Finally watched Hoarders ...

[Usually Curious]

OMG - it's on Netflix on Demand and I finally got to see it. Talk about motivation - I'm gonna go clean now!

[philomom]

I tivo Hoarders and watch it the next morning. You can count on me cleaning the house like crazy after I've watched. I've even cleaned out a couple of my "problem" areas in the house recently.

I think the saddest ones are where there are children involved. No child should grow up without beds, food in the fridge or clean bathrooms. They are like prisoners... they can't have anyone over to play and they can't function properly. So sad.

[bobandjess99]

I watched the show for the first time a few months ago (no cable, i watched clips online).

Um..ya. Seriously motivating. My house..looked like some of them. Not with like piles of rotting garbage or animal feces, but just with STUFF. Piles and piles and boxes and baskets of stuff..clothes, toys, paper clutter.

The whole concept of going through it an seperating into "donate" "sell" "trash" "keep" was just all too much...WAY too overwhelming...it had been years upon years of "meaning to get around to it.."
We finally threw it ALL out. I harbored some guilt about throwing away perfectly usable or donatable or fixable things, but really..we were literally at the "drowning, had to save ourselves" stage. We rented and filled a giant dumpster with stuff. We threw out hundreds of bags of stuff.
My kids clothes are paired down to a weeks worth, period.
The toys all fit in the playroom, and not in a 5 foot tall pile on the floor, on a shelf or in a bin.
There is FLOOR in my house.
I used paper plates and stuff to get over the hump, so i didn't have dishes on top of EVERYthing else to clean. OMG..you can not imagine how that helped!!!

Our house is finally decent. Not picture perfect, but like..a normal house, not a pit. It's very freeing.

[Usually Curious]

Originally Posted by bobandjess99

I watched the show for the first time a few months ago (no cable, i watched clips online).

Um..ya. Seriously motivating. My house..looked like some of them. Not with like piles of rotting garbage or animal feces, but just with STUFF. Piles and piles and boxes and baskets of stuff..clothes, toys, paper clutter.

The whole concept of going through it an seperating into "donate" "sell" "trash" "keep" was just all too much...WAY too overwhelming...it had been years upon years of "meaning to get around to it.."
We finally threw it ALL out. I harbored some guilt about throwing away perfectly usable or donatable or fixable things, but really..we were literally at the "drowning, had to save ourselves" stage. We rented and filled a giant dumpster with stuff. We threw out hundreds of bags of stuff.
My kids clothes are paired down to a weeks worth, period.
The toys all fit in the playroom, and not in a 5 foot tall pile on the floor, on a shelf or in a bin.
There is FLOOR in my house.
I used paper plates and stuff to get over the hump, so i didn't have dishes on top of EVERYthing else to clean. OMG..you can not imagine how that helped!!!

Our house is finally decent. Not picture perfect, but like..a normal house, not a pit. It's very freeing.

Way to go, Mama!

My 4yos just sat there with his mouth open. Every once in a while he would ask, "Why is their house so messy?!"

Our house is far from fastidiously clean but I was glad he didn't say, "Hey Mom, their house looks just like ours!"

[Juvysen]

Originally Posted by bobandjess99

I watched the show for the first time a few months ago (no cable, i watched clips online).

Um..ya. Seriously motivating. My house..looked like some of them. Not with like piles of rotting garbage or animal feces, but just with STUFF. Piles and piles and boxes and baskets of stuff..clothes, toys, paper clutter.

The whole concept of going through it an seperating into "donate" "sell" "trash" "keep" was just all too much...WAY too overwhelming...it had been years upon years of "meaning to get around to it.."
We finally threw it ALL out. I harbored some guilt about throwing away perfectly usable or donatable or fixable things, but really..we were literally at the "drowning, had to save ourselves" stage. We rented and filled a giant dumpster with stuff. We threw out hundreds of bags of stuff.
My kids clothes are paired down to a weeks worth, period.
The toys all fit in the playroom, and not in a 5 foot tall pile on the floor, on a shelf or in a bin.
There is FLOOR in my house.
I used paper plates and stuff to get over the hump, so i didn't have dishes on top of EVERYthing else to clean. OMG..you can not imagine how that helped!!!

Our house is finally decent. Not picture perfect, but like..a normal house, not a pit. It's very freeing.

Wow! Good for you!

I watched it on netflix too... I notice a lot of behaviors they do (like the clutter as a decision deferred) that I do... thank goodness it's not to that extent. We do only use half of our house, really, though, and the rest is piled up with junk we're not using. I need to ditch most of that, and I'm slowly working my way through.

Dh does things like keep boxes to things and keep wires that we'll almost definitely never use... I'm trying to figure out how to get him to let go...

It made me so upset, though, when the kids get taken away by CPS and the parents can't let go of their junk just to get their kids back. I can guarantee I'd have a dumpster pulled up to the house and I'd be chucking my stuff out into it if anyone every threatened to take my kids... but the sad thing is that I don't even think it's their fault... they're mentally ill They literally CAN'T let go.

I do like that the people running the show seem pretty respectful toward the people on there though... they're always saying "I'm not going to make you throw anything out, it's all up to you" and whatever. Some shows like that are a lot of shaming, you know?

[phathui5]

Watching it always makes me want to scrub the house down. That and "How Clean is your House?" that sometimes airs on BBC.

[Alyantavid]

I just watched the first few episodes last night. I seriously thought I was going to have a panic attack. Dirty clothes on the floor for 2 months? How many clothes do these people own?

I can see how they'd have a hard time letting go, especially if someone's pushing them to when they don't want to, but I'd much rather throw out everything in my house than lose my kids.

[ILoveMyBabyBird]

oh yeah, i'm going to watch a couple episodes on netflix tonight. I love netflix.

[PoppyMama]

bobandjess- I think Hoarders should interview you and give you an award. I watch the workers, PAINFULLY, trying to get people on the show to understand that if it's too overwhelming it's best to just get rid of it vs doing the whole separating thing. Most of them are so sick they can't grasp the idea that if they aren't willing to chuck it they will never dig themselves out. I get the guilt from getting rid of usable things to but sometimes you have to save yourself.

[mamadelbosque]

Hoarders is such a wondeful show to watch if/when you feel like you need to clean but don't really want to. Just thinking about it makes me think about all the crap in boxes and bins we have sitting around that we can/should get rid of.

[mylilmonkeys]

Yes, we just watched this through Netflix, too. I have spent all summer on the couch suffering with morning sickness. This show sent me into instant nesting. In a BAD way!!! I moved way too much furniture one day, on my own, pregnant, up and down stairs, just because I couldn't take the clutter the way it was. LOL There's lots more I want to do, but I'm slowing down. Our house isn't terrible, but it could improve. We have a lot of stuff sitting around to be fixed. I'm realizing it's really never going to be fixed. Let it go!!!

Directly after watching through this series, I found American Pickers on Netflix instant. They often deal with the same sort of people, but they have a lot of success getting people to part with their "collections". They have a level of respect for people and their stuff that you really don't get from the counselors. I think it would be priceless to merge the two. Often if you can get the person to start parting with things, one item at a time, they become more willing to let more go. This wouldn't work as well with the trash hoarders, but with those with overgrown collections or "I might some day need this" sorts.

[greenmansions]

So I just watched the current episode shown on aetv.com called "Dawn" and I went to high school with the decluttering person named Dorothy. I have not seen her in over 20 years. Wow.

And yes, talk about motivation to take care of the [relatively few] piles around my house. Those poor families. I can totally relate to some of the comments made by the hoarders like, "but...but... just let me go through that box!"

[mommaof3boz]

OK I'll be honest here. I do feel very sorry for the kids involved. No child should be forced to live like that. And I do believe if after a set amount of time to get things cleaned up, and aren't, they should be removed from the home. Children deserve a childhood.

That said, I sometimes want to SHAKE those adults who can't "let go" of all that junk. I know its an illness. I know for many they simply can't reason through it. However, some of them are plain out lazy. I saw one episode where a women was sitting on a chair in the lawn, just letting them clean out her house while she smoked cigarettes. She acted entitled to her kids cleaning out the mess she'd created. And not once did she thank anyone.

bobandjess-you deserve a big kudos. You should be very proud of yourself. None of the above was directed to you.

[treegardner]

Originally Posted by bobandjess99

I watched the show for the first time a few months ago (no cable, i watched clips online).

Um..ya. Seriously motivating. My house..looked like some of them. Not with like piles of rotting garbage or animal feces, but just with STUFF. Piles and piles and boxes and baskets of stuff..clothes, toys, paper clutter.

The whole concept of going through it an seperating into "donate" "sell" "trash" "keep" was just all too much...WAY too overwhelming...it had been years upon years of "meaning to get around to it.."
We finally threw it ALL out. I harbored some guilt about throwing away perfectly usable or donatable or fixable things, but really..we were literally at the "drowning, had to save ourselves" stage. We rented and filled a giant dumpster with stuff. We threw out hundreds of bags of stuff.
My kids clothes are paired down to a weeks worth, period.
The toys all fit in the playroom, and not in a 5 foot tall pile on the floor, on a shelf or in a bin.
There is FLOOR in my house.
I used paper plates and stuff to get over the hump, so i didn't have dishes on top of EVERYthing else to clean. OMG..you can not imagine how that helped!!!

Our house is finally decent. Not picture perfect, but like..a normal house, not a pit. It's very freeing.

Good for you!

[adorabelle]

Oh my gosh, Hoarders makes me twitch! I can't stand the mess. My house is pretty de cluttered, but when I watch the show it makes me want to purge even more!

[zebra15]

This show made me realize my roommate has some of the tendencies of the 'hoarders' featured.
Not being able to get rid of anything
Having a storage unit for FOUR plus years when she has a huge house
Not cleaning anything
Mood swings

*I'm working on finding a new place for DS and I to live

I think Im becoming a neat freak...

[ILoveMyBabyBird]

i watched a couple episodes and gah it was pretty disturbing, but I could relate, my mom wasn't a hoarder, but often we lived with my g-ma and i grew up in my early childhood years living a lot like the kids in the first episode. I always thought i was a pack rat type, but i am finding as i age, i am becoming less attached to objects and have been able to let things go. I think for me, growing up in a not really clean; never mind neat environment has made me immune to messiness, and it doesn't bother me that much, but I am trying to improve about that. I think 2 things when I visited IL's in India affected me a lot. 1) was how they just didn't have much stuff, which made housework relatively easier. I liken it to when i worked at at hotel cleaning rooms, there was little more than the general, vacumming, mopping sweeping and wiping stuff down, but with more stuff there is more to pick up and then by the time stuff is picked up, I become tired and end up not even doing the cleaning part of the job. 2) next thing i learned was how the hoarding mentality is almost a definite relation to poverty, we brought gifts of perfume to give to dh's sisters and nieces and on the last day my mil was crying not because we were leaving but because dh had given the gifts to the sisters and nieces rather than letting mil keep them all, (she also got a perfume gift) we're talking like 6 or so giftsets of perfumes! So MIL hasn't visited us in the states yet, but i often wonder how she will react to her new surroundings (our home) and I honestly don't want to overload her with lots of excess stuff in our home, even if it boxed up in the closet. So I am working on that, in a way my MIL and her eventual visit has been a lot of my motivation to get rid of unused, broken, unwanted stuff, oh that and I am pregnant and have been nesting pretty much since i found out.

[2lilsweetfoxes]

I start watching that or Clean House or any of those home-makeover shows and somehow, within 15 minutes, I'm cleaning my house.

[lolar2]

Originally Posted by mommaof3boz

That said, I sometimes want to SHAKE those adults who can't "let go" of all that junk. I know its an illness. I know for many they simply can't reason through it. However, some of them are plain out lazy. I saw one episode where a women was sitting on a chair in the lawn, just letting them clean out her house while she smoked cigarettes. She acted entitled to her kids cleaning out the mess she'd created. And not once did she thank anyone.

A reminder (from someone who knows a lot of people on the fringes of the TV and movie industries) that she did not thank anyone ON CAMERA or do any work ON CAMERA. It doesn't mean she did no work and thanked no one during the whole process. The magic of Hollywood, you know.

[Geist]

watching Hoarders always makes me feel depressed because my mom IS a hoarder, but she's one that refuses to admit that she has a problem and whenever anyone tries to say it's a problem, they're being mean because it's part of her business/she doesn't have time to clean/they're all really valuable. Sigh. It's a hopeless situation and we know the only day we'll ever have 1-800-Junk trucks outside her house is the day she dies. It's also really depressing to see how similar all these hoarders are to my mom: she also refuses to take responsibility for any of her actions, everything is always someone else's fault (like my dad's, since he's the only one still home) and, in general, extraordinarily selfish.
But because of that, my sister and I are very aggressive in getting rid of stuff and tend to keep our homes pretty neat :P So, that's one benefit.