OT: Hoarders!!!!! on TLC

Wow, if you have not seen this show it is quite alarming. I have been cleaning and organzing my house all this three day weekend.

Telling my self "when in doubt throw it out"

My boxes are filling up to take down to the church thrift store. It is just amazing to me how quickly stuff accumulates. I dont even really consider myself a big spender, shopper or consumer either.

Cleaning is also good excercise :):):):)

I just love that show! Its absolutely addicting. I think I find it fascinating because I dont get how people could ever allow themselves to get like thag.

After watching that show Im always looking around for stuff to clean lol.
There were a few people that I never would have imagined like that either. They were good looking professional people.

There was one episode that bothered me the mosg where this little chinese lady was so selfish and her husband, who was so sweet, was sleeping in their car. He also had Osteporosis really bad and she still didnt care :/

 It's a mental illness these people are very sick, its just like morbid obesity.

Yes, last night with the house that had all of the roaches was about the worst house I had seen so far on that show. I felt for the junk clean up people and the physc doc that was there with the bugs crawling on them. The roach pooh was something else also.

I'm not sure if it was the TLC show or the A&E one, but one ep had a woman who had soiled adult diapers THREE FEET DEEP in her house. She used them because she didn't have water service any more. Even the cleanup guys had to quit.

I admit, I am not the neatest person in the world, but jus****ching this show gives me the heebie jeebies! And it caused me to start scrubbing the kitchen floor!

I watch every show they have had. It is disgusting, but I have noticed a very consistent theme. The hoarders have almost always experienced some significant loss. The woman last week had two teenage sons die within six months, one from cancer, one from suicide.

So I feel like maybe some dysfunctional grieving or inability to fully grieve for various reasons played into their hoarding.

I know someone in real life, used to be a great friend. She lost her Dad suddenly, her Mom of cancer a few years later. She was an only child, inherited everything. Became a hoarder, constant shopping and spending, took in dogs, so she has the condemable house now, loaded with dog waste and filth. I had to cut her out of my life last year bc she was so toxic. Than she told people I called animal control on her! First off I would never, bc if her dogs were taken away that would be more loss for her, and second if they had really shown up her house would have been condemned.

I think you're right about hoarders;  I work with people (doing a lady now) who need to "destuff" in order to move, etc., and it's amazing the things that are clung to with absolute ferocity.  It's as if the person who once had an item is gone, but this thing (whatever it is--a spoon, an oven mitt, an old souvenir of a trip) is sacred and they must keep it or the one that once owned it will be totally gone.  As if they are not already.  It's definitely a fear of loss.  I really feel for them. 

I had to deal with this same thing when my mother passed away;  I couldn't let go of any of the things she'd had in her home.  It took a real intervention by my daughter and some friends to help me see that even if I kept every little thing she'd ever touched, it wouldn't bring her back. 

I can'****ch these shows, knowing how difficult it is for the people trapped in this nightmare.

 Hoarding is a mental illness, I always hope they get help and get better, but I am sure it is just as hard for them as it is for a food addict to just stop and always do the right yhing.  Its sad.