Hoarders

If you’ve never watched the show Hoarders, DON’T! You will become addicted. You will start hoarding episodes on your DVR that force other recorded shows to be buried deep within the saved shows list. As you watch the episodes, you will find they are so intriguing that you just can’t delete them even though you will never watch them again (or even remember that you have them).

I couldn’t fall asleep the other night so when I stumbled upon a Hoarders episode, I thought, “this will help me fall asleep”. Um, not quite. Six hours and six episodes later, I was stuck like glue to the TV (kind of the way important papers from the ‘80s and take-out containers are stuck like glue to a hoarder’s walls and floors). You wonder why I was sucked in, why I couldn’t shut the TV off. When a six foot tall bearded guy decked out in a terry-cloth sweatband (I know, I really don’t need to say much after “sweatband”), a sleeveless khaki vest-shirt, and almost short-shorts who still manages to look like a biker says, “I have one too many rats” how do you say “well, I think I’m going to hit the hay now”.

First of all, isn’t one rat one too many rats? This guy had (drum-roll please…) over 2,000 rats! The best part was the fact that these rats didn’t emerge and multiply as a result of his hoarding, these were his hoarding. He kept them as pets. They were in the walls, on the floor, on the counter; they were everywhere (just like God…except he doesn’t leave excrement on bedspreads).

If you’re not familiar with the show, they always send out a psychologist (along with a cleaning crew & professional organizer) to help the hoarder. Every time the psychologist would speak to this guy about the rats, he would let out this kooky sounding yelp and start sobbing. And the craziest part of it, he was one of the more “together” hoarders of the series. He didn’t fit the hoarder mold (usually, part of the hoarder mold is mold). He appeared to have all his teeth, he didn’t have a waddle to his gait, and he wasn’t combative. He was cooperative and immediately acknowledged he had a problem. It usually doesn’t go that smoothly.

Enter Hannah—my favorite hoarder of all time. It wasn’t her hoarding style that wooed me; it was her down-home, old-fashioned abusive charm. Add in a mush-mouth; a walker powered by two of the most flabtastic arms I’ve ever seen; and a crippled goat, and you have the inspiration behind the saying “what the fuck?”

These people never think they have a problem either. They all say the same thing: “I am not a hoarder, I’m a collector”. Really? I wonder how much brittle cat feces and unpaid electric bills with Tang stains go for on E-Bay. Do you think it’s a problem when you’ve “collected” yourself out of your own home and into an unheated trailer that doubles as a chicken coop? Nah, of course not—that’s completely normal—especially when all the chickens have scoliosis from being cramped in cages like day laborers in Toyota Celicas.

I hate it when it’s time to get to the “clean-up” and they allow the hoarder to sift through each item ONE BY ONE. I’m pretty sure you could throw out their toilet and they wouldn’t miss it, or even notice it was gone. It’s kind of hard to miss something you haven’t seen since Joan Rivers had her original face. When you have so much crap that you have to walk through your home like a SWAT team sneaking up on a meth lab, chances are you don’t have a detailed inventory list of your “items”. If you do have an inventory list, what are the chances you could find it anyhow?

Here are a few tips to figure out if you’re a hoarder:

• You have to rake your house
• The only pathway in your house requires you to launch yourself from the top of the staircase to get to it
• Your dining room table is also your curio cabinet, file cabinet…and the cat’s litter box
• Your knick-knacks consist of Precious Moments figurines, miniature teapots, and cat carcasses
• The only garbage can in your house is your house

So next time you find yourself debating whether or not to throw out an expired bottle of Anacin because you “might need it someday”, realize you are one disability check and two estranged children away from becoming a hoarder.