i'm judy and i'm a former food service worker
my mobile home looks like this it needs a lot of work it's healthy it's cluttered it's not safe
and then these mice are running all over the house
i'm maxine and i'm a long time friend and neighbor of judy's she has tried several times to capture
the mice but she won't let them be killed so she has taken recently to feeding them
they're her friends i feel sorry for them because i know they're hungry and i don't want them to die
i am a hoarder but i am also a germaphobe she very much has this feeling
of germs everywhere everybody everywhere the fact that she's a germaphobe and that she's
continued to live in the situation that she lives in is really very hard to weigh
i'm renee and i'm judy's caregiver and neighbor a neighbor of ours introduced
us to each other and we just kind of gelled and ended up becoming friends
and then i went to school to become a caregiver because i felt like judy needed some help
she sanitizes things in the sun regularly
if we have a real hot day i want to put out
things in the sun in my mind i feel like they're going to be sanitized
washing clothes for me is a big job she averages washing one load of laundry eight times
in a row before she kind of feels like they're clean
and she always uses bleach and so it takes the color out of her clothes and everything
i just do not understand why i am a germaphobe and yet live like i do judy likes to write
up lists and it could be anything from trying to remember to buy a light bulb to go grocery
shopping pay bills lists are extremely hard to let go even if they're 40 some years old i still
want to keep them thinking someday i'll go through them but it's not just lists it's a book maybe
old catalogs maybe that i haven't looked at newspapers or the funnies are in there or
some cute picture of a dog or an animal i can't let that stuff go until i've gotten through it
i'm sheri and judy is my mother my mother is a hoarder and always has been
when i was growing up as a little girl i just didn't know how to deal
with it but as i was getting older i'm like mom what are you doing
raising her by myself wasn't easy because she got kind of rebellious when i was like 10
it's when we kind of started having a lot of trouble we just butted heads a lot
and i would try my best to clean up the living room maybe the dining room do the dishes and it
would stay that way for a brief period and it could be a day and then it would be messy again
i just told her i said i know that would be devastating to you but it might be the very
best thing for you i wanted to be safe i wanted to be healthy despite everything that's happened
i still want the best for her
good morning you guys good morning good morning my name is corey chalmers i'm an extreme cleaner
that specializes in biohazard and hoarding judy how you doing today i honestly feel like i met my
execution well that's not a good start to the day listen but i'm trying you have a
lot of people that are here to help you okay like your granddaughter who's here
for the first time in her life how do you feel today christina nervous to
see what it looks like i don't really know what to expect sorry um
that's right i know this is hard for my grandma because
she's not used to people coming in her house what are your concerns for today
things being taken from me that i don't want to be okay people in there
going through my stuff it is probably going to be hard so one thing that we might think about
is that this might represent your best chance toward really being happy safe and healthy
judy's obviously really distraught right now about this whole process she does not seem ready to
have people touching her stuff i think the best thing i can do at this point is to take her in
just one-on-one work with her and learn what her parameters are what her rules are as far as what
she'll let go and what she wants to keep so what if we talk about these shredded up newspapers
on the floor there's droppings on them there's there's urine on them from the rodents so what
prevents you from throwing stuff like this away i have to go through it and look through it first
tell me what you would expect it might be in something like this that you would have a loss of
um an article that i want to look at a picture of maybe an animal a cute picture this is from
over a year ago and it's been on your floor you know it and you haven't read it yet right
it's something that i want to keep until i can look at it
the problem is the very first thing that i picked up in here you want to hang on to and
so i'm pretty sure that everything else that i pick up you're going to have reasons to want to
hang on to too and nothing will change and we'll leave here with the fear of you dying in this home
the goal right now is to make some decisions on all the things that we put in boxes
so this is where it's going to get a little challenging for you
do you want to keep this yes i do i can bleach them uh keep keep oh yeah keith i know it's icky
but don't throw it away why it's got mouse poop on it i know it everything does a mouse has pooped on
it fine that one's fine judy has a reason or excuse for everything and one of the ones she
keeps saying is that she's going to clean stuff keep just like she said that laying something
out in the sun is going to somehow sanitize it i'm going to challenge one of your cleaning processes
okay so i'm going to get my atp monitor i'm going to swab the surface of something that
she says is cleaned by the sun and prove to her that it's not working below 40 on this is clean
1158 so is your process working no i'm not doing this to embarrass you no i'm shutting down
how about the bowl would you clean that um what's in the bottom mouse yeah mouse crab if we weren't
here would you keep this no why haven't you thrown it away yet i haven't gotten to
do it yet okay and again that's the issue i know you're never gonna get to this no
i know it right now you have 25 people standing around to help you get to it do you want to get
to it or not can you let go of this stuff to save your life mom i am scared for your health
i'm gonna have to call somebody to pull you out of there and i don't want that let me
take these boxes and get them out of here let me see what's in there first just say dump it
do it say it can't that some of that means something to me
what does this mean to you can be washed i'm done is that more important than your daughter
i'm just all kinds of emotions right now i don't know what to do we can't force her to do it
we're running out of time and i don't think she understands the gravity of what's at stake god
we're just switching tactics to harm reduction which is just all about your safety in the home
just making pathways to your exits and to your important functional items your kitchen your
bathroom three foot wide with your walker i think that's necessary okay there's things that we're
not gonna be able to fix today that are gonna make a safe home that's functioning utilities
i know the toilets haven't been working so that's something you're gonna have to address but what we
can do is make the pathways okay we'll start the process but there's a lot to be done there to make
those pathways it's not easy to shuffle that stuff around to open up three feet this is what we're up
against underneath all those boxes and big things is tons of paper and i know you have a hang up on
paper and i'm begging and pleading with you to let us remove that so we can get to the door
there's absolutely no reason why you need any of that so if you scoop it up though there's some
good stuff what that's so important that you not that it's so important i just want there's a the
film might be some years ago oh this is trash this looks like has been sitting here a good 10 years
those i can return and get the money for it i put you're off for a lot of money
you're look at me i can return the money for it nobody's gonna want to buy that look at me
this is it you have got to trust corey and his guys you have got he's not going to go through
it i mean you have got to do this please how far are we all right all right we just want to deal
with the stuff on the floor right there that's it make this sacrifice for your future please
just don't yes okay i'm gonna deal with this i promise you just this okay
just kind of go through stuff please i promise you i will okay
let's get you out to the tent and i promise i will make progress in here that you can trust okay
is sherry in there she's in the house she'll come in a minute she's just having a moment wow
we're trying to get to the front door you guys that's where our focus needs to
be
our time's up now it's time to take judy and her family into the house to see the little
bit of progress we were able to make not an ideal ending by any means we came in here with the best
intentions we tried every trick in the book with her and yet devastatingly we're walking away with
her having not much change at all there's still a lot of health hazard safety hazards in the home
as a licensed psychologist i'm obligated to notify the proper agencies when i see that an older
person is in danger and judy is most definitely in danger i'm going to call adult protective services
none of us would feel good if something bad would happen to
you in this house i think we would all feel a certain sense of responsibility
it's all going to be a long road ahead but i'm still going to be here for her
i'll still do whatever i can to support her
no thank you that seems like it's a lot more important than some newspapers doesn't it
i wish i could have done better i know i
disappointed myself and everybody but i'm very very grateful for everybody's kindness
that means a lot you take good care of yourself all right hi thanks for being a fan of hoarders
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