Hoarders

[skye]

I'd rather watch Duck Dynasty or What Not To Wear (which sadly, is ending its run).

I know!

But watching a human garbage machine???? that is something to behold!

If you want to see a real human garbage machine, check out "I Eat 33,000 Calories A Day" (it was on the Discovery Channel a few years back).

Talk about disgusting. Here's a clip.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0fISI7tYPE].[/ame]

Yep.

All that is hypnotic ....

and magnetic...

and one is glue to the TV .... because repulsion and attraction are opposite ends of the same string.

 

[whitehall]

Here's the deal in logical legal terms. A hoarder who accumulates stuff and continues to accumulate stuff is restricted by zoning ordinances that he is required to comply with and if zoning ordinances are loose enough he is on his own as long as he can pay for the stuff and pay his taxes. When a person or a family relies on government support and lives in filth and pizza boxes and roaches and animal dung he/she and/or the family needs to be placed in a shelter because they are mentally or physically unable to function within the limits of reasonable behavior supported by taxpayers. The concept is simple but the program conveniently fails to inform viewer if the hoarding is financed by taxpayers.

 

[Noomi]

Here's a solution - drag them out of the house, clean it all up, and send them the bill. If they wreck the house a second time, they lose it for good.

Couple weeks ago I watched a TV show about a woman who filled her house with junk. 7 years ago she had a TV station pay to remove 4 large industrial sized bins worth of garbage, and then she filled the house with rubbish again, and called up the same TV station, expecting them to pay to remove the rubbish yet again.

Thank goodness they refused.

Years ago I recall watching a show about an overweight, diabetic woman who lived in filth, mold everywhere, her fridge was covered in it, and mice and cockroaches were all over the place. She couldn't get to the toilet because of all her junk so she shat wherever she could, in the kitchen, in the hall, etc.
She was interview sitting in her 'kitchen' which smelled so bad the interviewer had to wear a mask. The woman was sitting down in an oversized nightgown, demanding to know who was going to help her clean up the mess.

Again, thank goodness the TV station had enough sense to ignore her.

If you don't like the filth you live in, clean your house. That's my advice.

 

[Gracie]

Some of those folks have mental issues and cleaning up their house for them won't make those issues go away.

 

[Noomi]

Some of those folks have mental issues and cleaning up their house for them won't make those issues go away.

See, I believe that we overuse the term 'mental illness'. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with you, but we label people mentally ill anyway to give them an excuse for their rotten behavior.

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

I think they have attached their own personal self worth to what they own and cannot throw anything away without feeling they are throwing a piece of themselves away. They feel more comfortable living in filth than with everything clean and nice. I definitely think there is something to it although I have not figured out what it is that would drive someone to live like that. It is as if they are completely detached from their surroundings. Personally, I could not live that way.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

I dreamed about this last night. The piles of junk and filth, the stench of cigarette smoke and FILTH. Both of them had that grey skin smokers get and their clothes looked as dirty as everything else. Also, not sure I said this earlier but the son ate most of the brownies and she ate one piece of key lime pie after another.

I don't think there's a fine line between collecting and hoarding. There is not one room in my home that does not have a bookcase in it and I am SO glad to be selling books on Amazon.

Vox is right -

cleanliness and order. no grey line here at all

that's the line.

And, what is it with people being willing (wanting?) to appear on these disgusting TV shows? Last night, I flipped channels a little bit when I just couldn't stand to look at the hoarders any more. Our brains are rotting. That's the only possible reason why those shows are popular.

33K calories a day and that plate of cookies sitting there. She said, 'as soon as its safe, as soon as no one is there to find out', she's shoving platefuls of cooking into her face. REALLY? When the kid comes home with more cookies, does she think he doesn't know where the last plate full of cookies went? It sure as hell wasn't the cookie monster.

I come from a fat family and I can see they all have enablers. Someone who eats that much does not go to work, earn the money and then go to the cookie store. Someone else does that for them.

Ugh. I'm not having anything to do with cleaning up for this hoarder I visited yesterday. I do feel bad for them but it just isn't right for people to come in and tell someone how to live. If they break city ordinances or if neighbors complain, that would be different. But, they choose to live like this and its not my business to tell them to live differently.

 

[Circe]

Collecting is not the same as hoarding.

How is it different?

Easy, and it's a basic issue in the field of hoarding.

Collecting is when you are proud of the collection and show it off.

Hoarding is when you are ashamed of the stuff.

 

[boedicca]

It's just a problem of perceived value and organization. An art exhibit could be hoarding of useless junk on a grand scale or priceless canvas with speckles and drops of paint allegedly created by maniac alcoholic Jackson Pollack. If you saw a statue of the Virgin Mary smeared with dung in the front yard of a junk collector you might be horrified but in a NYC art gallery it's considered art. There must be a million big and little museums in the US not to mention the entire world and one man's artfully displayed iron square nail is another man's piece of junk It's all about perception.

Ownership and possession are not hoarding. One may question someone's taste, but merely having something distasteful doesn't make that person a hoarder.

Isn't ownership and possession part of the definition of hoarding? How many things does it take to label a person a hoarder? Isn't it a matter of space and organization and value? The Smithsonian has 200 million artifacts. OK the discussion was fun and maybe we should distinguish between types of hoarders even if the program doesn't. There are collectors who live among the junk they continue to accumulate and then there are crazy people who live in discarded pizza boxes and rodent filth and sometimes dead pets that they haven't seen for a while.

Ownership and possession are not indications of a mental disorder.

It's the obsessive compulsive disorder aspect that makes it a mental illness. The OCD just manifests itself in hoarding behavior.

 

[Circe]

Do those cat people that you hear about count? You know, the old lady with 300 cats in her house.

Oh definitely. Having too many cats is a sign of mental illness.

Reminds me of the T-shirt slogan --------

"One cat away from crazy cat lady"

[



It's an interesting issue, though. After all, the cats tend to do it themselves, that is, increase in numbers. If they are just doing it themselves, the issue becomes, do you harden your heart and get rid of some and neuter the rest or just keep the males? That's what we did, and we only keep two (spayed and now old) inside. In the case of natural increase, it's like having mice or rats or bats -- people are expected to have limits on their homes that don't involve a lot of animal dirt.

The REAL animal hoarding problem is when they actively bring them in. Animal "rescuers." My husband knew a woman in Canada who had 26 cats in a small apartment.....it was a no-pets building.

And a young, nervous woman came to a wool-spinning group who says she's a cat rescuer and people supply her with food for them....I know the place where she lives and I am hoping she keeps them in the barn. She apparently had LOTS. She didn't want to say how many and was generally vague about her situation.....so I bet it's pretty bad. She was very controlling and directive and urgent about telling people what they had to do with cats, and quick, too --- I realized she was one of these crazies who will call the County on everyone who has animals but herself, a control freak, so I broke off contact.

This "animal rescue" label puts a good name on what probably is a lot of animal hoarding going on.

 

[Circe]

Some of those folks have mental issues and cleaning up their house for them won't make those issues go away.

See, I believe that we overuse the term 'mental illness'. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with you, but we label people mentally ill anyway to give them an excuse for their rotten behavior.

Noomi. Of course they are mentally ill. What, people defaecating wherever they can because they can't get to a bathroom anymore? What did you suppose mental illness looks like??

Worst-end hoarding is an obvious sign of psychosis if they are young and an obvious sign of senility when they are old: it's all too common in old age, so watch out, it could happen to any of us.

 

[Circe]

I dreamed about this last night. The piles of junk and filth, the stench of cigarette smoke and FILTH. Both of them had that grey skin smokers get and their clothes looked as dirty as everything else. Also, not sure I said this earlier but the son ate most of the brownies and she ate one piece of key lime pie after another.

I don't think there's a fine line between collecting and hoarding. There is not one room in my home that does not have a bookcase in it and I am SO glad to be selling books on Amazon.

Okay, that's it. Luddly, what is going on here is that you have been traumatized by this event, and that's the norm. I know something about this issue and when a non-hoarder sees this sort of situation, they do become quite traumatized. And you do start worrying a lot about where you are on the spectrum.

Which is not a bad thing.....this country is so rich that our economy facilitates development of this mental disease, of course. I expect it always happened with senility and mental illness, however: you can accumulate a lot even in poorer circumstances if you never throw anything out! Watch for it in older fiction and you'll find it.

Personally, I think it's the madness that traumatizes us. We come into contact, unwarned, with flagrant madness, and a lot of people try to normalize it and talk about rights, so it becomes very confusing. There is of course a continuum of hoarding from everyone's junk drawer in the kitchen to the TV show situations, because humans are a storing-up species, like pack rats and ravens and several other species. So we are anxious about the idea that we maybe should get rid of our stuff and what is crazy and what isn't!

I think you should realize that you actually got yourself into a serious situation here ---- for you. (They are perfectly comfortable in it, at least till people start throwing away their stuff.) If you are like many people, you will probably take some years to process this, so take care of yourself and expect that. It's usual. Contact with flagrant madness is not good for people ever and is hard to deal with unless you are very used to it like some of the TV show social workers and junk removers.

 

[editec]

Since getting home today, I've been watching the program, Hoarders, Buried Alive. I had never seen it before and decided to watch it because I visited a hoarder today. I had been told it was bad before I got there but I was absolutely stunned at what I saw.

A long time, widowed woman and her 30-some son live in this very nice bi-level house. They're both very heavy smokers so breathing is pretty much impossible. Just inside the front door, you can look up to the top level but there are boxes and stuff right to the edge of the steps so going up there is not possible.

She invited us down to the lower level where we walked past a little alcove where there was a TV playing and her son sitting at the end of a couch that was piled high with stuff.There were boxes, VCR tapes and overflowing ashtrays.

The next room was a kitchen where there was a table with her computer on it, two chairs besides the one where she sits and a refrigerator. The stove was piled high but it looked like they use a microwave. More ashtrays and filth everywhere.

Both are overweight and diabetic. She sort of served coffee, key lime pie and brownies. The coffee was instant, heated in the microwave and the desserts were store bought. As we sat there, she ate most of the key lime pie while her son ate most of the brownies.

I once knew another hoarder where you had to shimmy inside sideways and you literally stepped up onto the filth. This person seemed to be clueless or maybe just uncaring but she invited me in as though she lived in a castle. Inside, she took me in to the bathroom to see kittens so I walked through the living room, down a hallway, past a bedroom and into the bathroom. In that walk, there was no place to sit, no toilet or shower. The tub was piled high with clothes, empty cat food cans and empty TV dinners and soda cans and just trash. Seeing that was years ago and I was really unprepared for what I saw today.

So, I've been asked for help in dealing with this situation. Both are unhappy with this awful mess but I didn't see or hear any thing that indicated they wanted to make a change. I feel like there's a huge wall and no way past it.

MY opinion is that nothing can be done or should be done until and unless they want it. And, they're going to have to want it really bad because, out of a 4 bedroom house, they are actually living in two very tiny rooms. (I have no idea where they sleep.) Moreover, I feel like I (my friends) don't have the right to go in and tell these people how to live.

A major factor here is that the son has no way to make a living when his mother dies. As it is now, they're living on family wealth passed down to them. The house is paid for.

Has anyone ever seen this before and have any thoughts?

BTW, I've dealt with animal hoarders but never anything like this.

Thanks for reading this long post.

This behavior is quite common here in Maine.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

I dreamed about this last night. The piles of junk and filth, the stench of cigarette smoke and FILTH. Both of them had that grey skin smokers get and their clothes looked as dirty as everything else. Also, not sure I said this earlier but the son ate most of the brownies and she ate one piece of key lime pie after another.

I don't think there's a fine line between collecting and hoarding. There is not one room in my home that does not have a bookcase in it and I am SO glad to be selling books on Amazon.

Okay, that's it. Luddly, what is going on here is that you have been traumatized by this event, and that's the norm. I know something about this issue and when a non-hoarder sees this sort of situation, they do become quite traumatized. And you do start worrying a lot about where you are on the spectrum.

Which is not a bad thing.....this country is so rich that our economy facilitates development of this mental disease, of course. I expect it always happened with senility and mental illness, however: you can accumulate a lot even in poorer circumstances if you never throw anything out! Watch for it in older fiction and you'll find it.

Personally, I think it's the madness that traumatizes us. We come into contact, unwarned, with flagrant madness, and a lot of people try to normalize it and talk about rights, so it becomes very confusing. There is of course a continuum of hoarding from everyone's junk drawer in the kitchen to the TV show situations, because humans are a storing-up species, like pack rats and ravens and several other species. So we are anxious about the idea that we maybe should get rid of our stuff and what is crazy and what isn't!

I think you should realize that you actually got yourself into a serious situation here ---- for you. (They are perfectly comfortable in it, at least till people start throwing away their stuff.) If you are like many people, you will probably take some years to process this, so take care of yourself and expect that. It's usual. Contact with flagrant madness is not good for people ever and is hard to deal with unless you are very used to it like some of the TV show social workers and junk removers.

I think you are absolutely correct that my reaction is to finding myself in the presence of very obvious madness. It is simply not normal to fill one's cave up with so much stuff that you less than two rooms to actually live in.

I marveled that the house looked so normal from the outside. And, that the woman carried on a nice normal conversation, as though we were not sitting in the annex to the city dump. Actually, we were mostly standing for lack of room to sit.

This behavior is quite common here in Maine.

I suspect its a lot more common everywhere than most of us know.

When we drive from our lake house to town, we see places where cars are sitting up on blocks, old trashy trailers rotting out, junk piled on porches.

The more I think about this, the sicker and the sadder it feels to me.

 

[Circe]

I suspect its a lot more common everywhere than most of us know.

When we drive from our lake house to town, we see places where cars are sitting up on blocks, old trashy trailers rotting out, junk piled on porches.

The more I think about this, the sicker and the sadder it feels to me.

Yeah, once you've been shocked by seeing it up close you start to become more observant and see it in more places than before. We communally ignore a lot of it on public view as basically not our problem.

We are frequently overwhelmed by our possessions and our instincts. Thoreau was probably right: "Simplify! Simplify!"


Though it has always worried me that he said it twice.......

[

 

[April]

Hey...you all say 'crazy cat lady' as if it's a bad thing...

 

[FA_Q2]

Some of those folks have mental issues and cleaning up their house for them won't make those issues go away.

No, it won’t. As a matter of fact (or belief I guess as this is MHO) the ONLY thing that is going to help people like this is when THEY actually throw everything away. One has to make the conscious decision and take the self-action of overcoming something like this or they will never get out of it.

It is the same with virtually all mental problems from mental addictions to things like this. You can ‘force’ them to comply but the problem will never go away like that.

 

[skye]

Collecting is not the same as hoarding.

How is it different?

Easy, and it's a basic issue in the field of hoarding.

Collecting is when you are proud of the collection and show it off.

Hoarding is when you are ashamed of the stuff.

Exactly! the difference is like Heaven and hell.




Collecting




Hoarding

 

[Connery]

Collecting is not the same as hoarding.

How is it different?

Easy, and it's a basic issue in the field of hoarding.

Collecting is when you are proud of the collection and show it off.

Hoarding is when you are ashamed of the stuff.

I do not think that being "ashamed" is a requisite element to being a hoarder. To me there is a mental illness or emotional problem going on.

 

[Asclepias]

Its pretty obvious its a underlying mental issue. Ive seen the Hoarder show a number of times and everyone of those people have some serious mental issues. For some it shows just how far people go when they isolate themselves. We were meant to live in groups. For others it shows how dangerous it is to only hang around like minded individuals and enablers.