Let’s be an episode of “Hoarders”

I'm the jar of black mayonnaise that was purchased in 1995 and is still able to provoke a meltdown in 2018.

I’m the mummified dead cat under the bed.

Um the newly cleaned house that will look utterly disgusting again in six months time.

I am the dining room table full of used Chinese food Styrofoam containers.

I’m the cleaning crew member who manages to throw out that one prize possession buried for years that threatens to shut down the entire cleanup.

I'm the homely daughter who has used the same grocery list since 2003. I drop things off on the back porch, but I never go inside. Nobody goes inside.

I've been praying for a fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, or nuclear winter.

I’m the structural damage that the hoard has caused that makes the cleanup unsafe.

I’m the hoarder who loves Christmas 🎄- and has spent thousands on decorations - but hasn’t decorated in years because the only space available to do so is the ceiling.

I am the bathtub full of shitty Depends.

I'm the (usually ethnic) housecleaner who leads a prayer circle of the cleanup crew before the work begins.

I’m the hoarder on cleanup day who still thinks it’s not THAT bad and wants to pull the plug on this whole thing.

I'm the audience that gets off on feeling superior to people with severe mental illness.

I’m the closet hoarder or SJW on DL that finds this thread triggering....

I'm the husband forced to sleep in my hot car because my wife's hoarding is so bad.

I'm Dr Robin Zasio's scorched 'blonde' hair.

I'm the buckets of faeces in the garage.

I’m the one per episode hot junk hauler who wears shorts to the cleanup. If you put your TV on slow motion you just might see my junk bulging!

I'm the old Big Mac wrappers interleaved among issues of the Post dating back to "Nixon Resigns."

Some of those hot junk haulers....wouldn’t mind hauling their junk!

I’m Matt Paxton keeping it real with a hoarder and their ridiculous demands.

When he gets testy, you know it’s on!

I’m the plastic bag that takes 20 minutes to decide if I should keep, throw out, or donate.

I’m the tarp on the front lawn where they pile all of my valuable “treasures” freshly hauled out of my filthy hovel. I would be so upset if they were damaged while sitting on the grass.

My “To Keep” Pile

I'm that mouse urine soaked crumpled sheet of paper that hasn't been seen in years, yet I am so valuable that my hoarder goes into a meltdown when I'm tossed in the garbage bag.

I'm the Legal Services lawyer who has to go to court again and again to try to stop these people from being evicted from the premises they have destroyed with their mental illness.

I the icey layer of hard ice cream on the old half gallon in the freezer next to the dead mice she kept for the snake she never had.

I'm that forgotten Grand Canyon rock that my hoarder got 30 years ago. I haven't been seen in 29 years 9 months. My hoarder chooses ME over their daughter when the daughter tells the hoarder to make a decision. Then the daughter grabs me out of the hoarder's hand and THROWS me far across the street. Then as I lay there far away in the street I see my hoarder go into the mother of all meltdowns in the middle of the street for all to see.

I'm the mental illness manifesting itself in hoarding behavior, and now the entire world can laugh at me via cable TV.

Oh wait, is that a Happy Meal box from 1987?

I’m the hoarder’s computer

I'm the next door neighbor. I fucking HATE that hoarder. My house and yard are infested with rats and I can't keep my windows open in the summer because I can fucking SMELL that house if the wind shifts. I don't believe in God but I fucking pray that a bundle of newspaper will fall on top of that cocksucker and kills them.

I am the surge of detachment that allows the hoarder to throw away things with wild abandon for ten minutes. This is followed by a cigarette and a crying jag in the middle of the street.

I am the gay real estate house flipper calling code enforcement daily to complain about the house and pretending to be the neighbor. The house is in in a gentrified area and worth much more than the hoarder or the family knows. My objective is to get the house condemned, then approach the daughter or son of the hoarder and make a substantial offer. I will also assist in finding an assisted living apartment for the hoarder parent and get a kickback from my lesbian friend that owns the assisted living facility.

I’m sick and stressed canaries and parakeets in cages. There are hundreds of, stacked on top of each other and hanging from the ceiling. There’s decades of bird feces from us littering the floor. Our owner goes into a meltdown when we need to be given to an animal protection agency. The owners Japanese husband hasn’t lived with the crazy white wife in years but somehow hasn’t divorced her. Her hot mixed race cub son is on the clean-up detail and his pain and embarrassment is on display for the world to see.

I'm the 67 cats cross-infecting each other with every feline disease in the book.

I am DL'r that lives in his parent's basement, I tuned into the show by accident, I turn it off after 10 minutes while looking at my immediate surroundings and finding points in common. I then get on DL and vent my frustration by railing on Trannies, African Americans, Heterosexual Women , and any gay man that is handsome and/or muscular as I recline on the Laz E Boy wearing my size 44 waist sweatpants from Walmart and my stained wife beater with the remnants of my generic spaghettioes I heated up in my filthy microwave. I am depressed that Craigslist Personals is no more. I am saving money in a jar for an escort now.

I'm the 20 years of clipped Cathy comics and each and every one means something special to my hoarder. When it's mentioned that I can be purchased in a treasury book my hoarder has a fit like no one has ever seen.

R35 Tell us which season/episode of Hoarders you were on. We’d like to see what triggered you about this thread and made you so defensive. You’re way to invested for that to be just a casual comment.

I'm Jill's puffy yogurts...yes I'm back to my old ways... told you I was hardcore.

Im the priceless jade figurine no one knows about wrapped in a rotting towel that is thrown in a dumpster.My hoarder had long forgotten I existed and now I reside under tons of garbage in a landfill.Had I been found and sold,my hoarder would be in a top notch nursing home,but since I wasnt they are shoved into a state run one where they die of neglect after 6 months.

I'm the thrift store owner who is conflicted between feeling sorry for the hoarder because of their mental issues and enjoying getting 85% of their income.

I am the hoarder's fabulous doll collection.

I'm the hoarder's family member who is fed up with their bullshit so I just start throwing all their shit away without their approval triggering a breakdown as the hoarder crawls around the dumpster trying to retrieve the garbage they simply can't live without.

I am the collection of emotions the hoarder feels when these assholes invade his, or her, private space and publically humiliatehim or her and take his or her prized posessions out of the fortress of solitude. The hoarder gets weaker and weaker with each piece of treasure no longer in reach. So much anger, so much fear, so much shame. The hoarder would throw up in the toilet, but he or she secretly hid some treasures in there and they would be flushed away when the toilet is being used!

I’m the back of Dr. Z’s guillotine chopped hair.

I'm the militant atheist cleaning crew member. But I joined in the prayer circle with the ethnic cleaners in R10. Lord give me strength!

I'm the van. I get loaded with trash. There are better ways to exist. I wouldn't know, I get trash in me all the time. Where's MY show?

I’m the healing moment the specialists try to broker between the hoarder and upset loved ones. Hoarder is oblivious and completely focused on whether or not the other half of a broken spatula found in a trash can was accidentally tossed.

I wouldn't call myself a hoarder. I'm an artist, a collector, I like to shop.

In OUR day we lived amongst our possessions in some dignity!

Most hoarders don't get really BAD until their parents die, at which point they either:

a) End up owning (and responsible for the maintenance of) a house that's too big for them to personally maintain (and might have years of accumulated neglect they can't afford to repair). They can't sell it, because their parents were hoarders too & it would take them YEARS to sift through everything. So they pack most of their parents' stuff into spare bedrooms, the garage, etc... then move their own stuff into the house.

or...

b) They HAVE to sell/empty out their parents' residence & find themselves confronted by the MAMMOTH task of trying to sort through everything within a month or two... so they box everything up & move it into their own dining room, garage, basement, etc.

In both cases, the house ends up SO packed full of stuff, they CAN'T sort through it, because there's nowhere TO sift and sort. And if there is, the space quickly gets filled with sorted stuff (because the room where the sorted stuff belongs) is still largely inaccessible. It snowballs.

I'm personally an "organized" hoarder... aspie, kind of anal retentive, occasionally neurotic about being judged. I have thousands of boxes packed floor to ceiling in a few (mostly hidden) parts of the house. Every few months, I'll try to throw stuff away... at which point my living room & dining room DO look like a typical 'hoarder house'. After weeks of effort, I'll get rid of maybe 3-5 cubic yards of stuff... and have boxes that are now better-sorted & half-full, but take up almost as much total space as before. ie, lots of time, effort, and chaos within my personal living space... and very little to show for it.

The hoarders on the show are somewhat sensationalized or exploited. Many are Floridians who went through a hurricane & ended up with roof damage they either didn't see (because it affected somewhere they rarely/never GO) or can't GET to in order to fix. To increase dramatic tension, the producers impose unrealistic deadlines & intentionally trigger the hoarders (often, by forcing them to sift through a pile of small items of relatively high value & pressuring them to wantonly discard stuff... while ignoring the big low-hanging fruit, like a big box of flattened boxes or a broken 30 year old washing machine that's been rusting on the back porch for 12 years that they probably WANT to get rid of.

Hoarding is a complex problem. The first step towards managing it is to be honest about why you care about something & storing it appropriately. Old clothes with deep sentimental value? Cherished childhood toys? 2x2x2 boxes, packed into a corner somewhere behind shelves with the stuff you might actually use. Supplies related to some past (but currently inactive) obsessive special interest? Bankers boxes... labeled, on less-accessible shelves (or stacked as the outside layer around your "cold storage" boxes). Stuff you might conceivably use sometime soon? Plastic boxes, labeled, on accessible shelves.

Plan your storage area so you have at least two places to unpack & sort. Pick boxes with uniform sizes that can efficiently stack. Bankers' boxes are 12x15x10. Buy regular boxes online that are exact whole multiples of this size (uline.com is a good place). For example:

24x30x5 (large, flat items). 24x30x10 (bulkier items), 24x30x20 (old clothes), 15x24x10 (things just slightly too big for bankers boxes), and 12x7.5x5 or 10 (for smaller items). If using a bedroom for storage, lay it out like a mini-warehouse, with shelves & aisles.

I am that extremely handsome retired military guy who you would never guess was a big time hoarder. You knew immediately that something was wrong with him because his girl friend asked him to take out her trash and then had to go to find him because he didn't return from a quick trip out to the trash bins. She found him going through her kitchen bag of trash piece by piece looking for "recyclables" that she may have put in with the rest of the refuse.

The next time we saw him was in his his beautiful townhouse which was filled from top to bottom with his hoard. Lots and lots of brand new clothes with the price tags still attached just thrown around. Cartons upon cartons of "stuff." Junk, junk and more junk and trash filled up the rooms of the spacious townhouse.

We finally got to see his place through the GF's eyes when she visited it for the very first time. Needless to say, it did not go over very well with her. Her first big mistake was laughing in his face because she was so shocked at the utter chaos confronting her. He was devastated by it. The word was that they broke up shortly afterwards, but then got back together and then ended it for good when he showed no progress in trying to solve the hoardiness of it all.

Did I mention how gorgeous this guy was and that he looked like a fashion model when he was dressed to go out on the town? Can't judge a book by its cover.

R50 is exhausting

R51 Thank God for the innate willingness of many women to see a partner they can try to “fix” and ultimately dominate.

R50, wishing you well! I do see a difference between organized clean hoarders and the filthy ones. It’s all the same beast, but one is domesticated.

My mother is an organized, domesticated one. She has a 2-car garage that is packed to the rafters with boxes and storage containers. In a northern New England town, her car sits covered in snow because the garage is for STUFF.

She also hoards cash. She hides money all over the house. Pick up a paperback mystery and a $10 bill flutters out. For decades she’s told us “When I die, don’t let anything leave this house until you’ve searched it thoroughly!”

Which, to me, translates to “Even in death, I’ll be controlling everything and being a pain in the ass *cackle cackle*” She probably delights in the idea of us painstakingly examining every item in her hoard, spending hours with “her”.

But I’ve told her unless she starts consolidating her stash, there are going to be some very happy yard sale customers. Sister and I don’t have time to play those games.

I'm the imaginary person who is stealing things from the house on a daily basis because the hoarder can't find said things and it couldn't possibly be because the items were misplaced.

I'm the very precious thing the hoarder could really use the next day, but I'm gone! GONE!

r54 Will you let DL know the time and place?

I'm the social worker, trying to maintain a professional demeanor and not show the utter horror I feel upon entering the house for the first time. I'm mostly successful, but nobody knows that I take a Xanax and sit in my car for 20 minutes listening to Hay House podcasts before I go in.

I'm Linda (every third female hoarder on this show is named Linda).

[QUOTE] Sister and I don’t have time to play those games.

You don’t really call/refer to your sister as “Sister” do you? Did you grow up in a Horton Foote play?

r58, congrats. The Hay House Podcast is a nice touch.

R60, LOL, sometimes we do call each other “Sister”! We are kind of fucked-up, I guess.

I'm Dr. Melva Green, the black female psychiatrist who shows up to a home filled with poop diapers and dead cats while wearing a pair of luxurious false eyelashes. What is she thinking?

I'm Dr. Suzanne Chabaud, and I elongate my last name when I pronounce it. My voice is grating.

i'm the meal made on the stove covered in grease and rat feces and i only function on one burner. I was made in pots and pans that roaches have been crawling all over. I'm usually pasta or eggs

I'm the toilet that stopped working about 3 year ago, but the hoarder kept using until I was full to the brim, then I took to shitting in grocery bags. I look like an institution-size can of chocolate pudding was dumped in me.

R66 Thanks, now I can never eat chocolate pudding ever again without thinking about that visual!

I'm the hoarder who when viewing her cleaned home complains about the paint color.

I'm the white trash hoarder mom and her daughter, who are having a fistfight on the front lawn because the daughter want to toss a 30 year-old lawnchair that's soaked with cat piss into the dumpster, but the mom wants to keep it.

I am typical gay watching this show commenting on how "gross and disgusting " these people are when the night before I had my tongue up the ass of some random stranger I met on Grindr.

I am the viewer with last night's dishes in the sink, and a week's worth of mail on the table who feels a sudden urge to clean everything in sight after watching an episode.

I'm a rat! I'm fat and happy and so are all my relatives.

I'm all the confused cats and dogs who are taken away from the animal hoarder, who don't realize that they're going to a better place. Why are these strangers shining lights in my eyes, looking in my ears and poking me with needles? I'm so scared!

I'm the pyramids of soiled adult diapers strewn about the entire house that the network doesn't bother to pixillate, provoking an attack of the dry heaves on the viewing audience.

I’m an ugly old fat frau that was featured on Hoarders and now I’m super triggered and attacking gays on DL.

It’s mostly because my arid, musty cunt that no one has wanted since the 60s would make The Mummy look like a moist towelette. I’m really irked!

I'm the papers all over the floor that everyone else slips on except the hoarder.

Same for the sticky/slick sheen on the kitchen floor.

R71. lol that’s me!

I’m the front door that is no longer visible from the inside due to a recent avalanche of unopened QVC boxes.

I'm the possum!

I don’t see why even a possum would want to be in one of those places. The food on the garbage cans at other people’s houses is cleaner and more edible.

[quote]I don’t see why even a possum would want to be in one of those places.

He can't find his way out.

“Linda” was one of America’s most popular girls names from 1947 to 1952. So it seems there’s something in the mentality of baby boomers that leads them to obsessively hoard shit.

I'm the neighborhood thrift shop. I'm hoping the hoarder doesn't get the help she needs.

I feel unsafe

I’ve had the flu all week and feel terrible, yet somehow I’ve managed to rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher and wash my sheets. I can’t breathe, and the house isn’t as tidy as I wish it were, but if I can do this much, hoarders should be able to. The thing is, they don’t recognize the problem they have. I’ve noticed it really intensifies with elderly depressed people.

I’ve had to clean up after two hoarders in the family. When one of them died, it took a month to clean her house out, working forty hours a week. I just couldn’t do any more hours. It was so traumatic to be in a place where you couldn’t sit down, because there were roaches in the sofa cushions, cat shit everywhere and maggots in the sink. Every day I left there I just couldn’t take it any more, not one more minute.

The one I’m dealing with now, I spent a whole day just washing the floor, flattening cardboard shipping boxes, throwing away rotten food and putting piles of dirty clothes in bags. That’s all the time I had. I immediately got the flu after that so it’s another whole day or two of laundry alone later. It’s not as bad as the first one, but it’s so dirty and unhealthy there. The windows are never open unless I open them.

At the same time, I’m trying to throw away everything in my house that can’t easily be sold at a garage sale after I’m gone, keeping only items I use, as few items as possible. I’m trying to eliminate all clutter. It’s so much easier to keep it clean when there’s not much to clean.

I’ve seen elderly people completely lose the ability to keep themselves clean. The only answer is don’t have many possessions when you get older. Older people just can’t keep a lot of possessions clean. I’ve seen elderly people suddenly go from physically capable to helpless virtually overnight. Your only chance to stay in your own home is to keep your possessions to a minimum as you age.

When my dad left a nursing home, they sent a physical therapist to the house to figure out if it was clutter free enough for him to come home. I had spent the last couple months he was in the hospital cleaning and making the house elderly-proof, so the guy was in and out in a few minutes. He said, elderly seniors should not have a bulky coffee table, a bunch of little pieces of furniture blocking the aisles, loose scatter rugs, a lot of breakables or clutter. And that they absolutely refused to get rid of any of those things, even if they wouldn’t be released to their home if they didn’t comply. They acted like he was abusing them if he told them to get rid of the stuff they stumbled over. He said falls are what killed people, and they fell over footstools, rugs and flimsy little tables.

I'm the kitchen sink, which has been used as an ashtray since 1992 and has never been cleaned.

I’m my mom’s kitchen sink, full of the sludge of rotting food, maggots crawling, and unwashed pots and pans with roaches nesting in them.

I’m the floor, with open jars of half full peanut butter tossed all over. Filled with plump, happy roaches.

I’m the refrigerator, with a dozen cartons of orange juice, all unopened.

I am Dr. Robin Zasio's expensive designer wardrobe, which she wears while rummaging around in decades-old garbage and literal shit.

R85 Wow thanks for the informative share. Hope you feel better and bless you for helping those hoarders. One thing I notice on this show is how many are addicted to the internet. I think part of the problem is that they are prisoners of the virtual world (TV, movies, online shopping, web surfing, etc) so normal cleanup gets constantly put off until it’s a critical situation. I’m not saying it’s the only factor, but it seems to be a visible trend.

I’m sweaty Matt Paxton in a hazmat suit

R89, in my experience, in the elderly, it seems to be depression, too sick and lethargic to get the energy to keep it up daily and suddenly it’s a mess, and particular individuals who are generally in poor health and obese. Their underlying health and stamina is poor. And mental illness that makes it hard to reason with them. They don’t listen to others because they are drowning n mental illness. And not a special hoarders-only mental illness, but more generic depression and bipolar or other other mental illness that slows them down until they’re walking through molasses. Dementia is another cause.

I'm the teen child of the hoarder who shuts the door to keep the mess out. My bedroom is the only place in the entire house where you can see the floor. My parent still claims "the whole family" is responsible for the mess.

I'm the mummified mother in the back bedroom, inaccessible because of the hoard. She didn't know what to do with me when I died so tucked me into a sleeping bag in the corner to be buried in junk.

It's not about being lazy or too depressed to clean. If that was the case, they'd just have the cleaning crew come in and get the placed cleaned up. It's about being attached to the objects. Hoarding usually seems be triggered after a major loss. And holding on to objects gives the hoarder a sense of security. They haven't dealt with the loss in their life so the objects become the substitute for the person they lost. At least that seems to be the issue in most of the cases.

I'm Cory Chalmers. I'm a hot piece of ass and you fantasize about fucking me six ways to Sunday.

R94, sometimes “the loss” is the loss of good health. Listen to the calls on the shopping networks some day. A bunch of elderly ladies buying jewelry and gadgets for a life they’re no longer capable of living. They don’t go out, and can’t physically do much, but they’re buying stuff that matches their image of their younger self: a person who needed nice clothes and accessories to go out, but they’re shut ins.

They’re using stuff to affirm an identity that no longer exists. Reality does not affirm that wished-for identity of an active person, so they buy the affirmation, by buying going-out clothes and other accouterments of an active person.

An example is my mom bought a very expensive piece of exercise equipment to “lose weight,” but she was barely ambulatory and if she’d ever tried to use it it would have killed her. She was falling constantly, but this equipment required careful balance. It was too dangerous for her to use. So it sat there, “too expensive to be thrown away.” She could have just tripped over it standing there and killed herself.

I'm one of the 525,000 roaches who wander over and under the hoard during daylight. It is nice not to have to live in the shadows anymore. I still don't understand why all the women scream when a box is lifted and 5,000 of my cousins scurry away. Get over yourselves, bitches.

I'm the can of gasoline and box of matches that should be used instead of the cleaning crew.

I am Standolyn, the organizer that isn't featured on many episodes. What's up with my fucking name?

R99 I assumed her father was named Stanley and her mother was named Gwendolyn or something like that. It looks like they made up a name combining 2 family member's names.

R100 Those are exactly the names I think of when I see her name. I couldnt think of any other explanation.

I am the item that the hoarder refuses to throw out because he or she is going to "list it on ebay."

I am everything marked limited edition or collector’s item, which makes my collection worth a fortune.

Delusional hoarders are delusional. A few years ago one of the hoarder shows had a woman living in a mansion that she'd filled with furniture, etc. from her failed interior decorating business. It was so full that she lived in a VW bus in the driveway. She was so sure that the rooms full of "antiques" would give her enough to buy the house back and stay in her home. She had plenty of notice to move/clean out her valuables, but her illness got in the way - she kept putting it off. The bank finally took the house and gave her X time to clean out her stuff. The show got someone in to assess and sell off as much as they could in the little time allowed - I think the woman got around $5K if I remember correctly. She was devastated and after all that she was refusing to move out of the van. She was so sick she wanted to still live in a van in a driveway of the house she used to own. It took a lot of reasoning with that loon to understand that she had to move on.

I remember that episode R104. She had this huge historic mansion, the biggest house they ever did on Hoarders. The mansion was foreclosed on and a gay couple bought the house and all of the contents in it. The were amazingly patient with her. The one man of the couple was in tears about it. He was really upset that it came down to chucking her lifetime of possessions but as you say, she had YEARS to get the situation sorted out and move to another place.

Even tho the gay couple legally owned all of the contents in the home they allowed her to be present while they cleared out the home to have a say in what happened to her stuff and they brought in an auctioneer because she actually had some nice things to sell. I couldn't stand the woman. After how the couple went out of their way to make things as easy as possible for her, she did everything she could to make things stressful for them and hold the process up. Matt Paxton lost his shit on her, which I never saw him do before. And Dr. Zasio was in tears because she felt like she was unable to help the hoarder. It may not have been the grossest episode ever but it was the most epic in how the hoarder behaved.

Lots of people got into trouble during the housing boom with adjustable home equity loans. They used it to buy crap and got over their heads financially when the bubble burst.

We tried to get my elderly father to sell his house and move into an apartment but he was too stubborn and attached to his reality. People cling desperately to things, be it houses, property, useless crap. Change gets to be overwhelming. Unfortunately it ended in his suicide. Sometimes you have to no when to cut your losses before you sink lower than you are.

I own a company which manufactures Hazmat suits. I need to start advertising on Hoarders and maybe come out with a line of fashion-forward suits and respirators. Maybe Dr Melva Green would like her own signature line? Who's her agent?

I'm the viewer who just wishes they would not take a single thing out...including the hoarders...and would just burn it all to the ground, preferably in the first 10 minutes of the show.

How does Melva keep her makeup so flawless during those initial visits? It’s a wonder to behold!

Some people are terrified of change (get overwhelmed by it) and literally hold on to things like it will stop time and change from happening. Of course it doesn't work and instead of easing their pain they added further pain by holding on to the material baggage. And they feel like even bigger losers not only for not being able to stop change from happening, but also being stuck with shit they can't let go of. And they can't admit that they were total idots for thinking that their hoarding could prevent change from happening in the first place (like addicts who believe they can keep their problems and issues at bay by taking drugs or blackout from drinking too much alcohol).

I remember an old man who lived on several acres of land that he had covered in old rusted vehicles and lots of misc. metal objects. He was sure that when he died the heirs would have a hefty nest egg worth maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. But, it grew bigger and bigger and it started to encroach on his neighbor's land. The county got after him to clean it up and he absolutely refused to do anything with the hoard. It was going to be his legacy.

They finally moved in and carted away most of the mess for him, billing him for it. After getting all that metal to the junkyard, I think he realized about $2,000.00 for it all. He was heartbroken. It seemed like such a fool proof plan.

I remember that ep R111. He was so adamant that all that metal was worth a pile of money. I honestly think he knew it wasn't worth shit but couldn't face up to the truth and convinced himself it was a legacy for his family.

Sometimes when I watch that show I get so exasperated. I can’t imagine having a family member like that. Has anyone else had to deal with a hoarder? How did you cope?

Watching Hoarders have the opposite effect on me. I end up throwing out things I actually need.

My aunt and uncle lived next door to a hoarder for years, the hoarder's house was completely trashed. They and the other neighbors tried repeatedly to get the town to do something, but nothing was ever done. When the old hoarder bitch finally died, my aunt and uncle felt guilty for feeling relieved instead of sad. The house was considered unfit for human occupation and torn down.

Eldergays—were there hoarders in the “old timey days”?

I'm HOUSE ON THE ROCK and I'm everything your hoarder wants and needs.

Nobody gives a shit who built me, who amassed endless collections, or who is in charge of disquisitions.

I AM the pinnacle of American-branded hyperreality that makes the Hearst Castle look like it's trying too hard.

I am the unopened can of green beans from the supermarket that went out of business 15 years ago. I'm still good.

For r116:

Swedish Death Cleaning.

Yikes!

I am the match that will start the fire that will torch the varmint infested house.

I also remember a couple who lived in the hoard that she created over the years, but it hadn't been that long because their two kids remembered her as a tidy and neat person for their childhoods. No hoarding at all, it seemed to come out of nowhere.

So, when the kids started to avoid the house and refusing invites, the show brought in a therapist and she got the whole family together to sort it out. It got off to a very bad start when the therapist put it to the kids, in hushed tones, that the mother had confessed that it all started when she was a little 5 year old girl and her father threw out some of her precious stuff when they were moving to a new house. She was traumatized watching her old toys and dolls going into the trash can. She had held in this tragic secret for years and years and was now ready to divulge the root of her hoarding.

Unfortunately, the son laughed and laughed in the faces of his mother and the therapist. He did everything but yell "BULLSHIT!"

The grand therapy session ended as quickly as it began.

I dated and briefly lived with a hoarder when I was young. It was in the late 90s, before the hoarding reality shows. I didn't know that what he did was "hoarding." I searched online and discovered the word "de-cluttering." I ordered a couple books about how to de clutter your home and life and he would NOT read them. Any time he was in the shower or out walking the dog I would hurry a few things out to a nearby dumpster. He never noticed them missing. Eventually I asked himnto move out. It took him months. One day he came by for a vist after he moved out and made a comment about how sad and empty my apartment looked without all his crap stuff taking up space and I realized he honestly believed his junk was valuable and was comforted by it surrounding him. Meanwhile I was enjoying a clean home with more space and felt relieved when all that crap was gone! Only later when "hoarding" came into mainstream consciousness did I understand what his problem was. I'm disgusted by hoarding, and even by larger than necessary homes and cars, etc. and prefer a minimalist, small living space. I wonder if that's fallout from seeing hoardibg firsthand and pushing it out of my life before it took over.

R124, I'm trying to understand your post. You asked him to move out of his own apartment and you stayed?

Of course, to top it all off, the “Hoarders” program is followed by a program extolling the virtues of “Couponers,” mostly women, who obsessively collect coupons to amass excessive amounts of items in their homes. A cabinet filled from floor to ceiling with toilet tissue. A hundred deodorants. Masses of canned goods. All of it “hoarded,” until they presumably one day use it.

Strange juxtaposition.

I watched one of those couponers shows where some woman bought like 50 jars of mustard and ketchup. How the hell could you ever go through that amount of condiments before they went bad? And she was buying for her family, not for some food bank.

R126, the purpose of Hoarders is to promote hoarding not to combat it. Where would the show be if there were no hoarders?

Those extreme couponers have a strange mix of OCD, shopping addiction and hoarding tendencies. I saw one episode where a woman had 100 boxes of tampons in her stockpile storage building. Did I mention that this woman gleefully admitted that she had a HYSTERECTOMY, so didn't even need them?

OK, contributing to the spirit of the thread:

I'm the 50 pounds of fat that certified professional organizer Dot Breininger lost throughout the run of the show.

You go, girl!

That's messed up that the extreme couponers don't donate the stuff they won't use. I guess they get some satisfaction from being to show off how much stuff they scored? I'd think it would be more satisfying to know you're helping out people who can actually use those things.

My sink is a biohazard zone, but the dishes I use daily are spotless... they come straight from the dishwasher, then go into the sink after use until the next dishwasher run.

I have 3 specific cabinets of clean dishes + cookware... the remainder don't get used without a run through the dishwasher first.

A show like Hoarders would show dusty dishes in a cabinet I haven't opened in 3 years and the green ooze in the sink & imply I eat filth, but would go out of its way to NOT let viewers see that the island in the middle IS clean & clear... and is, in fact, the part of the kitchen I actually USE. The remainder is just a long-term storage area.

Part of MY problem is, dirty dishes absolutely disgust me... and hand-washing them is out of the question... It would mean making extended bodily contact with them, and I wouldn't regard them as adequately sanitary until they went through the dishwasher anyway. Recognizing this was a major step, because I now go out of my way to NOT buy or use anything that can't go in the dishwasher. And generally try to avoid anything plastic, because fucking modern dishwashers sacrifice cleanliness for energy-efficiency & water-saving... plastic dishes come out still-wet, because it's apparently now illegal to sell new dishwashers with forced hot air drying. I miss my old dishwasher... you could put in a baking dish with rock-hard carbonized lasagna & cheese, and it came out SPOTLESS. The new one requires running it through twice.

R131 = disgusting and I strongly suspect, obese

Do they do follow up shows years later? I’m curious what happened to Augustine, the trashy lady who lived in mountains of garbage with no gas, heat, or running water. Her son smelled like garbage and was picked on at school until CPS removed him. He noted that the animal protection people rescued the dogs way before someone thought to rescue him.

Submit your stories! Mandatory Requirements for Season 10: Mega Hoards!

I've wondered that too R133 - I'd like to see the people a year or two later. That would be a good program for A&E.

I just saw that Hoarders is on Hulu - hmmmm.

My mother lived with me for a few months and she started to show some hoarding tendencies; I know it now but this was back before hoarding shows became a thing. She went to a lot of thrift stores etc. and picked up little knick-knacks here and there - it never got to full blown fill up the house. It started with magazines - she was into a lot of crafty things and got mags like Good Housekeeping, Martha Stewart, etc. I noticed a bunch of them tied up with twine under my bed. I am a minimalist and anything out of place draws my eye and makes me antsy. I would walk in the room and my eyes would constantly go to this pile peeking out.

When I asked about that, she got an attitude and said "I don't throw out my magazines - there's projects, recipes, articles that I may want to read again". I was oh, no I don't want them here - they're an eyesore and realistically I don't see you going through these bundles to find a meatloaf recipe from 1992. This was the first time I encountered the stubbornness and unreasonable side of a hoarder - it was a foreign concept to me whose philosophy is to throw that crap out. Since it was my place, she capitulated.

r51 You are Chris and you were not on Hoarders but rather the the copycat show "Hoarding: Buried Alive" The best part of that one was when he was trying to stomp off indignantly after his gf called him crazy, he couldn't stomp off though, he more had to climb over mounds of shit indignantly and his dramatic exit was ruined.

r133 I wondered about that too, I just found this, haven't watched it yet. Oh and I am "the smell of Hawaii" that some psycho chick said was in her fridge. I am fairly certain that Hawaii does not smell like anything in these people's houses.

Shit, forgot to post the link at r138.

I’m the Seconal suppository in a cardboard prescription box dated Sept. 23, 1964 found in the refrigerator in 2014. True story.

I worked a job for a while where you had to go inside peoples houses to install, oh the stories I could tell you. The strangest was probably a lady who live in a large two story house by herself, there were boxes everywhere. The boxes were nearly all the same size and were all stacked neatly and well organized but they were everywhere.

The living room was a maze of boxes stacked to the ceiling and on all the chairs and sofa. There was no place to sit other than a small card table with one chair. The stairs to the upstairs had boxes stacked on every step. The spare bedroom I had to go in was full of boxes stacked on the bed and nearly everywhere else. Everything was neat and well organized and the house didn't smell but there were boxes everywhere. I wondered if there was even anything in any of the boxes.

She was a pleasant lady, somewhat embarrassed at what she called "the mess" but if you met her any where but her home, you wouldn't have a clue.

I wish I could remember more details of the episode where they were cleaning out the home of some older dude - had to be in his 70's. It was crazy when the crew found a stash of sex toys hidden in the guys mess - big dildos, DVDs, paddles, etc. I know that either the organizer or the doctor handling that person made a speech to the workers about having respect for other peoples private affairs. Someone else here may remember more, but didn't he also have some women's clothes (he wasn't married!)? And this last part may just be my imagination going wild, but didn't some of those dildos have... fecal matter on them?

Oh, look what I found on Youtube - should have checked there first.

There was also guy who had his sisters helping clear out the hoard and they were the ones who found his kinky stash. Hardcore porn, garters and women's panties, stockings, wigs and high heels. The sisters were really weirded out by being the ones who found the stuff and pissed at him because he knew they would find it and he didn't make any effort to get rid of at least those things to spare them.

I have no idea why these people agree to go on TV.

I am the mountain of empty Coke Zero cans strewn all over the house. My owner swears one day they'll take me to the store to be redeemed for cash, so I just wait here getting crunched up and squished every time someone walks on me...

(mostly seen on Hoarders: Buried Alive)

I’m the hoarder saying “Keep” over and over again.

My grandfather was almost removed from his house because of the piles of trash that accumulated. The fridge was the worst. We could clean and clean and a month later it was back to hellhole status.

He now has a nurse that comes in 2x a week to clean and take him out on errands. The house looks better but he'll still spill coffee on the floor and walk away or insist a moldy piece of meat is edible.

He's 97 now. I've been sneaking things out {like long forgotten ham radio equipment} and selling them on eBay.

I’m Dr. Chabaud’s thick New York accent saying “butt plug” in the sex toys episode which is actually a New Orleans accent ( which I just discovered when I went to post this and looked up where she was from).

27 & 36 - can you link to this episodes on YT please?

Dr. Robin Zasio checking in. I rode the sybian on the Howard Stern show.

And I am her pronunciation of her first name r148, which is SUZ-ONN, not Suzanne, damn it!

I'm H&M.Dr. Robin Zasio stops by me before every shoot and picks up a skimpy top and Capri pants so she can precede to wade through 4 feet of garbage and rat shit.

Who does the lighting for the interviews? They make the women look super wrinkly and caked in foundation. Someone needs to learn how to a more flattering job when it comes to lighting and makeup of the female hoarding specialists.

I wish they'd combine this with 'My 600lb. Life' and have a show about morbidly obese hoarders.

I'm the plastic bottles of human waste that litter the house because the bathroom hasn't worked in years and even if it did, nobody can get in there.

I'm the local health department and if you don't clean this shit up, I'm gonna lock you up.

My 600 lb life grossed me out too much. The curtains of fat and enabling relatives were just disturbing.

I feel like sometimes they are way too PC when handling these folks. At some point if your shit is that crazy you don’t get a vote anymore.

I don’t ever see the hosts ever say to the camera “the smell of human feces and urine in this house is overpowering!”

r153 Dr. Tonya Harding IS wrinkly and caked in makeup, what the hell do you want us to do?

I saw an episode once where some lady would piss and shit in jars and leave them in her house and backyard. It was absolutely disgusting and I actually had a nightmare about it later that night.

In it, I was back in my childhood home, but there were all these shit jars around and I couldnt get downstairs because it was dark and i would have to wade through them all and I couldn't see well and didn't want to run into any. It was so vivid. I woke up during it and was so relieved it was just a dream.

It put me off Hoarders for a long while.

I am one of the mice that lives in the abandoned mattress that you can’t see anyway for the heap of garbage and clothes piled on top. The fat lady that owns this house just naps between 2 mounds of garbage on the couch off and on all night.

Thanks Lady!

R160. That was the lady that said she got high from eating contaminated food I think.

“BECAUSE! I want to get high one more time!”

Another gem from that episode was, “Oh, you smelled poop? Yeah, I just emptied a 5 gallon bucket in the front yard so, yeah you probably did smell that.”

R148. That was a shocker. I can’t believe that fat turd let his sisters go through his house cleaning knowing that they would find his sex toys and female underwear.

What is it with these lonely man and cross dressing? There’s a thread up now about these old ugly men like to wear lingerie and film themselves with the dildo… Now that is lonely

What about the woman who crapped in diapers for years and just piled them up around her house. When the cleaning crew started working they found that the years of urine/feces had actually eaten a hole in the bathroom floor.

I remember her because she was really sweet and soft spoken but also seemed rather mentally slow and fragile; she had some kind of medical condition that made it hard for her to walk. She used a walker and she slept in it sitting up.

r164 that episode gave me nightmares. I can never un-see the 5 ft. piles of used adult diapers that were all over the house.

R164 that was the lady that would tie herself into a chair in front of the kitchen stove to sleep at night then ended up sliding down during the night and getting stuck. She had to call 911 and that’s how they discovered the hoard. She’s lucky she didn’t die.

And the urine and feces from the dirty depends ate away the floorboards of the entire bathroom. It was more than a hole.

I used to live three blocks from this home in San Francisco. The hoarder's mummified mother was found inside along with hundreds of bottles of urine and other gross stuff.

R148 - I would probably piss myself laughing at her (all prim and proper) talking about butt plugs. And her voice grates on me so much!!

Oh...stop! Just STOP!!!

Matt Paxton said something like "we are all about 4 or 5 bad decisions away from becoming hoarders."

I agree since my sister in law is one and it's truly awful. Thoughts?

When my single half-brother died suddenly 6 years ago, it fell to me to empty his small house and sort his affairs. We had not been close, and when we did get together at holidays we always met at my home or at a restaurant.

Upon making entry, I was stunned to discover the house was packed from floor to ceiling with junk. Fortunately no filth per se, mummified kittens or spoilt food or the like, but piles of VCR tapes, thousands of magazines, piles of wire and broken electronics. And 'collectibles'. Jesus, the collectibles. Hundreds of boxes filled with Franklin Mint plates, wee novelty statuettes, folding knives, sports memorabilia, children's toys, 'limited edition' book sets etc, most unopened. It took weeks to empty that place out, working 14 hours a day.

Ever since that sad experience, the word 'collectible' gives me a cold chill.

r170 If that's the case then these people really are just selfish assholes and not mentally ill as is suggested angrily by the person on here who won't fucking stop insulting us for being disgusted by this. Maybe we are 4-5 paychecks from being homeless but hoarders...I don't think so.

Just got rid of a hoarding 30 year old tenant with a suboxone addiction. Dumpster dives, curb alerts & thrift store finds. Sells nothing. All that free shit costs rent & work. PWTISH but found some good finds by accident. Zero self control. She must hate herself.

Let us not forget the Polar Opposite OCD mental illness of hoarding-

The Obsessive Compulsive Spartan. Including a link where people in comments feel they'll be punished for not giving away things. But go look at the other articles then read the comments.

I had at mom like this and just thought it was a quirky way but after reading the honest anonymous commenting from people who suffer from this I've come to a conclusion.

They like the thrill of the hunt like the hoarder but it seems to boil down to not taking responsibility for objects. They don't want to do the work of claiming an object. Nothing worse than when they start "shedding" other people's items. It's really about being lazy. As a child it is devastating having such a parent.

I find both ends of the spectrum maligned with laziness. There are limited articles on the other pole but I was so relieved to have found this today, in fact.

I'll add another link. Anybody else know or familiar with this other pole of hoarding mental illness?

My mom was a hoarder for years. Mostly her own crafts she made as leisure. My siblings and I sold everything and got her 13k. She was happy for a while but now has resorted to hoarding again. It's something we can't stop. Really.

"Hoarders" helped me understand the concept of attachment to the hoarder and their stuff. Very helpful when it came to cleaning out Mom's house. For example--old toys. She'd never use them, but "some kids" might. So I told her we needed to get them into the hands of those kids by taking them to Goodwill. I let her tell stories and be part of the process. Once I had her trust, I was able to drive truckloads down to the road for trash pickup ( at night, after she took her hearing aids out and went to bed).

I think it would have been cruel to make her deal with every single thing, because I noticed how much it bothered her to see things that were new/just bought in her mind, but in reality they were old or falling apart.

R144, many of them are told they're being filmed for a home improvement makeover show & don't KNOW what kind of show it is until the crew ambushes them (AFTER they've signed the releases).

Some of them are truly dire, but at least a few of them have used SPECTACULARLY misleading videography & editing to make things look worse than they really are.

One lady put up an entire "truth about Hoarders" web site with pics OF HER OWN showing how they totally set her up to look awful (ex: telling her they needed to get at a wall inside a closet & quickly emptying it into the room, making the room look like a bomb went off inside even though it was a clean room with packed-full closet earlier that morning). Ditto, for her bedroom, which they made appear to have a bed buried under clothes, but was REALLY the contents of another closet they made her hurriedly clear out.

With reality shows, beware of anything said by an off-camera voice... they CAN and DO edit unrelated statements & use them out of context to tell the producer's own narrative. The thing to watch for in Hoarders is what's going on right at the edge or in the background... especially look for glimpses into adjacent rooms.

yeah r178 maybe the Real Housewives fudge some stuff, but sorry, those hoarders didn't just do that the other day to be on tv and producers didn't magic up a bunch of fucking rats and dead cats and roaches.

I can sort of understand the people who hold onto clothes, dolls, collectibles. The ones who hold onto garbage are the ones that I have no sympathy for, especially the ones who try to rationalize why they need an empty yogurt container that's sitting on a pile of trash. Anyone remember the woman who held up a cleanup because a rock was missing. On TWOP, it became a running joke after hearing that crazy lady say "I had plans for that rock". TWOPers would use that line in comments on the Hoarding sub-threads.

Another head-scratcher was this teen goth kid who lived with his alcoholic father. He lived in a mess but he could not get rid of any of the hair that his cat shed. He would gather it up and stash it in the belief that throwing it away would cause his pet to die. I took that as maybe he had some form of OCD with a touch of delusion.

Anybody remember the wealthy heiress Huguette Clark? She hoarded mansions. She owned several of them, even though she never left her luxury NYC apartment until 1988 and spent the rest of her life in the hospital before dying in 2011 at the age of 104.

r170 it was a dog, and I loved that one, that poor kid. I hope he's okay now.

Shit I meant r180^

I’m Renee, the helpful neighbor/friend.

I can't be pissed at Renee r184, I can't imagine living next to that.

Their cars give them away.

I am all of your "stuff" piled high everywhere. I block out people from interacting with you so that you don't have to process your rage, crushing grief, and or harsh disappointments. I serve a purpose for a while but then dire circumstances intervene and you are forced to decide: do you want your stuff? Or do you want your family and friends? Mental illness and years of isolation living in very dangerous conditions will make this very hard for everyone.

I am a recovering dish queen. I used to collect CDs and LPs, too. And I had lots of books, though I could not call myself a book collector, as I never organized my books beyond buying them shelves. I have divested myself of most of my collections, and am now down to ~300 CDs, <100 LPs, two bookcases filled with books, and one set of dinnerware for 12.

I've never really been a hoarder, as I get rid of things. Most of my friends, and some friends-of-friends, have sets of dishes I gave them. I got rid of at least 1,000 books during a move some years back. I sold most of my record collection when someone offered me stupid money for it, and no longer even use a mainstream stereo.

I'm writing today because I am fighting the urge to buy another chunk of the dinnerware I already own. It's in excellent condition and wouldn't cost that much. BUT I DO NOT NEED IT. I haven't had anyone over to eat in a few years. I feel so compelled to buy it, even though I finally got rid of another set of dishes about a month ago that I was really resenting for taking up space. I KNOW I WOULD RESENT GIVING UP THE SPACE AND SPENDING THE MONEY WITHIN A MONTH'S TIME. I have resisted thus far. Why is this so compelling?

Dont do it,R188 ! A few months ago I bought a gorgeous set of haviland china,settings for 6 with all the accoutrements for $20 at a last day estate sale. As soon as I drug it home and unpacked it,I realized my mistake. It was huge,took up scads of space,and I simply had zero use for it. Long story short,after failed attempts to sell it then give it away to family and friends,I donated it to a thrift where I could tell they werent terribly happy to get it. NOBODY wants old china,no matter how beautiful.

Isn't there a 12 step program for hoarders that R188 could high tail it to?

Having had some experience with mild cases of hoarders, here’s something else. And I wonder if other commenters can chime in if they’ve experienced it:

The hoarder will press their hoarding onto others. Example: my mother and sister love to acquire. They’re both organized about their hoards and their emergency release valve is to purge and pass it on to me. (That makes me an enabler; I recognize that). Instead of driving those six bags of clothing and household goods and food to the Goodwill 20 minutes away, my sister will drive an hour to drop it at my crowded apartment. She wants ME to have it. The reason I accept at all is that the clothing and shoes can be worn by my daughters.

My mother sends packages of tidbits and trinkets, absolutely useless garbage “I saw this at a yard sale/I was cleaning out the basement/someone gave this to me”. She pays more in postage than the stuff is worth.

When I’ve asked them not to - because it becomes MY problem - they both say “you need a house!”

No. I need less STUFF.

My father has amassed a huge dvd collection - thousands of films. Needs to start clearing those out.

Akso has a workshop full of "good tools" - from 30-40 years ago. Sighs.

“Stuff???”

I swear I can smell those houses through my tv screen.

I am the 52 diseased cats removed from the hoarder’s home and the three, favorite, cats returned to the hoader at the end of the show. Everyone watching knows this is not going to end well.

Guarantee that the delusional twat upthread who keeps banging on about thrift shops making a killing by taking advantage of hoarders is a hoarder himself.

Honey, no one wants your junk. Trust me, It has no value. In fact, when you die, your poor family will be paying thousands to have your hoard hauled to the dump.

I'm the house flipper the hoarder's relatives will sell his house to, hoard and all, for pennies on the dollar after he dies. They're thrilled just to get rid of it. I'll have my demo crew clear everything out and do a full gut before I start the rehab. It will take a few days and cost me about $5k. Who knows what horrors await beneath all that junk. Fingers crossed that we won't have to deal with rotting floors, pet damage, mold, termites, asbestos.......on and on and on.

I'm the 2 closets packed with empty butter containers. We can be re-used !!

Q: What do you buy a man who has everything?

A: Shelves!

Check out Dr. Melva Green's Facebook page when you have a chance. I love her on the show, but she is a textbook narcissist on social media. She enjoys bragging about how so many people recognize her and tell her how wonderful she is wherever she goes.

I'm the grandchild who disappear a few yrs ago and everyone thoughtwas kidnapped. I'm actually still under grandpas recliner, and I suffocated under tons of Hot Pockets and pizza boxes

I am Anastasia , the lost Romanov

I’m a dead owl in the freezer of a New Jersey hoarder house. I’ve been in here for 15 years. Please help me.

I'm the bags upon bags of human waste piled in the bathroom with plumbing that hasn't functioned in a decade.

I'm the guy with a gigantic air-conditioned "shed" in the back yard that's my own private (and VERY well-stocked) "store" with all the shit I needed at some point in the past to proceed with some project I was working on, but ended up not being able to find anyone with it in stock locally & had to order it online. By the time it arrived, it was too late to do any good, and I'd already walked away from the project in disgust and frustration... but I'll be DAMNED if I'm EVER going to find myself in that situation again, so I now have enough to solve my original problem four times over. And just in case, I speculatively bought 20 other related items that I might need someday, but can't buy locally at Home Depot, either.

No, I don't have an immediate need for a 4-gang steel electrical box... but I'm not getting rid of it, because if I ever DID need one, I wouldn't realize I needed it until 2pm on a Saturday, at which point I'd be totally FUCKED if I didn't have one, because stores like Home Depot don't sell them, and stores that sell to electricians are closed on weekends.

Ditto for my set of stone polishing wheels. I might need them once in 25 years... but when I DO need them, I can almost GUARANTEE that no store within 100 miles will actually have them in stock and available for immediate purchase at 2pm some random Sunday afternoon.

There's just no winning. If I try to plan ahead and anticipate my needs, I'll order a ton of shit online that I'll probably never need... but can't return, and won't just throw out because it was fucking EXPENSIVE. If I try to be frugal and buy only what I need, I'll inevitably run into some roadblock that requires buying something that isn't available for immediate local purchase, and have the whole project go off the tracks (for months, maybe forever).

I'm the rotted cabbage fished out of an auxiliary cooler because the fridge is stuffed with spoiled food. The hoarder cradles me and starts ripping away the rotted outer leaves, praising me for my forgiving nature.

I am the 3647 plastic Tidy Cats 35 lb litter containers that Wilber knows he will eventually find a good use for......

I'm the bitter son or daughter who tries to weaponize social services & use the threat of "turning them in" to bully a hoarding parent into cleaning up... then storms off enraged when Elder Services informs them that they're there to *help*, not perpetuate dysfunctional family power struggles.

I savor every semi-coerced act of parting with some item, because I *want* to see them suffer for refusing to listen to me for years.

Bump

Hoarders has a marathon going on today. I need the motivation too, R209!

Lazy pig bitch.

Which season & episode had the gay twink with alcoholic father who saved vacuumed-up fur from his dog because he felt like something bad would happen to his dog (whom he clearly loved) if he threw it out?

how is a place like that not infested with roaches and rodents?

R213, Raid Fumigator (the one where you add water to the cup, insert the cylinder with Zyklon-B (well, not quite... but a chemical descendant of it), and leave the house for a few hours)) does the job nicely.

Back when my house was in a bad state of hoarding for 2 or 3 years, I used to use the fumigators every 3 or 4 months. Never saw a live roach, but saw plenty of DEAD ones every time I got back after fumigating.

For non-dysfonctional hoarders whose houses are cluttered & messy, but not buried under literal feces or spilled moldy food, Raid fumigators used every few months work pretty well since the fumes can get into otherwise-inaccessible spots & leave behind enough residue to keep killing for at least a few weeks.

I am the two small dollar store plastic storage bins, from 30 years ago 'they don't make plastic like that anymore' in my silverware drawer. They are full of twisty ties, some also from up to 40 years ago (today they use plastic lining, the old ones with paper now disintegrated). You have a screening match with me in the kitchen to save both bins of ties.

Oh, that was me and my mother when we downsized from at 3000 sq ft two story , to a more modest 1500 sq ft rambler just 4b years ago. We still have the one plastic bin fill of twisty tires in the drawer. I won?

I'm the absence of product placement.

OPs picture looks like my sisters house before my family did an intervention.

I'm the eight month out of date yoghurt, full of curdled mouldy liquid that the hoarder grabs back and dips a spoon in beaming a victorious "delicious" for the camera.

R218, in their defense, 90% of the expired food the "experts" go nuts over IS ok to eat (maybe a bit stale, but generally OK). At one point, I was eating canned corn that expired 2 years earlier (my mom gave me a pallet from Sam's Club, and I just don't eat enough to use that much in fewer than 3-4 years). It tasted fine.

The show does a lot of "bait and switch" for the cameras... they'll try to get the hoarder to let them throw out something recently-expired that's still ok, get them freaking out about it on video, repeat the trick with something blatantly bad, then edit it together out of sequence to make it look like the hoarder was freaking out about the blatantly-bad food.

Tip: if you're on a reality show, grow a full beard... then trim something away every time they bait you into reacting to something on camera. It makes it a LOT harder for them to construct a fake narrative if your appearance keeps changing every 15 minutes (one guy in some season actually DID that... the producers were FURIOUS at him).

r219 = Darth Tater

This thread should be published as a book. it is that good.

I'm the miserable old bitch that went shopping at a thrift store in that one episode while the crew was at her home cleaning it out.

Matt Paxton was PISSED!

Neighbor next door is a hoarder, and not just of stuff but rotten trash. The first time we all found out this was a problem was after having had strange bug infestations that went on a few weeks. It took days to that place up. They still repeat the cycle, but at least clean it up quick enough before the bugs re-appear in at least our unit so every few months we'll see a few workers from one of those junk services there to haul the latest stash out. They tried using an ozone machine hide the smell from the other neighbors but that didn't last long when we started smelling the ozone and it's not healthy to breathe that stuff ongoing. City services are a joke and do little. I don't get it. Fill a bag, take it out...not that difficult!!!

R219, I’ve been on some prepper websites and they talk at length about how long foods are good after the expiration date. It depends on the type of food and packaging a lot. Non-acidic foods such as corn can be good past the date. Acidic food in cans such as tomatoes and pineapples or pineapple juice should be discarded by the expiration date because the acid can leach chemicals out of the can lining. Also tomatoes can get botulism in a failed can, so the can should be checked for bulging. Any can that bulges, or doesn’t sound like the vacuum is being breached when you open it should be discarded.

Acidic foods should ideally be canned in glass jars. Vinegary pickled foods like pickles or jalapeño peppers jarred in vinegar can last a long time if refrigerated. Any food canned in glass should be kept in a dark box or dark cupboard because they lose their vitamins quickly if exposed to bright light.

Foods kept in cool conditions, like in a basement, can last longer if they stay continually under seventy degrees. Every ten degrees over seventy cuts the life of the product in half. Storing food at eighty or ninety degrees drastically cuts the shelf life. Cans exposed to freezing temperatures are not safe to eat. Never store canned goods or any food in a hot or freezing garage.

Foods generally last longer without temperature shifts. If you have clear glass jars of food, like jam that you’ll eat for a long time after opening, it’s sometimes better to just leave it in the refrigerator even if not opened. That way the shelf life is preserved for when you do open it. Same with nuts you’re going to use a few at a time. Heat makes the oils in nuts go rancid. I keep mine in glass mason jars in the fridge, cool and dark.

Foods with oils generally have a short shelf life. Mayonnaise and peanut butter have short shelf lives. Keep an eye on the date of mayonnaise especially. Any nut butter might as well go straight in the fridge from the store, at least in the summer if the house gets warm. Never let nut butters get hot. They’ll spoil.

Meats have a shelf life that is years longer than other foods. The saltier, the longer it’s good. Spam has been consumed safely (many) years after the expiration date, because of the very high salt content. Canned meats and fish generally have much longer expiration dates than fruits and vegetables.

I am the cable network that exploits people with mental illness. I started out as a 'medical mystery' educational network, than I thought 'screw it' , let's exploit societies rejects.

R141 what else did you see?

R170 tell us about your sister in law

I'm ... this.

This thread is the funniest thing on Earth. I almost died laughing when reading it. God bless each and every one of you.

Oh wow, I just watched the full poop lady episode. She’s seriously messed up. The other story in that episode deals with another loon stockpiling junk for her family after she’s no longer here.

R229, I couldn't watch a whole episode featuring the woman in the clip at R227. The short clip was too sad and disturbing. I hope that her mental health improved, along with her living conditions.

make that an e-book, R221.

That woman was so excited at the thought of eating food contained by her own feces that she was about to jump out of her skin.

I'm the McDonald's Big Mac STYROFOAM containers (there are 7 of us scattered here and there). I've been here since 1981. Inside me are about 9 rows of neatly stacked pennies all with the ONE CENT/wheat on the back. I'm of EXTREME monetary value...as told by the myriad voice inside the head of schizophrenic hoarder hoarding me.

I am the shit stained underwear you won't part with

It would have been hilarious if Matt Paxton had secretly shit in her soup and then sat back and watched her eat it.

How would Dr. Robin Zasio deal with such an event?

Animal Control Officer here. We deal with animal hoarders frequently.

My favorite (?) story has to do with the 30 foot by 30 foot basement containing 7 large dogs and 77 cats. Instead of removing the feces, the people who lived there just pushed the shit towards the walls with a snow shovel. It was 4 foot high at the walls and sloped sharply towards the center floor drain. There was only a 6 foot circle of clear basement floor left.

And...it was August. Good times.

Seriously, I could tell hoarder stories for days.

There will be no humoring of scatological thoughts on my watch.

R235 That dumb cow would’ve probably scarfed down the soup and would’ve never known the difference. Obviously, she couldn’t smell shit so I doubt she could taste it either.

I'm Dr. Robin Zasio's low-key bitchiness.

Seriously, though, Dr. Melva *is* such a narcissist. Just check out her FB page.

Awww ... I liked Dr. Melva until I looked r240

I'm the VHS tapes still in the original shrink wrap.

I'm the 48:00 minute mark in an hour-long episode.

If the hoarder has not had an epiphany by me, you know the episode will have an unhappy ending.

I’m the closet filled with bags loaded with aluminum cans and plastic containers worth 5 cents apiece.

Im the Cartier diamond and ruby dress clips mixed in a huge pile of cheap costume jewelry that almost got thrown in the garbage until the daughter decided to go through it . She ended up getting more for those than the actual house . True story !

I’m the condescending “organizing expert” who knows exactly what buttons to push that will make the person I’m supposed to be helping feel insulted and shut down.

I’ll then alternate with talking to that person like a child, and then referring to the person with others as if they’re not in the same room.

I’m that moment when the camera shifts to workers chaotically grabbing anything in sight willy nilly and SLINGING it into a rented dumpster, after the host assured the hoarder that they would CAREFULLY go through everything piece by piece and give CAREFUL consideration as to wether or not it was worth keeping or sentimental.

I'm the ultimatum.

I'm the white trash momma about to punch out her adult daughter on the front lawn because the lawnchair that's been in the basement for 37 years and is covered in cat piss is going to be tossed in the dumpster.

"I need that! Ain't nothin' wrong with it!"

I'm Dr. Robin Zasio, stepping through piles of human shit in my $1200 Prada boots.

I'm Dr. Melva Green, changing wigs mid-episode.

I'm the inclement weather that threatens the cleanup on the critical second day.

I'm the treat to call Adult Protective Services that never materializes.

I'm Dr. Suzanne Chabaud's Louisiana drawl.

R240, you were not kidding.

It's disappointing r255

Okay. So I totally confused Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive. And I also confused Robin Zasio with Becky Beaton.

Zasio is annoying, but it's Beaton who comes across as patronizing and very unkind.

I keep my dead cats in the freezer.

Please tell me someone else is watching the new ep right now!!! Southern gay and feisty mama's boy, mama and son both hoard, sister is trying to clean the house, mama and son are ballistic.

[quote] Okay. So I totally confused Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive. And I also confused Robin Zasio with Becky Beaton.

I like both of those ladies: Dr. Zasio and Becky Beaton. Dr. Beaton does seem like she's laughing at people (hoarders) sometimes. If I had to choose, I'd definitely choose Dr. Zasio. So caring & kind.

I also really like Matt Paxton, cleaning specialist. He keeps it real and will allow his emotions / frustrations to come through, but not to a crazy extent.

R259, how are you watching this new episode? Amazon? Netflix?

Live on A&E, R261!

I don't have A&E, R262!

I'm sorry, R263. Maybe it's online?

*cough* torrents

We’re the Edies Bouvier, and you lesser bitches will never come close.

The Southern redneck queen on the latest episode is one of a kind.

I’m the sudden realization that Robin Zasio looks a lot like Tonya Harding.