Messiest House

OK, on my facebook I joked about the episode of Clean House in which they found the messiest home in the country. Ha Ha Ha, and it wasn't MY house! Small victories taken where I can find them all all that, I have to laugh at how many of us can joke about our messy homes.

But this episode was really sad. The host of the show even cried, as it was so.... so.... much? There are seriously no words to describe how overwhelming it was. They had to stage the garage sale in an empty store, they had 5000 visitors to the sale, and they made OVER $17,000! (At garage sale prices... that is a lot of crap sold. Proceeds from the sale went to charity.) This woman had so much stuff in her attic that her living room ceiling was collapsing.

I downloaded a few pictures from The Cincinnati Enquirer to show you how messy your home isn't:

This is the living room...


The Home owner's bedroom...


The kitchen...


...and the basement. You could do a 360 degree turn and never see a wall.

The thing that bothered me isn't that they came in and helped this woman out. That doesn't bother me. I don't believe this show "rewards" people's bad habits - everyone needs a hand sometimes. What bothered me is that this isn't just a messy house. This isn't a woman that can start the flylady system and in 6-10 weeks be on top of her home. This is mental illness - and the show should have arranged for some counseling, because this isn't going away. This woman had to buy a third Christmas tree because she couldn't remember where she had stuffed the other two she already had. There were rodents living within the clutter in this basement, and the homeowner actually got mad at the end of all this. She was really upset that all of her stuff was gone - and I have not doubt that, since this episode was taped 3 months ago, she has started collecting again. She was "attached" to all of this junk; gift bags from 15 years ago, hundreds of blazers she never wore, stuff that was behind all that stuff in the basement that she hadn't seen in over 10 years - didn't even remember she had... she didn't want to let go of it. She'd "sort through it later, when (she) had time."

Now, I want you to know that I normally really like this show. Most of the people they help have portions of their homes that have gotten out of control with clutter, or they need help bouncing back after a personal trauma temporarily threw them off track... and they're really good at helping these people and their individual situations. I think Niecy Nash and the rest of the crew honestly want to help others. However, if they're going to help people they need to really help people. Have counselors and/or psychologists weed out who is mentally ill as opposed to who is just an over achiever at slack house keeping. Because if they don't? It doesn't matter how much furniture they give them or how pretty they leave it looking... it's exploitation. In the end they may not have helped this woman at all, not in ways that really matter.