We shouldn't forget the house in Young Ones!

The Style Network's 2010 Search for the Messiest Home is on every Wednesday at 10/9. The one they find to be the messiest in America will have a two hour show.
MSNBC had a documentary on about a woman who chronicled her mother's extremely packed home. It was quite sad but also gave more insight to why she was a hoarder, how difficult it was to clean her home and the aftermath. Anyone know the name of it?

There were some really filthy homes on that show "How Clean is This House?" where two nicely dressed British women cleaned a pigsty and the owner swore it would stay that way. There were only a few people who seemed like they were going to change their ways. The most disgusting episode was a frat house, where they had a close up of a dirty toilet bowl. Yuck.

i've seen worse. long live punk houses

There's a show here in France called C'est du Propre! (It's Clean!) that might be like "How Clean is This House" where two French ladies help someone with a messy & filthy (really filthy) apartment/house get clean and organized. Then they come back later to see if the person was able to maintain it (here they often do, at least to a reasonable extent).

What I love about the show is that they show how to clean things that I didn't encounter until moving to France (tomettes, plaster of paris walls, 17th century exposes beans) and they tend to prefer non-toxic and/or low fume cleaning options - lots of baking soda & white vinegar, savon noire and sodium carbonate (washing soda).

Sometimes I think my home belongs on this list. Sigh.

Fight Club.

ThinkerBelle, was it "My Mother's Garden"?

http://www.mymothersgardenmovie.com/

"Desperate Living," one of John Waters' earliest movies, was set in Mortville, the shantytown where Mink Stole's character has to live in after she murders her husband. The houses, like Mortville itself, were dirty, trashy and poorly constructed.

Oh, and Oscar Madison's room in "The Odd Couple" was always a mess.

I'm living in my parents house temporarily until it sells. Which means hoeing out 60 years accumulation by two packrats. Unfortunately, we grew up with the stuff and much of it had reverent attachments for them. They infused us with a respect for these objects so with siblings living far away and not too interested in the goods (except of the truly family heirloom variety) I've taken on the dispersement of this pile. My mom called it organized chaos.
Our kids don't want this stuff, either. It's sad and a burden. My siblings and I have vowed to whittle down our stuff so our kids won't have to go through this.
I don't know if it was an illness or simply a sign of their times. In war torn Norway you were to hold onto everything you had, it could have a future use, OR who knew when you'd have money again to afford things. When they came to this country after the war they had nothing. I feel empathy and it's hard changing my own somewhat pack rat ways, but I'm trying.
I think these shows must be good for bringing these issues to our collective attention.
(What IS the difference between a pack rat and a hoarder?!)

Here's one definition:
The difference between a packrat and a hoarder is functioning. A packrat has a cluttered house, a filled garage. There is disarray in some rooms of the house.
A hoarder is spending money on lockers or additional storage space, has a hard time getting around the house and is filling up the car with possessions because they've run out of room in the house.
Phew. My parents were only pack rats. There, I feel better.
Still, the first photo is chilling and I can't look at it without feeling a deep sense of nauseating sadness.

That feature pick is just sad.

What I like about these shows/houses is that they act like an object lesson for me. Cleaning is NOT my fav activity but I NEVER want to live in such squalor as seen in these houses -- so I do my cleaning and tidying!

I can only stand a small amount of viewing of this kind. It kind of upsets me, I have a desire to "fix" the situation for everyone, and of course, I can't. I've seen a few episodes of Hoarders,and it just amazes me that anyone can tolerate what these people do.

I think the difference between hoarding and being a packrat is that hoarders are dealing with a serious mental illness. Packrats just like their stuff. As a semi-minimalist, I have a really hard time with understanding the need or desire for so much stuff. But that's just my perspective - I know others are more sentimental about certain items than I am.

I think the difference in being a packrat and a hoarder is the difference between being a social drinker and an alcoholic. The hoarding interfers & disrupts their life. It has a huge negative impact, and yet, they don't stop.

Watching Hoarders & Buried Alive makes me so sad for these people.

GREY GARDENS!

I watched it last night again, and the raccoons crawling in and out of the walls never cease to make me marvel.

When my former mother-in-law died in 2001, the task of cleaning up 30 years of hoarding fell to me. At the time, I had never heard it called hoarding. I guess I thought she was crazy and no one would ever do anything about it. I will never forget how shocked I was the first time I saw the house, and it only got worse in the years leading up to her death. Yet her children refused to even try and do something about it. They claimed it would upset her too much. So she lived in filth and squalor, with paths everywhere, an unusable kitchen, and nowhere to really sleep. It was unspeakably sad.

I watch all of them -- Hoarders, Hoarding: Buried Alive, How Clean is Your House?, and Clean House .... and every time I am spurred to clean or tidy up as I watch them! I also end up putting stuff aside to donate. The conditions of the homes on these shows works as a scare tactic for me.

I agree with ngnerd about How Clean is Your House?, they always zoom into filthy toilets and then show you a up-close shot of the rag they used to clean them up. So gross.

veslabeachgirl, I think the difference between a packrat and a hoarder is that a packrat saves way too much, but the stuff they save is (at least in theory) useful. A hoarder saves items, such as daily newspapers, which have no value at all. So the guy who keeps a bunch of auto parts is a packrat; the guy who saves empty toothpaste tubes is a hoarder. The hoarder will, however, believe the empty toothpaste tubes are somehow important. I think impact on life matters as well; any collection that prevents the use of your space, or threatens your health or safety, has transitioned from a collection to a hoard.

Watching the show Hoarders, it has struck me that hoarding is like so many other disorders, such as anorexia: it's a solution to a problem (anxiety, depression) that does not solve the problem.

I agree with others that people's homes can get completely out of control even when they do not have OCD (obsessive compulsive disorders). Just add pets, a few kids, a full time job, and a bout of illness to the picture, and you can end up with a horrifying mess real fast. It's unfortunate that shame seems to prevent many from seeking help -- help that would gladly be given by friends and family.

My problem is perfectionism. I recently donated vintage cookware to a school fundraiser, but it took me months to do it, because I was waiting for a mythical bit of free time to spend on cleaning the cookware up before giving it away. Yep, I was going to spend hours on that project. Ugh. Nuts!

Is it wrong that the first thing that jumped out at me in the second picture was that midcentury chair black leather chair in the middle? My second thought was "The towel on the chair is blocking my view". Fortunately my third thought was "Huh, that's one messy room".

Perhaps that's how it starts, I do have a storage room full of midcentury furniture that I will "someday" re-upholster.

This post is making me itch. I do know that it's often outside of a person's control, and that is unfortunate. Purging is something I try to do regularly. I stock up on things I go through pretty quickly, like toilet paper and my favorite dishwashing detergent (which doubles nicely as a bubble bath- thank you, Seventh Generation!), and buy other things as they are going low (salt, sugar). But all things have a certain place for storage, and I only by enough to fit on the designated shelf space. For clothing, I have a one in, one out rule for most things, and will purge whole categories and then refresh rather than buying one at a time (i.e. tshirts). These are all of my internal switches that tell me, "Enough." So the sight of so much stuff laying around makes me feel like something is biting me.

I always wonder what people from poor third-world countries, who have virtually no possessions of their own, would think if they (had a TV so they could) watch these hoarding shows.

Cristina Yang's apartment from seasons 1-2 on "Grey's Anatomy". Ditto for Cordelia Chase's apartment on season 1 of "Angel". Gross.

I totally thought that this post was going to be about film & tv sets that feature messy homes so I appreciate the comments (broccoli, carter76, RJManila, modestalmond) about fictional messy homes!

Sets created to look gross or messy are interesting because they require a whole design process whereas reality shows like Hoarders or Clean House show up and document straightforward cautionary tales. Those are more like gawking at accidents in progress and just really bum me out.

I'm worried about anybody that wants to differentiate between a packrat and a hoarder. They are both bad and no matter how you look at it, they are more the same than they could ever be different.

The apartment of John Cusack and Cameron Diaz from "Being John Malkovich".

What about the "Friends" episode where David Schwimmer's hot girlfriend (Rebecca Romijn) had such a disgusting apartment that he broke up with her.

I must second "The Young Ones" for the winning crown of messiness.

........I still have my Christmas tree up.

I hardly can watch those movies, they make me sad and anxious. I have a hard time in organizing and I am so afraid at someday my pad will look like one of those place....

The house in the movie "Running with Scissors" is also pretty insane. Especially seeing as the movie is based on a true story.

Did nobody watch "Bones" last night? The had a hoarder, or somebody who suffered from disposophobia. They called him a 5 on a scale of 5. Bugs, rats and snakes in house apartment. I am cleaning out closets this weekend!

How about the Ruloffs house from the reality show Little People Big World. Their house is always a disaster. It drives me nut that they have this gorgeous house that is typically strewn with trash and junk.

With two small children on the premesis... my living room can look like the one in the second picture in about a day. Then, I get discouraged (lazy) to clean it because i know that it will just turn that way in a couple of hours. I've been trying to make a concentrated effort to start teaching (and enforcing) the kids to put one thing away before they take out the other. Me too. We installed a new kitchen and so far, I've been spending 30 minutes after every meal cleaning it up. I'm hoping it becomes a habit because I enjoy living in a clean house and it's easier to keep that way. Now that i live in italy, expectations are even higher... your house does not just have to be clean.. it has to shine! So dusting isn't enough, you have to polish, bathrooms fixtures have to be waxed, and floors have to sparkle! So, even if I get to a basic level of clean I will always feel like I have not done enough!

I imagine that people in those shows are like me but even lazier!

Thanks for reading my confession of a messy house!!

L

I love these pictures. They make me feel much better about my house. :)