<p>Have any of you watched the Hoarder TV shows that are on now? I’ve watched a few of them on TLC-that show is called Hoarding-Buried Alive.</p>
<p>Some of these people just hold on to “stuff”-but most live in absolutely filthy conditions, with rotting food, animal waste, dust, mold, etc. It’s gross and heartbreaking at the same time. Many of these people seem to have experienced a loss of some kind-death, divorce, empty nest, etc., and are using possessions as a coping skill.</p>
<p>Have any of you experienced this in real life? It seems like a problem very resistant to cure. Many of these people are very belligerent, defensive, or in complete denial about the problem. One man, who had an entire room of rotting newspapers, would not consent to throw away even one page-even a 30 y/o advertisement. He was extremely angry, sarcastic, rude,etc. to the people who were there to help. I wonder how prevalent this disorder is.</p>
<p>People like that really have a problem and need help. Those are usually trailer park people with stuff all over in the front yard. Thats how you know, they have all kinds of stuff in the yard and if you touch it they act like its the most valuable posesion.</p>
<p>My uncle was kind of like that. He would go on vacation and take the towels and soap from the hotel like he was getting a bunch of neat stuff for free. If your house smelled really bad the neighbors would call the police and have them clean up the house cause of the rats and flies. So i bet it hapens alot where its not popluated.</p>
<p>My mother-in-law has this condition. Her house is absolutely a nightmare…you can only walk in little pathways because there is stuff up to the ceiling. It is dirty, smelly and overflowing with debris…just like a dump. She just buys and buys and buys, with no end in sight. She somehow tries to portray it as funny…like she is a “bit of a shopaholic.” Our children have never been to her house, as it’s too dangerous to be in (things come flying down from the piles frequently). My mother-in-law is a gorgeous, professional woman and practically no one outside of her family and close friends know about her condition. It’s really sad, and it has caused a lot of friction in our family. BTW, my husband is a firefighter, so he goes into a lot of stranger’s homes frequently; he says that there are lots of people like his mom…it’s just an easier problem to hide than most other addictions.</p>
<p>I read in the paper recently about an elderly woman who had been reported missing by family. They finally found her dead body in her home-she was buried under piles of debris which had fallen on her. She was a hoarder.</p>
<p>One of my mother’s cousins was a hoarder. She was a neat freak as well, and kept her “treasures” organized in boxes that were piled all the way to the ceiling with little paths connecting her and guest beds to the bathroom and to the kitchen. She knew precisely what was in what box. Most of her “treasures” were “good buys” from sales and a local consignment store where she was a frequent customer.</p>
<p>Just thinking about her house makes me want to get up and find something to throw away!</p>
<p>Have to disagree. I go into a number of family homes for my work, and of all the hoarders I’ve met, they’ve all been in regular homes/apartments. And I’ve yet to go into a mobile home where the residents were hoarders.</p>
<p>I think it is a variant of OCD–there is a compulsion to save items, even when it impact every aspect of their lives. I have watched several episodes with a morbid fascination–you can just see the incredible anxiety build up in these individuals when they see one of their possessions about to be disposed of – “that’s perfectly good–I might need it some day.” Twin studies suggest a strong genetic component, and an overall prevalence of 2-4% in population based studies–so it’s not rare. It seems to be remarkably resistant to treatment, and one gets the impression that after the show’s psychologists/junk disposal squad get through with their work, the person will just start the cycle all over again. One consequence of watching this show, for me, was that it led to a strong desire to throw things out. I spent one Sunday morning watching several episodes and cleaning out my bedroom closet and all of my bureau drawers–if you’ve had any tendency to be a pack rat, a couple of episodes of Hoarders should cure you!</p>
<p>I’ve known two hoarders in our neighborhood, both of them older women. (One was featured on the TV show!)</p>
<p>In both cases their church came to the rescue - got them counseling, sent people over to help them clean up and throw out the junk. In both cases they were able to get cleaned up, but they aren’t really cured. Evidently the urge to return to hoarding is very strong.</p>
<p>I do estate sales and I run into it occasionally. Or sometimes someone wants a downsize sale. But when you go in to sort and organize for the sale they can’t get rid of the stuff. They don’t need to move to smaller quarters they need more space if they are going to keep all of that stuff. I see lots of people that only hoard certain things. Like boxes or gift ribbons - always saying that they are going to use it but when the time comes to use it they go and buy new. When we helped my parents downsize a few years ago I almost had to laugh at all of the plastic grocery bags - I bet I threw out thousands. That was my dad who did that. My mom had every cleaning product known to man. She would buy it try it not like it but she couldn’t throw it or give it away. I think in these milder cases it’s a matter of not wanting to waste or justify what they’ve spent money on even if it doesn’t work for them.</p>
<p>There are obviously enough of them to have multiple TV series about them. After seeing a few shows they’re all pretty much the same - if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all - kind of like that wedding dress show my female household likes to watch.</p>
<p>The mother of a friend of my W was apparently a hoarder. It’s hard to understand how anyone can choose to live like this but I think they all are suffering from some form of mental illness - whether it be OCD to an extreme, a method to attempt to replace something they’ve lost, the ‘thrill’ they get from buying and owning things, or other mental issues.</p>
<p>I think this is an example of a personality variation (possibly genetically based) that had a survival advantage in a very different era in human history, and now goes tragically wrong, in some cases. A group/tribe could be well served by having a few people who had a tendency to hoard items of any detectable value, at a time when there was not a surfeit of such items. For example, that perfectly good half spear-head in the back of the cave, together with that great, almost straight tree-branch, and that old leather string might have been sufficient to skewer a saber-tooth tiger (if contemporaneous with early humans) or another predator. So the pre-disposition persisted. </p>
<p>It’s only a problem in a highly affluent society. If you look at the wills from the colonial era in New England, for example, it appears that no one had a sufficient number of possessions to cause an obvious hoarding problem. (Probably even the newspapers were less thick.)</p>
<p>The animal horders are the absolute worst! I actually became nauseous watching one show of a woman who had something like 70 or so small dogs in her ranch house. She was afraid to let them outside (“they might get hit by a car!”), so she kept them all inside, where they proceeded to answer the call of nature anywhere—on the floor, the sofa, the woman’s bed (:eek:), ANY WHERE! And she had asthma or some other respiratory illness. Small wonder! Can you imagine the stench? How does anyone live like that? And of course, the poor animals were suffering terribly. Most of them were sickly, and underweight. It’s completely unnatural for dogs to be confined and forced to live like she forced them to live. How come we don’t have mental hospitals anymore?</p>
<p>DD and I have been watching A & E’s Hoarders. I can understand the people who have stuff - things they collect, or clothes they outgrew, things they inherited, etc, but the people who live in, literally, garbage dumps I don’t get at all. To me that’s just laziness, which doesn’t seem all that much like a disease. </p>
<p>I had an aunt by marriage who never cleaned her house. She wasn’t really a hoarder, per se, but the house was always filthy. She never had a job. She just sat around and watched soaps and played cards. Her 4 kids raised each other.</p>
<p>sylvan, I know exactly what you mean. I watched one episode of Hoarders a few weeks ago, and although this family, more specifically, this mother collected things, it was more filthy than anything. The saddest part was this woman’s children, who were very young. She just sat around the house all day and ordered things like they had a disposable income, which, according to the husband, they did not. It was really just a shame.</p>
<p>I like that they have those episodes though. Interesting to see how certain people live. They always do a close up of the street, showing how nice the house is, etc. Seems normal. Oh, but little do you know what’s going on inside, lol. I’ve always been fascinated by the whole “going on behind closed door” scenario. But the way these people LIVE is nuts.</p>
<p>I think they should continue to focus on more people like your aunt- hoarding is not necessarily the biggest part of their problem, but laziness is.</p>
<p>I could never be a psychologist or organizer that comes along to help these people. I’d get so frustrated and disgusted with them, I’d lose it and be of no help whatsoever. I can’t imagine living like this, but even worse would be to have to live with someone with this disorder. That would be hell on earth to me. I really feel for children in this situation. They have no choice whether to go or stay. At that point, it just seems the height of selfishness not to seek or accept help when your kids are wheezing from asthma brought on by the filth in your home which you refuse to address.</p>
<p>Lots of misinformed posts here…hoarding is not laziness…it truly is a mental health issue. Someone who needs an organizer is not the person who is featured on these shows. These people need psychological help. It has nothing to do with selfishness.<br>
One of the episodes I saw was very specific to point out the circumstances around the woman’s mother’s death. It was fairly clear that the death was a turning point which started the snowball of this condition.</p>
<p>There are two shows, one is about hoarders the other is “Clean House”. Both of these shows are so similar but one brings in the psychologist and the latter brings in the organizer. I wonder if the Cean House show ever returns to the houses to see if they become a mess again. It seems hard to believe that someone with this type of disorder could make the change after the film crew has left. </p>
<p>The show with the dog hoarder was probably the most disgusting of all.</p>