I know threads have been created previously for this show. Does anyone have personal experience with this issue? Your family, friends, etc.?

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Good timing Drop In.

My neighbor called last week and asked if I could help move a table up from their basement to their kitchen because "we're out of counter space". I walked in and the reason they are out of counter space is because there was so much junk on their kitchen counters. Dining room table also covered with junk. And another smaller table had already been moved in the kitchen. They have a 2 car garage and they can only park 1 car in there. And from living next door to them for a few years, I would say that they are just lazy and don't have some sort of mental illness.

A guy I work with lives next door to a hoarder. 2 car garage with only enough room for a person to walk to the back door. He had a new stove delivered to his house and his neighbor came out and asked the delivery guys if she could have the straps that were around the stove. The final straw was the old lady taking a wheelbarrow full of thawed meat and dumping it under a bush that was near his property line. He confronted her and she said "I'm going to bury it". Now that's a lady for the show.

I would say this show is 50/50. Some of these people do have some real problems, and some of them are just fat/lazy/trashy/etc.

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My ex-wife's grandfather had hoarding issues. When they moved out of their house, I helped my father-in-law go through the garage and shed, and we were amazed at the crap we found. And everytime something was brought up as to why he still had it, he would come up with an excuse...for example, we found 10 years of Barrons magazines bundled in the shed. The excuse given was that he used them for research on the market...only none of these had seen the light of day in at least a year.

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Hoarding occurs more often than you would think. People are just afraid to let some things go, especially if those "things" bring you comfort or remind you of something significant in your life. Obviously this can be taken to the extreme, which will obviously get you TV time on A&E.

I feel bad for some of these people, as they are just lost individuals. However, some of them are even more mentally ill, and they have destroyed their children. A couple have the look of pure evil in their eye. I know caring hoarders, and it makes this show hard to watch.

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Just watched one today and they found 2 different cats decomposing under all of the rubble.

I remember the first one I ever saw on tv was Chunk from the goonies mom's house.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

My grandmother and mother both showed mild hoarding tendencies. They both had a room or two which were filled with crap. A lot of things were bought and never opened, then chucked into the room. The interesting thing was that my grandmother knew EXACTLY what was in those rooms and where it was in the room. She moved out of state and I moved into her house here to remodel it. She would call periodically and request random shit and she would pinpoint exactly where it was. It was creepy.

My mom died a few years ago and we're still finding shit that she bought and never opened.

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it's going to get really awkward when you get to the big, rubber fist

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Sweet. We had Hulk Boxing gloves too.

Yeah my Grandma has a few hoarding tendencies as well. She has ended up on a bunch of crap mailing lists where they send you the stuff for like the power of the Acai berry and crap and instead of just chucking it she brings it up to her room because she wants to see what they are going to say so shes got like a pile of junk mail up there.

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A pile of junk mail, eh? You should watch the show.

That's not hoarding.

I've seen it thanks. She has other crap too around too. Its just more of the hoarding mentality where she has trouble letting stuff with no intrensic value go. I am very thankful that it is not as pronounced as some of the people that I have seen on the show.

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Ok, well I don't know your grandma so when I saw your story about a pile of mail in a hoarding thread, I thought maybe you missed the point. Apologies.

Well it is a really big mail pile for what its worth

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My wife and I have an incipient hoarding problem because we are both compulsive book collectors. In our home right now, we probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 books and don't have much space for anything else--like the baby's crib, toys, etc. Everytime we put some books in storage, we end up acquiring a greater amount to compensate for the loss.

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I bet they're all leather-bound, too.

You are on the cutting edge of popular culture!

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Fire Phil Emery

Did you at least get to finish coloring them first?

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No, but my son seems to enjoy chewing on them, so they will apparently serve a purpose.

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I'd like to thank Drop In for bumping this thread. I had completely forgotten about this show, so I stayed up till 1 AM watching episodes. The initial shock value of this show has worn off and it's replaced by a feeling of sadness for these people.