Hoarders

[dissentowner]

Anyone seen this show? My grandma was a hoarder but not to the extreme some of these people go.

[pylon]

nm....don't need the aggravation.

[Locke]

You are a strange, sad, sick man....but its okay....

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by pylon

nm....don't need the aggravation.

Who's going to aggravate you about being a impulse buyer for tools and cheap DVDs?

[pylon]

Fair enough, just don't want to be ridiculed over it. I could see where Locke was going. The guys I work with know about the power tool problem, and bug me about it all the time. It does have a plus side however. One day I found the worlds best deal on these big Coleman 10 gallon 5 hp air compressors. They were regular $500 bucks, and due to some pricing glitch they were $99 a piece. I bought all 5 of em, got the parts van from work loaded em up, and sold em all off to the guys at work for what I paid minus one for myself.... to add to my other one I already had. Its quirky I know, and sometimes it can be a bit embarassing.

[starseed]

I cannot see the video, but I work with a hoarder. Apparently he takes all kinds of things from work. He even took a used toilet. :/ (by take, I do not necessarily mean steal)

I have heard stories about how packed his acreage is with random crap. I definitely could not live with someone like that. :P

[Deegee]

It kind of amazes me that there are people like on the show in the world.

I only watched the one episode, but she (the hoarder) had so much junk in her house it was going to be condemned and people will shovelling out garbage from her house and she was just oblivious. It was so bad they found a couple of dead cats under all the garbage. I'm not calling her stuff garbage, either, I mean it was under layers of actual garbage.

[drewboy12]

ya I watched 2 or 3 episodes.... the one with like 60 dead cats in the house just ruined it for me.... disgusting.

[ken0042]

There was a good one I saw; where the person helping the hoarder was really able to drive some points home. The hoarder had bought a broken vacuum for 25¢ at a yard sale, and it was in the junk pile because "All I need to do is fix the power cord and I should be able to sell it for $10." At that point the helper kept asking if she had any history of successfully repairing appliances in the past.

The answer was no, so the vacuum went into the bin. This went on with each new item- it took days but they cleaned up her place.

[Cowperson]

I've only seen a few episodes but most seem to revolve around a single individual sitting on a pile of crap.

A more disturbing episode was a gentleman who had moved his wife and three young kids, including a little girl who appeared to be pre-school, out of the house into a tent in the yard and had been there for seven weeks with winter nearly on top of them.

The place was crammed to the rafters with crap, including a bathtub full of lumber, but the real reason they'd moved into the tent was because of an out-of-control bed bug infestation. The plan he had was to starve the bed bugs to death by removing his family. The dilemma was the fumigator couldn't work with the house piled full of crap. He had to clean it up.

Basically, his life plan and the lesson he was teaching his kids was that when you're done with a plate you put it down on the counter and that's the end of it, as one example.

Children of the Depression, (he was an older gentleman in spite of the pre-schooler) taught by parents to never let anything go to waste and, in this case, a spouse too weak or lacking confidence to challenge the way they were living.

It never occurred to him the harm he was doing to his children or that his wife actually cared (her fault too).

In the clean-up, he was worried the haz-mat dressed crews were scratching the hard wood with their shovels . . . . it never occurred to him that the crap they were shovelling was more important as an issue.

Fascinating stuff but you almost feel embarrassed watching it as you are watching the humiliation of an unwitting human being. They just don't get it, that the way they live is abnormal.

At the end of the show, I still wasn't sure if he fully understood how messed up he was, although he seemed to be trying.

Cowperson

[troutman]

Tiger is a whore-der.

[Pastiche]

Tiger is a whore-der.

[Clever_Iggy]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

A more disturbing episode was a gentleman who had moved his wife and three young kids, including a little girl who appeared to be pre-school, out of the house into a tent in the yard and had been there for seven weeks with winter nearly on top of them.

I saw this one last night. Really really disturbing. The guy obviously wasn't all there upstairs... he would be asked a question about something and his eyes would glaze over when it challenged his belief system.

The "professional organizers" and psychologists that specialize in hoarding are incredibly patient. Obviously they understand the mental side of the disorder, but still, it would take one round of the person refusing to throw away a magazine covered in cat s*** because he could clean it and sell it for me to lose my top and burn the place down.

[Komskies]

Anybody see the one where the lady couldn't throw any food out? Her fridge was feckin disgusting! She had a jar of mayo or something that was like 6 years old, and she said when she went to use it she would just scrape the mold off the top and there was "fresh" mayo under the mold.

Probably the closest I've ever been to puking without actually puking.

[REDVAN]

Watching last night's episode, I can't help but think that if that was my family member, I'd burn the house down. It'd be easier.

Mentally, they'd be screwed, but sometimes people need a harsh wake-up call.

[ricoFlame]

last night's was especially tough to watch...it was just gross and sad.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by Komskies

Anybody see the one where the lady couldn't throw any food out? Her fridge was feckin disgusting! She had a jar of mayo or something that was like 6 years old, and she said when she went to use it she would just scrape the mold off the top and there was "fresh" mayo under the mold.

Probably the closest I've ever been to puking without actually puking.

"As long as it has been kept cold and the container isn't puffy, my yoghurt is still good."

"But this one expired 6 months ago."

"This fridge is very cold."

Yikes.

[CaptainCrunch]

How can we give these people a hard time over food when CalgaryPuck was flooded with "Is it ok to eat this threads" for a while there.

[burn_this_city]

I watched one where the lady dragged the clean up into weeks because she insisted on checking each item before it was tossed. She wanted to keep the stupidest crap and at some point everyone gave up. She was under court order to clean up the house so it could be sold to finalize her divorce. It didnt end up getting clean and everything was left in limbo. In the same episode a guy had a sea of garbage in his house. It got cleaned up but in the bathroom they discovered he'd be keeping his feces for safe keeping. Fuggging disgusting.

[Cowperson]

I wonder what you're thinking when you sign a contract to be the subject of a nationally syndicated television show called "Hoarders" which could also be re-titled "Humiliation Central."

No warning bells going off in your head?

On one level is squirmingly embarrassing to watch some obviously mentally ill people being paraded . . . . . but I can see the value of this show in helping family members decide an intervention is in the best interests of people whom we'll never hear about.

In Calgary, I'm pretty sure there is one individual who has had a court-ordered clean-up not once but twice, spread out over several years after he re-accumulated his crap.

Cowperson