I Am Anticipating HOARDERS The New Series On A&E!

You can be in it with my other friend. :(

my parents used to worry about this with me, but then i pointed out to them that they're minor hoarding habits are pretty intact and they stopped bothering me.

still, i have a gigantic box of old hardcore/punk show posters from Philly circa 95-99.

You're not even close, don't worry about it until you start saving things like special kinds of band-aids, shampoo, stickers, or plastic forks "just in case they stop making them"

i have to say, i was VERY impressed with the amount of stuff that the mom on the 2nd episode had. wow.

was that the thrift store shopper? she def had a major problem. the other dude was just lazy and out of shape and had an obscenely disgusting bathroom/shitpile

yeah i just watched that one. the thrift store lady made me cringe, the guy just needed some life coaching.

this week's is too sad with the schizophrenia and cats ;_;

Last week's guy looks totally like Cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch.

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/744/rob1r.jpg
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/5239/rob2.jpg
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/5149/screenshothig.png

i would like a support group for only children of hoarders, pls

There already is one: http://www.childrenofhoarders.com/bindex.php

What would happen if Extreme Home Makeovers took on Hoarders?

you get Clean House on the Style Network - hoarders sell all their junk at a garage sale, which pays for the clutter-free makeover!

Of course on Clean House they always present the homeowners as having a "clutter problem" instead of being hoarders, although that doesn't explain why some of the people start decompensating at the idea of getting rid of some of their disney collectibles or whatever the junk it is that week. And to be fair, I think some couples go on that show so the wife can get rid of all of her husband's stuff.

omg my favorite part of the Children of Hoarders website is the "non-clutter gift ideas"
um, been there.

oh god, this poor gay boy. he is making me so sad.

i know this is awful, and i felt really bad for him too, but sometimes when i was watching him i thought of david cross doing one of his mr.show characters. and i kept thinking that morrissey could write a really good song about him.

that whole episode was heavy though. ouch. those cats...

"Mr. Doctorow said he didn’t write the novel as social commentary. Still, it’s hard not to notice that the Collyers’ literal demise as a result of unchecked materialism presents a timely cautionary tale, given Americans’ tendency toward over-consumption and the spread of storage units to contain all that stuff. In fact, last month, the A&E channel introduced a reality series called “Hoarders” that profiles people whose lives have been damaged by the same extreme version of accumulation that afflicted the Collyers. Mr. Doctorow said he was not aware of the series, but added: “That’s a good sign. I’m on to something here.”

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/1400064945.jpg

http://www.ralphmag.org/FR/junk-collyer781x591.gif

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/05/14/books/collyer-house-480.jpg

kinda like the u.k. cover better though

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n61/n306145.jpg

i'll spare this thread the picture of langley collyer's decomposed body in the kitchen. you can thank me later!

I had nightmares about cat corpses thanks to the cat hoarding old lady.

OK, I watched an episode of this show and now I seriously need a support group. I spent most of the episode I watched (with Kerrylea and Lauren) wanting to just SHAKE THE SHIT out of both of them. No sympathy, just fury. And then I felt terrible because I know this is a mental illness and that given a choice, it is unlikely that either of the women would chose to live the way that they do. But their childish irrationality just made me nuts. It's like my inability to feel any sympathy for this particular disease is its own similarly irrational mental illness.

I also get annoyed at the disconnect between their claims that they value all of this stuff, and then their treatment of all of these "valuables" as straight up garbage. If you really love all of your broken dog toys and old electric bills, buy some attractive boxes from the Container Store. It's like, I could probably deal with a hoarder who hoarded things in a more aesthetically pleasing or organized fashion, but just throwing everything into huge piles of trash is beyond my comprehension. Obviously.

Gah. I don't think I can watch this show any more! I don't like feeling so negatively towards other suffering human beings!

i kinda feel like i get more bummed out with each new episode. it's a dark pit of a show. but, um, i like it! hahaha, oh god, i dunno...

the "normal" boyfriend in the condo, oh god, what is HIS problem???? some seriously deep denial and depression going on with these spouses. they need their own show.

oh yeah i got really mad at kerrylea and the other girl's boyfriend. he seemed so miserable. and kerrylea was definitely a child.

the "normal" boyfriend in the condo, oh god, what is HIS problem???? some seriously deep denial and depression going on with these spouses. they need their own show.

― scott seward, Friday, September 18, 2009 3:59 PM

same with 'intervention'. both series could spin-off with 'enablers'.

Oh yeah I wanted to shake the shit out of Will and Kerrylea's husband, too. Especially when Kerrylea flipped out about that stupid roll top desk and Geoff just sort of simpered about "oh yeah I told them to throw it out." Also they both suck for buying one or more houses with these women.

Agreeing to buy a second house so that your crazy hoarding wife can keep on hoarding out of some naive and mentally broken belief that a second house will somehow make it better is about the most enabling thing I can think of in this situation.

I think Kerrylea's husband is more of a hoarder than an enabler, but her case was more severe than his so he could use her as the excuse for all of the hoarding. He was also getting upset when the cleaners were trying to clear things out. Plus, I don't think someone who wasn't mentally ill in some way would think buying a second house would be a great solution to their problems.

I agree, Jenny -- I know it's not really fair to them because they were ill, but Kerrylea and Lauren were both so maddening.

My grandmother in law (can you even say this?) is someone who hoards. Won't say as bad as the ones in the doc, but not far off. She kept all her receipts. Which isn't that icky. What was icky? She still has the doopsuiker of my husband (given at birth, he's 36). I'm not sure if it crawled out of the cupboard by itself.

i thought kerrylea's husband wasn't a real hoarder but after so many years of her acting like a baby every time he tried to throw something out he had learned that allowing the hoarding is the path of least resistance. probably only someone with their own set of weird problems and doormat tendencies could be in a long-term relationship with these people though.

I really don't know how anyone could be around Kerrylea for more than an hour without wanting to smack her, the organizer who was trying to help her was a saint.

often it's the marriage itself that takes two borderline people and pushes them both over. they could keep things manageable when they were single, when it was all their own stuff. the second they begin living with crazy amounts of stuff that actually isn't theirs, all restraint with their own acquisitions vanish

compounded by the fact that sometimes it's just a late-life thing, you hit your weekly routine, some priorities fade and you just start living with it. 40 is a tipping year.

In my grandmother in law's case it was the war mostly. That's my excuse. She once served my husband GREEN stew.

Do I even want to know what a doopsuiker is?

I think part of my strong reaction is that I see some of these tendencies in my mom, who used to be a neat freak and now has a tough time letting go of things. I've retained her neat freakiness (hence my sincere horror at the state of the people's homes) and worry that I'll wake up one day to find that I've saved every Roman's and Vermont Country Store catalog that I've received for the past ten years. I'll be 40 in four years, so I guess we'll see then, now won't we??

(If I do turn out to be a hoarder, just burn it all down, okay? Unless it's cats. That would just be horrible.)

Doopsuiker. Literal translation is baptising sugar. It's a candy which is given to people visiting the mother and newborn baby.

OKAY. That's actually much better than what I had feared (which was, um, placental in nature) although it still does not seem like something I would want to keep for 36 years.

Last night's episode was one of the most depressing things I've seen for quite some time.

i watched about 10 min of this show but too close to home, too near the bone. for example, i once cleaned up a pile of unopened mail (including various unpaid bills) at my parents' house and underneath all of it was a winner's certificate from my dad's 7th grade chess tournament.

my dad's reaction: see? that's NOT all trash! you could have thrown something VALUABLE away. you have to be more careful!

btw the pile of mail filled the better part of the only open space in a spare bedroom
it was considered a success to have moved this pile from the living room to this extra bedroom (i didn't move it, but that's how they envision "cleaning")

CANNOT watch this show, it's way more depressing than junkies or trichotillomaniacs.

i gotta tell you, i think i've actually reached my limit with this show! it's so arduous. i thought i was hardcore, but A&E has proven that even I have limits! years ago, when my cable went out once all i got for three days was those dudes selling hunting knives on my t.v. i watched them for THREE days straight! like, HOURS of them. i will watch ANYTHING. i can watch 24 consecutive hours of msnbc prison programming! but this show has broken me...i kept thinking of excuses to do something else last night during the show. it's too excruciating. that little kid's bedroom...AAAAAAAHHH!

this week's was kind of boring. i think i'm getting used to it! i might become a hoarder myself.

i liked bill. he seemed like a nice guy.

i gotta tell you, i think i've actually reached my limit with this show! it's so arduous

yeah there was a marathon of these on Saturday and 1.5 episodes was my threshhold. it was the first time I'd seen the show, watched the whole cat-lady episode but then I had to turn off the one with Kerrylea and Lauren halfway through. it's too much!

the part where they actually find the green tutu and then Kerrylea stops everything AGAIN wanting to look for a tiny piece of broken tile? omg

"we probably would have mistaken that for rubbish"

i sometimes get more frustrated at the therapists/organizers than the actual subjects. i know it's traumatic and counterproductive for them to just throw things out without asking and they're not supposed to be in control and stuff but sometimes i just want them to crack the whip! also 2 days is way too short for anything to happen anyway so the end is always disappointing.

i know it's traumatic and counterproductive for them to just throw things out without asking and they're not supposed to be in control and stuff but sometimes i just want them to crack the whip!

Yeah, I don't know if I'd have the patience to deal with someone who wanted to agonize over broken tile for two hours.

or an empty shampoo bottle

okay, the woman on the last episode ended up with, like, 1400 boxes of crap, but i missed where the hell she was keeping all this stuff. that house was sooooooo full, jeezuz. and all those unopened shopping bags!!! hubby can't take her credit card away?????? both people on the last episode lived in huge houses.

they just said "in storage" so i assumed she was renting space elsewhere

i watched one recently where the mom just sat on this trash throne all day drinking huge cups of soda and next to her throne were like 50 million empty soda bottles and i kinda thought that one would make a good one act play off-broadway. she never left that seat and her kids just tried to crawl through the wreckage. they could barely move inside the house. her daughter managed to cook in a kitchen that was knee deep in garbage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K61JHAU43zU

I've started to realize that I have a little of this problem, but only in my pantry and freezer. With other accumulated stuff, we're not so bad — we sold/gave away half of our books this past weekend.

xp
blehhh, I only posted that because I thought they found a cat but it wasn't in that clip.
back when I watched one season of that show :/