Hoarders on A&E

So I just finished watching a marathon of Hoarders. WOW. There were some stories that really got to me. Its amazing how people could live that way.

Hoarders is a show about helping people get over their addiction of hoarding. A hoarder expert comes in for a couple of days and not only helps clean the house, they also work on why the person is hoarding. I've seen this show a few times, but never seen episodes so bad. Usually its just people who don't throw "memories" away.

One of the stories was about a lady who hoarded food. She would eat severely expired food because she refused to throw any of it away. She had some yogurt in her refrigerator that expired in April of 2007. When the specialist asked her why she held on to it, she said that it was still good and she is not bother with expiration dates. If (in her opinion) it smells ok, she will still eat it. She had Easter eggs still in the fridge and two pumpkins in the living room rotting from Halloween. She said she didn't want to get rid of them because they were too pretty. Because of the rotting food, her landlord was going to evict her if it did not get cleaned up. I was so disgusted when they were cleaning out her fridge and she wanted to keep things that were in a drawer with rotting meat. This poor lady could not part with anything. When her son offered to buy her all new groceries in exchange for throwing away all the food and starting over, she fought him on it. They barely made a dent in the house before it was time for them to leave. I don't know if she got evicted or not, the episode just ended saying that she was continuing to work on it and her landlord gave her more time because they saw progress.

Another one that really got to me was a lady who hoarded cats. She lives in the state of New Mexico where there is an animal laws of only 6 domestic animals without a permit. The lady estimated 25-30 cats on her property and knew she could go to jail because of animal cruelty. She didn't care because she was made to feed animals. The house was also in shambles because of all the animals and lack of cleaning. The cats tore up the house. Animal control came to take the animals and ended up finding 75+ animals in the house. About 30 of them were dead or just skeletons. Animal control determined that there was no death smell in the house due to the other cats eating them before they rotted. Animal control took all the animals away while the house cleaning continued and decided not to prosecute because she cooperated. After the house was finally cleaned, they allowed her to have 3 cats. I personally believe that she should have gone to jail. The animals were in unsanitary conditions and she could not take care of them properly. Also by giving her some cats, I feel the process would just start over.

It makes me sad to see people like this. They truly need help and a lot of these people don't have family support because they don't understand this is a disease and is not easily fixed.