My mother seriously needs to be on this show. Its like an illness or something. Its so sad. The only plus to hoarding is knowing that if you ever need something random you can probably find it at their house 1st.

Actually, I watch this show so that I'm never tempted to "collect" or hoard...helps me keep my house clean and clutter free.

Yes...and I'm amazed at the tacky stuff people spend their money on.

Love the show. My boyfriend has slightly pat-rack type tendencies, and I make him watch it for preventative purposes. Also, if you ever need to get in the mood to declutter and clean, 10 minutes of this show can do wonders.

YES! This show makes me so sad, and worried about myself. I think I might have mild hoarding tendencies and this show has kind of scared the bejeezus out of me and now I'm on a rampage to get rid of every extra piece of unused anything out of my house! Eeek!

It is an illness, mental illness.

My mom is not so bad as the people on this show, but there are so many similarities in her thinking patterns. She has a shopping addiction and is always on to the next best thing and she, like AnniaJ's mother, does always seem to have whatever you might need. She attaches sentiments to everything, stocks up on things even though the store is less than 5 min away, takes advantage of anything that comes with a free gift or bogo, etc. and I could go on and on.

I have the newest episode ready to watch on dvr.

Hoarding is a sad illness....way more than being a pack rat.

Yes--I do watch the show and also find hoarding fascinating. I work in the mental health field and as I have been doing the "Cure", I happened to attend a seminar on hoarding which made me realize how much the "Cure" focuses on helping us to rid our lives of clutter. Doing this and making sure we are not overattached to things in our home is not only good for the health of our home, but for our own mental health!

It's awful, but I use this as motivation to clean. I have to be throwing things away while I watch.

I watch the show and since I started I'm much more conscientious about sending old magazines to recycling and getting rid of things that might pile up.

I just watched an episode inwhich one of the people was a food hoarder. Her kitchen was piled high with so many moldy rotting foods that the clean up crew wore hazmat suits.

i don't have tv, but if i did, i would probably watch this. i don't hoard (i actually like decluttering), but i'm messy. being skeeved out by other people's filth is motivating. i would love to watch this and clean sweep!

I think we all have tendencies to be a bit of a pack rat at times but I find that pack rats do eventually get rid of stuff whilst hoarders most likely don't, which is why you often see them with their homes or apartments stuffed to the gills with garbage and other crap, most of it needing to be tossed.

And if you notice, they are not organized at all. They tend to buy and stick somewhere so being able to find it later is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

I don't get the A&E channel as I don't have cable but it might be worth watching an ep or two out of curiousity.

I'm just glad I'm not a hoarder as I DO get rid of stuff every now and then.

I don't have TV, either, doubledutch, but I think I would find this show fascinating. I'm also messy but not a hoarder. I let things get bad then I go insane with cleaning because I can't stand it anymore.

I can't watch it, it makes me feel filthy, but it is compelling and definitely give you the urge to clean and purge.

The one with all the dead cats and kittens was horrifying.

GAH! My grandmothers garage looked like the last photo! Till my mom and aunt rented one of those large garbage thingers and loaded it up and had it hauled away....

well, by definition, if a person hoards, they are unable to keep their behavior in check. It's a mental illness... a rather stressful one that affects the entire family. I watched that show once. I felt so bad for these people. I also felt like they were purposefully embarrassing themselves in order to get better. similar to "the biggest loser". I don't like reality shows that make viewers feel better about themselves at the expense of the show participants, so I never watched another episode.

My mom tends to avoid tossing stuff, but by no means is she a hoarder. She just has a few overfilled closets.

Living in a small apartment for many years, my husband and I had to declutter regularly... and now we maintain the habit.

I agree with the others that hoarding is a mental illness. I also learned that hoarding can be a public menace.

An extremely dilapidated house in my neighborhood caught fire last week. I have always wondered why the house had not been condemned by the city, as people were living in the home. Firefighters had an extremely difficult time extinguishing the fire because of all the "combustible material" inside the home.

I learned of the fire when my friend called as she was having the unpleasant experience of watch huge cinders fall on the roofs of her and other's homes. Luckily people got out hoses and the fire did not spread (it wasn't very windy, either).

The mass of material inside the burned-out home is now very visible and truly shocking. I feel like the city should have intervened many years ago when it was clear from the outside that the house was not habitable and that something must be wrong with the inhabitants.

I was just discussing this show with some friends! I don't have a TV, but was fascinated by the premise, so I watched an episode.

It's extremely scary to me.

I'm not a hoarder - on the contrary, I am a minimalist and declutter/purge regularly. However, I live with a pack rat. We've been together for 10 years, and through a combination of reading/education and arguments, his packrattery is somewhat curtailed. Luckily, we live in a beautiful MCM house, which encourages restraint and minimalism. However, I am pretty sure that if we were to separate, he'd end up as a at least a borderline hoarder. If anything will ever break our relationship it's this, and it makes me very sad.

I admit I am fascinated with this show. I had a friend, who has since passed away, who was a hoarder. She wasn’t always like that. She had a beautiful home, but it gradually got messy, then cluttered, then outright out of control. I hadn't heard of hoarding before, and for years thought I failed her somehow. I now realize, partly by viewing the Hoarder series, I really wasn’t equipped to help her. I She had no family in town and I lived 500 miles away. Her family was shocked when they had to deal with the house. I believe now her hoarding was from depression. It is a very sad situation and effects the person and everyone around them.

I watch it online when A&E posts them since I canceled cable. I think hulu.com also airs episodes. It helps deal with my mom when I visit my parents--she's not nearly as bad, but some of the strategies I see on the shows help me convince her and my packrat brother to let me help clear and clean a bit. It also reminds me to my own hoarding tendencies in check.

Also, it's interesting to note that my mom wasn't like that until all the kids moved out (my bro moved back in to help care for my parents). There are dozens of things that could've sparked it. She was spic 'n' span when I was growing up, though.

It's a good thing I'm not a therapist because I'd just put everything into a pile, pour gasoline on it, light a match, and burn it all to the ground. Once they got over the initial shock of losing everything, I'd stand back and watch them bask in the newfound freedom from the burden they've been carrying for so long. I know it's not that simple...but I'd sure like to try it!!!

I never miss an episode of this show. It simultaneously disgusts and fascinates me. I feel really sad during the shows in which we meet hoarders who have pets. They have actually found cat carcasses in some of the hoarders' homes, and I really think these people should be banned from having animals, although I guess it would be difficult to keep tabs on them.

I, for one, am sickened that cable airs stuff like this. Do we really need shows like this - to see stuff as shocking as dead cats and kittens? I refuse to watch this show since in my opinion it shouldn't be on the air. Just by reading these comments, it's just making people who are normal extremely paranoid if they have just a few items they don't use regularly that everyone will think of them this way.

Minimalist in a family of pack-rats. Who do you think is crazy?

ChrisGal, that is what makes America so great, you can turn off the tube if you don't like it. Given the fact I hadn't heard of this before and then actually dealt with it first had, I appreciate the information being out there. I'm sure others would too.

Ilima- you're right, the city should have intervened. My father worked for a large US city and part of his worked involved dealing with issues just like this- homes with so much material piled up that they became dangerous to the inhabitants and a fire hazard for the neighborhood. He used to tell us terrible stories where it was clear the residents of the homes had serious problems and could not deal with the hoarding themselves. There has to be collaboration between concerned citizens who report these problems and city officials who take them seriously and respond properly. Of course this is true just for the most extreme cases.

My mom's side of the family tends to be a bit PackRatish.
After seeing this show, i tend to purge a lot more. Only keep what i truly love and is unique.
My mom watches this show and it scares her. She can see how she's a magazine away from being like these people. I hope it scares her straight.

I'm with CatSitterintheCity in that I am fascinated and revolted at the same time. I watched the Augustine episode last night and had horrible nightmares all night. Sadly I don't believe that any of these people can be helped.

Those pictures are practically giving me an anxiety attack, and I have to change the station or leave the room if the commercial comes on the television. I'm a big advocate of the "one in, one out" rule!

The episode with the food hoarder scarred me for life. When the cleanup guy is using a shovel to scoop up the rotting pumpkin off her living room floor and she stops him to pick seeds out of that drippy black pumpkin goo!! That was the end of me right there.

I had a great uncle who was a hoarder. We didn't realize it until we had to go through his house. I could never watch that show. I blocked all that out for a reason.

I saw that episode too Cindy, it was fascinating and horrific at the same time. I could only imagine the smell!

Hello apartment therapy, I'm a hoarder. Please don't confuse us with packrats or shopaholics. Hoarding is a entirely different and harder to handle issue. I'm lucky enough to not have a compulsion for collecting anything, I shop less than the average person (I’ve gone through consumer data to back this up), I've never had an animal lost or injured in my mess, I have been a hoarder ever since I physically could as a child, and no specific traumatic life change or event made my weakness worse or better. To look at me in public, I'm better dressed and more fastidiously groomed than most 'clean' people. I just can't throw ANYTHING out. Not gum wrappers, no half finished pizza, qtips, magazines, fruit. I carry an enormous amount of shame around every day because I can't 'just be clean' and am gripped with fear every time there is a slight chance someone will see how I live. Especially as a woman I feel a sense of failure whenever I can't 'keep my house well'. Medication, years of therapy, hypnosis, nothing has helped. I have to keep my illness in check with brute force. I send my friends a cell phone picture of my home weekly for a necessary dose of accountability, I move every 6 months to keep things from getting bad in drawers and dark corners the photos don't show, I could afford to own, but without a landlord who could evict me if things got out of hand, I would wind up with a house packed with junk. One of the largest hurdles for getting help is the feeling that by letting people know you’re a hoarder you’re admitting you’re lazy or weak. Messy and personal failure go hand in hand culturally. I was finally able to break my own patterns once it stopped being an indication of me being a failure and became this thing I’m not so good at. If you know someone who is a Hoarder, talk about it. Help them put it in proper perspective as just one part of their life. Often because of the mess we can’t see things clearly, both literally and figuratively.

I think I have the opposite problem. I throw everything away! Drives my husband crazy. :-)

My mom (like so many here) I would say is a hoarder. She is definitely getting better, but i really think that she needs to be more accountable. She has a very dear friend whom i have named "Saint Karen" is helping to clear out the house. However, when Karen helps clear a spot, a few days later the house is again filled with just piles of mail or paper. I dont understand why she (mother) cannot or WONT take the time to just toss something out? She is doing really well with all the "stuff" and learning to keep what she really needs but all this old paperwork from jobs past! its really just bad karma and i think its destroying the energy of the house. But like i said she is getting better because she has realized she cannot live like this. I on the other hand, now have to go through all the "Stuff" i have acquired and left behind since I have moved out and toss that as well. But i'm just lazy :) Good luck to everyone who does have this problem- wish you the best!

Hi abcoabq,

Just wanted to say you're doing great!

Lots of people don't realize these kinds of behaviors are genuine mental illnesses that can be treated, but rarely cured. There's nothing to be ashamed of. But for your own safety and well-being, it's wonderful that you've got a system in place.

I used to watch this show, but I can't any longer. These people have a mental illness, which according to everything I've heard, is really hard to treat. I think the show borders on explotation. To me, it is somewhat akin to watching schizophrenics and expecting that treatment will get them to act "normal."

Any time you want to bump up the number of comments, post a question about hoarding. It never fails!

Every time I read a post about hoarding, I am reminded of a couple I know where the husband threw their wedding pictures away with the explanation that they didn't need them, and therefore the pictures were "clutter." If that's not the opposite of hoarding, I don't know what is.

First off - I want to commend abcoabq for being willing to share their struggle and the reminder that something that seems unbelievable to many is the reality for some.

To take this to a much more philosophical level, while the majority of people may not have a hoarding issue in their own home - think of the global hoarding issue we have as a whole! The amount of stuff we produce, and our habit of simply throwing things away (which in the case of hoarding is considered a good thing) is creating a major problem for our planet! Perhaps we can all learn something from hoarders - not to keep what should be thrown away, but to realize how little we really need in the first place, and how much senseless waste there really is.

@abcoabq -- Hang in there, baby.

@MegP -- Seriously?! And they're still together? Ouch. So... does he have some type of OCD centered around cleanliness, or is there another term for obsessively throwing everything away?

If you've seen the show you know that hoarding is a mental illness. And I feel bad for people who are stuck in that world, like being stuck in the world of other mental illnesses, it must be horrible for the person and the family and friends involved.

I think this show has exposed a certain thing that is not seen, by the majority of people, as a disease but rather just a messy person, a packrat, etc. But it is and it can be treated. Their show "Intervention" raised wonderful issues about addiction of all sorts not just drugs and alcohol.

But on a lighter note (and not to make fun of the people on the show) every time I watch this show it turns me into a cleaning frenzy.

My heart breaks for these people and I hope they can overcome it with hard work and determination. It can be managed and not let it take over your life.

I grew up in a house that had double everything. When my mother got a complete set of new living and dining room furniture, she crammed it all in next to the old stuff. Thinking back on it, I guess my dad didn't care as long as he had his recliner. He also had one cluttering hobby after the other. He built his own darkroom and ended up using it as storage for his CB radios, telescopes, hand-made stereo components, and, yes, extremely expensive photographic equipment that he used no more than 3 or 4 times.

I watched once, and couldn't watch the entire show, because I had the impression that poor vulnerable people were being exploited by some shady reality show producers intent on making an easy buck. I don't see the point in showing us the desperation, depression, confusion, and helplessness of the mentally ill, week after week. I don't find it fascinating or motivating. I find it sad. Makes me feel powerless. Reminds me of a circus freak show.

I saw one episode where they found two dead cats - it was sickening. I will watch the show again.

I also watch it while cleaning. I'm trying to rid myself of clutter, and I find that I have an emotional attachment to a lot of "stuff" that really has no place in my life. This show helps me get stuff OUT the door of my apartment!

I watched the season premiere and watched a bunch of episodes from last season. It's very sad because this is a mental illness that people deal with, but it's also dangerous.

A friend of mine lived next store to a hoarder and because his apartment was so stock piled with stuff it caught on fire. It was the smell of burning plastic that woke her up and she luckily called the fire department in time so that no damage was done to her place. Luckily, her neighbor was not in the apartment. It turned out that he lives in his car now because his apartment has too much stuff in it. Really sad.

My mother is somewhere between a severe pack rat and a hoarder. She hoards food, but it's always nonperishable stuff. She tries to send it home with me, but I throw most of it away because it's out of date. She is a compulsive shopper, constantly watching QVC and buying things for herself, me, my husband, her brother and his wife, everyone. Despite all of this, however, I do not consider her a dirty person. Granted, she could stand to vacuum under all those piles of stuff, but at least she doesn't have rotting food throughout the house and weird smells.

When I moved out of my parents' house they filled my room to the ceiling with junk to the point that I couldn't come back and get the stuff I left behind because it was blocked off.

I really wish there was something I could do for my parents in this situation. I have begged them, taken matters into my own hands (she hoards newspapers, coupons and mail so I've often bagged them all up and thrown them out when they weren't home), and I've threatened them with the worst fate I can imagine: not being able to have their future grandkids visit. Nothing helps. My dad swears he wants to do something about it, but he never does. He just enables her habits.

I'm fighting the pack rat urges daily. When my husband and I recently moved we piled all of our moving boxes into the garage thinking we would just move things in slowly. Instead, we moved in the things that were most important to us and the garage is still full of things I intend to sell, trash or give away, which is really most of our posessions.

To answer the op's question, no, I have not seen the show, but I desperately feel I need to now. If not to help my mother than at least to help myself.

I find Hoarders fascinating!

I've watched several episodes, and am struck by the varied 'reasons' they hoard.

Hoarder A thinks objects are imbued with magical significance, and getting rid of it is to harm the person or animal it's associated with.

Hoarder B thinks he's sitting on a small fortune in scrap metal-- it's valuable, dammit!

Hoarder C is just a lazy disorganized slob who seems to be rebelling against her tidy mother.

Hoarder D compulsively buys too much food on sale, and needs electrical tape to keep the fridge closed.

Hoarder E is a shrill greedy control freak who enjoys imposing her will upon her poor husband and the world.

Hoarders F & G were the most disturbing-- the sloppy disorganized wife and neurotic hoarder husband duo, who force their poor children to live in a pigsty, where you can't see the floor.

I don't accept that it's a 'mental illness'. I think it's more a case of colossal self-indulgence and years of ingrained bad habits. Why would they bother with the therapist/ social workers if this were due to a chemical imbalance? Hoarders are just hugely self-indulgent slobs who deny themselves nothing. Grown up infants.

abcoabq - thank you for sharing. Keep it up the hard work and I'm glad you have a good system in place and friends to help.

I watched a few episodes of the show when I was out sick from work this week and it really helped me feel more compassion towards hoarders. I'll definitely watch again and invite my husband to watch (he has some packrat tendencies).

I used to have pack-rat tendencies, but moving twice a year for the past three years put a stop to that. Now I actually enjoy decluttering. Obviously though, being a pack rat is not the same thing as being a hoarder.

abcoabq, it's clear from your comment that you are a strong and very resourceful woman. I am astounded by all the self-imposed checks you've come up with to keep your surroundings safe and liveable. Good luck to you, and keep it up!

shirley-temple-of-doom, please... just for your own sake, stop. You are only broadcasting your ignorance, and that's nothing to be proud of. I sincerely hope none of your loved ones ever develop any mental illness, because you certainly won't be any help.

And I've noticed that whenever someone starts a sentence with "I don't accept..." what they really mean is, "I don't understand, but I won't make any real effort to and I don't care. Now listen while I spew forth a whole pile of ignorant drivel."

I don't understand the family members who remain in the house and tolerate the filth? If I were confronted with that sort of thing there wouldn't be any "discussion" or therapy. I'd just wait until they went to the store or work, and take the whole schlemiel out with a backhoe. There's plenty of time to make an appointment with the therapist AFTER the cleanup. I seriously wonder about the mental health of the enablers too.

How PC that we call them hoarders. 50 years ago we called them what they were. Slobs who wallowed in feces and filth until someone had the sense to lock them up. They can get their cure just as well as an inpatient without destroying the rest of the family IMO.

Most things that are called “mental illnesses” are nothing more than deviation from common behavior. You can use “mental illness” as a metaphor for convoluted, irrational thinking, but the term implies that there’s some sort of demonstrable biological pathology.

Call it instead a “mental disorder”, and I won’t quibble. We all have varying degrees of mental disorder that could stand correction.

“Illness” implies that the affected person has no control over their behavior, no volition.

I watch the show and find it fascinating and disturbing. It does motivate me to do a deep clean of my apt every time i watch it. I'm also amazed by some of the hoarders on the show who say they were normal, organized or tidy people at some point in their lives. Thats what scares me.

I watched one episode, which had two different stories, and that's all it took. I began tossing, donating, streamlining like there was no tomorrow (until I saw the show I had a difficult time getting rid of things inherited from 3 relatives). After watching the show, I made a list of just the items I loved and where they'd go, and everything else leaves (today, tomorrow, soon). Also now, if I'm tempted to buy something, it's either leaving my house immediately (because it was purchased as a gift) or has a very specific place to live in the house. Just watching Hoarders acts as a terrific curative to ANY hoarding tendencies you may have!

I don't have a TV either, but A&E has full episodes on their site. It's fascinating. So many people in my family are like this, which is why I'm the exact opposite. My apartment is minimalist and OCD clean. Probably the opposite side of the mental disorder spectrum.

There's nothing inherently illogical or disturbing about squirreling stuff aside for future use-- things are assets, literally.

Natural hoarding tendencies are kept in check only by one's ability to be scrupulously honest with oneself, and to always see the big picture (: I have X-amount of storage space, anything that exceeds this space is a liability, not an asset).

I can only conclude that hoarders have never had this internal dialogue with themselves. Note that the therapists and social workers do little more than suggest that the excess of stuff makes their lifestyle worse, not better.

An organized home without an excess of superfluous stuff isn't a natural state, it's an enlightened state.

Every time I bring home another piece of furniture my boyfriend asks me if I'd like to be a candidate on hoarders

i watch "hoarders", and i don't even live in the US! but it's not doing me any good. I feel so sad for the hoarders of things and the problems that come with or that triggered their behaviour. They seem so ashamed for their condition, and yet they can't help it, it brings me to tears.

2 swiss brothers did a documentary about the cleaning out of their mother's apartment. no one had known she had been a hoarder. it's called "seven dumpsters and a corpse", after the contents of the apartment. after watching it, i couldn't sleep for a week because they even showed the cleaning person scraping the liquefied, then encrusted remains of the mother from the floor, her glasses and some hair being thrown across the room. mean thing is, they don't tell you first that these are human remains. way too scary.

trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M8sXt3otvA

@rosenatti - in fact, they are not still married! Not as a direct result of throwing the pictures away. She rescued them from the dumpster before it was emptied.

I don't question that hoarding can be a symptom of a serious mental illness. However, I think that this program, and other similar reality tv shows are the symptom of a societal problem. We seem to have an endless appetite for entertainment which allows us to feel superior to others, and "tut-tut" over their inablity to function, unusual unattractiveness, or foolishness.

We even see this on the local "news", where the anchors shake their heads over some poor individual with too many pets, who is raided by the health department. This is not news, and it seems to me that these "news" stories, and this sort of "realty" tv is pandering to something really base, at he expense of the defenseless.

I think there is also a bullying aspect to some of the real estate programs, where people are helped to sell their homes by redoing them to make them more attractive to a mass group of buyers, or led to price them more realistically.

There is an assumption that that which is acceptable to more people is not just a tool to sell, but actually "better", and that perfectly good rooms, satisfying to their occupants, should be perpetually redone, so they do not become "dated". The smugness, which the audience is invited to share, is, at best, unappealing...to me.

I can't watch this show. The pictures make me itch.

I grew up with a mom who was an extreme compulsive hoarder. The worst thing about it was being embarrassed to invite friends over as a kid and all throughout highschool. Also, it was "clean" but very messy throughout most of my time living at home, but in the last year or two, we started having horrible rodent problems, which were extremely hard to deal with with all the stuff everywhere. That was absolutely horrible. My other family members had several interventions where we hired dumpsters and even a crew to come in, but my mom would just keep bringing stuff home. We never got rid of things. We never cleaned. If she saw ANYTHING on the sidewalk, it came home with us. Free stuff was irresistable. She loved going to thrift stores and sales, too. It was a huge problem, and she still has those issues.

I'm just glad I don't have to live with it anymore. I am not OCD about cleanliness now, but I make a concerted effort to have an organized and presentable space. From living in such a horrible environment, I understand first hand how much your living space effects your mindset, so I have set out to create a living space that is balanced, clean, comfortable, and uncluttered.

By the way, about it being a mental illness, it certainly is. It's not a "disorder" because hoarders can't control their behavior. My mother has been this way for over 25 years... She understands how detrimental this behavior is. She has gone into debt and filed for bankruptcy in the past because of her compulsive buying. But she doesn't stop. I don't think it is just a deviation. People who have not lived in these situations don't understand what a huge problem it is. It's the weirdest thing... growing up I felt extremely "other" due to our household. But it wasn't like I was being abused or like my mother wasn't caring and a great parent. It was this very strange situation that I just couldn't explain to people. It may not be a mental illness in the way that schizophrenia is, but believe me, it's a bigger problem than you'd think.

The fact that hoarding is a mental illness does not help those of us who happen to own a home next to a hoarder of "outside" stuff. We neighbors are the ones who suffer due to their illness. The stacks of metal, old propane tanks, scrap wood, old appliances, diesel fuel, all sorts of chemicals in plastic containers...he even had an old toilet sitting in the driveway! It is a fire hazard and in my city the fire chief told me "sorry, I can't do anything about it". My hope now is that the county will do something, but no luck so far.

quibble? is that what you call it? i call it ignorance.

People know smoking is detrimental, they 'can't' control it, yet the urge to smoke isn't considered a mental illness.

Ditto overeating, drinking, drugs, or gambling.

What's so special about this vice that makes it a 'mental illness'?

Where do you draw the line between the mentally-sound 'pack rat' and the mentally-ill 'hoarder', since the symptoms are identical? When the packrat's collection grow past a certain point... voila! Mental illness!

Smoking, overeating, drinking, drugs, and gambling are addictions (which are a form of "mental illness," in that they are associated with imbalances in the brain. But lots of people enjoy a glass of wine ... and even are even serious connoisseurs of wine ... without any inclination to being alcoholics. (Just like there are lots of pack rats without the inclination to become hoarders.)

Where does it end?

I have no doubt that a host of diverse traits (shyness.. impulsiveness... competitiveness... artistic ability... you name it) are also "associated with imbalances in the brain'. Imbalanced in comparison to what, I ask?

If we acknowledge that varying brain composition results in varying personality, couldn't we call all undesirable personality traits 'mental illnesses'?

What's the difference between an addiction to gambling and an addiction to hoarding? What's the difference between a bad habit that's difficult to break, and an addiction?

"Artistic ability" may be inherited, but I don't think it is necessarily a symptom of "imbalances in the brain"...

wow, have you not had any experiences with people that are addicts to realize the huge differences that you are speaking about? just because you don't understand hoarding/addiction doesn't make it any less serious or "real"

maybe just temple of doom is more appropriate? :)

Speaking as someone who has lived with a hoarder I feel I should speak on behalf of those who AREN'T enablers who happen to live with a hoarder. For a loved one, "correcting" serious hoarding behavior is pretty impossible for a few reasons:
1. They compile so much stuff it can take WEEKS of constant work for 1 person to clean and clear it all. @LBhirise, A trip to the grocery store is maybe enough time to dispose of the immediate garbage in one small area.
2. You can't just throw everything away. They are still people with lives and there are things mixed in there that are actually needed and useable (like anything people use in day to day life- clothes, dishes, home goods), but everything is usually so bunched up with junk you'd need time to sort through it to find all the stuff to keep. Plus, I'm not a millionaire and can’t just re-buy a whole house worth of items for my hoarder family member. (and if they have to re-buy it themselves there will be blood)
3. Imagine if your loved one threw away all your furniture, photographs and anything else you value that is irreplaceable. The reaction you would have to that is the same reaction a hoarder usually has to you trashing a stack of old magazines or a pile of new clothes that are destined to never be worn. It’s irrational yes, but it's what I’ve experienced and had all out brawls over for years. Often sentimentality and need are bestowed upon things that don’t deserve this treatment, and in a hoarder’s mind keeping bins of old mail is just as justifiable as keeping a wedding album.
4. Most often times as soon as you do dispose of something, other things will soon fill its place. This is life. More stuff will come in and you are basically the only soldier fighting a never ending war.
The hardest part of living with someone like this is realizing you can't change them, and nothing you do externally to them will treat their behavior. They have to want to change themselves.
In the case of the show, think most people are nicer to strangers so the "experts" on this show do have the upper hand in a sense. The show is only an hour long so they don't show you all the anger, and crew members talking these people into changing their lives for money or new things. I'm sure almost everyone on this show has had to be talked out of backing out of the process numerous times. I'm fairly sure the families have tried to intervene in most of these cases and this was the last resort. Also, I would bet money that almost all of these people will be right back to their old ways after filming wraps if they don't see their behavior as a problem and aren't provided with some kind of post show counseling

I have a neighbor and friend who both she and her husband are hoarders. I have watched their home slowly fill up to the point where every room, bathtub, even sinks are unusable because of junk, old newspapers and mail. Many things they have bought are still in original boxes/bags and piled so high you cannot use any furniture, table, no place to sit either. Even their bed has junk mail all over it. Even some of their broken down cars are filled with overflowing junk from the house. I stopped going into their house years ago and worry about fires as they have blocked off many of their quick exits and could be trapped. I wonder if the fire department would site them for this. Don't want to lose the friendship by reporting them. Guess I have to accept that I can never pop over for a cup of tea (as she does at my house) and hope for the best re fires. They each blame it on the other so they are in denial. Well, at least they are not alone-----I never realized what a problem it has become until I saw the show. Too bad they don't have cable tv because maybe if they saw the show they might think about their problem---see the light so to speak.

Like some others I watch this show in order to pep myself up for some serious cleaning. At least to me, these shows are the cautionary tales of our times -- see what too much plenty will do to you. If the Grimm brothers were around, I'm sure they'd be right on to writing a scary story around this issue.

One of the big reason why I divorced my wife. She was a pack-rat who would choose her clutters over me.