Hoarders

I recently watched a show called Hoarders. It is about people who collect things and never throw them away. They clutter their houses with junk. Some people’s houses you can’t even walk through.


There was an old woman on the show. She was one of these hoarders. The house she lives in is a five-bedroom house, but she has so much junk in her house that she was forced to live in a little part of the house. You can’t even get into her living room. It crowded up to the doorframe with things she thinks is important to her, and where there isn’t junk in the living room, she had bits of paper and Styrofoam plates ripped up all over the floor.

She agreed to get some professional help.


A professional visited her house. She looked around. She peered into the basement. The stairway was so cluttered with stuff that the professional said it could pose a great threat. The old woman said, “It doesn’t pose a threat to me. I never go down there.”


Her refrigerator was in a hallway, and it was apartment size refrigerator that one of her children had given her. The microwave was really small.


The grandson of the woman felt horrible for his grandma. He said, “I can barely eat knowing my grandma is sitting on her bed eating TV dinners while I have a nice meal.” She finally agreed to have crews help her to clean out her house.


There was also another family, who had a three year old son. He loved to clean. His room was neat and tidy. But the rest of the house was a disaster. It looked like a tornado had hit it. The father had his own work area downstairs, but you could barely walk through it. Another professional cleaner took about two minutes just to get to the man, and it was only about five feet away from where she stood. It was basically his fault the house was the way it was. It was his wife’s too, letting him do this.

The wife was terrified of what would become of her child. She said he was a good boy, learning to clean. Finally she got fed up with the mess. She told her husband to get help or get out.
They agreed to have a crew clean out the house. Most of the things were put into boxes and put in the basement. The wife said this had changed their lives.