[music playing]
[chickens clucking]
OK, here I come.
[hiss]
Meow.
I'm Ruthann, and I'm me.
And I like me.
Nope, get back.
I've got something for you.
I enjoy my pets.
I enjoy my life.
And I enjoy the things I do at my house.
I would say that I have hoarding tendencies
that have gone overboard.
Is the house a mess?
It's ridiculous.
It's a sad, sad thing.
My name is Tamara, and my mother is Ruthann.
My mom is definitely a hoarder.
And she is every kind of a hoarder--
animals, good stuff, bad stuff, trash, everything.
She's kind of like the hamster in her own home
because there's just a trail through the house.
She has more stuff than anybody I know.
She doesn't use them.
My whole house is full of treasures.
They're good.
All my stuff is good.
I just gather it up.
I don't know how it gets in.
And when I do anything, I do it, I
think, in a big way, sometimes a little bit too big,
as you can see, more ways than one.
I think that she will always be that way.
It's in her.
It is her.
That house, in its day, was a beautiful house.
She has made it the way it is right
now because of her hoarding.
I'm Patty, and I'm a cousin to Ruthann.
I'm disgusted on what Ruthann has done to this home.
My mom and dad purchased that house, I believe, around 1966.
I was born and raised in that home.
It was gorgeous, beautiful.
It has white oak throughout.
It's 3,700 square feet, four huge bedrooms.
I think it sits on an acre lot.
It's a gorgeous house.
And it's something that none of us, in our lifetime,
will ever see replicated.
You can't build a home like that.
Ruthann had approached my mother and asked her if she
was interested in selling.
And Ruthann assured her that she would take care of the home
and make it a bed and breakfast.
I had hopes, and dreams, and schemes.
The house was intended to touch people's lives when
they came through the gate.
I don't think she had any intentions of turning
that into a bed and breakfast.
It makes me angry because I feel like she blatantly lied.
The bigger the dream, the further it was to reach.
That's when I lost control of it.
TAMARA: It was strange.
My mom's hoarding got out of hand
when she moved to that house.
PATTY: I would say within a matter of a year,
you could start seeing things piling up,
probably two or three years that it really became apparent
that she had a problem.
You couldn't see the front porch.
You couldn't see the driveway.
It became a big mess.
It breaks my heart.
I get very emotional, very emotional.
It's more than just a house.
It's not just four walls.
It has life.
It had connection.
It's sad.
I feel like it's almost like a death.
And my mom died mourning that house, I mean, mourning it.
It would kill her to see it.
RUTHANN: There's nothing wrong with the house.
It's the person that ended up being in it.
That's what the problem was.
I feel like I've disrespected it putting
all this trash around it.
But that doesn't mean that the house is broken.
I was the broken one.
Because a normal person doesn't live like this.
PATTY: What the hell happened?
What happened to you?
What happened here?
I mean, we all know hoarding is something that's mental.
I mean, it comes from some kind of tragedy.
Many years before I ever moved into this house,
there was a tragedy as far as I had a boyfriend
that ran off with my daughter.
My daughter was 7 when I met him.
She ran off when she was 15.
And he ran off with her, you know?
That's not right.
When they first met and she was 7,
she's supposed to sit on daddy's lap, right?
You don't think much of it.
TAMARA: I can remember conversations
about what he was doing to me.
RUTHANN: One of the major stepping stones
was when she was in eighth grade and would
have a little boyfriend.
And he showed jealousy to my daughter.
He didn't like her having male friends from the eighth grade.
Well, that's not normal.
When this came out, she ended up being a ward of the court.
TAMARA: I was placed into a foster home because of being
molested by my mom's boyfriend.
I ran away from the foster home, falsified a birth certificate,
got married to my mom's boyfriend,
had three kids with him.
I loved him.
I love him now.
And then he just passed February.
RUTHANN: He was 10 years older than I was.
But that made him 30 years older than her.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
My name is Cory Chalmers.
I'm an extreme cleaner that specializes
in biohazard and hoarding.
Ruthann, we are all here with one goal,
to help you out of this mess.
Thank you.
CORY CHALMERS: Ruthann is just a very active acquirer.
I mean, this is an old, historical, beautiful house
that she has completely destroyed.
The goal is to get your house functional and safe
for you so you don't burn up and die in there.
- OK. - OK?
So we all have the common goal.
It's how we get there that's going to be the struggle.
And just from talking to you, I know there's
going to be some struggle. - Oh, yeah.
I don't think Ruthann is going to handle the cleanup
process very well at all.
I think all the things in the house have value to her
to the point where she's not willing to let go of them.
There is no easy way to get from where we're
at now to functional and safe.
So there's going to be some challenges.
MELVA GREEN: I'm Dr. Melva Green,
a psychiatrist specializing in hoarding behaviors.
This is going to be difficult. She's
held on to a lot of things, and not just the physical things,
but a lot of things emotionally that are going to come up, OK?
CORY CHALMERS: Everyone good with that?
- Yes. - OK.
Just into the cleanup, Ruthann completely fell apart.
I think she's coming to realize that this is a lot harder
than she may have suspected.
This is what I've been talking about.
This is the hard part.
So everything that's been here with me as my security blanket
or whatever--
TAMARA: Are you secure right now?
Ruthie-- RUTHANN: You know--
No, you're not secure.
You're broken.
You're broken, ma.
If you want them to be able to help you,
you've got to identify someone that you can trust,
OK, to throw out the trash, OK?
Can Scott start outside?
Yeah, can we just start getting trash out here,
just get it with--
anything, out front, everything.
Just let's get it going.
Let's get the trucks loaded.
All right.
OK, so you're OK with them doing the outside?
Because that'll keep a lot of people busy.
That's OK? - All right.
Yeah. - OK.
Good job.
Yes.
Right on.
CORY CHALMERS: So Ruthann gave Scott the green light
to go fill up the truck with anything
he wanted from the front yard, which he did.
Ruthann, I need to borrow you just for a minute.
I want you to see outside and make
sure that you're OK with everything going on out there.
RUTHANN: I already seen some things.
I mean, you're throwing away everything.
Why the-- now that yellow thing, Scott--
now what about the metal thing?
And of course, when I invite her to come out and make sure
that the truck is good, ready to go,
she finds things like a wheelbarrow
with flattened tires that she must have.
RUTHANN: It is a wheelbarrow that you pick up like that,
and you tip it like that.
And it tips up and dumps itself.
CORY CHALMERS: But do you use it?
Do you need it?
Do you know that's a $200 wheelbarrow.
No, it's not.
Right now, it's a $0 wheelbarrow.
WOMAN: But if you don't use it, ma, then it
ain't worth nothing.
CORY CHALMERS: It's taking up space.
RUTHANN: Can I get a trash bag?
Right here.
There we go.
What are we doing with this?
Trash, or keep, or what is it?
No, I would cut it up for my bulletin board.
CORY CHALMERS: I'm beyond frustrated right now.
As soon as we think we're making a little bit of progress,
we go right back the other way.
SCOTT: Mom, you really want this shoe rack all bent up and--
Scott, that's what the problem is, when we make a decision,
and then everybody wants to stop and nitpick every item.
There's too much stuff.
And you got to get rid of it, or you're
going to have it forever.
And it's going to be piled up in your way.
What difference does it make right now?
This is ridiculous, [bleep] like this.
You can't even use the stove.
You guys want to complain instead of listen.
You know what, we're getting nowhere.
This is what we should do.
We should just fill a truck up within like 20 minutes
with this stuff right here.
She's always just moved it from one place to another.
And she just thinks that everything can have a place,
but it's just not possible.
TAMARA: Way too long.
I'm upstairs on the landing, and I think I smell marijuana.
Tamara?
[knocking]
TAMARA: Yeah?
When I ask her, she fesses up.
It smells like pot in there.
I was smoking pot.
MELVA GREEN: Tamara in the bathroom getting high
is just a clear indication of wanting to check out.
Are you feeling anxious?
I feel like that I was the one that did it.
MELVA GREEN: I was struck by her taking responsibility
that she was the reason that her mother's
boyfriend made these choices.
She drops this bombshell.
It was me and him, not me being abused.
In other words, I was the other woman.
MELVA GREEN: This is a family with some deep issues
and some really severe avoidant behavior.
They said when you're broken, you hang onto things,
and your things don't run off.
How did you get broken?
I don't know.
Ma--
They look at each other, and you can see they both know.
But they're not expressing it.
It's just swept under the rug.
Do you think this has anything to do with your relationship
with your daughter?
Probably everything.
MELVA GREEN: Probably everything.
CHEYENNE: It's been bad for my whole life.
It's just that we never dealt with it.
You know, my dad just passed away like not even a month ago.
So it's been really, really hard for me because they're
all I have left.
It is what it is.
Well, yeah, you can't change what already happened.
Neither of them is really ready to go there.
This is tough.
Everybody needs a pull stuff off the porch.
Load the truck.
Take stuff to the back.
[grunt]
All right, you guys, we're all done.
It might not have been the exact ending we were looking for.
But can we at least say we've learned
a lot through this process?
Yeah.
Yes.
CORY CHALMERS: We learned a lot about each other for one,
and what our limitations are.
It's very difficult for both Ruthann and Tamara
to say certain things.
But they're beginning to speak about what happened, and so
many hurts, so much deception that by bringing this to light,
this is an opportunity for Ruthann to really
step on the path to healing.
CORY CHALMERS: If you guys continue
to work on the family stuff, I think this house will
continue to get better too.
This was a great start, I'll call it, a great start.
Yeah.
I feel like even though Ruthann couldn't let
go of a lot of her things, we still
did the most important thing was to make an area livable,
and clean, and safe for her.
I feel like as long as it stays that way,
I don't think we'll need to report her to APS.
I don't think I will.
Ruthann, is this something that you
can continue once we leave?
Yes.