I saw the trailer to that a couple of years ago. Her house got so bad she was sleeping outside in the yard.

I will have to watch that show. I wish I could send the URL to my sister who is a hoarder so she would watch it but then she would get mad at me. She has her own condo but had to move back in with my Mom because she has so much stuff she could no longer get into her place. Then she started doing the same thing to my Mom's house. The last time I was there a year ago, you had pathways going from room to another with boxes lining the walls. I spoke to her about it but she is in denial like every horder. They refuse to see what is in front of them.

Now that my Mom is in a nursing home, my sister has to leave the house. She is angry at all the rest of the family for giving her the boot. She is mad because she has to rent a storage place to put her stuff after she cleans out my Mom's house of her own possessions because we need to rent or sell it to pay for our Mom's assisted care. She also has to clean out her place to be able to live there and she hasn't been inside for over 3 years. She lives in FL and it must be overrun by bugs and vermin. She is 57 now, what is she going to be like 10 or 20 years from now. It is so sad. I wish she would get help.

Sorry didn't mean to go on and on.
Clare

I am fascinated and disgusted by hoarders. I have done a lot of reading about it. They ALL deny they are hoarders, then they talk about all of their "precious" little items. I do not know how on earth they can deny they are hoarders when their homes look the way they do. I have been in a lot of homes of hoarders. It is disgusting. I know it's a form of mental illness, but I have no patience for this problem for some reason.

They showed in the clip this morning that while the kids were cleaning up, they actually found several dead rats. When the mom unexpectedly showed up after the kids had cleaned out the house, she was distraught that all of her stuff was gone.

How very sad.

I must confess that I do not understand it at all. I do realize that it is a psychological/psychiatric condition but I truly can't wrap my head around it. How can anyone live in those conditions? And she didn't even use gloves when she was dumpster diving! Eeeeewwwwww!

In delivering Meals on Wheels, we have found a lot of horders in our older people...I found this in Florida and again back here in Pa., so it's all over...
I had an uncle, years ago, that kept everything...After my aunt passed he got worse and at times wouldn't let anyone in the house...He was somewhat challenged and we figured this was part of his illness...After he passed, my sister found cans of food in the basement that were bulging and very outdated, plastic bags full of soap slivers, all the newspapers that he had ever gotten etc. It took months for her to get the house in order.....
Right now, I'm at the point in my life, I'm trying to get rid of most of my stuff....

So sad!

I know a man who is exactly like that. There are paths in his house, he lives alone now. His wife and kids moved out a long time ago.

I have a brother and his wife who filthed themselves out of their house. They have a business and it is a heck of a mess in there. They live in back of the filthy stinking pet store and wonder why they don't have much business.
Sicksicksick

I had a friend where I used to live that was a hoarder...disgusting to say the least-BUT-she had lived thru a parental divorce,was an only child..and it seemed in her particular case,that *anything* that was the past,she couldn't/wouldn't let go

The last I knew of,she still had fruit/vegetables that she had canned the year the first son was born-1978

I will watch this show, because I too, am fascinated by it. We had an aunt that was a hoarder. She had paths in her house. For some time, she slept on about 8 inches of her bed...the rest of her bed was piled to the ceiling with things she "needed". Eventually, she was forced to sleep in her recliner. She had a place on her counter that was cleared enough for a paper plate to fit on, so she could make a sandwich. She lived in her house for 60 years. She had some beautiful antiques hidden under all the things she "needed". The door to her basement was in the floor. When you pulled the door open, you couldn't get into the basement. She had filled the basement and when it was too full to accomodate anything more, she started putting things on the stairs...and the stairwell was filled with stuff. When she passed away, two sister and a brother brought in dumpsters and what they didn't hoard...they threw out. I think they filled quite a few of the dumpsters.

I have a close relative with this problem. I'm going to watch it, if I remember.

I think the older people with this condition went through the Great Depression and never lost the feeling of not knowing where they'll be and with what, tomorrow. And I would suppose that younger people with the condition perhaps had some event of insecurity in their lives that triggered it? It is as any other mental disability, a condition that needs treatment. The hoarder simply cannot shake her/himself out of the notion that what s/he is collecting is precious and valuable, and that these things may come in handy one day. My mom is not a hoarder to any extreme, but has always bought "good deals" to store at home, even items she doesn't need, because the bargain was too good to pass up. She grew up during the Depression and will not talk about those years because they were frightening to her, as they were to tens of thousands of others.

Hoarding is an illness, and unfortunately it affects family members and neighbors. Eventually the family is left with "cleaning up", and meanwhile neighbors put up with increased rodents and possibly odors.
We lived in a small upstate NY town that had a certifiably insane woman who hoarded, and the volunteer fire department went in and cleaned out her home so it would not be a fire hazard. In a small town in Texas, a woman dumpster dived regularly and her home was literally stuffed with broken, unusable and not-very-sanitary stuff. Sympathy can be offered to the hoarder, but help, either mental or physical, is of more use.

I collected dolls for many, many years and ran a wanted ad in the local paper. I visited a lot of home and some homes have nothing but trails through the home, boxes, blankets etc., stacked everywhere and stink of mold and litter boxes. But the worst I have seen are on the animal channel. Dog and cat feces every where, some places have to be condemned.

I don't think all hoarding is mental. Some of it can be learned behavior.

My grandparents were so poor, they didn't notice the Great Depression. My grandfather had over seven buildings filled to the ceiling with stuff when he died. It has taken a long to clean it out. I think my grandfather's motivation was one of security. When someone needed help, he would offer goods or money. I think he looked upon his collections as a way of taking care of the family when he was gone.

I saw this a lot when I was working as a paramedic. Homes so full they had paths through them ( liked mentioned above). Counters piled two feet high, stacks of news papers and magazines three feet deep and to the ceiling, garbage, plastic bags, you name it. It was always a nightmare trying to treat patients in those homes. They were also almost always in some piled up room in the back of the house too. You can't get a gurney down a hall filled with newspapers. Can you imagine a fire in those homes? I'll never forget the first home I went to like that, you couldn't see the floor. You had to walk over plastic grocery bags,paper plates, and who knows what else. It also had dog feces through out because they had about five little dogs in the house.

These were all in San Jose and Monterey California.

My mom isn't a hoarder to this extreme, but she has potential. She RARELY gets rid of things. She throws away garbage and scraps of things but she has make up and other products from the 70's, a drawer full of rubber bands and bread ties, gobs of plastic bags. I've gone in to her pantry and said "mom how long have you had this (fill in the blank) in here?" I've been out of the house for 15 years and I KNOW there are things on her shelves that were there when I lived there. She has paints and cleaning products from my childhood still in her garage. I am sure her holding on to those things and constantly seeing those same old things every single day are what contribute to her depression, but she says everything is still useful and good, so she keeps them. I can just barely stand to be in her house anymore and it was the home I was born and raised in.

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be a vent about my mom.

I lived through the Depression with my large family. There was never enough money to buy anything except what was needed immediately. I don't know how other Depression folks got the money to hoard with.

My parents never hoarded, and I don't know anyone from that era who did, or does. So I think there has to be other explanations for this.

Sue

My widowed 85 year old mother is a lot like that. She got mad when my sister took down her kitchen curtains and put up new ones (clean, cheery) . She has somehow taken in two extra households worth of furniture, when her own mother died (1976) and when my brother divorced (1993). She somehow shoved all the extra furniture into her house and will not part with one piece. There are "goat paths" in every room. The ceiling in the living room is collapsing from the weight of everything in the room above, a spare bedroom. She has 19 five-pound bags of sugar in a plastic garbage can in the basement. (It was "on special".) Who needs 95 pounds of sugar? She rarely bakes, wink,wink.

Sometimes I think that it just might be that the older people aren't able to clean out things and carry things. When you hurt a lot of times you can't do what you once did and you have no one to help you. I know that isn't the case with everyone. I know when my Sister and I decided to help my Mother get her house cleaned up and fixed up, she got very mad with us for disturbing her things. Her house was not that bad for a woman of her age, but it needed things moved and cleaned up. She still has not forgiven us for making it look so much better. We didn't get rid of her stuff, just stored it in a different place.

Sue

I think deep down all of us are "hoarders" as we seem to save things that someday we might need. One difference is most of us do clean house at least once a year, give it to our kids, who really don't want it, or find someone else who wants it. I am a hoarder, but if I ever got bad, believe me my DD and anyone else in the family will clean up and I think that is what makes me get rid of stuff.
Recently I have been cleaning out so much and donating so much it really feels good.

sue va--- I don't mean that people hoarded during the Depression, only that they learned to value EVERYTHING and some may have not lost that inclination.

danihoney-- I think we may have been separated at birth, as we seem to have the same mom! But I grew up in Oregon.

adabella-- yes, hoarders certainly do seem to see all their stuff as wealth, and maybe even a safety net.