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

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

Yeah, it seems like the amount of time they give for the whole cleanup and learning new habits thing is just asking for failure. When you have people making decisions about individual things, and there are thousands and thousands of things in the house...it's just not going to happen. The horrible thing is that it's presented as an ultimatum, choose your family vs. your stuff, and for everyone who's watching it's totally OBVIOUS that the choice is your family...and yet it's not, it's a mental illness thing and it doesn't go by those rules, you can't FIX that in two days.

(Honestly I think I just watch this for the inspiration to clean. And because my roommate's obsessed, and hey, watching TV together is a social activity.)

man i don't think i could stand to watch this show. i know it's an illness (control-anxiety type of thing, rite?) so it's akin to telling a depressive to cheer up. but jesus i'd just want to throw them in jail (nicely) for a couple days and have a crew start loading up dumpsters.

i have known people with hoarding tendencies in the past and it is baffling.

Honestly I think I just watch this for the inspiration to clean.

coincidentally I had a stoop sale the same day I watched. and the next day too. felt good!

I can't really watch this, but at the same time I'm compelled to watch this repeatedly. Hoarding is probably THE most active DNA strand in my family* - my grandfather, mother, and brother all had/have this to some degree and it was pretty much the defining issue of my early life (parents separated because of it, mom still hoards and will not quit ever).

*my hoarding DNA is apparently limited to mp3s, avis, and effect pedals.

was Edward Gorey a hoarder?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mychatham/2347383043/in/set-72157604189279962/

nah, he just had lots of stuff and books. his house isn't really chaotic or messy. plus, its edward gorey's stuff, therefore it's COOL.

i just ordered the limited collector's edition of this show! 2 copies, one for watching, and one for you know just in case.

hahaha!

i just saw an episode the other night where a bunch of cleaners came across a decomposing pumpkin buried under trash on the floor of this woman's home and she made them stop before tossing it so she could say goodbye? and she didn't want them to toss out expired food because she said, "until the container starts to expand, the food is still good." O_O

the one with the older couple that were hoarding cats was pretty disturbing

the same woman, the cleaners found two cat skeletons buried in her trash. it seemed like they just died somewhere in the trash and were left where they expired. : /

that happened in this one too but they found a lot more skeletons, and mostly of kittens

>: (

are there gonna be any more episodes?? seen em all

the adventures of skittles the skeleton cat

oh there are more. i haven't seen "augustine."

That's a good one -- more dead kitties, though. :(

if she gets the whole episode to herself it must be good

This is interesting: http://www.mymothersgardenmovie.com/. Feature documentary about a hoarder, directed by her daughter. The mother is a very glamorous lady. I met her before a festival screening and was surprised when I realised who I had just been talking to a few minutes into the film. Totally worth checking out if you get the chance, although I don't expect anyone will now that it has finished its festival run.

"are there gonna be any more episodes?? seen em all"

Think new season starts next Monday, at least I thought I saw that in Entertainment Weekly.

this show is basically:

D:

i got bored of it. i started watching the episode about the beer can collector and the people with bedbugs and just figured i knew what would happen and turned it off. it's not exciting anymore.

oh that little kid last night. tearing my heart out. i hope somebody helps him...

not on the show, but

"There was so much garbage, it left about 2½ feet of space between the pile and the ceiling. Apparently there were tunnels and the residents had to crawl on top of the debris to get around,"