[music playing]
My name is Darcy, and Adella is my mom.
She lives in and sleeps with a pile
of nameless, faceless trash that is her accompaniment in life.
You want to care for, and respect,
and love the people who brought you into the world
and have been a part of your existence,
and instead, I don't even have her phone number.
I wouldn't know if she was alive or dead.
She certainly doesn't want time with me instead of the trash,
so I allow her to have what she wants, which is the trash.
I've only come back because my father asked me to.
In the very last conversation, he
asked me to do the best that I could do for my mother,
and I will.
I'm Beverly.
I'm 46, and Adella is my mother.
My mom's hoarding started in 1988 when
my grandmother passed away.
Something seemed to short circuit in her brain.
She started slowly becoming somebody else,
and then she started bringing in bags of trash.
And my dad says, I can't live like this.
Why are you doing this?
And my mom told him if he didn't want to live like that,
he could just leave, and that's what he chose to do.
She chose the trash over my dad.
She chose the trash over me and my sister,
and she chose the trash over our children.
She put up a wall of trash to keep us all out.
My daughter, Beverly, is thoroughly disgusted with me.
She thinks there's no end to my collecting things.
I have things in my car, things in my house, things in my yard.
High-society people don't like that.
She sees me as the demon from hell who wants
to take away all her trash.
ADELLA: Darcy got a good education.
She's had things that I didn't have, and that's good.
But you should never look back on your mother and think,
to heck with you, I've made it, and you didn't.
I'm here on behalf of my father.
He asked me to.
[music playing]
MATT PAXTON: Good morning.
ALL: Good morning.
Thank you for letting us be here.
Thank you for coming.
My name is Matt Paxton.
I'm an extreme cleaning specialist.
We're in this big backyard.
You've got a lot of stuff back here.
Yes, sir.
Some of it's good.
Is all of it good?
50 years of accumulation.
MATT PAXTON: So answer the question.
Is all of it good?
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, yeah. [laughs]
OK.
So we see the problem.
We see why we're here, OK?
The biggest problem is we could lose this home.
This is very real.
All right.
Let's do it.
[music playing]
As this process is getting underway, I'm hopeful.
MATT PAXTON: Soggy britches.
Yeah, but they'll hang up and dry.
MATT PAXTON: In Phoenix maybe.
The rain just came last week, y'all.
DARCY: I'm hopeful that it'll continue on an even
keel, rather than uneven.
Yeah, this is keep right here.
That's a toothbrush, though.
Yeah, it is.
DARCY: I don't expect that.
In fact, I, frankly, expect the opposite.
Now what did you squirrel away back here?
That's new.
OK, but why are you squirrelling away?
Why don't you just put it on the keep pile?
Because I'm keeping it.
BEVERLY: She keeps things that I think she should have let go.
That frustrates me.
What is this?
I'm keeping this coat.
No, you're not keeping this.
ADELLA: It's got money in it.
How are you doing, Adella?
OK.
My name is Mark Pfeffer.
I'm a licensed psychotherapist and specialist
working with people with compulsive hoarding
and their families.
Earlier, I asked you to let me know how you're feeling
on that scale of 1 to 10.
Where would you say you're right now on a zero to 10?
Five.
In Adella's case, she almost feels that the items
represent part of self.
It becomes very difficult for someone to let go.
It brings back the memories.
Those are calendars from the '80s.
I know.
They're antiques, and they got the--
MATT PAXTON: Well, they're not antiques
if they're from the '80s.
They're just old.
What year is that?
I don't know, but I want it.
MARK PFEFFER: Let me ask you a question for this.
It goes to a drinking cup.
This is for jewelry and stuff.
I know.
I'm keeping it.
But not for napkins.
Oh, lord, help.
I use napkins.
Of all things.
I'm trying to find me some clean clothes.
Do you want to keep--
- I didn't want to-- - Time out.
I didn't want to--
Do you want to keep your house or not?
Well, sure.
But I didn't want to look dirty today.
Do you blame me, Beverly, for wanting clean clothes?
BEVERLY: No, but I blame you for not listening,
and it's been like this for 20 years.
ADELLA: A child's responsibility is to respect their parents.
OK.
Well, you don't get respect if you don't give it.
OK.
20 years of disrespecting us cleaning up this filth.
You're not going to get respect today, for sure.
And you're going to lose it if you bring
anything else back in here.
OK. OK.
OK.
MATT PAXTON: All right.
This is Father's Day, OK?
It's hard enough to do this on [bleep] Father's Day
when you lost your dad three months ago.
And then you won't even listen.
You won't--
ADELLA: I did listen.
I was thinking about cleaning [bleep] up.
You didn't [bleep] listen.
[sobs]
It doesn't even [bleep] bother her.
ADELLA: I was anticipating to start working this morning,
but the minute that I get out here and start working,
I get all this cussing.
Adella, it's the minute we start asking you
what your responsibility is in this whole situation
that you become very angry and defensive.
They don't hear you accepting responsibility,
nor do they hear your motivation to want to change.
BEVERLY: Why didn't you just listen?
I need a reason why.
(SHOUTING) What's the [bleep] reason?
Give me a [bleep] reason!
Stop using the Lord's name in vain.
I don't give a [bleep] what you say.
Well, go home then.
I'm not going home.
Why don't you - Leave?
I don't have to listen to [inaudible]..
BEVERLY: You leave!
I wanted this to be a peaceful get the family back together,
but Della doesn't want that.
Della wants her trash.
All because I came out here--
(SHOUTING) Della wants her [bleep] trash!
You know what?
You need to stop the manipulation.
Everybody here is feeling a massive amount of disrespect--
I know.
DARCY: --from you because of what you're doing.
You do not care about the impact to yourself
nor to anyone else around you.
Well, that's your opinion.
No, it's not my opinion.
This team came here away from their families
to give you their strength and their efforts
to make a difference for you.
That's what they came here to do.
They're away from their kids.
They're away, and they are sweating.
And they're doing it for you, and you don't have
the respect to say thank you.
ADELLA: I will say thank you.
Do it.
Thank you, everybody.
I didn't think we was through.
No, we're not through.
Look at this place.
But you're wanting me to say--
No, let me tell you something you don't know.
The last interactive conversation Daddy
had with me before his surgery and his death
was to make a difference for you, and your trash,
and to use the cooperative effort of this team
to do that for you.
ADELLA: And you don't--
(SHOUTING) And that became his dying wish!
ADELLA: OK.
You've had your--
You need to man up, and you need
to take some responsibility for your choices!
You need to have some respect for your mother.
You need to have some respect for everybody.
I do.
DARCY: Quit re-creating your own personal tragedy every day.
Determine you want something different.
You got to want it.
[music playing]
All right, I love you.
Bye.
I don't feel like I made any reconciliation with my sister
like I wanted.
I feel like crap I didn't get to hug her.
I don't see her every day.
DARCY: I won't be back.
I feel like when my dad died, I lost my only parent.
Well, at least I was going to tell her adios.
These are pretty good.
Do you like pretzels?
[music playing]
Just at a glance, I think you are going to be
safe with the city for now.
We're going to have to work very diligently together
to keep a lid on this problem.
Yes.
I knew where everything was.
But now it's all gone, so I start over.
MATT PAXTON: Here's the deal.
This is everything you wanted to keep,
and you got plenty of room.
Our task was to clean the home, and we did that.
The house is clean.
All the citations are gone.
But I don't feel like we've solved the problem at all.
When I come back in three months,
I don't want this place full, OK?
Yeah.
I don't mind walking over stuff.
MARK PFEFFER: Beverly and Darcy expressed their motivation
to come today and to assist in the process
based upon their father's dying wish,
but they've been through this so many times
that I think that they've already
protected themselves emotionally for the worst-case scenario.
BEVERLY: It looks good for now, until she starts accumulating
stuff, and then I'll be getting a notice
until I get it out of my name.
I've done my last cleaning.
I like tables, and I like chairs.
And I like radios.
And everything has to be put up, so I'll go dig me
a radio out when y'all leave.
[music playing]