Does anyone watch Hoarders?

I watch those shown on occasion to realize no matter how bad my life get I haven't gotten to that level.

These shows give me PTSD. My grandfather and brother were hoarders.

My parents are moving in the direction of becoming hoarders...with stuff. They aren't pigs who throw food around and have bugs and rodents in their house. They just refuse to throw things away (like old clothes) and just keep buying and buying stuff.

I've tried to sit down with my parents and watch this to show them the error of their ways. They can't relate to the extreme people the show likes to profile. Maybe if they profiled milder cases and called it "Future Hoarders" I'd have a chance.

OP, for some reason, Michael Tompkins seems like such an odd match with Hoarders. It's almost like he just randomly got matched up with these hoarders. I haven't see many episodes with him, though, so my opinion could change.

R3, the British hoarder shows are edited *way* different, compared to the American shows. The American shows put a really scary spin on things. The British hoarder shows make dealing with hoarding a lot more do-able.

My mom has literally the opposite problem, she throws away everything that isnt super urgent to keep. She once gave away all my old clothes I left in her house when I left to live abroad a couple of years.

I loathe the Robin Zasio episodes. Her furrowed brow and concerned, sympathetic whispery voice bug me.

I know the hoarders have a psyche issue and it's not advisable to just let the families shovel all their shit into dumpsters but she coddles them way too much.

Her episodes always end up with things being brought out and rearranged a bit and then stuffed back inside.

Huh. I see Robin Zasio as somewhat passive-aggressive.

My favorite therapist is, of course, Suzanne Chabaud. I'd feel the most comfortable with her. Dr. Green, I like, as well.

I like Matt, the organizer, of course. I like all of the organizers, but he's the funniest.

Fucking hell, half of Data lounge is scared shitless by this series. And 99% of the time for no reason.

Not being a Marie Kondo doesn't define hoarding.

R3's parents with closets full of old clothes "that they refuse to throw away" and buying habits that he doesn't think have slowed in due proportion to their advancing years is not hoarding. Stubborn old parents doesn't equate to hoarders. True hoarding is a quite rare pathology and it's depths are obvious.

An aged mother with a spare bedroom full of hideous dolls that her heirs all despise is not a hoarder, she merely has a habit that her children find inconvenient.

Americans in particular have a habit of buying things for the sake of buying things. They have spare bedrooms full of unopened bags of cheap tatt they bought because it was "such a good price." Stupid, but not hoarding.

When you can't get the front door open, when traversing a house means walking over and across things, between narrow little aisles of shit stacked to the ceiling, when the person has lost all sense of what us potentially useful (to themselves or others) and they have become emotionally attached to trash if not the least potential value ti anyone...that is hoarding. Simply having more thanks than they put to use is not hoarding.

Hoarders are emotional cripples and disturbingly unfit for making any decisions. And it's practically incurable. A crack team of rubbish removers and cleaners and organizers and psychiatrists is useful only if it does the same thing over and over and over again until the patient first. Curing is near impossible; there's only regular and heavy duty intervention as a control to protect the patient from material risks if their hoarding: fire, unsanitary conditions, mountains of stacked full cat litter boxes collapsing on the hoarder...

Somebody's parents with closets dull of old clothes from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s... Not hoarding. It's just shit nobody wants and the parents don't care because it's been in those same closets since the 1970s. And they're old and near death and don't relish the idea of having strangers from the charity shop poke around through their house.

"with closets dull of old clothes from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990"

Sign me up! If those parents knew thrifties like me would spend good money for that, they'd get rid of them.

I love it. The show put teenaged me on the path to minimalism and becoming as brutally greedy with my attention as capitalists are with their money.

R10, "brutally greedy with my attention"? What does that mean?

R11, it’s caring deeply about what I spend my precious attention on, protecting it from ads and consumerist culture which created the hoarders we see on TV. It’s looking for deeper, more lasting sources of dopamine than my bank account; eg my laziness which prevents me from starting dirty, inelegant hobbies like those hoarders; or my narcissism which ensures my home will never be gross; or my schizoid-like tendency to tune out chaotic people like many hoarders’ friends and family. The show is a wonderful guidebook on not becoming these unfortunate people.

I can't watch this show, it freaks me out. I don't even deal well seeing pictures that my friends posts where they have stacks of stuff in the background that needs to be sorted and put away or picked up. It makes me agitated and depressed.

I don't watch Hoarders because it would freak me out like R13, but I'm curious what R12 means by "dirty, inelegant hobbies." Woodworking?

Frankly, I think a match would fix a lot of these issues.

R14, anything that grows beyond a clean and ordered state. Like repairing old cars parked on your property, or “caring” for chickens/bunnies/hundreds of cats, or even collecting some random mid-century BS if it’s inelegant or dirty. I just see it as meaningless hubris to think they can tackle all of these things in their crazy lives.

The show was actually really helpful to me in accepting that my father's hoarding problem is a psychological problem. I was once on his case about giving at least SOME of the several dozen never-used comforters he'd accumulated to Goodwill and his usually mild demeanor changed for just a flash -- like Bilbo's moment of Precious-protecting rage in the LOTR movie -- and I realized I'd seen that same reaction from subjects on the show. I knew I had to back off.

r15 That's my standard reply when people ask me how I'm gonna deal with all my dad's stuff when he passes. "I've got a match."

I like you R18.

My partner and I are toying with the idea of doing a short weekend in Greensboro, NC to stay at the 1920s mansion that was owned by Sylvia, the former decorator. The gay guys who bought the house and had to ah e her kicked out have finished the renovations and it’s beautiful.

I’m the one upthread with the grandfather and brother. I tried to give my grandfather some leeway because he was in his 90s. You couldn’t even walk and any attempt I made at throwing stuff away caused a nuclear meltdown. When he finally went to a retirement home, it was such a sigh of relief.

My brother always had issues. After he died I went out west to clean out his apartment. I ended up calling in one of those cleanup companies. I don’t mean to MARY but between his sudden death (not in the apartment) and the shock of seeing what he was living in, I nearly passed out when I forced open the door. The company I called in was amazing. It’s not cheap, but to me it was worth every penny.

None of the therapists are tough enough on these losers.