A Fascination with Those Who Hoard

My name is Laura, and I am ashamed to admit that I am a devout viewer of The Learning Channel’s “Hoarding: Buried Alive”, and am counting the days until A&E’s “Hoarders” season debuts next Monday evening.

For those of you with more mainstream viewing habits, TLC describes its series as one that “takes viewers into homes cluttered and packed by people who are obsessed with saving items in large quantities that most people would discard in the trash,” while A&E explains “each 60-minute episode is a fascinating look inside the lives of two different people whose inability to part with their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of a personal crisis.”

I loved these two shows from the first episode of each, yet I am hard-pressed to explain my fascination with either of them, as the programming descriptions are at best kind if not almost outright untrue in their clean language.

Let me start by explaining I personally feel there are two different types of hoarders on these shows: There are those who truly have some type of compulsive disorder who cannot see the obvious craziness of cramming nine-thousand square feet of QVC purchases into a twelve-hundred square foot house; and then there are those individuals who simply lost their garbage cans twenty years ago, never bothered to find or replace them, and simply use their home as one large dumpster.

When the producers cut to a shot of a refrigerator filled with rotting, oozing food products, Jim can barely control his gag reflex and buries his head in a pillow. I instead stare directly at the screen, dumbfounded at how any person could live in that situation.

“You know I would never deny you watching a program you like,” Jim said from behind the pillow. “But what the hell do you get out of watching this show? Half of these scenes put me on the verge of an anxiety attack, and I can’t understand why they don’t bother you.”

And after much soul searching I determined I have absolutely no good reason whatsoever for enjoying this show. I can’t even call it a guilty pleasure, as that term is specifically reserved for the act of watching Jerry Springer for one segment just to make myself feel better about my own life when I’m having a down moment.

Maybe it is the complete cycle of the show itself that I appreciate: The sad beginning of someone in great distress, the arrival of family, friends and therapists in the middle to help address the glaring issue at hand, underfoot and God knows where else, and the happy ending of someone with their emotional affairs in order and a clean house to provide them with a fresh start.

Sounds good, doesn't it? That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.