"Hoarders" on A&E is fascinating

[OutHouse]

I kinda wonder if it's because he was denied so much as a kid... his family was pretty well off but, for example, he was only allowed to have 2 outfits (one for school, one for church). he saved up money from his job once and bought new clothes and my grandfather made him return them :/

but seriously, he's got 3 refrigerators, a chest freezer, a pantry, and he had shelves installed in my old bedroom to store stuff in.

everything is so much better FRESH anyways, idk why you'd want to freeze stuff like meat or cheese.

with 3 teenagers you bet if freeze meat, cheese, bread, butter... im not going to the damn store every other day I live 23 miles from costco and 9 miles from a safeway. the foodsaver vacuum sealer is my very best friend. we buy half a cow every 9-10 months how am i suppose to store it? salt cure it?

 

[Miramonti]

I'm a digital hoarder.

 

[Fritzo]

I watched an episode this week. I was thoroughly disgusted. What a bunch of pathetic delusional losers.

Sick, sick, sick and then some.

Where is the barf emoticon when you need it?

I keep all the cables for electronics...does this count as being a horder? I can't throw them away (although, about 10 times a year I find a use for one of the cables---you never know 🙂 ).

 

[MrPickins]

dude take that old computer shit out to the dumpster right now and chuck it! you will NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER use it again.

At my wife's insistence, I tore all the cases down to steel and had them recycled, but I kept the CPU's, RAM and a few ethernet cards.

Now I need to recycle 7 or 8 motherboards and some various cards...


I'm glad I kept the CPU's, though. I upgraded a friends socket478 pc from a 2.2ghz Celeron to a 2.6(?)ghz P4. Not that it's blazingly fast, but those netburst celerons were dogs. Any improvement helps.

 

[Juddog]

The weirdest part about hoarders is discovering they are hoarders when visiting their house for the first time. For example this friend of my dad's had us over one time and I went to use her bathroom and the bathroom was literally so crowded I could barely sit on the toilet. The shower itself was piled with boxes, WTF is the purpose of having a shower in that case?

Not to mention the rest of the house was crammed with stuff, every nook and cranny filled, there was barely enough room to sit down.

 

[isekii]

Damn these people are pigs

 

[Miramonti]

i used to do that, but i finally just asked myself. "look self, that crap has been sitting on that shelf for 4 fucking years. you havent used it, you forget its there until you look at it, you will never use it. toss it!"

so i did and i can actually use my work bench now.

Three years ago my wife (2 be soon) picked up a couple beta fish from walmart for fun. We got home and she's like, 'I could really use a fish net right about now.' I went into my office storage bin area and pulled one out that I acquired around 1995 for no particular reason (garage sale?) yet had never used. That was one of the last times she bothered me about misc. unused stuff I keep. The fish on the other hand...its been 3 years, when the frick are they going to die??

I think one of the biggest problems of many hoarders is the lack of effort or ability to systematically organize everything. This is critical and I'm fairly anal about this. Its a proud if not soothing feeling when finding something easily, yet not being able to find something could give me a stroke some day.

 

[Miramonti]

I handle this issue pretty easy.. own as least amount of things as you can that would ever need fixing 😛

I think my handyman focus is spent 50% on fixing things, 50% improving things. If I never need to fix anything again, I'll still always be tweaking or 'upgrading' stuff.

 

[Lounatik]

I watched part of the cat lady episode last night and it hit a nerve with me. I was an A/C-appliance reapairman for about 8 years in Florida and I got to see this first hand. I had to go to a guy's house and remove a wall unit ac to bring to the shop to repair. Front part of the house is fairly normal, but his wife tells me to be careful in the back room. Holy flurking shnitt. Boxes everywhere, windows had aluminum foil over them, and then there were the cats. About two dozen of them cooped up in a very warm, very congested room. Dude was sitting in the middle watching TV and never noticed the fucking smell. What smell? How about a carpet that was actually brown and squishy from all of the cat shit and piss in it, no matter where you stepped. Litterboxes literally piled six inches over the top with shit. Never cleaned. But goddamn the fucking squishy carpet. This was so disgusting, I left and refused to go back. All of this happened probably twenty years ago and I am fucking gagging right now as I type this.


Peace

Lounatik

 

[Lounatik]

I watched part of the cat lady episode last night and it hit a nerve with me. I was an A/C-appliance reapairman for about 8 years in Florida and I got to see this first hand. I had to go to a guy's house and remove a wall unit ac to bring to the shop to repair. Front part of the house is fairly normal, but his wife tells me to be careful in the back room. Holy flurking shnitt. Boxes everywhere, windows had aluminum foil over them, and then there were the cats. About two dozen of them cooped up in a very warm, very congested room. Dude was sitting in the middle watching TV and never noticed the fucking smell. What smell? How about a carpet that was actually brown and squishy from all of the cat shit and piss in it, no matter where you stepped. Litterboxes literally piled six inches over the top with shit. Never cleaned. But goddamn the fucking squishy carpet. This was so disgusting, I left and refused to go back. All of this happened probably twenty years ago and I am fucking gagging right now as I type this.


Peace

Lounatik

 

[ChaoZ]

The only thing I hoarded were computer hardware. I had a bunch of 56k modems, but I finally decided to throw them out. I still have a bunch of old RAM and cables.

 

[nick1985]

I watched part of the cat lady episode last night and it hit a nerve with me. I was an A/C-appliance reapairman for about 8 years in Florida and I got to see this first hand. I had to go to a guy's house and remove a wall unit ac to bring to the shop to repair. Front part of the house is fairly normal, but his wife tells me to be careful in the back room. Holy flurking shnitt. Boxes everywhere, windows had aluminum foil over them, and then there were the cats. About two dozen of them cooped up in a very warm, very congested room. Dude was sitting in the middle watching TV and never noticed the fucking smell. What smell? How about a carpet that was actually brown and squishy from all of the cat shit and piss in it, no matter where you stepped. Litterboxes literally piled six inches over the top with shit. Never cleaned. But goddamn the fucking squishy carpet. This was so disgusting, I left and refused to go back. All of this happened probably twenty years ago and I am fucking gagging right now as I type this.


Peace

Lounatik

sickkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

 

[nutxo]

I have a friend who hoards. I tried to get him to watch the show to see what hes like. He said to me " I know, Im a hoarder "..

Its pretty interesting how many of the things he does are the same as the people in that show. He buys things and just sets them in his house and never opens the packages. He'll buy many items he doesn't need or maybe even want because they are on sale.

I guess its good that its not foodstuffs though. He told me a few days ago that since he bought his house 8 years ago he used the stove once to heat water.

 

[edro]

An acquaintance of mine will be on the show in a few months.
He is an older guy who "collects" beer cans.

The filming is done now. He said it will take a few months for editing and he should be on the show in Jan or Feb.

He doesn't seem like a hoarder...

 

[nageov3t]

with 3 teenagers you bet if freeze meat, cheese, bread, butter... im not going to the damn store every other day I live 23 miles from costco and 9 miles from a safeway. the foodsaver vacuum sealer is my very best friend. we buy half a cow every 9-10 months how am i suppose to store it? salt cure it?

obviously not all situations are the same.

my mom and dad live by themselves, live 2 blocks away from a deli, and a mile away from multiple grocery stores... but they just recently got rid of one of the fridges (gave it to a coworker of my dad's); hopefully my mom doesn't let him buy a new one.

 

[MotionMan]

My parents have hoarding tendencies, but keep most of the stuff in the garage and one file cabinet in their office. Otherwise, they keep a very clean house.

My parents' garage a few months ago. It has been cleaned up a little since this picture was taken:

MotionMan

 

[Kanalua]

My in-laws, specifically my mother-in-law is (was, she's deceased) a hoarder! when she passed, my wife and I and my wife's siblings helped to clean out my in-law's double wide trailer. We filled five construction trash skiffs with crap. She never threw away a thing. And when there was no room to wash dishes, she'd just buy a new pan everytime she needed one, then eventually just started hoarding pots and pans for future use (instead of washing them). She had a pantry with canned food that expired in the mid-1990s and cans that had expanded into balls and burst, leaving empty shells covered in decades old goop.

My MiL kept all of her kids clothing, shoes, toys, did not throw a thing away! what was sick was the my sister-in-law glorified and idolized my MiL. she was mad that we were throwing things out, because it was calling into question her mother's decisions and hoarding lifestyle. I found that the black pepper on the table was full of bugs and bug parts. I threw it away, and my SiL got upset, questioning why I was throwing it away, saying it's still good, and they used that pepper for years with no ill effects. My wife and I looked at her and were like...whatever...get over yourself...

i think my SiL will take to baton of her mother's hoarding...

 

[Terabyte]

My gf's grandmom has receipts and shit like that from 19XX (30's)? I'm like toss that shit, but that's not my grandmom so whatever.

 

[Miramonti]

My parents' garage a few months ago. It has been cleaned up a little since this picture was taken:

MotionMan

I see garages like that all the time. Its when the house inside looks like that too that people need some serious counseling.

 

[Imp]

I live with a hoarder. He went crazy when we trashed his scrap steel, which he thinks has value, but won't actually go to sell. Instead, he has a scrap guy pick it up for free every few years.

 

[JulesMaximus]

A neighbor of my Mother-In-Law is like that. This guy has stacks of newspapers and magazines spanning decades piled throughout his house. How anyone can live like that is beyond me...

 

[CRXican]

Yesterday's episode was the worst yet. Barf.

And did anyone catch Intervention? Old due addicted to morphine. He responded to hundreds of email scams and would actually talk to the foreign scammers. They actually call him, he would answer them on speakerphone. Supposedly he sent out around $600,000

 

[KDOG]

My wife is a hoarder. It drives me up the freakin' wall cuz I'm just the complete opposite. Besides some things like my tools (table saw, etc.) all my belongings could fit in the back of my Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. Seriously. I would have no problem living in my camper.

 

[SunSamurai]

You guys need to differintiate between a Hoarder and a packrat. They arnt the same.

A garage full of old stuff from the last 30 years of living does not a hoarder make.

 

[MotionMan]

You guys need to differintiate between a Hoarder and a packrat. They arnt the same.

A garage full of old stuff from the last 30 years of living does not a hoarder make.

I guess there can be a fine line drawn, but it is very easy to step over.

A packrat will get rid of stuff and you can reason with them.

A hoarder, not so much.

MotionMan