HOARDING BURIED ALIVE

Russ and I are big fans of the Hoarding shows, and try to watch all of them. That’s why we were especially interested in the episode where they visit some of the past hoarders, to see how they’re doing, if they’re making progress or backsliding. We just watched the “Where are they now?” show and saw just about the weirdest thing we’ve ever seen on any of these Hoarders shows.

This one lady, who they visited and helped during a previous season, has gone pretty much right back to where she was. They sent in a professional organizer to help her clean out again. They started with her collection of hundreds of purses and handbags. The hoarder said she couldn’t get rid of a lot of them, because she was storing them for her twin sister, who did not have enough room at her house.

The hoarder’s husband stuck his head around the corner and said, “That’s a good one. Only one thing: you don’t have sister.”

So the hoarder went on to say, “Yes, I do,” then she explained to the organizer (and the camera, and thus all of us watching the show), “He just doesn’t like to talk about her, because he had an affair with her.”

When the son came over later, he confirmed: Mom does NOT have a sister. She made it all up.

How far will some hoarders go to continue denying they have a problem?

In another story, a hoarder had made significant progress in cleaning up her house, but her sister (this one a REAL sister) was still threatening to attempt to gain custody of the hoarder’s ten year old daughter. Yes, at the time of the original show, the house was a disaster, not safe or healthy for a child to be living there. But by the time of the follow-up show, the conditions were entirely acceptable. (Even the show’s psychologist agreed there was no longer any problem.)

The sister was not invited to the follow-up, but she showed up anyway. The hoarder took her inside the house to see the progress. The sister left with some sarcastic words, clearly annoyed that she was not going to have any ammunition in her plans to take away the little girl. She scowled and left without so much as one sincere, “Good work, sis! Keep it up!”

It was priceless.