[music playing]
Onion.
My name is Jill, and I'm 60 years old.
I've been a messy person all my life.
I hoard food.
I feel guilty about wasting something
that somebody could be using.
I use duct tape to close the freezer
door sometimes when I've got too many things in there.
My name is Kathy, and Jill is my older sister.
The food in Jill's house is just really scary.
It's because it's everywhere.
Uh-oh.
Looks like I lost a grapefruit.
I went into her home and I was shocked.
I was just shocked.
I was horrified.
We were supposed to be eating a meal,
and there was no place to eat.
JILL: Oh, that's where my scale is.
We were supposed to be cooking a meal.
There was no place to cook.
There was no place to wash dishes.
And none of it seemed to bother her at all.
JILL: I've had periods of poverty
where I haven't had a choice of what I could eat.
That affected me really, really severely to the point
now where I want to always have a choice.
Where's the lid?
My name is Aiden Madigan.
I'm Jill Madigan's son.
[pots and pans banging]
Her current living condition is poor at best.
JILL: Aiden's always grown up in my disorder.
I taught Aiden how to shop in periods of poverty.
$4, that's not terrible.
It's very seductive to gather things
that you might need when you don't have money to buy them.
Geez, all that flour.
Wow.
Oh, I didn't know they made spaghetti from corn.
Salmon cube.
I have this difficulty with resisting sale prices.
When something is inexpensive, I buy it.
Oh, irresistible.
It's springtime.
Having a pantry that has a large collection of different types
of foods means that I can come up with whatever
I want to throw together.
And I'm a good cook.
She's a damn good cook.
But, ugh.
Finger food.
There are things that I buy and then forget about.
She gets pumpkins from the church
sometimes so that she can make pumpkin pies.
But with some of the perishable items,
she gets sidetracked and forgets about them,
and then they just sit there.
Cabbages are really forgiving.
The outside will go bad but the inside will be fine.
Now we're seeing some good color.
I believe that if things have been kept cold
and if they're not puffed up, they're just fine.
What are you going to do with sour cream?
What's going to go wrong with that?
Is it going to go sour?
There's still a very good meal there so bet it tastes good.
DAVID TOLIN: Can I make a suggestion?
JILL: Yes.
I think maybe it makes sense to prioritize first areas
of hazard, things that pose a danger to you, your pets,
the people around you.
My name is Dr. David Tolin.
And I'm a clinical psychologist and a researcher in the area
of compulsive hoarding.
I'm Brendon McDaniel.
I'm a professional organizer.
We help people get on track to an organized life.
DAVID TOLIN: Brendon and his team
are going to help with the organizing aspect of it.
I'm going to get in there with the behavioral and
emotional change part of it.
Sound like a plan?
Sounds great to me.
Let's get inside and get warm and get to it.
Yes. OK.
I think you're all set.
You're about ready to do the pumpkin.
It was a beauty when it was alive.
I enjoyed you while you were here.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
There's a lot of work to be done.
This is probably the worst house that I've done, period.
JILL: Oh my.
Let me just look and see if there are any seeds in here
so we can try to get a few of these
because this is an odd pumpkin.
I've never seen one quite like this before.
And if I can grow some, that would be neat.
OK.
The kitchen is what I'm really concerned about, just
the sheer magnitude of the amount of food in the kitchen
that all needs to be tossed out.
Rotten apples.
Looks like it's separated.
Oh, looks like more apples, some lettuce,
some other stuff that turned black.
Delicious.
So how about the freezer?
Can we get rid of everything in the freezer?
Let me look through it, if you don't mind.
Oh, I didn't know I had tamales.
I'm going to keep those.
I'll keep this one.
I'll keep this one because that's small ones for me.
BRENDON MCDANIEL: If it's squishy, I'm tossing it.
Those don't look good.
JILL: What is that?
BRENDON MCDANIEL: Ground buffalo.
Expired--
JILL: It probably isn't expired because I haven't
been buying it that long.
Well, it's green inside.
It's hard seeing someone living in these conditions
and not having a problem with that.
You've got this really cool organic chicken broth,
free range chicken broth.
JILL: Right.
But it's November of '08.
Can we let that go?
No.
That's something that I would be able to use.
Well, we have--
It's not puffy.
It's expensive.
I don't have the money to replace it.
And it is something that I can eat on my diet.
How much bacteria do you think would have to exist
in here before it would puff?
JILL: I think quite a bit.
Yeah.
You're probably talking life-threatening amounts
of bacteria. - Yeah.
I must have a cast iron stomach or something
because I can get away with eating stuff
that other people get--
they see the date and say, oh horrors, November '08.
How critical is it for you to make the big behavioral changes
that are going to actually get you where you want to be
in life, versus saving the money and hanging on to this very
expired chicken broth?
My thought is that you have a blind spot here.
My thought is that you're falling into one
of your hoarding habits.
Clutter is the symptom, but hoarding is the disease.
If all we do is tackle clutter, if all we do is remove things,
we're not changing her behavior.
We're not really helping her in the long run.
And if we come back in six months or a year,
I think we would find that the house is exactly how it was.
[music playing]
Today, we're going to go and work in the kitchen.
Jill's got to make some decisions about getting
rid of lots more things.
On that side of the shelf is going to be bad.
Throw that butter, throw that cottage cheese.
Farina, that I will keep.
BRENDON MCDANIEL: How long have you had this?
I don't know.
When there are bugs in it, which is what happens to them,
there are little crawly marks that go in here.
That's how you can tell whether it's got bugs.
Do these expire?
I mean, what can they do, go sour?
They can give you food poisoning and kill you.
JILL: Ricotta cheese is frozen solid and--
What's your rule? Talk us through it.
What's your logic?
OK.
Well, my logic is that when stuff's frozen,
it expires slower than it would when it was not frozen.
The date on this is January '07.
Oh my god.
Something about those eggs is really scaring me.
Yes, those are the ones, those are
the ones that I got from you for my birthday a year ago.
A year ago?
I gave them to you to eat.
Well, they were too pretty to eat.
Are your perceptions of food completely accurate?
Or might there be something irrational--
I know that you're right about some of it
and I'm throwing out things that I've
kept in there for a long time.
Some of them are no-brainers.
But some of them are things that I
had to really look at them before I
could find some good reason to throw them out.
What's going on with that?
Once again, an attempt to be self-supporting.
That's the driving force behind most everything.
And yet, it is also that mentality that got you here.
I know. Yeah.
Right.
OK.
This is all gone.
Pitch it.
I'm sorry.
I'm really grossed out.
Please.
It looks like something--
I got to go.
JILL: --something out of a bad dream.
I'm sorry.
This looks like residue of the meat
that was not completely frozen.
Smells a bit fishy.
Holy smokes.
JILL: I did not plan to let it get this bad either.
It was so disgusting.
I just--
My god.
And there's stuff that was in that drawer
that she's still saving. - That she's examining.
I know. I know.
She gave me this package of cheese
that had been sitting in that dripping stuff
and she wanted me to look for a date on it.
Something is off here, your old way
of doing this, your old way of thinking about things.
It is self-destructive as hell.
BRENDON MCDANIEL: So Jill, the guys, the 1-800 guys--
Can you, can you let me at it before you start?
There's nothing here that I want to save,
but you're ready to jump on me for it.
OK?
You're expecting me to disagree.
You're expecting me-- but don't--
give me a chance, will you please?
BRENDON MCDANIEL: That's fine. I just--
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. I mean--
BRENDON MCDANIEL: As soon as you opened up--
It's been hard.
I know I need to change in order to get the life that I want.
The yogurt, we'll just let it go.
It's all gone.
Take it away.
Arrivederci, dulce de leche.
Thank you.
Nice going, Jill.
BRENDON MCDANIEL: Unless Jill makes a dramatic and sustained
change in her behavior, then the problem
is just going to return.
She's going to fill that space up again.
JILL: This is cat and dog stuff.
This is good stuff Yeah, this is good stuff.
[music playing]