced Alzheimer's, which of course is a different disorder, and on top of that was a Depression child, so she had issues of all kinds!

In her assisted-living apartment (where she lived very briefly after being forced to give up driving ... she hated it and essentially starved herself to death rather than completely lose her senses and her ability to choose for herself ... tough old broad!) she had multiple covered candy dishes full of M&Ms and other things, so old that they had literally decomposed at the bottom of the dishes. These had gone with her from her house.

However, she did not "hoard" as we see it on the show. Her home was very neat and clean. Food was where she seemed to fixate.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the pathological viewpoint we see on "Hoarders" is actually very common: most of us just have it to a much lesser degree, and consequently it's easier to find ways to work around or through it.

Posted 1 year ago #
MellieTX
Member

We joke that some of our older relatives are "food pushers"- eat this, you must be starving, etc. when you've said no thank you over and over and over. Just realized, or rather cemented the idea, that my parents are "stuff pushers"- do you want this?...can't you use this?...this used to belong to?...wouldn't the kids like to play with...? Argh. Saying no helps sometimes, but not always. I think it comes out of not wanting to be wasteful, the desire to be helpful, etc. I think our society has also evolved unspoken rules about how much stuff one "must" have.

Posted 1 year ago #
SarahJ
Member

When I get stuff pushed on me, I take it and then get rid of it at home. And then say "Why, yes, those canned chickpeas were great, thanks, Grandma" when in actuality you never use canned chickpeas and gave them to a food drive instead.

Posted 1 year ago #
MellieTX
Member

I do the same- gathering items for donation right now.

Posted 1 year ago #
bandicoot
Member

i started watching hoarders online after i found this forum.
what an eye-opener!
those poor sad lost souls....so much pain there, it's hard to watch.
and it's hard to watch the incredible mess.
i found it all very motivational though.

totally agree with you mellietx, about the stuff-pushers!
i accepted stuff for years,
and now i say no thanks.
OR i say, *i* don't need it, but i know someone who does....would you like me to get this to them?
and often, that's ok too.

Posted 1 year ago #
Amy
Member

If you have ever watched the Flip This House shows, you've seen some awful looking places that have been previously inhabited by hoarders, or possible Alzheimer patients. Always an incredible mess.

I had to clean out my mother's house when she moved from there to be closer to my sister and her married daughter. It wasn't as bad as Hoarders, but it was close. She never was much of a housekeeper, and her house was pretty gross. Mouse turds on the counters, and bugs in the drawers.

I just hope I don't leave a mess like that for my own children.

Posted 1 year ago #

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