Hoarding Intro

As children we are taught in boy/girl scouts to be prepared, but stock piling up with 30 bottles of shampoo might be too prepared. In the last ten years hundreds of extreme hoarding cases have popped up all over the country. But hoarding has been a problem for some time; however only recently does it seem to have caught the nation’s attention.

 In 1947 an extreme case of hoarding accrued in Harlem, New York when the Collyer brothers died in over 130 tons of junk in the small apartment protected by booby traps. In this case, a booby trap killed one of the brothers and the other, being blind and crippled, starved to death in their junk.  Without the internet and much TV coverage back then, it is  quite probable that other extreme cases were missed. It is unknown how many cases went unreported during the last century, but with the invention of reality TV and the internet, it is becoming very clear that hoarding has been deep-rooted problem that is only now coming to light.

Cable networks finally found a new theme for their reality shows that almost anyone in the country can relate to: Hoarding. The currently popular reality cable TV shows are:

·         A&E's "Hoarders,"

·         TLC's "Hoarding: Buried Alive"

·         Animal Planet's "Confessions: Animal Hoarding."

But reality TV  isn’t the only the  programming cashing in from the recent awareness of hoarding.  Hoarding is now a staple of prime-time television.

·         CBS “CSI” Episode 5, Season 11, “House of Hoarders”

·         Comedy Central “South Park” Episode 10, Season 14, “Insheeption”

·         Fox “Bones” Episode 22, Season 5 “ The Beginning of the End”

There are more  examples of hoarding in prime time, but these are the most recent, and they showcase how hoarding has reached  some of the most popular programming offered on TV.  It is unclear if TV companies are just looking for the newest thing to boost ratings, if they feel the audience is fascinated by unfamiliar, eccentric behavior, or if they are now trying to shed light on the issue.  One thing seems likely:  this isn’t the end of hoarding programming.

One of the most dangerous problems of hoarding is that the person doing the hoarding doesn’t see the clutter as a problem. Life  seems normal and the person is functioning normally otherwise. Family and friends are often clueless and shocked when they learn of their loved ones’ hoarding behaviors. Even after a loved one or the police tell a hoarder  the hoarder has a problem and it is time to clean up, they refuse to change, denying the problem all together.  Many of these hoarders can not understand why hoarding is so dangerous to themselves and to others.