Hoarding: Buried Alive - General Discussion

[kelm]

I was needin' a hoarder fix, myself!

Debbie from Iowa seemed to be more of just a lazy pig who didn't want to clean her house...

Chuck, sadly (grossly, irritatingly) reminds me of somebody I know very well.

[notyrmomma]

I know it's been some time since anyone has commented on this episode, but I just found this discussion and I remember this particular episode like a bad dream.  I had a couple of questions/observations about this episode:

 

1. Did anyone find it weird how the girlfriend was just sitting around the house with them while her baby was in the hospital? I don't know how it works when you have an infant in the NICU, but when my 6mth old was hospitalized, I was there 24/7 and when I did briefly run home, my husband was at the hospital with my son.  It seems like she was always at the house - maybe it was for the show or maybe the hospital shooed her out too, because IMHO, that chick was just as much of a moron as those two creeps.

 

2. When her mother came in (maybe it was her step-mother?) and were giving the two guys "heck" for the way the place looked, did you notice the mom didn't offer the daughter to come to her house with the baby?  My mother would have been like "..oh hell no, you and the baby are coming home with me!"  What's going on there?

 

3. The part with the cats made me cry, literally.  I hope they all got good, loving homes!

[kelm]

Eeeek!!! I caught a glimpse of Seymour and his roach infestation! I've gotta find it online so I can watch it...

I'm so ashamed...

[RedKoolAide]

I watched Seymour's episode in its entirety. I have never been more disgusted. I also had to clean my home after watching.

I was happy he was in a new clean apartment.

[kelm]

I saw him pick up a pan. He may have taken a lid off? It was literally crawling with roaches. Gah!!

[RedKoolAide]

Those damn roaches! There were so many and all different sizes. My skin is still crawling.

[kelm]

In looking for Seymour's epi, I stumbled upon something called the worst roach infestations (not an exact quote). I haaaaaaad to look.

Don't.

[Mrsjumbo]

I watched Shelleys episode today (it was the update show but I remember the original). The jaw dropping part where she tells the organizer she is saving purses for her twin sister. Her Dh peeks around the corner & says "you never had s sister!" She says "you had an affair with her". He says "I never had an affair & you never had a sister".

I can't believe some couples stay together- if I was him I'd be long gone. She's now messing up their new house. I guess he stays because they have a disabled son?

[JudyObscure]

  So many hoarders are like Shelley, totally confident that their spouse will stay and put up with all their literal and figurative crap.  I would love to have updates on all those marriages.  I want to see the non-hoarding spouse get free to a nice clean space almost as much as I want to see the children get away.

[JMarie99]

That Shelley episode really ticked me off, for the reasons mentioned, and also because the "solution" to her hoarding was for the family to move into a much bigger house, with "plenty of open space," but no mention was made of her actually getting rid of her stuff!  I'm assuming that since the rooms we saw were so spacious, that there are several empty rooms that she can fill with up her crap, with room for her to keep buying even more.  That's not a solution at all.  And by the way, how did they afford this big beautiful house when she is spending all their money buying crap?  Unbelievable.  The bit about the "twin sister" definitely made the episode worth watching though.  Priceless!

[Taylorh2]

I really don't understand why family members know that children are in the hoard and don't offer to take the children. I watched one of these shows and 2 small children were living in squalor and the grown son and daughter of the hoarder knew what the house looked like (not just hoarded but filthy) and didn't say a word.

 

Another show had the daughter coming home from college, and when she saw that the house was worst then when she left. She called her Aunt to ask if she could spend the night at her house because her room was packed to the ceiling with crap. The Aunt said "NO"

[JudyObscure]

I remember that aunt saying, "No!" I think I usually imagine that relatives have tried to take the children out of the hoard and the parents have claimed their right to raise their children in squalor, but when an older child asks to come and the relatives decline, what's that all about?

One thing about hoarders, what's theirs is theirs, by golly, and that includes their children. They may not be lifting a finger to raise those kids in sanitary conditions with unspoiled food available, but the parents will tell you their "greatest fear," is CPS taking their children. They "would rather die," than give up the kids but I guess they would rather die than take the trash out, too. They aren't giving up their kids or those old McDonald wrappers.

[AuntTora]

Creating this topic so that I can make a post. This is the #1 hoarder I've wanted an update on, and that update being -- kicked to the curb with her purses and sparkly pens. I will be very disappointed if there's no change since the last update.

[honeywest]

I'm watching the update on Laura (former model who became a hoarder after her husband died) and her daughter, Alicia, who's also a hoarder but doesn't acknowledge it--and Alicia and her fiancé are even crazier than her mother, the acknowledged patient. (One of the cleaning crew aptly describes Alicia as "35 going on five.")

[OSM Mom]

She needed to be slapped silly. The fiance seemed like a decent guy. What was the appeal of this little vapid twatwaffle? Is she a freak in the sack or what... I was hoping he would cut and run.

[OSM Mom]

I wanted to shove that fugly purse and her pens up her ass.

[sofaslug]

She needed to be slapped silly. The fiance seemed like a decent guy. What was the appeal of this little vapid twatwaffle? Is she a freak in the sack or what... I was hoping he would cut and run.

I was wondering if he did bail out on her since he wasn't at the "final inspection".  I think one of the hauler guys had it right when he commented that she was "45 going on 4". She was annoying (with so many examples to choose from) when she came across the trophy for the "Miss Nevada" or "Miss Las Vegas" pageant and kept announcing that she should have won the whole thing. It felt, many times, that Alicia was auditioning for something, anything.  Robert needs to run as fast as he can in the opposite direction before he gets suffocated in Alicia's mess.

[Taylorh2]

I'll bet anything that whenever Alicia enters a rm that she demands that everyone look at her.

 

LOOK AT ME!!!! LOOK AT ME!!!!

[notyrmomma]

How about the mini shopping cart? And the lid to the cup from 7-11 or wherever?

[OSM Mom]

She probably does a cartwheel when she enters a room.

[Taylorh2]

I wanted the husband to say 'okay, give the Dr your "twin sister's phone # so she can call her to ask if it's okay that we throw away this stuff that you have "been saving for her"

 

I totally wanted her to be put on the spot.

[Cherrio]

Gene her husband is worse than Shelley. In the first and second show he said he would take the youngest child and the disabled son and leave. He never did, instead let them wallow and have to live with her and her mess.

 Plus, uh Shelley?  Your eye makeup?    Go out and hoard some up to date color.   Thank you.

[Taylorh2]

Yea. I don't understand Gene at all!!!!! Not only did he not take the kids and leave her crazy lying ass, he bought a bigger house for "a fresh start"

 

Guess what Shelly is doing to the bigger house ? 

 

Any guesses ?

[Guest]

Bennie!

Dr Heaton: (upon opening a previously unseen maggot-encrusted freezer) Oh my goodness! Not quite sure what all that is, but it looks like it's been there for a couple decades!

Bennie: Well, I can't remember everything, but I do know that there's a ham in there.

God bless Bennie who remembers his special former ham. I hope he got another one he can save for another 15 years and let it turn to goo.

The producers must really love Bennie since he's gotten two update shows so far. That or he's one of the few willing to participate.

Anyone know if they're making new shows or just doing these follow-ups? (Not that I don't like a good follow up, for the record.)

[JudyObscure]

God bless Bennie who remembers his special former ham. I hope he got another one he can save for another 15 years and let it turn to goo.

Nobody grieves like Bennie grieves. I made it about half the way through before I lost patience with Bennie, or maybe it was with Dr. Heaton, whose sympathy for Bennie was almost as exaggerated as his grief. Yes, he took it hard when his mother died, most people do, but most of us don't use that as an excuse to sit and watch old movies for the next 35 years.

The bathtub situation, seen in so many hoarding situations, always baffles me. Bennie went through a daily ordeal of carrying water from the kitchen, in a cooking pot, to bathe. The water ran fine in the tub, and he would have loved a nice bath, but he couldn't have one. Because there were clothes in the tub.

I really wanted Dr. Heaton to point out that Bennie could have removed the clothes from the tub and tossed them into the hall in less time than it took to carry a pan of kitchen water over an uneven ground of trash. But no. She's too kind. She has to feed Bennie the excuse that he's punishing himself for something and not just self-indulgently helpless. My mother could have straightened him out in one day.

[Guest]

Yes, he took it hard when his mother died, most people do, but most of us don't use that as an excuse to sit and watch old movies for the next 35 years.

Yeah, I think Bennie was just piling that on as an excuse to hoard. Or to be extra, super lazy -- who knows?

Totally agree Dr Heaton was feeding him the "poor me my parents died" excuse. I probably didn't hate Bennie as much -- and gave him more leeway -- because I watched that awful Florida "I AM AN ENVIRONMENTALIST AND HELP THE LOCAL POORS BY LEAVING OUT MY PLASTIC I THINK IS SCRAP METAL! " hoarder who just up and dumped her hoard for another home before watching his episode.

[JudyObscure]

Oh she was a piece of work wasn't she? I came in on the end of hers, but I well remember her lecture to all of us about being wasteful. She feels so very superior to those of us who contribute to the landfill while she just contributes to the landfill in her living room. Big difference.

[janerazor]

Quite a few of the people who get on this show seem too mentally disabled to have decision-making power over their own lives. They're completely out of touch with reality. I don't know what the solution is, but this doesn't seem right.

Cary the Elvis impersonator did indeed seem extremely mentally ill, and it really broke my heart. Usually these hoarders come off as just controlling or hateful, but Cary...man...how is it that he doesn't have some kind of caregiver? I think his friends meant well, but their constant yelling and "tough love" was giving me anxiety!

Edited April 15, 2015 by janerazor

[califred]

Omg Laura's daughter is 45 but acts like she's 5. Her it's all about me attitude and horrible high pitched squealing would have me running for the hills.

[califred]

I too hope the fiancé left since he wasn't at the final recap.

[SFoster21]

Marathon today on TLC. Updates promised.

[JudyObscure]

I just watched Herb and Janet and "the elephant in the room," who had been intimate  with both of them.  Blerck.  It's hard enough to watch Hoarders and their big piles of trash without getting queasy, but we usually aren't asked to picture them having sex in the middle of their home grown land fill.  It did have a happy ending though, they and their son Hervey were able to have dinner at the table for the first time in 15 years.

[BooksRule]

I just saw the update with Rhonda, who was originally on the show in 2010.  She was the one who starting hoarding after her third child was stillborn and her husband left her.  Her two adult (maybe older teenage?) children left because of the hoard.  At the end, they helped her clean and even had new floors installed and painted the walls.  She was the one who had all of her stuff moved to a church meeting hall so it could be sorted (wow!  It looked like the biggest rummage sale in the world).  I did feel a little sorry for her--she kept making little jokes about being alone (pointing out that there were no new messages on her machine and how it's better to eat alone than in a restaurant with others because at home there's no waiter to bump into her while he's carrying trays to others.  Sad).  However, her new follow-up was pretty bad.  She was so proud that she had managed to keep her house so uncluttered compared to the way it had been in 2010.  Yeah, right.  She had wider paths in the rooms, could sit on her couch and her bed, there was a clear space at her kitchen sink and the stacks of stuff were several feet below the ceiling instead of all the way, but other than that, it was almost as bad as before.  If I hadn't known this was the follow-up episode, I would have thought that this was her first time on the show.  I did laugh when she proudly pointed to the clean kitchen sink area and said that when she washed her dishes, she was careful to put them into plastic bags so that they would stay clean from all of the cat hair flying around.  She mentioned several 'sanitary' habits she had developed because of the cat hair (she has six cats) and every time she did the camera would focus on one of her cats (each one looked a little bewildered to be there) and then on a pile of garbage in her kitchen or other room. 

Edited April 28, 2015 by BooksRule

[notyrmomma]

I used to be a huge fan of this and the other Hoarders show, but I just can't....I know there is real mental illness here, but I just can't handle watching people who refuse to help themselves, even after all the help they have received.  It sickened me to see Rhonda smile while she told us how well she was doing.  I had to turn off the TV.

[JudyObscure]

Ach! I watched Rhonda, too. Never was anyone so proud of such a slight improvement.

Since these shows were made, thinking in the psychological community has changed. Hoarders are no longer classed as part of the OCD spectrum and standard treatment is a little different -- I'm not sure how. It would be interesting to have some new shows made with the new methods demonstrated. Clearly the old therapy didn't work very well.

[BostonBlonde]

I only watch the one occasionally, but saw the last part of one about the high school principal who started hoarding when he was threatened in school.

Does anyone know where he lived?   He sounded Canadian to me, from watching watching all the Canadian DIY and real estate shows, and I was wondering if I really can tell a Canadian accent, if no one say "eh?"

Dr Becky, and the other psychiatrist, are more hard-nosed than the organizers, who are too soft on these people.

When they're endangering their families, their neighbors, or themselves, I can't see trying to persuade. 

And the thought of some of that stuff showing up on EBay is disgusting. 

You don't try to persuade an alcoholic to cut down on driving, or drink half as much.  You yank the license and stick his ass in jail if he's caught again.

 

I just saw this episode...

 

I was wondering if the person who wrote the letter (a student wrote a "kill list" & the Hoarder's name was on it, the letter was found before anything occurred) ever saw the episode & saw what they had done to someone. 

 

BTW- his daughters were horrendous. That man was CLEARLY ill. 

Edited May 4, 2015 by BostonBlonde

[Guest]

Creating this topic so that I can make a post. This is the #1 hoarder I've wanted an update on, and that update being -- kicked to the curb with her purses and sparkly pens. I will be very disappointed if there's no change since the last update.

I hope you're following this thread because tonight your dream is coming true; if you're on the East Coast, the update show is airing now. Yay!

I wonder if her "twin sister" will materialize tonight.

[honeywest]

Last night I made the mistake of watching the episode with Kay, who sleeps and eats on a mountain of trash in the bedroom she shared with her late husband. Kay keeps a bowl filled with dead (and some living) roaches; when the county pest control officer tells her, as kindly and tactfully as he can, that her house has the worst cockroach infestation he's ever seen, she says something like "Well, that's your opinion." Kay gets into a screaming match with her daughter when the daughter tries to throw out the moldy food in the refrigerator; the daughter finally loses it when she discovers a petrified copperhead corpse buried in one of the garbage piles. The shrink asks Kay if she can understand why her daughter is upset that there was a poisonous snake in her bedroom, and Kay shrugs as if they're making a mountain out of a molehill (or out of a garbage heap with a dead pit viper at the bottom).

 

So all day I've been thinking about those roaches. At least the copperhead was dead.

[lovesnark]

How nice for her. They buy a bigger house so she can fill it with more crap. The downstairs of the house has a home theater but it's piled to the ceiling with stuff  so they can't use it- no surprise there, huh? She made me want to hit her when she was going on about how nice their family living area is now because they have more room. Yeah, her family can watch TV and eat at the table while the rest of the house is covered with piles of her stuff.

 

I was really hoping her husband kicked her out or he left with the kids and moved into his own place. I want to know why he gives her all the money he earns to spend. I don't think she works outside the home so why doesn't he just cut her off financially? Here's money to buy food and what we need to live, I'm keeping the rest out of your hands.  Go dig through your rooms full of shit if you want the thrill of getting something new. You haven't seen most of that crap for 10 years, so it'll be like buying it again and you won't have to spend money.

[Guest]

I used to feel sorry for Gene, Shelley's husband, but no more. Your wife goes and shits up one home only for you to reward her with a BIGGER ONE?! And who in their right mind bought the first home? How did they real estate people stage that disaster? Then you move into the new house and Shelly uses nearly every room as a landfill upon moving in?

Gene has a major case of Stockholm Syndrome.

[BostonBlonde]

I gotta look back here but I am watching the "Laura" episode which says it's a new episode but then it said she has been featured before....

 

 

I am 1000X more fascinated by the daughter, Alicia!! She's either on something or just nuts. Her behavior is insane. She is more worried about showing her strange, older fiancee her "modeling" pics, trophies and awards. LMFAO. Her demeanor is that of a pre-teen, she told the organizer:" You know I'm gorgeous." HAHA

 

She is so emotionally stunted...and that's putting it nicely. 

Edited May 19, 2015 by BostonBlonde

[califred]

Alicia has at least one YouTube video where she continues her bizarre behavior.

[BostonBlonde]

Alicia has at least one YouTube video where she continues her bizarre behavior.

 

MUST. see. this.

 

Thanks!

[Beaner]

I watched that episode this evening, would love the YouTube link.

I also caught the "last chance" episode with the woman whose name escapes me. She's the one who was a model back in the day, inherited a lot of money, had tons of clothes but wore pajamas in both episodes. It seems like many of the hoarders will clean if their backs are up against the wall, but this one wouldn't/couldn't do it & lost everything. What a sad waste.

[lovesnark]

I watched that episode this evening, would love the YouTube link.

I also caught the "last chance" episode with the woman whose name escapes me. She's the one who was a model back in the day, inherited a lot of money, had tons of clothes but wore pajamas in both episodes. It seems like many of the hoarders will clean if their backs are up against the wall, but this one wouldn't/couldn't do it & lost everything. What a sad waste.

Louise was her name. She's clearly so mentally ill and out of touch with anything related to reality that I wasn't surprised at all to see her fawning over her tons of clothes in her storage unit after she'd been evicted from the apartment she lived in. I've never seen any of the hoarders say their clothes tell them when they want to go out and that she takes several outfits out at a time because the others would be sad if they were left behind.

 

I'm glad she had a friend that owned an apartment building and was willing to let her rent a room. For someone like her, having concrete limits on what she could bring into her room, inspections and a contract is the only way for her to have a safe place to live without the possibility of her filling it with stuff. 

[Blue Plastic]

I watched that episode this evening, would love the YouTube link.

I also caught the "last chance" episode with the woman whose name escapes me. She's the one who was a model back in the day, inherited a lot of money, had tons of clothes but wore pajamas in both episodes. It seems like many of the hoarders will clean if their backs are up against the wall, but this one wouldn't/couldn't do it & lost everything. What a sad waste.

I just watched a bunch of episodes (marathon on) and this was one of them.  I didn't catch her name - it would be interesting to know more about her history.  The show mentioned that she was an heiress but had squandered her money over the years by having two apartments and a bunch of storage units for her hoard.  She definitely did seem like an eccentric.  Anybody know what that pyramid-shaped frame was in her new room at the end?  No bed or even a cot, but she had included whatever that weird metal thing was.  It took up most of the room.

 

In another episode there was this horrible woman living in a home with her 19-year-old son who was recovering from lung surgery.  He'd had a spontaneous collapse of his lung and was told that it could happen again if he got bumped in the chest.  So of course there is his idiot mother keeping the whole house piled to the ceiling with crap that she claims she's going to sell online but never actually sells.  Whenever the son leaves his room, she sneaks stuff in there, too, so that he's left with barely enough space for his bed and a chair and that's it.  Whenever anyone mentions how ridiculous all this is, she just laughs as if it's funny, even though her son's life could be at risk.  I just wanted to punch that woman in the face, and she hadn't made much progress by the end of the episode.

 

The most severe case I watched was Michelle.  She seemed to really have a severe problem.  I wonder if there has been or ever will be an update on her?  She had her whole house piled high with garbage covered in rat feces with rats running all over inside and outside the property, digging tunnels from the outside to the inside.  A pair of house flippers supposedly bought her house, cleaned it out, then basically gave it back to her.  I wasn't at all sure about the ending of that one.  How is that going to work?  That had to be staged - house flippers don't usually buy your foreclosed house from under you, clean it out and give it back to you.  This Michelle had been an intelligent woman and knew something like 5 languages, but she'd lost her job a few years back, piled her house up with crap and got $20,000 behind on property taxes.  She wanted to save rat poop-covered law books from 1996 because she thought she could use them to do research for the Supreme Court (???).  She had a busted-up piano in the back yard that she would try to play even though the keys didn't even actually move.

[califred]

I can't link on my phone but it's called "Alicia responds to Hoarding Buried Alive Comments

[Guest]

Ugh. Yesterday I caught the rerun of the woman whose home was overrun by roaches. She claimed to be "disabled" and sat in a lounge chair in her living room surrounded by a mountain of trash -- comprised mostly of empty 12-pack containers of Pepsi. Her ex-husband allowed the kids to live in the filth because the wife would "lose her benefits" if he pressed for custody. So, instead they live in a home filled with roaches and a bathroom with a mountain of used sanitary pads piled high on the floor.

She was a loathsome beast.

I think Alicia, aside from being insane, was hoping to kickstart some type of modeling career by appearing in various sexy outfits. Because nothing says "superstar" like being a crazed hoarder.

[califred]

That roach woman was vile. So was the husband he should have either kicked her out or taken the kids and ran far away.

[BostonBlonde]

Ugh. Yesterday I caught the rerun of the woman whose home was overrun by roaches. She claimed to be "disabled" and sat in a lounge chair in her living room surrounded by a mountain of trash -- comprised mostly of empty 12-pack containers of Pepsi. Her ex-husband allowed the kids to live in the filth because the wife would "lose her benefits" if he pressed for custody. So, instead they live in a home filled with roaches and a bathroom with a mountain of used sanitary pads piled high on the floor.

She was a loathsome beast.

I think Alicia, aside from being insane, was hoping to kickstart some type of modeling career by appearing in various sexy outfits. Because nothing says "superstar" like being a crazed hoarder.

 

While that beast (perfect description of her!) was lying in bed, as they cleaned around her, I had serious violent tendencies towards her. What a disgusting, lazy, waste of space she is....ugh. 

 

LMAO @ superstar. Right? She made my skin crawl. The cartwheels, the outfits, the ego = HILARIOUS! 

 

I loved the younger worker saying she was a 45 yr old trying too hard. HA! 

 

 

That roach woman was vile. So was the husband he should have either kicked her out or taken the kids and ran far away.

 

Those poor kids....& the dad leaving them in that? They both should be charged with abuse.

Edited May 19, 2015 by BostonBlonde