Saturday we witnessed the rarest of things, a success story on "Hoarders".
Or maybe it was "Hoarding: Buried Alive". Either or.
Now, I love me some "Hoarders" (who doesn't) but I have to admit it had gotten increasingly difficult to watch because there were never any winners. Each episode seemed to end exactly where it started and over time the whole enterprise was becoming depressing and dispiriting. Oh sure, occasionally they'd make a house kinda sorta livable, but when they'd return for a visit weeks later, more often than not it was even worse than before. Usually, after days of shoveling, the best you could hope for was maybe a glimpse of a long unseen floor or forgotten bathroom. Just once I wanted to see someone overcome the compulsion, to kick the habit, to break free of that monkey on their back. The crocheted monkey cozy they'd found at a garage sale.
And Saturday was the day! I can't remember his name... George? They always seem to be named George. Or Debbie. At the start, George seemed to be a particularly hopeless case. His home was so full of crap that the back rooms had been sealed off for years and the the only way you could traverse the rest of it was by crawling on your belly atop six feet of God-knows-what with your ass scraping the ceiling. I almost turned it off. Almost.
But damned if George didn't do it! It took three massive trucks to haul away his shit, but by the end of the episode his house looked great. OK, maybe not "great", but still. There were still a lot of boxes but now you could at least make out discernible rooms.
We went to commercial break and when we returned the words "TWO MONTHS LATER" flashed on the screen and I thought to myself "This too shall end in tears..." but miracle of miracles, the house looked even better than before. All the boxes were now gone and it seems our George has quite the knack for interior decorating. One man's garbage is another man's ironically hip collectable.
Originally I watched "Hoarders" strictly for the entertainment value, but since we moved here I also watch to try and get some insight into my neighbors. This condo complex is a huge nest of Hoarders. They should rename it "Rancho de Firetrap". Almost everyone parks on the street because all of their garages are filled to the rafters with junk.
Our original next door neighbor was a kindly older lady who grew considerably less kindly when the owner of the unit she rented sold it out from under her. She had so much crap it took her weeks to move it all out, and even then she appears to have just thrown in the towel and left a ton of junk in her open garage and on her patio. The other residents swooped in like a swarm of locusts and picked it clean in minutes, ferreting it all back to their own little hidey holes.
Our lease is up in a few months. Here's to hoping we can make it out before this place burns to the ground. It's just a matter of time.
