"Hoarding: Buried Alive" - Who has watched this show?

[Liberty Belle]

I watch it sometimes. Some of the hoarders seem quite normal, while others seem very off.

My great uncle was a hoarder. He was also a genius and I'm certain he had undiagnosed Asperger's. He was a chemist living in New York and one time some fumes made him really sick (he was in the icu). We went up to New York to visit him and were going to stay in his house since it was a really big house and he was alone, never married.

I'll never forget (I was five) when we first opened his front door. The alcove was full of books. I mean they were almost to the ceiling. There was a narrow path (the adults had to turn sideways at times) throughout the house. In the living room, there was one spot on the couch that wasn't covered. This was where he sat to watch tv or read. The rest of the couch couldn't be seen.

We opened up his kitchen cupboards and there were books. He had three bathrooms and two of the tubs were filled with books. Books everywhere! He also had several unopened boxes of the same things - usually electronics or gadgets. And tons of magazines and newspapers everywhere, too.

It was so bad he had to have the foundation of his home worked on twice to be able to accommodate all the extra weight.

When he passed away (he moved into an apartment a few months before), family went and chose some of his books and the rest were donated to the local library.

 

[RitaE]

I watch it occasionally but sometimes the people on it make me so sad that I have to turn it off.

I suspected for years that my Mom was a hoarder but once I started researching the topic I found out that she just lives in varying stages of squalor linked to her depression and other mental conditions. She has very little attachment to the stuff in her house. She's mostly fine with other people coming in and clearing out her stuff. She's just unable/unwilling (however you want to look at it) to keep her own house in a livable condition. The clinical definition of a hoarder though is somebody who is so attached to objects that they are unable to clear them out of their lives.

An excellent book on the subject is Stuff - Compulsive Hoarding by Dr. Randy Frost who has done considerable research and work in the field. It is in case study form and some of the people in there are quite interesting. Such as one time he mailed a patient of his a blank postcard and then asked her to throw it away once she received it in her mailbox. She was literally unable to .. and they had extensive discussion over why she would feel so attached to such a meaningless piece of cardboard and she would come up with all these stories of how the postcard "might" be important and how she would miss out on all that opportunity if it were trashed and her anxiety levels would go through the roof.

I remember he talks in there about driving through a neighborhood in Berkley with a known hoarder and she pointed out to him all the houses she suspected as hoarders .... and why. Curtains always closed and obviously pushed up against the windows. It was an eye opener even for him, the expert, on just how common the disorder is.

 

[Disney Doll]

So did anyone see "hoarders" last night wit hthe guy that was an "antiques dealer" and he had the yard sale trying clear things out. He was pricing everything so high! He wanted $15 for a muffin tin ! He said because it was commercial. OMG! That thing wasn't worth $15 new! He was really detached from reality. Greed greed greed. Just rather keep his junk in his house rather than take a few bucks less. Amazing.

Or maybe he priced it so high that no one would buy it and he could keep it.

 

[DVCLiz]

Zombie thread! I was wondering why the date on the post was April 13 when it's only April 11th, until I realized this thread was started a year ago.

I love the Hoarders shows - both of them and any special I can find. it's just fascinating to watch. And it makes me clean compulsively at the commercials.

 

[rwdavis2]

I've watched a couple of shows (morbid curiosity) but stopped because I don't think mental illness should be marketed as entertainment.
BD

 

[talulabelle]

Zombie thread! I was wondering why the date on the post was April 13 when it's only April 11th, until I realized this thread was started a year ago.

I love the Hoarders shows - both of them and any special I can find. it's just fascinating to watch. And it makes me clean compulsively at the commercials.

OOPS! I knew there was already a thread, so I used search - and when isaw the April date, I thought it was current...sorry...is there a newer thread?

 

[talulabelle]

I've watched a couple of shows (morbid curiosity) but stopped because I don't think mental illness should be marketed as entertainment.
BD

I agree that they shouldn't exploit mental illness - which they do a bit. But I actually have fought some hoarding tendancies for my adult life (My house is in order and I am able to get rid of things, but I really have to talk to myself to do it) Watching the show makes me realize some tendancies I have, and see how if gone unchecked - where they could end up. I also love when they show one of the people that is able to turn their lives around because it gives others out there struggling hope for themselves. My biggest beef with the show is that they tend to focus TOO much on the disease and the depression and play such depressing music and talk in such a depressing tone to emphasize the craziness and spend not at all enough time on focusing on the cure or the positive outcomes. They spend the whole show showing the person at their worst and then just a couple minutes of the recovery. It's because it would cost way more to produce if they had to make multiple trips back to the home to show the ongoing recovery - they spend one day shooting the horrible part and come back for one day to show the cleanup - and there isn't a lot to gawk at that day - so they get like a minute of footage.

 

[rwdavis2]

I agree that they shouldn't exploit mental illness - which they do a bit. But I actually have fought some hoarding tendancies for my adult life (My house is in order and I am able to get rid of things, but I really have to talk to myself to do it) Watching the show makes me realize some tendancies I have, and see how if gone unchecked - where they could end up. I also love when they show one of the people that is able to turn their lives around because it gives others out there struggling hope for themselves. My biggest beef with the show is that they tend to focus TOO much on the disease and the depression and play such depressing music and talk in such a depressing tone to emphasize the craziness and spend not at all enough time on focusing on the cure or the positive outcomes. They spend the whole show showing the person at their worst and then just a couple minutes of the recovery. It's because it would cost way more to produce if they had to make multiple trips back to the home to show the ongoing recovery - they spend one day shooting the horrible part and come back for one day to show the cleanup - and there isn't a lot to gawk at that day - so they get like a minute of footage.

I'll agree that they should spend more time on recovery. One generally gets the idea of what's wrong in about 15 minutes. I'll also admit that after watching a couple of shows I started seriously cleaning out the basement of things I finally admitted I'll never use.
BD

 

[DVCLiz]

OOPS! I knew there was already a thread, so I used search - and when isaw the April date, I thought it was current...sorry...is there a newer thread?

lol - it doesn't matter. There are lots of threads about hoarding on the DIS but they all repeat each other and anyone who is on one of them usually turns up on the others. It was just weird becaue I have been having some computer trouble and I spent some time trying to figure out why my calendar function was incorrect before I finally saw that it was April 2010.

FTR, I am a little compulsive in the other direction - my linen closet is super organized and I have made P-Touch labels to show where all the different kinds of sheets go - but I am also pretty lazy so I tend to have big clutter piles, too. I am almost through with a giant house sorting project - maybe this summer I will tackle the last two problem areas, the attic and the garage.

 

[It'sWDW4me]

So did anyone see "hoarders" last night wit hthe guy that was an "antiques dealer" and he had the yard sale trying clear things out. He was pricing everything so high! He wanted $15 for a muffin tin ! He said because it was commercial. OMG! That thing wasn't worth $15 new! He was really detached from reality. Greed greed greed. Just rather keep his junk in his house rather than take a few bucks less. Amazing.

It really is an unrealistic "view" of your stuff to try to charge that much. Greed not so much. That muffin tin is an "antique" and it just has got to be valuable. The fact that it isn't worth that much is just an unfathonable concept to the hoarder. KWIM?

My mom is a hoarder and I think I'm well on the way. A few years ago I finally consented for my son to take a bunch of very old video game discs to sell to GameCrazy. It took a few visits for me to accept that the game I paid $40 for three years before now has a trade in value of $3. WTH! I paid $40 for that - it HAS to be worth more than $3. Well, no. New versions come out, what was a "must have" isn't any longer, etc, etc.

I finally had to talk myself down - how much would I pay for that Pokemon game now? Not a whole heck of a lot. Why would I think anyone else would? I eventually saw the light but mom still does not get why I'm so excited that I got $40 in trade-in value for 15 games. All she can think of is how much those games cost originally. And she thinks I should have held out for more - that I got taken for a ride, basically.

Once I was able to grasp the concept of "current value" I was able to send a bunch of stuff with DS to his stepmother's yard sale. Jeans (no holes/stains) that I had paid $15 each, I was happily able to sell for $1. And they did sell.

I've tried to get mom to take some of my brother's older games in for trade but she simply can't bring herself to do it. He beat and was tired of a game not long after he got it - within a few months. I tried to tell her that she should take it in right then and get maybe even $10-$12 for it. She looked at me as if I had an arm sprouting out of my forehead and stated she. just. paid. $50 for it a few months ago. sigh By the time the game finally does get traded in (IF it gets traded in) she'll get $1 for it because it will be 10 years old.