How Clean is your house? Filthiest Apartment EVER! (video)

A friend sent this to me yesterday. I made the mistake of clicking on it while I was still eating breakfast. :puke:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCpzP7nxsxs

Plus, The crazy Birdshit Lady!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHltq39Uo44

Ewwww! :scared:

I feel much less slobbish after watching that. Guy needs some serious help.

the filth that people live in makes me feel like Martha Stewart! I think these two clips are the best in the series. I wouder what makes people allow themselves and their filth to be filmed?be

but I know what you mean; I get hard on myself when I leave dishes in the sink for too long or don't vacuum three times a week (at least). After seeing these I won't be beating myself up as much, lol!

sans glasses I read, "I get a hard on myself when I leave dishes in the sink too long".....I thought, well, that's f'n weird but I did re-read it. :D

instead as it could easily be misread...especially by those of us without the "cleanest" of minds. ;-)

well, I do BUT I TAKE EXCEPTION WITH YOU SAYING IT :D

the blonde with her 'do and manicured nails cracked me up

It's hard enough keeping my house clean with help and three kids and two dogs. I would probably throw up in some of those places.

about my house.

I'm a messy person but I can still walk all the way through my apartment :D

is I have a sink full of dishes and my kitchen floor needs a mopping, really bad.

I just moved into an apartment that is much more "open" than my last one and just seems to be easier to clean. I am loving wood floors - much easier to keep clean than carpet or tiling. :D

not a stitch of carpeting in the whole place. You can get a little dustmop..(like the ones they use in the grocery stores) and zip zip, you are done.

That dude could just as easily live in a shack on a landfill.

just wow...

I just watched the whole thing because i had to see the "after"!!!

:wow:

it's more a sign of mental illness.

I really don't find that amusing, just sad. People need help they're not getting.

My mom's house was bad (but not quite *that* bad). There's definitely something wrong when people can't do what needs to be done to take at least moderate care of the space they occupy. I feel bad for the tenant of that flat, because chances are, it will look like that again in a year or three, unless there is someone to help them learn new habits and address why they allowed it to get that bad in the first place.

I think the good thing about going "public" with the problem is that his friends and clients will encourage him to keep it tidy. Sometimes situations like that just become a vicious cycle; the house gets too messy and then a person feels overwhelmed that it's too much to deal with, so it gets messier...the person gets even more overwhelmed, so it gets messier-until at last the person feels so hopeless about it that they become depressed and just give up on any attempts at cleaning. Having someone else attack the problem might be just the fresh start they needed to break the cycle.

I guess the concern is, what happens next time "it gets too messy"? If the person still hasn't learned how to take the steps to start getting it cleaned up again, what's to prevent that cycle the next time? I hope the encouragement from the friends and clients is enough to get them into better habits so that it never reaches that point.

away. When they moved from here to Greyslake, it was incredible. And, even though I knew she was sick (she calls it 'my problem'), I had no idea of the depth of it until I tried to help her pack.

The packers needed to get an additional truck and send in 10 more packers. What should have been a 2 day job turned into 4. It was horrific.

they're not doing something else?

Mine is reading. Mrs R's is cleaning.

The neighbors laugh (good-naturedly) because 75% of the time when they drop by unannounced, she's got that broom going. But boy, is this place ever clean all the time.

(Except for my office, of course.)

Redstone

It's actually her, her daughter, and I don't know how many cats and dogs.

Walking over the threshold is like forcing yourself through a solid wall of animal smells, but don't worry too much- there IS a bit of a path from the front door, through the decaying trash and junk, to whatever is in the back (I've never been in the back, and I never intend to go there).

I've given her up as a client because the computer table has cockroach shells an inch thick on it. Seriously.

The times I've had to go there I've always had to go home and shower after.

Yep, those people and places really do exist.

People are disgusting. Once everyone realizes that, you'll be better off.
Duckie

At least that's what I've read about hoarding.

My mom was like that. Mom's place was cleaner as far as the sinks and bathrooms, but the pile-up of pure junk was much higher and thicker. Compulsive hoarder who got worse and worse as she got older. There was no place to sit down and read or even do anything. All flat surfaces were covered with stuff except the recliner she slept in. All the floors only had paths through the rooms.

Took me five years to clean out her house.

One bedroom that was 10 by 20 feet was FIVE FEET DEEP in cardboard boxes, fabric, sewing stuff, and such. I had to climb ON TOP OF THE STUFF to get across to the other side. That was one thousand cubic feet of junk in one room!!!

Nobody was allowed to throw anything but kitchen garbage away. Had to keep plastic forks, tin cans, old coffee jars, etc. etc. Once we tried to throw away fifty year old rotten hat boxes, but she dissociated and started growling at me and cussing me out, and then dragged the trash bags back in from the street, two weeks after she had surgery, so we had to wait until she died. Very sad. I could have helped her have a much more pleasant old age, but she wouldn't hear of it, because she knew best, in her mind. She fell down and stumbled over her junk a lot, and could have broken a hip, but wouldn't accept any help. She got Alzheimer's and got meaner and meaner.

I couldn't go in her house, because I got sick from the dust & had to go to the emergency room because of my allergies, and she was so impossible to get along with I stopped communicating with her. I still have a lot of stuff I will have to sell over the Internet, I suppose--patterns, sewing stuff, fabric that's still good.

I think it's absolutely impossible to do anything about it with most people.

If you want good books on cleaning out clutter, read anything by Don Aslett.
Clutter's Last Stand, Not for Packrats Only, Clutter Free Finally and Forever...he has many more. He started out as a professional housecleaner but then discovered the real problem was hoarding clutter...and started writing books on that when he realized he'd hit a nerve with America.

one of my friends had something similar happen with both her aunt and stepmother. Her aunt got Alzheimer's and did exactly what your mother did-except she often wouldn't throw out food, either. She was worth several million dollars but never spent much of anything-acted as if she were living in poverty. She didn't have a will or any offspring, so when she died her estate went to the state. She had pushed everyone in her life away at that point, even though family did try everything to help.

My friend's stepmother had a brain tumor and became obsessed with shopping. Her personality changed after the tumor was removed and she lost many of her friends (she had become very hostile towards pretty much everyone). When she passed away she left everything to a next door neighbor that she barely spoke to rather then leave anything to her ds who had tried so hard to help her. The house was FILLED with mostly unopened merchandise.

My own mother was a real pack rat when I was growing up, but she has changed in recent years. Now she actually lives a pretty spartan existence. The change came after she spent some time teaching English in rural China. The people there had so little, yet they seemed happier than most of the people she knew in America. Once she returned she sold her home and most of her belongings and moved into a place half the size of the one she had once owned.

I was the only surviving child and I am lucky I have a hard-working boyfriend to help.

We threw away over 200 large trash bags of pure junk. We've given away stuff, sent it to an auction house, sold it on eBay (Three Sisters Web Sales has some of my stuff) and given stuff away to charity and poor people.

We still have stuff to go through, but at least you can walk through the house. It has about 1500 square feet, and the stuff the auction house got filled up a 40 foot gooseneck trailer! It was furniture and 60 boxes of glass, china, tchotchkes and other stuff I didn't need. And that was just part of it. We're in the process of moving up there and selling my house in the city.

We've moved 22 bookshelves and the books thereon, from the city house up there. And I don't get rid of my books, because they are not pulp fiction or bodice-rippers. They're college & grad school textbooks and stuff on any and all non-fiction subjects, and a little bit of fiction.

I still recommend Don Aslett's books. I was quoted anonymously (when Mom and Dad were still alive) in CLUTTER FREE: FINALLY AND FOREVER, so that makes me a published author. I know that Mom's junk drove Dad crazy, and I figure he must have had the patience of a saint to put up with her. He threw her out of his bedroom many years ago, because of her junk.

They could have had a much more pleasant old age if she had not been so bullheaded. Anyone who tries to help old people is seen as meddling in their affairs and being nosy.

some help. I also have a friend or two who would probably appreciate "CLUTTER FREE: FINALLY AND FOREVER".(Appreciate it or not they could use it)! ;-)

And I know what you mean about books; mine are mostly nonfiction, with a fair number of 100 year old (and older) classics. I'd sell them one Alibris or Abe books if I had to get rid of any of them-though books are some of the most difficult things to let go!

I feel for those five birds living with her.

Perhaps because my father is a packrat and my parents' house is rapidly becoming overwhelmed with "stuff." :scared: I am a regular at the Goodwill drop off and the flylady system but still, I do have a book addiction, plus I just like "things." It is difficult to do but I am slowly reducing the pile and trying to retrain myself NOT to buy new stuff!

in recent years (even my closets have bookshelves in them, lol)! My mom was a major pack rat when I was growing up, but my dad's home has always been a spartan zen garden-unfortunately I inherited mom's tendencies. I'm getting better about it, though, and I avoid buying anything more. I think part of it for me was that we were ALWAYS worried about going without as kids, so now I hang onto things because "I might need it someday" I finally realized that I needed space in the house and serenity more than I needed the stuff! I use Freecycle as often as possible to get rid of stuff, take other items to Goodwill or sell them on eBay. Eventually maybe my home will start to look more like my father's home always has!