My name is Lisa, and I love cooking.
My kitchen has all kinds of wonderful molds
for salmon mousse.
Got that bomb mold, a Mongolian fire pot.
Food is like creativity and possibilities in life.
But I don't have a working refrigerator.
When I buy food, I have to hang the bags from the chandeliers
in order to keep the rats from getting to the food.
I'm Anna, and I'm Lisa's daughter.
My mother's house, it just looks like something
out of a horror movie, like an evil witch lives there.
Something out of a monster movie, where it's
some swamp thing is going to rise out of the basement
because it's created a new life form down there.
They're just food everywhere.
It's as if somebody had just taken a municipal garbage dump
and just dumped it into a house.
My daughter threatens me that everything could be condemned,
that the house could fall in because I'm not
doing enough to maintain it.
The neighborhood that she lives in is really beautiful,
then right in the middle of all of it is my mother's house.
The neighbors are not happy with the house,
and they have been calling the zoning
board about the front yard.
It's a matter of time before one of them looks in the window
and calls the fire department or the health department.
My father was an abusive sociopath, and in a way,
I always felt like it was like living with Jim Jones.
He didn't know how to have a relationship that wasn't
based on fear and control.
Living with my husband was constantly up and down--
you know, very good, very bad.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Move out, I can't stand you.
She was in so much anxiety and fear
over him, that what he said became reality.
She became a hoarder, because he told her she was one,
like a hypnotized person, you know, carrying
out exactly what he described.
All the depression and misery and anger inside her was--
was displayed in the house.
I had gone through so much.
I had cried so much.
And I'd gone into a frozen state.
She's lost contact with reality.
Eventually she'll make some heinous mistake,
and eat something that expired three years ago.
I feel like it's a game of Russian roulette.
Good morning, everybody.
Good morning!
My name is Matt Paxton.
I'm an extreme cleaning specialist.
This is going to be a tough one, because everything
in this house matters so much to you.
This is a great opportunity to work
on your mind and your home.
All right, let's do it.
Pineapple.
Is it dried pineapple?
It is dried pineapple, you're right.
That's meant to be good, right?
Man.
Yeah.
Let's have a bit.
The rats have been eating here and hanging out,
because they're eating and they're pooping.
So, they're everywhere, man.
I'm totally thankful for the mask, actually.
[coughing]
Is it that bad, huh?
Yeah, get a good whiff on that.
Yeah?
That's not good.
Oh!
The kitchen was disgusting.
I have found smells that I've never smelled
before in my entire life.
Quick whiff.
Oh!
Yeah?
The chicken bones were disgusting.
They were dry bones, but they were sweating,
and they smelled like sugar and butt.
Oh!
Oh, my god.
OK, then!
They kinda stink.
There's a lot of food in this kitchen,
and the rats are not staying--
they're dying.
We have a rat!
It's our first flattened rat.
I smell a rat!
Is there a date on him?
No, no date on him.
It's like a scene from an old horror movie.
And that means the rat ate something bad and died.
It sort of reminds me of a "Chainsaw Massacre"
in a way when they enter this house--
full of bones and gore.
The first bag I have here happens to be a bag of cans.
My name is Marc Pfeffer.
I'm a licensed psychotherapist and specialist in the treatment
of compulsive hoarding.
Well, what are your thoughts about the cans?
Oh, I see potential in everything.
Right, but what would that potential be?
There are lots of things you can do with tin snips
to create flowers.
Because of Lisa's intelligence and creativity,
Lisa has taken the infrastructure,
if you will, of a hoarder, the multipurpose,
repurpose use of an item, and taken
it to a whole other level.
Well, you said you see potential in everything,
except for yourself.
Well, I'm too old for potential anymore.
Really?
Yeah.
So this can theoretically then would
have more potential than you?
It's very hard to listen to this.
To hear my own mother say that there's
more potential in something that's
trash than there is in her--
that's an incredibly painful thing to hear from my own mom.
I really did my best to be there for my mom,
but what comes out of her mouth, it makes me very upset,
angry, frustrated, sad, all at once.
Those bowls held a bag of sugar.
Yeah, they showed me the sugar and I threw
it away, because it had been-- - Why?
--it had mice in it, mice poop.
It had mice in the-- in the sugar?
Yeah, they'd eaten through everything.
And here I thought I had--
They got into it.
Now to downsize.
Are you trying to downsize?
It's in my-- in the back of my mind,
that's why we're chucking-- oh, and the craft, of course.
I need that.
What-- what was there?
It was probably some type of liquid jar
that got crushed by all the weight.
By what weight?
Of the three tons of trash on top of it.
Do you ever just get to a point you just give up because it's
just so much stuff?
Not because there's so much stuff.
I'm frozen.
It's not--
Yeah, I'm starting to get frozen in this room.
We've been working for an hour, and I don't
think we even made a dent.
And this is just fossil.
It's not even, like, eaten, it's just fossilized.
Lisa?
Yes?
Just out of curiosity, do you know what this is?
I have to see it closer up.
I'm gonna bring it up to you.
We're just curious.
I don't know what it is.
Now, did you guys say what it is?
We don't have a clue.
It's an old peanut butter jar.
Yes, but I've put--
But you've put contact paper on it.
Yes, right.
Is this a keeper?
- Yeah. - Are you going to eat it?
I might.
I'd have to see.
No, don't eat that!
Please don't eat that!
Why?
It's delicious.
I can't believe you just did that.
So close it up.
Ugh.
I just wanted to show you that--
Oh, sweet Lord!
Why?
It's a candy.
It ain't candy!
It is candy!
It's trash.
It's not trash, it's really tasty.
I have never run out of words in my life.
I don't know what to say.
It's the most disgusting thing I've
ever seen in my entire life.
I am shocked.
I have no words.
Perhaps he's met his match.
I have.
I cannot believe that this lady ate this
black tar from 25 years ago.
She's just chomping away on it, and
she's got a smile on her face.
It's even tastier with cream cheese.
Let's get the spoons.
Wow.
This could be a before.
I mean, this is so disgusting.
But this could be-- this could be
the house we come in to fix rather than the after shot,
you know?
I feel like I've let go of the thought of her
as basically a normal person with a problem,
and now I think the problem has taken over so much of her life
and the space in her brain, and that's very sad.
Yeah.
That's incredibly sad to realize.
Where do you go from here?
I'm really scared that she's going
to die before she gets help.
The reality is we do need to call APS.
Yeah.
It's a fact.
It is the right thing to do.
Anna knows that.
I know that.
Everyone knows it.
The woman is sick, period.
She's extremely sick.
If she thinks in any way that I've been involved in calling
APS.
Anna is afraid to call Adult Protective Services,
because she fears being alienated from her mother
for the rest of her life.
Well, you don't have to call APS.
We are proud to.
I feel that there's substantial resources needed
to get you the help required to be unfrozen,
and to live a safer life.
I need to get help from local authorities
to get the resources involved.
That includes calling APS, Adult Protective Services.
No.
I-- I--
And that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
No, it's not a good thing.
We want you to be safe.
We don't feel that you're safe here.
You know, when the phone rings,
I expect to be getting a call that your body's been found.
And that's how I expect to have my mother die,
and it's not what I want.
Can I ask for a couple of months reprieve
before you do this?
No.
Why not?
Because in the meantime, somebody else will call.
You come to them first voluntarily,
they treat you very differently than if somebody else turns
you in, because they will.
They've been circling around like sharks.
I don't see another way out.
I'm resigned to having all those people in the house.
I'm just sat on the porch, and let them
do whatever they wanted to do.
Lisa is finally accepting what needs to be done,
but my sense is that she will continue to hoard items
for the rest of her life.
I don't think she'll ever recover in her lifetime.
I think I have to sort of say goodbye to the hope
that I'm going to see my mother again.
I feel like I'm dealing with the death of a parent,
because it's the death of the possibility of having her back,
of-- of having somebody who's sane again in my life.
Where did the poster go?
Where did the cover go?
A whole bunch of things missing.
It's a horrible feeling, it really is.
It's better to have the realization
than continue an illusion, but it's
still really is very painful.
It's going to take me a long time to accept this.
Where did the poster go?