A&E's Hoarders is addictive yet painful to watch, but while Hoarders has been part of
the television landscape for years, how much do viewers really know about this disturbing
TV hit? Here is the untold truth of the long-running documentary series.
A&E programming executives hoped they'd have a hit on their hands with Hoarders, but it's
unlikely they expected the show to become as big as it became right out of the gate.
The 2009 premiere was viewed by an audience of 2.5 million, which an A&E press release
declared to be "the most-watched series premiere" in the network's history in both the 18-49
and 25-54 demographics.
When the series returned for a second season, ratings were even bigger. The Wrap reported
that according to A&E, the Season 2 premiere attracted 3.2 million viewers. That episode,
in fact, was the highest-rated season premiere of any A&E premiere in a key demo, and it
also was, quote, "the most watched telecast of any show on the network" that year. When
compared to the first season's numbers, ratings in the demo had risen by a whopping 46 percent.
As subsequent seasons aired, ratings never again hit those heights, but they remained
solid. As The Hollywood Reporter pointed out, the premiere of the fifth season in 2012 drew
2.4 million total viewers, a respectable number for a basic cable series — watched by nearly
as many who viewed the series premiere three years earlier.
"All of it just began to accumulate, and the more it accumulated, the harder it was to
get after it."
The sixth season of Hoarders debuted in August 2012, with A&E's press release promising "the
most dramatic stories." What fans didn't realize was that Season 6 would be Hoarders' last
— for a while, at least.
In September 2013, Today reported that an A&E spokesperson confirmed the show had been
canceled, and fans thought they'd seen the last of the show. Hoarders, however, wasn't
dead — it was just gathering strength for a second incarnation on a whole new network.
In early 2015, the Lifetime network announced it was picking up the show for a seventh season,
under the new name Hoarders: Family Secrets. This new iteration of Hoarders tweaked the
format, which would now throw live segments into the mix. In fact, Channel Guide reported
the season would kick off with an hour-long special focusing on two cases. One of these
was a so-called relapsed hoarder who was looking at a jail sentence if his home didn't pass
a city inspection, while the other focused on a Massachusetts family confronting a hoarding
problem. The latter segment concluded with a live intervention by the hoarder's loved
ones.
"You can't bathe, and you carry the smell of your house with you."
A total of nine episodes of Hoarders: Family Secrets aired on Lifetime. The new format
did not provide the kind of ratings that had been anticipated, and the show was canceled
once more. Yet Hoarders rose from the ashes of cancellation yet again, and the show was
quietly resurrected in 2016 — this time back on its original network, A&E.
The eighth season kicked off by profiling a woman who was a bundle of contradictions.
On one hand, she was a self-described germaphobe; on the other, her stuff-filled home was teeming
with mice.
"I am a hoarder, but I am also a germaphobe."
For this new revival season, the live elements of the Family Secrets edition had been ditched,
with the show returning to the original format that made Hoarders successful in the first
place. A&E ran Hoarders for one more season, concluding
in early 2017 before once again pulling the plug.
Yet that was still not the end. In 2019, a tenth season premiered, made up of two-hour
episodes that promised, according to an A&E press release, quote, "an even deeper look
at what goes into dealing with a hoarding crisis of epic magnitude."
Some of the things viewers witnessed on Hoarders were the stuff of nightmares. Yet for the
show's professional home organizer Matt Paxton, there was one house that stuck in his mind
as the all-time worst thing he'd ever witnessed in all his years on the show. That particular
home, he told Cleveland.com, belonged to a, quote, "sweet lady" whose refrigerator had
been stuffed with the stacked-up corpses of her deceased cats, stored right alongside
her condiments, making for one of the most disturbing collections on Hoarders.
As Paxton explained, hoarding wasn't officially categorized as a mental disorder until after
Hoarders had already been on the air.
In an interview with Channel Guide, Paxton said,
"I'd been in it for two years before I knew how common it was. People laugh, but I didn't
realize how big hoarding was until the day after my very first episode of Hoarders. That's
when I realized — 'Oh, this is national! This is everywhere... and it's a secret.'"
Hoarders is produced for A&E by TLG Motion Pictures, and anyone interested in having
a friend or family member's hoarding problem featured on the show can apply through the
company's website. There, a comprehensive form can be filled out, and there are a lot
of questions to answer.
One question asks,
"Does the hoarder have a compulsive urge to acquire?"
Another asks whether the hoarder has an "emotional attachment" to the hoarded stuff, and yet
another asks how difficult it would be for emergency personnel to move equipment through
the home.
The form requests that photos of the home be provided, while posing some practical questions
as well, such as whether furniture is able to be used for its intended purpose or if
the kitchen can actually function to prepare food.
Given the tons of stuff that must be cleared out of a hoarder's home, it shouldn't be surprising
that not all of that cleanup can be documented within the time constraints of a one-hour
episode of television. In the interview with Reality Blurred, Hoarders organizer Dorothy
Breininger revealed that the process typically begins with her making a phone call to the
hoarders in order to feel them out and determine how receptive they are to making a change
in their lives. If all goes well, she'll next do a walk-through of their homes to determine
the extent of the cleanup she's looking at.
After asking the hoarder, quote, "what they want the most" out of the experience with
Hoarders, Breininger said that she then dives into the nuts and bolts of the cleanup, getting
into all the various details and logistics involved. For example, is an auctioneer required?
What about tow trucks, or maybe a crew outfitted in hazmat suits? Those are just some of the
factors to be considered when creating her plan.
As one of the organizers seen on Hoarders, Cory Chalmers has helped dozens of people
clean their cluttered abodes for the show. In an interview with Iowa's KIMT 3 News, Chalmers
detailed some of the unexpected things he's discovered during his extensive work helping
hoarders clean up their homes and straighten out their lives. He said,
"Before I got into this, I never thought I would find hundreds of animals. We've found
tens of thousands of dollars, we've even found dead bodies in these hoards. We find everything."
Chalmers said that, when working with a hoarder, it's important to understand the dangers of
hoarding — ranging from fire hazards to health risks. Equally as important, he explained,
is to recognize the underlying causes for the behavior so that can also be effectively
addressed.
He said,
"The biggest two reasons people hoard are depression and post-trauma."
"So the goal here is to educate people on what to look for in their hoarding clients
so we can reverse that."
Arguably one of the biggest Hoarders success stories involves a historic mansion in Greensboro,
North Carolina that was featured in the show's ninth season. In the episode, an interior
designer named Sandra had filled every square inch of the place with her hoarded stuff,
losing the home to foreclosure in the process. When the house was purchased by new owners,
Sandra refused to leave and insisted her stuff stay as well.
With the help of the Hoarders team, the new owners were able to relocate Sandra to a new
home and begin the monumental process of cleaning out the house, which, as reported by News
& Record, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
After years of neglect and hoarding, the home required extensive renovations. In January
2019, the owners revealed their plans: to rent out the mansion for short-term stays
in order to raise money to complete the ongoing work.
Co-owner Michael Fuko-Rizza told the News & Record,
"To the average person, the house looks done. But it needs various amounts of additional
work and ongoing maintenance. This just allows us a little more time to continue investing
in the property and letting people enjoy it at the same time."
Verna Carter was the subject of a 2012 episode of Hoarders, described in the episode synopsis
as a, quote, "hot-headed ex-cop, ex-drug trafficker, and ex-prison inmate who has cleverly evaded
laws against hoarding by arguing that her hoard was her artistic expression."
"My house has gone past the point of being cluttered."
When she was admitted to a hospital because her home was no longer safe for her, Carter
was told that she wouldn't be released unless her house was completely cleaned out of all
the stuff she'd hoarded over the years.
Agreeing to let Hoarders help, Carter was apparently dissatisfied by what took place.
One of her neighbors wrote about the experience for Patch and quoted Carter complaining that
the Hoarders cleanup was never finished because, quote, "they just ran out of trucks."
Two months after filming ended, the neighbor noted, cleanup crews were reportedly still
hauling stuff out of Carter's house, with plenty more work yet to be done. Carter admitted
that her particular situation may have actually been beyond the scope of Hoarders, saying,
"Truthfully, they did not realize how much stuff there was at my house. I feel that if
they had gone in beforehand and seen how it was, they would have said 'no."
When the tenth season of Hoarders debuted in 2019, the first episode featured couple
Andy and Becky of Marysville, Washington. According to A&E's episode description, the
pair declared, quote, "their constitutional right to live however they choose."
"I am fighting for my freedom. I want my freedom, and they won't let you have it."
The couple's story was certainly not a new one for their neighbors, who'd been impacted
by their hoarding for years. In fact, a 2014 report from KOMO News detailed their neighbors's
ongoing battles to get the county to force the couple to clean up the place. While the
county had been taking action and sending letters, by 2019 the situation had deteriorated
to the point that the couple was facing jail time if they didn't address the mess, Distractify
reported.
The episode had a seemingly happy ending, with the couple forced to confront their hoarding
addiction while neighbors pitched in to help with the cleanup. After their experience on
Hoarders, the episode revealed an additional 60 tons of stuff was removed. The couple presumably
managed to avoid jail and remained in their home.
A 2016 episode of Hoarders featured a woman named Peggy whose packed-to-the-rafters home
in Pekin, Illinois contained numerous dead animal carcasses. In the episode, a city code
enforcement officer was seen poking around in the place, horrified when he discovered
the skeletal remains of dogs and birds within the massive mess. All told, the official discovered
about two dozen animal carcasses during the episode.
The day after the episode aired, reported the Peoria Journal Star, police launched an
investigation. But despite the city code enforcement officer's knowledge of what was taking place
within the home — and the fact that he actually appeared briefly in the episode — a spokesperson
for Tazewell County Animal Control claimed the department had no knowledge of what had
been found in the house until the episode aired.
A spokesperson for the Pekin Police Department likewise claimed they had no knowledge of
the dead animals until seeing the episode.
A 2016 episode of Hoarders focused on Milwaukee, Wisconsin couple Roger and Gerri Stank, who,
quote, "hoarded themselves out of their home" and were potentially going to lose their property
if they could not get it up to code."
By May 2019, Milwaukee's WISN 12 News reported that not only had the hoarding sadly not abated
since they appeared on the show, but it had escalated to the point that the city wanted
to tear the whole place down. With reports of dozens of stray animals — and even some
wild ones — living inside the house, the city declared the home to be uninhabitable
and issued an order to demolish the house.
According to a subsequent report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in December 2019,
the home had been officially condemned, with an order issued to raze the structure.
Gerri Stank told the newspaper,
"I'm so hurt that I don't know what to say. They can stop right now. They don't have to
bulldoze the house."
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