[music playing]
JUDI: My name is Judi.
I'm 66.
And I'm a recently retired technical writer
in the IT arena.
I moved into this house in November of 1990.
There is still stuff from 1990 that has not been unpacked,
as well as all the things I have acquired since then.
It just all adds up--
quickly.
[music playing]
To me, the concept of hoarding has
always been storing up treasures, bringing
stuff in, and keeping it.
There are things you save that have no value,
except for emotional.
Unfortunately, I keep not just grand treasures,
but I keep treasures that are not so grand,
and I started hoarding trash and garbage.
That's not good.
It's a piled up mess.
It's not fit to live in, but I was trying to.
[music playing]
I'm Ceci, and I am Judi's daughter.
There was always an issue.
I remember sitting at the kitchen
table with my scrambled eggs, but there was always
just a small amount of space for the plate and a cup,
and that was it.
Even then there was junk mail piled up over the tables.
I guess I probably realized my house
wasn't normal about the time I started going to sleepovers.
I remember being so excited to go spend the night
at someone else's house.
And they're like, oh, we've got to come
spend the night at your house.
And just being like, we don't do that at my house,
and not knowing how to explain that.
I mean, you don't-- you don't want to tell your friends that
they can't walk through your house,
and that they can't eat at your house, and that there's nowhere
to play at your house.
You don't want to tell them that, because it
feels like it's you--
and I still feel that way.
JUDI: As my health went downhill,
my efforts to keep it picked up and cleaned up went downhill,
and it's just gradually going to shambles.
[music playing]
CECI: There is a toilet chair, hospital
style toilet chair in there.
It's where my mom's been eating, sleeping, living.
She told me that she was tying herself in at night
so that if she fell asleep she wouldn't fall out of the chair.
The day that she got sick and we called and had them break
in and take her out, she had fallen asleep
and slid out and gotten wedged and didn't
have the strength or the ability to get herself back up.
And my mom had had a security system installed in her house,
and she'd set the panic alarm.
The door was locked and they had to break it down to get in.
CECI: They found her wedged in the kitchen between the chair
and a doorway, is my understanding,
wearing a snuggie and an adult diaper,
and they transported her to the hospital.
She had sores on the bottom of her feet
the size of ping pong balls.
And when I saw her, I--
I told her, I said, I hate to tell you this,
but you're going to lose your legs.
[music playing]
I believe, as the police did, that the infestation
of whatever insects are in the kitchen
bit her, constant cross-contamination
from the dirty diapers and the infections that were draining.
So, you know, which one caused it?
The bugs started it, but it just rolled from there.
Had she not set the panic button, she would've died.
She would have been in that hole,
and the infection would have killed her.
[music playing]
JUDI: There had to be a drastic change.
I could not come back to this.
I need to sell this house and get out of here.
CECI: Clearing this house and selling it,
this is what's going to pay for her to have somewhere to live.
She couldn't clean it out.
She couldn't sell it.
It has been referred to the health
department for inspection, so very likely it would become
condemned.
They'd bulldoze it, and she'd be in a nursing
home care, state-run, for the rest of her life.
[music playing]
All right, good morning, guys.
Ceci, thank you for having us here.
We appreciate it.
As I've told you all, we've got a whole lot
of feces in the home.
There are some things that she thinks
are valuable underneath all the poop-- basically
music, bills, dolls.
You're going to see a ton of these things--
what are they called? - Bleuette dolls.
Bleuette dolls.
She's-- her limit is this box right here.
We've got to keep it-- that's as much as she can take with her.
You guys are going to get the poop in the bags
and get it out, and we'll re-evaluate at noon.
Be respectful of what you're finding.
Even though it's poop, there might
be a $100 bill in the bottom-- at the bottom of it.
- All right. - Let's do it.
All right.
[music playing]
JUDI: There's going to be a finality at the end,
and it's sort of scary.
But this could also be a relief that all the trash
that has accumulated is gone.
What do you-- what do you see when
you look at this pile here?
I'm Dr. Elizabeth Moore.
I'm a clinical psychologist specializing
in anxiety disorders and compulsive hoarding.
JUDI: A lot of trash and a few treasures.
OK.
JUDI: And that's just skimming the top.
I don't know what's underneath.
What's underneath.
What percentage would you say is trash
and-- versus treasure, just kind of looking at all this stuff?
It's heavy on the trash side.
Heavy on the trash side-- all right, great.
After speaking with her, my-- my initial thought
was, well, this is going to go pretty smoothly at first.
We can skim off the garbage, we can get rid
of the-- the fecal matter, and she's not
sentimentally attached to that.
She doesn't feel like she needs to keep it.
How long do you think this has been accumulating in here?
I'd say a couple of years.
[music playing]
That really explains how bad the urine got,
and the feces got in this room.
It literally ate through the flooring, through the tile.
So basically at that point, we need to secure this room
because it's not safe.
Going right into the dumpster with this?
JUDI: Here comes a bone of contention.
ELIZABETH MOORE: So how long has it been since you
were able to use the toilet?
JUDI: So it would have been about two years ago.
ELIZABETH MOORE: About two years ago?
If you hadn't fallen and-- and injured yourself,
how long would this have gone on this way
before you decided that this was a crisis?
Not too much longer, because I was
unable to get in and out of that house very well at all.
It's getting harder.
Oh, you're-- who are you kidding, mom?
If you hadn't set that panic button, you'd be dead.
[crying] I'm sorry.
But two years, and you never told anyone?
All you had to do was say, I'm really embarrassed, Ceci,
but I'm sorry, I need help!
I didn't want to worry you.
You're my mom.
You're my family.
You have to ask for help, because I
can't take you to Spokane if you won't ask for help.
I can't!
When you're next to-- right around the corner,
down the block or two miles away,
I can ask for help much easier.
Are you really going to ask for the help?
I'm really-- I'm going to be really--
and this is the hardest thing I've ever said in my life.
But if you refuse to ask for help and you can recreate this,
I cut the line, even if you're in Spokane.
And I love you, but to sit here and listen to you
say you've lived like this for two years.
JUDI: I have been isolated from family
and I didn't want to bring family in at the distance.
It's the ones that would come, would come.
I love you, too, and I didn't want to create
big problems in your life.
CECI: I'm prepared to draw that line, which I've
done by-- by distance in the past,
but I'm willing to do it emotionally now.
[music playing]
This is literally [inaudible].
Oh, drippage!
Ugh!
[music playing]
Nothing to see here.
[blowing nose]
ELIZABETH MOORE: Yeah, how's it feel to see it go?
It's a relief.
Yeah.
JUDI: The kitchen wasn't that bad
until I started roosting there.
ELIZABETH MOORE: Roosting there.
Then everything went over the back of the chair
every night when I was too tired to do anything else.
Fwim! ELIZABETH MOORE: OK.
[laughs]
CECI: I just, like, watched her watch that come out,
and it didn't faze her.
She's laughing like it's no big deal.
It just really hit me that this is more than just hoarding.
She has a very major mental illness, and that I can't--
I can't right now take her to Spokane.
[music playing]
I thought that the house would be, obviously,
not in great shape, but I didn't think
it would be this far gone.
ELIZABETH MOORE: Judi has struggled most of her life
with compulsive hoarding, but over the past couple of years,
things declined even further and she
made some decisions that led to some pretty dangerous
conditions being made.
I'm not sure if she realizes how close she
came to dying in that house.
This is an awful, awful home, and it would be condemned.
It is condemned.
And there's no way that we could let this person back
into this home.
[music playing]
ELIZABETH MOORE: What are you thinking?
CECI: I just-- I know she doesn't
want to be a state home.
And financially, I mean, even if we do really well selling
this as-is, you know, it's $4,000
a month for assisted living and in a year, she has nothing.
So if she doesn't start in a state home,
she will be in a state home.
And I know that's not what she wants,
and it's not what I would want.
ELIZABETH MOORE: Yeah, this didn't register
with her as the crisis that it was,
and that's really concerning.
Also, her response to it, or lack of response to it,
I guess I should say-- and it's unusual to see someone
with such severe living conditions
work through things as easily as she did.
CECI: I know she doesn't want to go to a state home,
but I think that she's not ready for Independent living.
And I can't take her into my home.
I don't have space.
I have children that I just--
I can't commit to that kind of time.
I'm most definitely looking forward
to having a closer relationship with my daughter
and my grandchildren.
CECI: I know what she wants, and of course, you know,
you try to give the people you love what they want.
JUDI: I'm excited to get-- get a new start,
and it's much easier to get a new start
when you're in a new environment.
She's not going home with me any time soon.
[music playing]