I have hoarded Hoarders and Hoarding:Buried Alive on my dvr, spend the day watching the shows.

[texanwitch]

My sister is a hoarder, I understand the people in the shows.

My sister has filled up her house and apartment with crap.

It is a mental illness.

My dvr is now cleaned out.

[zen_bohemian]

1. I feel awful for hoarders

it has to be a most frustrating and aggravating condition to live with. I cant say that I can even start to understand their condition, I am the anti-hoarder, I toss everything out and save nothing.

[texanwitch]

2. I think my Father was a hoarder, I am not.

I am not super neat but I don't collect anything.

It is a good idea to clean out once a month.

[Arugula Latte]

3. Ugh. Sometimes I can't make it through those shows, I get so frustrated.

Intellectually, I understand it is a mental illness. But it just makes me want to scream.

[texanwitch]

5. I feel sorry for the family members.

My sister lost her husband and kids because of her problem.

She is still hoarding.

[murielm99]

4. My husband has the potential to be a hoarder.

His parents did that. What a mess we had to contend with when they died!

We live in the country, with several outbuildings. He is tearing down the barn right now. The other buildings have to be cleaned, and they will be torn down, too.

I will have to turn into a bitch, harpy and all-around horrible person to get it done. I will enlist the help of my grown children, too. It takes an intervention to get him to dispose of things.

[texanwitch]

6. My father's house was a mess when he sold it.

Boxes of everything I had to check out.

Took me almost 3 months, I did find important papers everywhere.


He was not living in the home anymore, so it was easy to do.

I could never have done it with him in the home.

[erinlough]

7. I watch those shows because

They make me want to clean and throw stuff out! I like a simple neat place with a small amount of stuff but sometimes things get cluttered and these shows are my way of getting motivated.

[texanwitch]

8. Yes, me to.

I was cleaning while watching the shows.

Last nights Hoarders on A&E was hard to watch.

The woman on the show didn't throw anything away, just had a hissy fit.

Everything was just moved back in the house.

[laundry_queen]

9. Oh, yes, they are a good incentive to clean for sure!

I will say that I am certain I have hoarder tendencies - my house is not cluttered at ALL - BUT I have a really hard time making decisions on organizing and throwing things away. I also find it difficult to figure out what to do with things once I decide to get rid of them. Our local garbage/recycling laws are hard to deal with and I'm too busy to list everything I need to get rid of on ebay or craigslist. For instance, I have 3 tv's I don't need - 2 are broken and one has a messed up picture. They are all 10+ yrs old. People figure because I'm a single mom they can give me their crappy tv's that don't work, LOL. Anyway I have to make a trip into the city, which costs me $10 in gas, to get rid of these things! First I have to find the time...then load the tv's into my vehicle (one is huge, I'm not sure I can do it) and take them there. I haven't found the time yet as I've been in school full time since Sept. I have August off though, and it WILL get done then. I'm just illustrating that I can sometimes see the same thought processes I have. It scares the bejeezus out of me and gets me cleaning! The ones I really don't get are those who hoard boxes, or have piles of feces or rotting food. EW! I have a holy horror of pests and that probably gets me cleaning too. I can tell the difference between my mom and I - it takes her a few minutes to declutter a room. I take half a day at least. My brain is just wired differently. Thankfully, even though it takes me longer, I love the feeling of getting rid of things and love a decluttered house, I hate 'collecting' and I hate 'decorations' for the house, so no danger of me being on that show anytime soon.

BTW, I know hoarding is a mental illness, but some of those people on the show have other issues too. There has been more than one person who seemed abusive towards their family - separate from the whole hoarding thing - and acted like total narcissists. Some of those people I wanted to yell at the family and crew to just leave them alone - soon enough they will lose their hoard anyway by some other means and then at least in the meantime you won't have to put up with the abuse they are heaping on you. Some of those people are just plain NASTY.

[seaglass]

10. My BIL was a hoarder, we did not find out until he died as he was

estranged from his family (his choice).

My husband took on the task of cleaning out the family home. It just broke my heart. The one positive thing is that because my BIL hoarded he had not thrown away anything of my in-laws so my husband had the opportunity to see lots of reminders of his childhood.

I can't watch hoarders because I get such mixed feelings - extreme sympathy for the hoarder and his/her family but on the other side I just want to scream THROW IT OUT!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

11. You can't cure them.

My mom did not have a problem with her hoarding. The people on the Hoarders show usually realize they have a problem and it separates them from their families. When I was a kid we had a three bedroom house and one of those was her junk/sewing room. I never had my own room. I slept in a queen size bed with my sister. It's a good thing we were of the same gender or the room problem would have been bad.

I told my mom her junk was more important than her family.I could not visit her because all the dust would stir up my allergies and I would get sick with a sinus infection/bronchitis.

I had to wait until she died in 2002 to start cleaning out and selling stuff and giving it away by the side of the road. And it took six years until I moved up into this house. I still don't have the place completely cleaned out, but I got rid of a lot of good mahogany furniture, old lady polyester pantsuits, plastic sacks, pill bottles, toilet paper tubes, 50 year old rotten hat boxes, rotten and stained piece goods/patterns/notions.

Tried to sell some depression glass on Ebay but only sold one batch and the company that sold it for me got a 50% cut. Nobody is buying anybody else's old lady crap either.