Just weeks before he died, Adella's estranged husband asked their daughter to help her mother clean up one last time. Adella's hoarding has already cost her a previous house, her marriage and relationships with her children.
Gordon and Gaye, along with their two grown children, have been given 72 hours to vacate their house. City Code Enforcement has served them with a condemnation notice if they don't clean up a lifetime of hoarding.
Carolyn's seven-year-old daughter is so distraught about her mother's hoarding that she has been leaving notes around the house saying, "It would be better off if I were killed.
The stench emanating from Robin's home can be smelled from the street. The garbage inside is piled from floor to ceiling and the house is literally caving in around it.
She has terminal cancer and is in fragile health, but sleeping or resting is nearly impossible for Laura. The only open spot she can lay her head on is two-thirds of the living room couch. A couch surrounded by plastic bins, toys, boxes, scrapbooking and crafts supplies, rotting furniture, magazines, and a carpet stained by cat urine.
Vula is hoarding more than 30 sickly cats that have completely destroyed her home. They have used every square inch of the house as a litter box, including the kitchen, which is filled with piles of hoarded food. Animal Control and the city attorney have now stepped in, leaving Vula no choice but to clean up or face eviction and the demolition of her home.
Kathleen's hoard is so bad that her son gave up his college scholarship for fear of leaving his 16-year-old sister home alone with their mother. The kitchen doesn't function and the hoard is being used to support sagging doorways to unusable rooms.
After losing a cousin on 9/11, Dawn's hoarding spiraled out of control, filling much of the house and part of the yard. The city will impose fines of $1000/day if she doesn't clean up.
Tami is battling cancer and her last hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant. But the condition of her home is getting in the way of her treatment.
Mary Lynn's 14 year-old-son Jacob would rather be in foster care than live with his own mother in her hoarded house. He recently fabricated a story about his mother beating him as a means of getting Child Protective Services involved.
Not even losing several inches of her intestine to gangrene has stopped Theresa from hoarding and eating expired food. She has also spent the bulk of her husband's retirement funds on thousands of luxury handbags and shoes.
Al used to take his three-year-old son dumpster diving, but Child Protective Services recently removed the child from his home. Al's hoarding has become such an eye-sore that he's also facing $2,500 a day in fines by the county. Julie's hoarding has reached such great heights that no one realized a homeless woman was living among the mounds of stuff in her basement.
Lloyd is facing fines and homelessness unless he cleans up his property. Carol's husband refuses to live at home unless Carol starts throwing stuff out.
Arline's hoard has reached such immense proportions that her six-foot-three husband Richard has been sleeping in his car each night in the oppressive heat of a Hawaii summer. He is trying to recover from heart and prostate surgery in the car because it's a better option for him than the inside of his home.
On August 6th, the Police, the Fire Department, C.P.S. and Code Enforcement all descended upon Jim's house and told his family it was uninhabitable. Because of decades of hoarding, he is estranged from his siblings and his children. If he does not clean up now, Jim and his wife will be homeless and the grandchildren that he has custody of will become wards of the state.
Andrew's home is an eyesore in a neighborhood of million dollar homes. The exterior and interior are completely hoarded, there's no running water, and Andrew has allowed a homeless man to create a makeshift shelter in his front yard. Now Andrew's brother has called Adult Protective Services.
19-year-old Andrew's mother is a hoarder, and after living in the hoard his entire life, he has learned no other way to live. Stuck in a hoarded house, with no job, no motivation and no direction, Andrew says he needs to get his hoarding under control now in order to have a chance at a normal life.
Mary has blown through over $200,000 of an inheritance buying items for the consignment shop she owns. But many of the items never make it from her hoarded home into her cluttered store. Her family says she will go broke by January unless she immediately gets help with her shop and her house.
Hannah has hoarded herself and her 200 chickens out of her house and is now living with the chickens in a windowless, unheated trailer. As winter sets in, she and her chickens face freezing to death if their original home is not cleaned out so they can all move back in.
A collection of 2500 free-roaming rats have hoarded Glen out of his home and into a shed on his property. Originally bred as pets, the rat collection spun out of control upon the death of his wife. Now Glen needs help removing the animals so he can return home, but he has insisted that they be saved and adopted out.
