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Come one, come all! See the amazing underworld of the gross domestic dwellings of nerds, weirdos, and hoarders! Witness the amazing under-the-crawlspace bedroom: Or, marvel at the mountain of potato chip bags. Is there a pet living underneath all that filth? Probably!  Or this place, which god only knows the story behind!  These are all old favorites from the last thread. Surely there must be more untapped hives of trashy living. Pissjugs and overflowing ashtrays most welcome!
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Nov 28, 2015 18:32
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korusan posted:Or this place, which god only knows the story behind! See that circle on the wall? Somebody summoned a squalor demon.
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Nov 28, 2015 18:52
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Whats the backstory to the crawlspace anyway? Was he living in secret down there? Was it punishment?
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Nov 29, 2015 00:19
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Hairy Poster.
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Nov 29, 2015 01:20
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I want to post Jane's house but I can't find the pics. Imagine for a second a house with a raccoon made skylight in every room that was condemned 25 years too late.
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Nov 29, 2015 01:47
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Someone please post the picture from the goon who shat in his trash can, tyvm.
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Nov 29, 2015 02:01
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givesnofucks.jpg
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Nov 29, 2015 02:25
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I love these threads because I live in a genuine Goon Lair(tm) - a one-room basement apartment with almost no natural light - and they give me the impetus to keep it clean, tidy and as pleasant as possible. I also propose we share the best moments from the Hoarders tv series, either in clip or anecdote form. Personal favourite: Elderly man hoarding pregnancy tests.
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Nov 29, 2015 18:01
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that house from the threat "CPS took my kids". Peak goon. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3453028
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Nov 29, 2015 18:06
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I think maybe these are more sad than amusing. All I can think is how hosed up and depressed the person behind these must be.
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Nov 29, 2015 18:50
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No thread on hoarders should be without a mention of the Collyer Brothers, hoarders in NYC who had scores of tons of junk in their brownstone. Both brothers died in the house, which was a shithole. Mansion conditions Article from Mental Floss on hoarders. http://mentalfloss.com/article/23071/7-famous-hoarders Pigsfeet on Rye has a new favorite as of 19:04 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 19:00
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olylifter posted:that house from the threat "CPS took my kids". Peak goon. Holy poo poo well worth being goldmined. jesus gently caress
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Nov 29, 2015 19:09
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Cracked_Gear posted:Holy poo poo
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Nov 29, 2015 19:46
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GWBBQ posted:I think it's obligatory to mention for people who haven't seen it that there was an update. Between CPS taking their kids away and the reaction from that thread, they realized how hosed up everything was. A couple of months later he registered again to let everyone know that they had cleaned up the house, gotten counseling for their issues, and CPS returned the children to the home and congratulated them on turning their lives around so drastically and so quickly. 
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Nov 29, 2015 19:48
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olylifter posted:that house from the threat "CPS took my kids". Peak goon. gently caress, I just read through the thread and was utterly disgusted. I wonder how his poor children turned out. ed: Didn't read GWBBQ's post until now. Pigsfeet on Rye has a new favorite as of 20:33 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 20:31
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I don't have any pics, sorry, but I do have some rather interesting stories. A few years ago, when the bottom dropped out of the U.S. economy, I started working for a rather large rent-to-own franchise called "Rent-A-Center". Now, rent-to-own is a horrible, lovely business. I know this and I don't need to be reminded of it, thanks. Back to the topic, working for rent-to-own, you will see some EXTRAORDINARILY lovely houses and some of the worst possible cases of child neglect and abuse you will ever encounter in your life. The story that immediately springs to mind is from picking up a front-load washer and dryer set for "service". (this means that something is FUBAR and we have to send the equipment to our repair department and give them a loaner set while it's gone.) My partner for this little debacle was named Justin and Justin is approximately 6'5 and weighs about 300 lbs and is covered in tattoos. A pretty gnarly dude, all things considered. When we get into the house, it is pitch black, but there is a ton of stuff all pushed up against the walls, making these eerie dark shapes at the edges of your peripheral vision that constantly seem to be shifting in the darkness. The floor was an exceptionally strange consistency, as it seemed to be somewhat spongey, but you made a distinctive clop noise every time you took a step. At the time, I simply chalked it up to being old hardwood or something else. When we finally made it past the mounds of "stuff", (I had no idea what it was because the lights were all out and they said the bulbs were burnt out), we finally get to the laundry room in the back. After we get out a flashlight to unhook the appliances, it becomes immediately apparent why the washer and dryer no longer work. There are literally at least 13 different SPECIES of bugs that are crawling in, on and around the appliances, including the electronic control panels. Hundreds, if not thousands, of bugs just milling about on the machines and the walls and floor. Justin starts to look a little icked, but we decide to soldier on, try to load the machines onto the dolly and head out. Unfortunately, we decided to take the washer first and, as anyone who works with appliances will tell you, front-load washers have a heavy block of concrete in them for "stability". What this means is that after we loaded the very heavy appliance on the dolly and started out, the wheels of the dolly immediately sunk into the "floor" that I, previously, had thought was some kind of wood. We still couldn't see a thing, so we decided to put on some gloves and carry the washer out by hand. After a few grueling minutes of trying to navigate in the darkness, the man of the house suddenly remembered that the hall light still worked and said "Let me turn the light on for you". It was poo poo. The floor. All of it. Was poo poo. Several inches deep and a combination of cat, dog, rat, roach and whatever else ran free in that house. It was so old and so matted down over time that it had taken on a dirt-like consistency. We also saw what the "stuff" on the edges was that we kept walking around. Rusted garbage, moldy fast food packages and diapers. There were also several dead animals, including rats and a few (as in more than one) dead cats in the corners. The one thing that really stuck out to me, though, was there, at the top of one of the piles, was a shiny yard sign with the family name of our customers, encouraging people to vote for him as councilman of that tiny little hamlet. That sign was crawling with bugs. We hotfooted the washer the rest of the way out of the house and Justin started puking in the yard. After about the 4th dry heave, I gently reminded him that we still had to get the dryer out and put in the replacements. I have never seen such a large man have such a complete look of absolute terror on his face since that moment. We got the stuff out, put the replacements in and begged the store manager to transfer that customer to a different store. She finally did, but Justin had to literally threaten to quit if she didn't. He meant every word, too.
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Nov 29, 2015 21:20
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Trainmonk posted:I think maybe these are more sad than amusing. All I can think is how hosed up and depressed the person behind these must be. Oh, I know, and I feel plenty guilty for finding them so fascinating. The show, despite its many flaws, does a pretty thorough job of showing how clearly this is a mental illness rather than a character defect. Many of the people on it seem so sweet and friendly, or cool and eccentric, until someone tries getting rid of some of their stuff and they just turn on them, usually reacting in the same way. I do wonder if there's a difference, in the pathological sense, between the people who simply accumulate way (way) too much clutter and the people who don't notice/care that they are living in biological filth, like in Dooky Dingo's story. I also wonder if the etiology of the disease has anything to do with our evolutionary history, wherein our hairiest ancestors had learn to hold on to important things (tools, etc) and never get rid of them, in ways that even tool-using apes don't seem to. The majority of sufferers seem to be women, and maybe that could have something to do with the role of gatherer? Can't pass by a promising bush (thrift store), gotta collect every last tuber (piece of discarded lawn furniture) or the family will starve, and so on. But yeah, I definitely hope they all get continuing support after the show leaves.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:17
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Not a psycologist, but I also wonder about the mental illness of hoarders. In particular I wonder about the distinction between "collectors", who have maybe 5,000,000 Star Wars toys or whatever but they are all shiny and presented and alphabetized and on racks and in shelves and all meticulously organized. As opposed to the "hoarder", who has 5,000,000 old newspapers or whatever, just strewn about the place collecting filth coz they won't throw them out. Surely there has to be some sort of connection between the two. And to clarify, I am not saying that "collectors" are mentally ill. I am saying where is the point with people who like to have and keep certain kinds of stuff, where one person keeps it maintained and nice and pretty, where another just throws it in a heap.
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Nov 30, 2015 02:18
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GWBBQ posted:I think it's obligatory to mention for people who haven't seen it that there was an update. Between CPS taking their kids away and the reaction from that thread, they realized how hosed up everything was. A couple of months later he registered again to let everyone know that they had cleaned up the house, gotten counseling for their issues, and CPS returned the children to the home and congratulated them on turning their lives around so drastically and so quickly. Was there any actual proof that this was true and not just some lovely attempt to save face after pretty much everyone ripped him apart for how lovely he was? People that slovenly don't usually just change for good in the course of a few months, if ever
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Nov 30, 2015 02:46
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BrigadierSensible posted:Not a psycologist, but I also wonder about the mental illness of hoarders. A collector collects things of value, be it real value or personal value. They also will part with some things in their collection when the space starts to become unmanageable. They will often sell items to other collectors to make room for new items. A hoarder doesn't do this. They keep acquiring things and get past the point where they can manage the space. They keep things that often have little to no value to anybody but them. Their "collection" becomes a disorganized mess.
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Nov 30, 2015 02:55
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Aesop Poprock posted:Was there any actual proof that this was true and not just some lovely attempt to save face after pretty much everyone ripped him apart for how lovely he was? People that slovenly don't usually just change for good in the course of a few months, if ever I remember pictures, and he was under a different name since his original account had been permabanned.
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Nov 30, 2015 02:59
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Dooky Dingo posted:I don't have any pics, sorry, but I do have some rather interesting stories. I know its way too late to do anything about it and I'm not trying to pick on you or anything (so this is more for anyone else reading ) but situations like this are why adult\child\etc protective services exist. You could also report it to things like city zoning boards or even city hall. Like other people itt have said it's a mental illness and you're not doing the people living there any favors at all by keeping quiet .
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Nov 30, 2015 03:35
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Cracked_Gear posted:A collector collects things of value, be it real value or personal value. They also will part with some things in their collection when the space starts to become unmanageable. They will often sell items to other collectors to make room for new items. Not to quibble over semantics, but lets say a "collector" collects something of value only to them, (say belly button lint or something equally worthless), but it's value to them is enormous and they can't bear to part with it. As such their "collection" begins to take up more and more space and time etc. Can they now be called a "hoarder"? It seems to me the only difference by that definition is that a hoarder over collects till there is no room, whereas a collector manages both his/her collection and the space it is held in.
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Nov 30, 2015 03:39
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BrigadierSensible posted:
thats pretty much it. a collector will stop and think "Okay it's invading the bathroom and my kid's room, and I can no longer park my car in the garage. Time to get rid of some of this. Lets see, this piece? Yeah that's pretty common and nothing too special. That can go." a hoarder lacks this reality check and the "collection" begins invading the kid's bedroom, the garage, the bathroom, anywhere there's space.
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Nov 30, 2015 04:18
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Humboldt Squid posted:Call CPS, dude. Oh, we definitely called CPS, the sheriff's office, the local branch of the EPA, literally anyone we could get a hold of about that giant ecological disaster that was that house. I have lots of other stories about rent-to-own houses, like one time I fell through the floor in a "soft spot" up to my chest, but that one was the one that will always stick with me. It was like a bad nightmare. hate hoot posted:I also wonder if the etiology of the disease has anything to do with our evolutionary history, wherein our hairiest ancestors had learn to hold on to important things (tools, etc) and never get rid of them, in ways that even tool-using apes don't seem to. The majority of sufferers seem to be women, and maybe that could have something to do with the role of gatherer? Can't pass by a promising bush (thrift store), gotta collect every last tuber (piece of discarded lawn furniture) or the family will starve, and so on. My psychology professor at Uni once commented on hoarding as a disorder and postulated that hoarding was actually a learned disorder that was birthed during the great depression where if you didn't hoard as many supplies and things as possible, your family would literally die and then those same values were passed down to the next generation until someone takes it to the extreme. I'm sure the actual root is probably closer to your theory of our little monkey brains wanting to keep stuff, but I also feel that the cultural shift that happened during the great depression and some of the families that were hit the hardest probably has some kind of impact on that as well.
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Nov 30, 2015 04:31
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BrigadierSensible posted:Not a psycologist, but I also wonder about the mental illness of hoarders. Most mental illness is normal human behaviour taken to literally crazy levels. "Disorder" is meant to mean a trait that has caused real, major problems that interfere with a person's life. The hoarder and the collector may both have similar inclinations WRT objects, but the collector's life and health are (presumably) not strongly affected the way a hoarder's is. (Similarly, I've been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive personality traits, but since I don't need to repeatedly check things, or scrub myself until I bleed, I'm not in the disorder zone, just kind of annoyingly pedantic and perfectionist.)
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Nov 30, 2015 04:41
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if this thread makes you want to clean up your room pls consider http://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing...7%3AMarie+Kondo this book is good
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Nov 30, 2015 06:00
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On the show, there's not really any connecting trait between hoarders. They can be older singles without family, someone with a wife/husband and kids, old, middle-aged, disabled, healthy. I think it's more like eating disorders, where their hoarding becomes a way to take manic control of an aspect of your life.
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Nov 30, 2015 08:20
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davidspackage posted:On the show, there's not really any connecting trait between hoarders. They can be older singles without family, someone with a wife/husband and kids, old, middle-aged, disabled, healthy. I think it's more like eating disorders, where their hoarding becomes a way to take manic control of an aspect of your life. Well, eating disorders and hoarding are both considered to be on the OCD spectrum, and compulsive behaviours in OCD are ways of trying to take control over some obsessive fear you have (even though the sufferer usually knows the behaviour isn't helpful). So you're pretty much right. Garbage hoarding might be a little bit different. I mean, if they're hoarding containers of used up products because "it might be useful to store things in", that's not so different. Rotting food and used sanitary towels are probably not wanted items, though. I imagine in that situation the hoarder just lets a little pile of garbage build up and thinks "I'll throw that out tomorrow, It'll be fine" until it has spiraled out of control and they don't even want to think about the problem.
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Nov 30, 2015 10:50
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Just The Facts posted:Whats the backstory to the crawlspace anyway? Was he living in secret down there? Was it punishment? The story goes he was kicked out and moved there in secret.
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Nov 30, 2015 11:01
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Weldon Pemberton posted:Well, eating disorders and hoarding are both considered to be on the OCD spectrum, and compulsive behaviours in OCD are ways of trying to take control over some obsessive fear you have (even though the sufferer usually knows the behaviour isn't helpful). So you're pretty much right. That's talking about squalor more than hoarding but they tend to go together. Squalor is what happens when you don't clean like...ever. It's more than just being disorganized and cluttery; it's being actually filthy. Hoarding often leads to squalor simply because extreme hoarding makes it difficult/impossible to clean. Hoarders might also get into hoarding oddly specific things. Containers and old food seem to be big ones. The bigger issue with hoarding leading to squalor is that the home just fills with garbage. If you can't get to your sink to clean the dishes then you can't easily clean the dishes now can you? Same goes for other cleaning; the cleany stuff gets buried which then leads to "oh I'll find it when I organize...which I'll do later gently caress man look at all this stuff." Then the vicious cycle starts; more stuff gets added, less stuff gets cleaned, and the monumental task of organizing and cleaning gets bigger and bigger. Plus if you clean and organize somebody will make you get rid of some of this stuff! The task becomes so huge that one person can't accomplish it alone but other people say "you should get rid of some things," which the hoarder rejects as a possibility. Hoarders are also known for ending up withdrawing from society which is sometimes caused by this. Other times it's just legit mental illness. A common thread seems to be "I have all this stuff and everybody else wants it but they can't have it. It's mine!"
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Nov 30, 2015 11:17
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Dooky Dingo posted:My psychology professor at Uni once commented on hoarding as a disorder and postulated that hoarding was actually a learned disorder that was birthed during the great depression where if you didn't hoard as many supplies and things as possible, your family would literally die and then those same values were passed down to the next generation until someone takes it to the extreme. My great grandparents were in their early 20s during most of the Depression and they never threw poo poo out. They also never really bought anything. When my great grandpa died in 2008 I helped get his stuff out of the house and in the basement I found hundreds of neatly bundled issues of National Geographic from the 50s to the 80s, as well as functional household appliances from the 50s they just didn't use anymore. The upstairs bedrooms they hadn't used in several decades were also stacked full of neatly bundled up clothing, books and newspapers. The part of the house they normally lived in was free of all that but once you dug past the surface they were really well organized hoarders. My sister's house, on the other hand, looked a lot like CPS goon's house for several years but she was dealing with some pretty serious issues at the time. Her house is still gross but nowhere near what it used to be.
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Nov 30, 2015 12:37
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My grandmother would wash and re-use ziplock bags. She also kept every plastic food container; who needs tupperware? Also grew tons of vegetables and canned it, even with no one around to eat it. All money was kept in checking accounts. The depression was a hell of a thing.
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Nov 30, 2015 12:52
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lancemantis posted:My grandmother would wash and re-use ziplock bags. She also kept every plastic food container; who needs tupperware? Also grew tons of vegetables and canned it, even with no one around to eat it. All money was kept in checking accounts. My grandma was born into a well-off military family twenty years after the depression and does all that poo poo. That's just what olds do.
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Nov 30, 2015 12:57
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KiteAuraan posted:My grandma was born into a well-off military family twenty years after the depression and does all that poo poo. That's just what olds do. It's fairly likely she learned it from her parents.
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Nov 30, 2015 16:47
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My uncle was a hoarder. He had depression and anxiety that went undiagnosed and (obviously) untreated for years. Outside the house, he was a jovial, fun-loving guy who had occasional dark moods and flashes of anger. He fell off the roof of his house at one point, breaking his back. He actually healed up reasonably well, but had chronic pain and mobility issues, which compounded his problems, and he was always obese. He had always been bad about cleaning and keeping up the house. I remember his house always being cluttered and needing cleaning, but liveable. After the accident, he stopped taking care of his house. For sixteen years, he never let anyone else inside. He would go to other peoples' houses, or wait outside for people to pick him up. We found out when he stopped showing up for work and a friend broke into his house to find him unconscious. He had been there for a few days, apparently. The ambulance crew called health services, who condemned the house. In order for him to come home, it had to be cleaned to the city's satisfaction. A professional cleaning crew said it would cost massive amounts of money, since there was human waste and biohazards (remember the broken back? He couldn't make it to the bathroom at night and was using buckets. He would empty them but the bathroom was only semi-functional and a disaster area). It took days to make it to the basement floor, where we found exposed wiring and raccoons, both living and mummified. There were holes in the walls and roofs, and one of the windows fell out when I was cleaning it. We rented a skip and kept filling it and having it hauled away. There were seven lawnmowers in the backyard, one of which had a tree growing through the handles. There were also guns and bullets. So, so many guns and bullets. Like, my aunt's trunk was full of nothing but boxes of bullets. Finally, the city said he could return, and had a health worker who checked on him regularly. When he passed away a couple of years ago, he had already started gathering the hoard again, but the city worker stopped by every few weeks and so it couldn't get too bad. He still didn't let any of us in his house. He was too ashamed. He was an incredibly sweet, generous, loving man. It just all fell apart and he was too proud to accept help.
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Nov 30, 2015 17:33
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Anatharon posted:The story goes he was kicked out and moved there in secret. Does anyone have a thread link?
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Nov 30, 2015 17:58
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Here's an old A/T thread where hoarders and children/roommates of hoarders talk about their experiences http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3520508 Mostly text but some pics.
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Nov 30, 2015 20:38
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lancemantis posted:She also kept every plastic food container; who needs tupperware? I do that. What's wrong with that?
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Dec 1, 2015 02:13
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Tiggum posted:I do that. What's wrong with that? When the hell are you going to use them all? Every plastic food container, when are you ever going to fill them all up with food? Just keep a couple and get rid of the rest, you don't goddamn need them.
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Dec 1, 2015 02:28
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