What’s the opposite of Bigfoot, a hairy loner that lives in the woods and avoids people (but loves grainy, out-of-focus trail cams)?  Probably not pathological hoarders, but maybe that’s close:  they can’t get away from their meddling relations and the government, which imperiously demands their children not live in homes covered in old Chinese newspapers and rat feces. The gall!

Unlike our elusive, hirsute woodland friend, these folks have the opportunity to bask in the limelight—of shame.  If reality television serves any useful social function (debatable), it’s that it occasionally shames mentally-scarred weirdos, making the rest of feel better about ourselves in the process.

At least, I always suspected that was the point of shows with hoarders and morbidly obese people (I wonder how big—no pun intended—of an overlap there is between those disorders?) was for us to shake our heads and thank God we aren’t as screwed up as those people.  As Audre Myers gently implies here, we’re all screwed up (true), and but for the Grace of God, we’d be holding onto broken baseball bats and takeout flyers.

I also can’t criticize Hoarding Americans too much, as my natural inclinations towards packrattery and a weird holdover Depression/Recession Era mentality make me loathe to waste anything—or to let too much go.  I’m especially that way with books, so when I successfully donated a massive cardboard box of old books to the local library, I took it as a good sign that I am not a hoarder, just a slob.  Shew!

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We all need grace and compassion—even the hoarders.

With that, here is Audre’s review of the A&E series Hoarders:

If you knew me, you would notice that I’m neat. My house is neat. My clothes are neat. A place for everything and everything in it’s place. I can’t handle clutter – even on my desk; paper work gets put away and if I have bills to pay, they’re right in back of my keyboard and I pull them out, pay them, and trash all the extraneous stuff. Neat.

So how in the world am I interested in the Netflix series Hoarders? I chuckle when I tell you that each episode of Hoarders is like a mini horror movie – and I love horror movies! My mind cannot grasp the sheer tonnage of garbage, the filth, the claustrophobia of the hoards. You ask yourself over and over again as you watch the episodes unfold how, HOW!, can people possibly live like that? The answer is – we are all fallen, broken people. There but for the grace of God go I – and you. These people aren’t stupid, they aren’t lazy, they aren’t slobs. It’s amazing, as you watch the episodes, the vast number of these people with IQs above average, people who have made big accomplishments in their lives and the lives of others. Some others are, indeed, uneducated but have made productive lives for themselves and their families.

But something happens. Some event in their lives connects with a tangled wire in their brains and one result is … well, hoarding. Keeping all that stuff around them gives them something they need – they feel attachment to all the million things they own and the very thought of losing one scrap of paper or one shirt or one shoe throws them into mental and emotional chaos. It is the most remarkable thing. You and I sit and watch and shake our heads but for these folks, this is their life, this is how they live, and they know it’s not right, not good, not logical but the ‘tie that binds’ is too tight for them to loosen by themselves.

The reason I like Hoarders more than other shows on the topic, is the professional help they get – a psychologist, a professional organizer, a cleaning crew, and any number of friends and family who show up to help clear the hoard. We see how it does, indeed, take a village. The other thing I like is the post script at the end of each episode that clues us in to what happened after the cameras and crews are gone. Some folks win; some folks just slide back but it’s very moving to watch, either way.

Watch one episode. You’ll find that they become like potato chips – you can’t eat just one. They are compelling, real world, and a reminder that none of us knows what the next guy is carrying.