Hoarders (on A&E)

[Inkyblott]

I feel bad for the neighbors of the hoarders. You just know the smells must have been horrible not to mention the vermin. I would be pissed if I was overrun with rodents and roaches because of I lived next to a hoarder.

The cat hoarder was just appalling. All those poor kitties.

A couple of the cases seemed kind of fake. Drama Boy gave off the whiff of overacting and there was no explanation of why he was living there with drunky alcoholic dad. I also call shenanigans on the last episode of the season, with the mother and little boy. The mother has apparently been very active on other hoarder message boards doing damage control and griping about the show.

[HotLips]

Did anyone watch the season premiere last night? They showed an older woman in Louisiana whose house was so piled with trash that when they started scraping it away, they found a dead cat carcass underneath the mess. How bad does your house have to smell for you to not even notice that there's a dead cat in there?

[Ladybug]

There were TWO dead cats under all that trash! I usually feel sympathy for the hoarders, but last night was pretty tough. Did Augustine have severe mental problems, or was she just an ungrateful, selfish beyotch? It was horrible to hear her blaming everyone else for her problems. Her own son was taken from her home because of the mess, but she would not take responsibility for it in any way. It was the government's fault, social services fault, etc. She blamed a lot on her daughter, who was there trying to HELP her. When people were cleaning the house, she just sat on the porch in a rocking chair and complained. They could barely even get a "thank you" out of her. She had to be prompted to show appreciation. When her daughter reached her breaking point and hollered, "She's a lazy pig! And she doesn't even care!" it was hard to disagree.

She has some serious, serious issues. Unfortunately those issues manifested in a way that made her come off as a very uncaring, cold person. I was glad to see that she was getting continued therapy.

Also, it was so sad when the son (who's 28 and lives in Seattle) said that he had a toy box when he was a kid, but couldn't get to it because it was so piled with trash. He opened it for the first time in 20 years, and there were all these little toys in it. That moment made me so sad for him and his sister, who had to live in that waste pile. The mother had no remorse at all for making her children live like that. She either had no understanding of what her actions put them through or just didn't care in the least.

[Spinderella]

Oh, last night was just crazy. One thing I noticed that was different with Augustine from the other hoarders that they featured was how EASY it was for her to say, "throw it away". She didn't put up much fuss at all when it came to them cleaning up.

Sure, she had some things she wanted to hold on to or go back over, but it was very, very minimal and they managed to get out thousands of pounds of trash. I think she knew that there was nothing there of real value, just her being too lazy to put the trash out.

What killed me was how her furniture was decomposing. I mean, it just melted into the carpet! OY! So disgusting. I'm just happy to hear that she is having her bathroom (OMG, was that not a nightmare?!) refurbished and is getting a weekly cleaning service. I do believe she had something mental happen to her at some point and caused her to become defiant and show completely no responsibility for any of her actions.

I found her house on GoogleMaps and man, it was such an eyesore compared to the other homes on her street. What a mess.

[Deleted]

Did Augustine have severe mental problems, or was she just an ungrateful, selfish beyotch?

I vote for the latter. I think the daughter called it right when she said Augustine had a huge entitlement complex.

And I'm sorry, but if you're a 68-year old woman STILL blaming your mother for your lot in life, then you're just a loser. At some point you need to OWN YOUR OWN SHIT. (In the figurative sense here, lord knows the literal sense was quite true in that "bathroom" of hers.)

The dead cats were horrifying. And her claim of "I love animals!" was patently absurd to say the least. That one carcass appeared to have died screaming. Fuck her.

[Martini Girl]

I don't know if I could handle this show. I lived with a hoarder, and it was not fun. What I found so utterly fascinating about my former roommate is that she was the utmost professional in her job. She was extremely smart. She was absolutely image conscious. Then you would look at her bedroom. Boxes piled to the ceiling and all over her bed. She bought clothes on-line and then just threw them on the floor (kept the tags in them so she could return them-- didn't care)-- we're talking thousands of dollars worth of clothes, which she bought every month. She had enough things to wear for an entire village. The fridge was filled with all of her stuff-- which she never ate. She also bought everything she could in bulk, then let it rot. The cabinets had all her crap stuffed in them, so I couldn't buy a lot. Every space needed to be filled, or she'd get anxious. She also wouldn't admit she had a problem.

At one point she got fired from her job, and she brought back her boxes from work. She didn't touch them for a year, and left them in the common area of the condo. Every time I asked her to put the boxes away, she said she had to go through them first because they contained important information. We would get into vicious arguments over it (cause my main argument was -- you haven't touched this stuff in a year, it can't be that important! It was maddening to me, cause I like to live in a clean house.

Anyway, I learned through therapy that this was an emotional issue for her, and I couldn't look at the situation logically.

When she finally moved out, the house was just empty. It was amazing to see just how much stuff she actually had. I feel bad for her current roommate.

And as much as it was an emotional issue for my roommate, she was also supremely lazy and entitled. She would make comments on how her investment banker friends had live in help, and our third roommate and I were just being cheap by only having a cleaning service come in once a month.

Oh, the anxiety this thread's dredged up! So glad my roommates are awesome now!

[tamaradixon]

Dec 1, 2009 16:00:00 GMT -4 Martini Girl said:

She was extremely smart. She was absolutely image conscious.

That's what shocks me about most of these hoarders. They don't look dirty or disorganized. Most of them seem rather fastidious about their appearance. Hair in place, just so, etc. I expected them to look more like street people.

Thinking about it just now, I had a great aunt and uncle that were hoarders. We just thought they were eccentric. They would pile everything. Everything! To move around their house was like walking in tunnels. Who knew they could have starred in a reality series?

[Spinderella]

Dec 1, 2009 17:09:35 GMT -4 @tamaradixon said:

That's what shocks me about most of these hoarders. They don't look dirty or disorganized. Most of them seem rather fastidious about their appearance. Hair in place, just so, etc. I expected them to look more like street people.

I don't want to sound like I'm harping on these people on the show, but a lot of those I've seen in several episodes do look somewhat disheveled. Not like some bum, but not well kept. *shrug*

[cantienne]

Augustine certainly wasn't looking to hot, what with her toothlessness and all. But others - Kerrylea, for example - look remarkably well put-together.

[Mugsy]

I don't think Augustine was a true hoarder - I'd say she was a dirty, disgusting, lazy slob who may have mental problems.

A hoarder actually sees value in their stuff, whether it's food, clothes, papers, tchotchkes, whatever. It's all treasured to them, even if they don't know exactly where specific items are. And often they do. Their reasons for hoarding may differ, but they tend to hang on to most of it like grim death.

Augustine was just too lazy to clean up, that's all I could see. She might have a mild case of "I might need that some day", but come on. She blamed a relative for dropping off a cupboard in the living room umpteen years ago. Instead of putting it away, she just filled/covered it with crap. And yeah, the house was literally rotting around her - floors, ceiling, walls. {{{shudder}}} That's not caring for the value of the "stuff". That's psychotic.