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Compulsive hoarding is a mental disorder marked by an obsessive need to acquire and keep things, even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary. |
Hoarders is an A&E Documentary which provides a glimpse into the lives of people suffering from compulsive hoarding. A typical episode focuses on two hoarders whose situation has deteriorated to the point that they face serious financial/legal/personal consequences unless they get the hoard under control. A therapist who specializes in this type of behavior meets with the hoarder ahead of time to assess the problem, and a cleanup crew consisting of professional cleaners, friends, family members, and volunteers is then brought in. The goal is to return the property to a more livable state in a short period of time, usually two days, with the therapist guiding the hoarder to make sensible decisions about what should or should not be kept.
Hoarders has proved itself an incredibly popular show, being A&E's most-watched premiere if Wikipedia is to be believed. Probably because it caters to our collective interest in mental disorders. Watchers beware: After a few episodes you might get fear-driven urges to clean your house. But maybe that's a good thing. In any case, the show is now in its 15th season as of 2024, having survived a cancellation and a brief Channel Hop (from A&E to Lifetime, which lasted one season before A&E brought it back).
Some episodes can be watched at A&E's website and Hulu
- Attention Deficit - Ooh, Shiny!: One hoarder used this exact term to refer to himself.
- Blatant Lies: Pretty much all of Sir Patrick's back-story.
- Basically, he turned out to be a con man and sex offender with multiple accounts on multiple online dating sites, trying to get dates with as many (often underage) girls as possible.
- Carolyn, in the "Arline/Carolyn" episode, was not only a chronic kleptomaniac (with much of her hoard consisting of stolen possessions), but a chronic liar - which caused a blowup with her daughter when it was discovered that Carolyn had possession of a family genealogical tome which she had told everyone she didn't have.
- The Collector / The Collector of the Strange: The "neater" hoards tend to start out as collections of, well, collectables such as commemorative beer cans or vases.
- Crazy Cat Lady: Some of the people on the show have been animal hoarders and, yes, that is every bit as disturbing as it sounds.
- Creepy Doll: The woman below had literally tons of dolls; she would even amputate their limbs at her "doll hospital" (it's okay, she was a nurse).
- Not to mention the aforementioned Sir Patrick, who had a collection of dolls because they reminded him of his 9-year-old neighbour. Yikes
- Dark and Troubled Past: A woman who hoarded dolls had serious self-esteem issues, starting from when she wasn't allowed to attend her own mother's funeral; other people were abused or severely neglected.
- Downer Ending: In some episodes, the hoarder refuses to get help and their living situation continues to spiral downwards.
- One hoarder who had succeeded in getting his life on track, Glen (see Explosive Breeder below), was sadly murdered after the show. Even sadder, as of 2021, his murder was still unsolved.
- Driven to Suicide: Cleanup in one episode had to be halted when the hoarder's wife attempted suicide with a prescription pill overdose. Fortunately she survived.
- Some hoarders' predicament stems from family traumas such as suicides of family members.
- Dysfunction Junction: Hanna and her family. Hanna herself is an elderly animal hoarder who lives in a single-wide trailer filled with chickens, turkeys and other farmyard birds crammed into tiny cages caked with filth. She has ten adult children, all of whom she physically abused growing up. When they return to the house to attempt to clean it, all hell breaks loose as the family scream, swear and physically assault each other and the Hoarders crew.
- And then there was Wilma (11/21/11), whose house was falling apart from neglect and the effects of her hoarding. Her three adult children claimed that she abused them when they were growing up, and she calmly described on camera a time when she chained one of them to his bed as discipline. As the cleanup effort progressed, she took no responsibility for the situation, told her children she didn't love them, and told the therapist that she wished she'd never had them in the first place.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin
- Explosive Breeder: Glen let his one male and two female pet rats loose in the house, and didn't have the heart to recapture or stop feeding them. Months later, his home is a Squeaking Carpet.
- The "Kathy/Gary" episode had a similar situation, but with rabbits.
- Follow the Leader: TLC's Hoarding: Buried Alive had the exact same premise as this show. It lasted eight seasons.
- Similarly, sister-channel Animal Planet has brought us a couple seasons of Animal Hoarders. It generally runs off a 50/50 blend of Tear Jerker and High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: A couple of women have been shown to hoard stuffed animals.
- One hoarder, Jackie, who had a massive collection of teddy bears, agreed to let them all go, but the end-of-episode update revealed that she had gone to the auction house and taken back every last one of them.
- I Have No Mother: The Adella episode. Adella's hoarding had estranged her from both her husband and her two daughters, and her daughters agreed to help with the cleanup only because it was their father's dying wish, not because they wanted a relationship with their mother. Some progress was made, but not enough, and one of the daughters remarked afterward that she now considered her mother dead to her. The daughters' lack of confidence proved sadly true: the post-case update revealed that Adella was hoarding again and that her house was in danger of being slated for demolition.
- It Came From the Fridge: One person who hoarded food kept it in her fridge even after it had long since gone bad.
- Taken to a new level in an August 2011 episode that focused on Lisa, a woman who enjoyed cooking and hoarded years-old food. Her daughter described a past incident in which she opened the refrigerator and found a dead squirrel in the butter dish. Later, during the cleanup, Lisa opened a jar of unidentifiable black sludge and ate some of it on camera.
- One hoarder had food in his house that dated back to 1977 - over 30 years at that time - and insisted it was still good.
- One hoarder announced she was going to eat the feces found in her kitchen, comparing it to the moments on Intervention in which an addict gets high one last time before going to treatment. The cleanup crew and psychologist in attendance couldn't believe what they were hearing.
- Nausea Fuel: Pretty much the point of the show.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Gary, a middle-aged bunny-hoarder who hides in his bedroom or flounces off in a huff rather than speak with the professionals sent to help him. At one point he throws a water bottle at his wife Kathy "because [he] felt like it". Ultimately, even though the rabbits are his problem, Kathy is the one who ends up dealing with them while Gary sulks, pouts, throws tantrums, and gives film crews the finger like a spoiled, sullen five-year-old.
- A regular Man Child with a mental disability got his own little Crowning Moment of Awesome by standing up to his mom, who would leave her dolls in his room for months and might have even stolen his money to buy more dolls.
- Billy Bob, a toy collector in a recent (June 27, 2011) episode, who tries to boss the cleaners and his family around to keep his precious toy hoard from being thrown away (actually saying at one point to the cleaners "This is not your show, this is the Billy Bob show"), saying "You're excused" rather imperiously to dismiss the cleaners when they go against him on this, and in general acting like a complete bastard.
- A different Lisa (not the food hoarder mentioned above), who kept dozens of cats in her house, decided halfway through the cleanup that she wanted nothing more to do with the show. She kicked the entire crew off her property, claiming that they had falsely promised to simply clean the house, and dared her father to evict her. The kicker? He had every right to do so, since the mortgage was in his name.
- Joni's son Joey (from the "Joni/Millie" episode) spent the entirety of the cleanup process screaming at and verbally abusing his mother, his brother, and the cleanup crew, and even threatened Matt and his workers with physical harm, forcing Matt to cancel the rest of the cleanup out of safety concerns.
- Andrew (from the "Andrew/Shania" episode), who obviously has a mental illness, refuses to accept the reality of his massive hoard, files an order of protection against his brother, who he may have cheated out of an inheritance, and makes childish remarks concerning his situation and his brother (such as stating that his brother may have had four people killed). The crew manages to clean up some of his yard, due to all the drama, and at the end of the episode no progress has been made on the house itself.
- Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Many of the more elderly hoarders on the show exemplify this, to put it mildly. Lloyd is a notable example, though this could have been at least in part due to his dementia.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In the Joni episode, Matt Paxton and crew were forced to do this for their own safety - without even coming close to finishing the cleanup of Joni's house - because Joni's son, Joey, had been threatening them over the phone the previous night.
- Selective Obliviousness: "This little doll doesn't take up any space!" ...And the rest of that eight-foot-high pile?
- Squick: With a show like this, it's a given. These people's houses are positively littered with trash like milk cartons and old newspapers, and that's not counting bedbugs, moldy food that's beyond rotten, and pet feces. Need we say more?
- The cleanup crew often finds large amounts of the hoarders' own urine/feces around the house if the plumbing is broken or the water has been shut off. Some hoarders have even saved their own urine/feces in containers.
- Rotting animal corpses are sometimes found at the bottom of hoards.
- Serial Escalation: And you thought your house was messy...
- Trash of the Titans
- Uncanceled: After six seasons, A&E canceled Hoarders in 2013, Two years later, new episodes, along with update episodes on previous cases, started airing on Lifetime. After one season of that, the show Channel Hopped back to A&E and has aired there ever since.
- The Unfavorite: One episode featured a mother and son who were both hoarders. The woman's daughter had always been the Unfavorite in her family, with her mother ignoring her and doting on her brother. The relationship got worse after the daughter called for a wellness check on her mother and brother after they hadn't answered her telephone calls. The mother and brother were hostile to the daughter all through the cleanup, but at the end they did begrudgingly thank her for coming to help. However, the post-cleanup update revealed that they were once again estranged.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Deconstructed. Some hoarders, upon seeing their newly cleaned and decluttered homes, react negatively - one woman broke into hysterical tears and sobbed about how much she hated the new look of her bathroom. The therapists, however, are quick to remind us that this is the illness talking and it doesn't mean the hoarder is actually ungrateful.