Hoarders Ramps It Up To Super-Extreme

Hoarding show digs into a whole new level of crap

I make no secret of my fascination with hoarding reality shows.  I actively look forward to my quality time with A&E’s Hoarders every Monday night.  In this third season I’m noticing that the people profiled are getting more and more extreme.

I know – that’s hard to believe.  They’ve always been completely extreme with dead cats and rat poop and no functioning toilets.  But I think we’re seeing more people with homes that might not be as disgusting but are way more filled with crap.  Not just literal crap but mountains of things.

I always thought of hoarders as people whose homes were filled with stacks of old newspapers with little maze-like paths leading to small, isolated living spaces.  And some of the folks on Hoarders are exactly that.  But far more seem to have abandoned the whole “path” system altogether and opted for filling every room from floor to ceiling and just crawling over the junk.

More and more I’m seeing “Extreme Cleaning Specialist” Matt Paxton show up with his five giant garbage trucks and tell us that they are going to haul 25,000 pounds of stuff out of a ranch house.  “Professional Organizer” Dorothy Brenninger (my favorite of the revolving professionals) would get crushed to death in these houses.  How can you organize something when you can’t even get in the front door?  Last week I saw Paxton fall while walking over a giant pile of dolls and do a face plant into a creepy mass of fake hair and frozen doll smiles.  Shudder.

I suspect that as these shows become more popular – especially A&E’s Hoarders and TLC’s Hoarding: Buried Alive – people will continue to crawl out of the woodwork and ask for help for a family member or friend.  Both shows have information on getting help for the disorder as well as getting on the actual show.

Hoarders becomes more extreme as more hoarders are coming out of the closet.  If they can find a closet.  Before now there was nowhere to go with your Aunt Harriet who was living in her car because her house was filled with purses she bought on QVC.  Reality TV has offered not only hope for Aunt Harriet but a chance for her relatives to get on TV and get her house cleaned up.

Who knew reality TV had anything beneficial to offer anyone?  Maybe this takes a little of the sting out of having the word “Snookie” enter the popular vocablary.  A very little.  I still maintain that nearly 100% of reality TV sucks, but I will happily and hypocritically watch my hoarders.

So bring it on, Hoarders – show us what you can do in a couple of days for people with 40 years of junk filling their houses, yards and several off-site storage facilities.  I will continue to watch every week with morbid fascination and genuine admiration as these folks face their demons and try to get it together.  It’s hard to imagine that they keep finding homes that are more outrageous, but they do.  Extreme Hoarding, meet Super-Extreme Hoarding.

You can watch full episodes of Hoarders on the A&E website or catch it Monday nights or buy season 1 through the link below.  I am pissed that Hoarding: Buried Alive – arguably the best of the hoarding shows – hasn’t had a new episode in ages, but you might be able to catch one in rerun once in a while.  You’ve let me down, TLC.

Let the clean-up begin!

More about Hoarding Shows on Movie Rewind:

Everything Hoarders

The Rat Hoarder and the Cat Hoarder

Hoarding Episodes of A&E’s Hoarders

Hoarding Shows – A Compare and Contrast

The Bunny Hoarder and the Chicken Hoarder

Sue Millinocket

Sue reads a lot, writes a lot, edits a lot, and loves a good craft. She was deemed “too picky” to proofread her children’s school papers and wears this as a badge of honor. She is also proud of her aggressively average knitting skills  She is the Editorial Director at Silver Beacon Marketing and an aspiring Crazy Cat Lady.