OMFG! This lady on Hoarders had a zillion cats shitting all over everything she owned.

[JVS]

The worst was that as they cleaned they kept finding layers of dead cats among the stuff!

[libodem]

1. Ewwww

Gross. Bet it smelled hideous.

[petronius]

2. Seems a bit excessive - I can achieve pretty much the same results with only two cats

And they'll toss in a bonus coating of vomit without breaking a sweat..

(Except for the corpses, of course - joking aside, that's horribly sad and I hope she got help.)

[stuntcat]

3. horribly horribly sad

This kind of story breaks my heart. It's something that didn't happen until the 20th century, and I think only in 1st-world countries.
It's weird and horrible and sad.

And yeah, whenever I hear these stories I think of how much barfs there must be everywhere. I brought in two ferals so I have 4 cats now and cleaning up after them can seem like a pain in the butt.. that's just four.

[REP]

11. It happened earlier, but no one talked about it much

I had a 19th century ancestor who hoarded food. Everyone assumed it was due to having been left alone for extended periods in a sod house with her children and having to do all the hunting herself (about 1880) and being robbed of food fairly often by local indigenous people. As an old woman, she hoarded food everywhere.

[sammytko]

15. I have 4 cats also and it's amazing how much they put out in one day

I have to keep a watch on the litter box and clean it a couple times a day. Fresh step is the best so far. Tidy catbnot so much.

[Yavin4]

4. Did You See The One With Guy Hoarding Rats?

I could not watch it. Gives me the willies even posting about it.

[KurtNYC]

21. it was the same episode as a cat hoarder

can you imagine if those 2 were neighbors?

[Lady Freedom Returns]

25. If they were Neighbors...

The Cats would be forever going to his house and there would be no more rats in just a few days.

[Kerrytravelers]

5. How about Allen, the guy who is choose his junk over getting custody of his five-year-old son back?

When asked what is more important, the junk strewn across the table or his son, he actually paused. He took way too much time to respond. When called on it, he said "But, I'd have to go back out and buy everything I just threw out."

Essentially, he has seven months to complete his home clean up, or he'll lose custody of his son permanently.

I can't imagine being that young boy growing up in foster care, knowing my dad picked some dumpster-diving junk over me. What will that do to this young man's esteem? :cry:

[LynneSin]

6. I can't watch the show anymore - I think it's 'Jumped the Shark'

In the beginning the houses they selected were houses that could be cleaned in 2 days and made presentable.

Now, it seems each week they want to find out just how gross they can get. This includes:

• A woman with hundreds of chickens and other farm animals roaming on her property. She couldn't even live in her house and instead lived in an unheated trailer
  
• A couple with bunnies breading like crazy
  
• The Rat guy
  
• The Father/Daughter who tossed bags of shit upstairs in their house
  
• The man with 100 cars on his property
  
• The woman who hoarded food and ate some black moldie crap on TV
  

Rarely do these houses get cleaned enough that you could move back into them. They are all lost causes. I think Matt Paxton gets a woodie each time he sees these massive messes!

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. Like I said before, it's about making entertainment out of mental illness. I feel sure there

will soon be shows about shadowing unmedicated bipolar people. After all, we can be really entertaining with the way we run rampant. Will she shoplift today? Will she go home with a complete stranger and destroy her marriage? Will she commit suicide on air? The show about schizophrenics will be reallly big budget. They'll be using CGI to show everyone what the main characters are seeing.

If people need to watch shows about messy homes, isn't "Clean House" good enough?

:rant:

[LynneSin]

12. I think in the beginning they were really helping people and I know the show helped many others

I wasn't a hoarder but I had hoarding tendencies and I got my house cleaned up after watching too many shows. The people on the show seemed a bit sane outside of their hoarding. It inspired me to get my mess cleaned up.

But I no longer identify with the show since you are right - the people they are selecting have severe mental disabilities. Plus the fact that they are selecting these massive projects but still trying to solve them in like 3 days - no one is really getting helped in the show.

[GreenPartyVoter]

23. I know some of my sensitivity to this is from my own slight hoarding issues, so it would

have been nice to get some helpful tips, you know?

I did get a few from "Clean House" back in the day, but from what people are saying downthread maybe it's not the same show as I used to watch.

[Throd]

13. That show has helped me recognize my own hoarding tendencies.

If I lived alone I can imagine I might be surrounded by many items of little or no value. Watching the show a few times has made me start to part with objects I have owned for a long time which I have no practical use for. I have relatives that are full blown hoarders, so maybe it is in my genes.

I understand how the show can be viewed as voyeuristic and exploitive, but it also shows how many of these people have no control over their compulsion.

[KurtNYC]

22. I agree. I think the show is done in sympathic tone and challenges the viewer to understand this

compulsion and perhaps even identify a little with it. My take is that most of the hoarding comes from a profound sense of loss -- it is grieving gone wrong. And some of it is people who feel 'thrown away' identifying with objects that are, or could be thrown away. At least the hoarders n the show get some help and counseling as part of the show.

I couldn't watch more than a couple episodes. Found it very disturbing and sad.

Whenever I go near a big box store and see people loading up SUVs with 48-packs of toilet paper and cases of individually bottled 12oz waters I think of that show. Materialism, consumerism versus hoarding -- sometimes the difference seems very small.

[hedgehog]

16. I think the Clean house people sometimes ran into hoarders

and didn't understand what they were dealing with.

[texanwitch]

18. My sister is a hoarder, she thinks everything is great.

She has filled up her house, two large storage units, and now a large 3 bedroom apartment.

The Fire Department has told her to clean up or she will be kicked out.

Her apartment is major fire trap.

You can't help her, we have tried.

[Kerrytravelers]

19. I think that happens frequently.

The latest Messiest House in the Country is a prime example. The mother hadn't cleaned the home in 17 years, right after her husband left. She had two very angry daughters. The hosts and that ridiculous Real Housewife lady were all over the girls for being disrespectful. You know, there is a 17 year history that the hosts and the Housewife lady aren't privy to and really don't understand. That is 17 years of environmental abuse. This is for a therapist specializing in these areas to work with the family, not tv hosts with no background in therapy to come in and bluster through.

That was the last Clean House I ever watched. Clearly, they are getting in over their heads. They need to stick with the chronically disorganized and the lazy, not people suffering from mental illness, family issues and hoarders.

[JVS]

10. I've rarely watched it before.

But since I had misplaced my remote in all my crap while watching intervention, I was stuck with it on the TV

[quakerboy]

17. On the one hand, they are going for shock value

On the other hand, as a person who has had to work with people in similar situations, Prior to it becoming reality TV, it was amazing to me 1) how many people there are with this type of problem 2)how few people realized that this actually happened, and 3)how rarely people notice even when its their own brother/mother/neighbor.

Granted I dont watch much TV now, and have not seen a single one of what you described. But I think that having it out there in peoples consciousness is a valuable thing. My experience tells me that among low income populations, at least 1 in 10 is a hoarder(not just cluttered, but unreasonable true hoarder). And I have not observed it to be much better among more financially secure populations. It is my opinion that what you have described is not even terribly uncommon. Unpleasant, sure. But uncommon, no.

[nadine_mn]

29. There is no way a hoarding house can be cleaned in 2 days

it is a mental disorder that needs to be worked on everyday. I watch the show, can't help it, but I am stunned that they continue to have "experts" try to clean a place in 2 days.

I like the other hoarding show Hoarding:Buried Alive - that one focuses more on the process and does updates after 6 weeks or more. Its not the dramatic look of Hoarders (which is what the producers go for - the Before and After shock) but actually shows the people going through the process of making small and lasting changes.

The problem with Hoarders is that all that crap just get boxed up or put into PODS so that the producers can have the dramatic "reveal" and instead leaves the hoarder in even more chaos.

I have worked with elderly hoarders - one was removed from her home (she had a guardian - which was so wrong in my opinion but that is another story) and put into an apartment while her home was emptied and everything trashed. This caused her so much stress - she would drive by and dumpster dive at her own house. She found a jewelry box with jewelry that had belonged to her mother in the dumpster. She brought it to court when she went for a hearing complaining about her guardian and conservator - the judge said "well when was the last time you wore that jewelry". I about beat his ass. Talk about ignorance. But she was so traumatized - she was going to the local thrift stores trying to buy her stuff back. This was used as "evidence" of how unfit she was. But if you got rid of all my shit and I had no control over it, had no idea what was removed, sold or tossed, I would be pissed and trying to get it back too.

She clearly needed help, make no mistake that I understand that part, and she needed help making those decisions of what to keep and what not to - but those were her decisions to make.

Sorry, ranting and raving again.

[Amaril]

7. I can't watch that show

I'm too much of a neat freak. Even the commercials make me twitch.

[HappyMe]

8. I have only seen 2 of those shows.

I won't watch it ever again. :thumbsdown:
The one woman chose her dogs & cats over her daughter. The place was disgusting.
The other was a man whose home had become structurally unsound because of all the stuff.

[Initech]

14. That ranks about a 9 out of 10 on my WTF-o-meter.

[MerryBlooms]

20. I can't watch those shows, they make me weep

and then I carry it with me in dreams/nightmares - I also can't watch Criminal Minds.

[undeterred]

24. I had a neighbor in my apartment complex

whose apartment was really bad. The weight of all her stuff was a hazard to the building and so were the squirrels, mice, etc.

[Aerows]

26. Dear Lord

And I thought I was messy because I left a coffee cup out of the sink this morning.

[Kerrytravelers]

27. Oh, I know. I'm the same way.

I work from home, so sometimes it can get really scary in here. Mr. kt is really good about being patient with my work pile-up, but will certainly say "really?" when it's gone on too long.

[hyphenate]

28. That poor woman

Mental disease has a vast influence on hoarding and home conditions, and people need to understand that hoarders aren't always able to do things around them to improve conditions. Personally, my health--rather the lack thereof--often doesn't allow me to be a very good housekeeper, and things often slide as a result. The problem I would worry about is how many cats she must have that she can't keep up with them--I have never had more than 6 during any one time in my life, and I know some people who are so good-hearted that they can't say "no" to another one. But people who are both hoarders in possessions and in pets are already living on the very edge of society and ridiculed and ostracized, when they should be shown understanding and compassion, and helped.

We try not to discriminate on the basis of color, sexual preference, religion, weight, and all these other things, so perhaps keeping in mind that people with psychiatric or psychological problems can't help those things, either.




(As a side note, I can't help but hate certain members of the opposition party, or those whose religious beliefs are so "out there" that they're a bad kind of insane. Nevertheless, there is an inherent difference between OCD and just plain idiocy, a condition that plagues both the GOP and the religious fundies alike.)