Disgusting Hoarder Stories That Will Make Any House Look Clean

Trista - October 7, 2021
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Disgusting Hoarder Stories That Will Make Any House Look Clean
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A&E introduced the stomach-turning show known as “Hoarders” in 2009. While some people already knew about this unique condition, other viewers were blown away by the unusual behavior. The episodes feature average American people who live a secret life of hoarding. That is, they save everything. And that doesn’t mean things of value — monetary or sentimental. A hoarder will keep garage, literally. Vintage treasures like old family photos or antique lamps has nothing to do with hoarding. Hoarding can be a difficult situation to deal with, not only for the people who are actually hoarders but their friends and family as well. It affects everyone around them and is not an easily treatable condition. It requires a lot of hard work, personal dedication, and time to manage a hoarding situation.

That’s why it’s important to recognize if you have a hoarding situation or not before it becomes a problem that’s too big for you to handle. On the show, some episodes feature hoarders fighting with their family members, or crying because they have to get rid of junk. In certain cases, the hoarding does get better, but not all of the time. We searched Reddit to find crazy hoarder stories that reveal the truth behind people who deal with family members with a hoarding condition. Some of these Redditors are hoarders themselves, or they work for cleaning companies that go into these dirty situations. Here are some of the most disgusting hoarder stories that will make your home feel exceptionally clean.

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30. A Mother Who Never Picks Up After Herself

Hoarding is a sign of mental illness, so sufferers shouldn’t be looked down on too harshly for their actions. What they really need is professional help, not someone to judge them. So there are some stories here that should be taken with a grain of salt to remind us that a hoarder’s mental state is much different from our own. But this story is definitely one of the more extreme ones, where a woman won’t lift a finger to clean up after herself because she believes she’s a saint. Her child, gettheloutasia, is the one posting this story.

“It takes A LOT for her to relinquish one tiny thing. She is ready to go to war for her hoard babies, her plastic containers, her plastic bags, her rats and roaches, mites and silverfish, her broken “still good” teapot that she wants to fix by coloring the chipped spout in. She breaks things regularly. I found pieces of broken plates and bowls under the fridge. […] She leaves a trail of food crumbs behind her, chunks of food rotting inside the microwave, and expired moldy food in the fridge. She retrieves expired food I throw out, so I throw it elsewhere.”

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29. Those Are Not Where Teeth Belong

When a child helps their hoarder parent clean out their home, it can be a relief to get rid of a lot of stuff they don’t want anymore. That means that there’s room for better quality things or to just have the space where the house can feel like a home again. Getting a hoarder, especially a parent, to agree to clean out their home, can feel like pulling teeth. Unfortunately for pandemicshutdown, that last pun probably hit too close to home for them when they were helping their hoarder mother with some cleaning.

“She has really made an effort to improve, and we got rid of a whole trash bag of garbage and trash bag for donations. But when I opened her purses up to make sure there was nothing shoved inside. I grabbed teeth. Real. Human. Teeth. Hers. Not dentures. oh god, I was not prepared.” No one can be prepared to find that kind of thing in a purse, nor could anyone understand why the teeth were there, to begin with. What was she saving them for?

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28. When Christmas Should Be the Happiest Time of the Year, And It’s Not

Christmas should be both joyful and a little stressful for everyone involved. There are presents to buy, meals to prepare, and decorating to get done to ensure that your home is presentable, even when you don’t have company coming over. But it can be made even more stressful if you’re related to someone who’s a hoarder. You don’t want to go over to their home packed with stuff, but you feel obligated to because they’re your family, and you don’t want to hurt their feelings. So when JRDax realized that they would be forced to spend more time with their hoarder family, they felt the need to vent on Reddit.

“Last year, I stayed at my partner’s house for Christmas and just visited my family on Christmas Eve & Boxing Day. Unfortunately, this year, my partner’s family has moved 4hrs away, so I can’t have the diplomatic balance of spending time with both. I recently visited for a few days and stayed at the hoarded house, and it was awful. I was having allergy symptoms the entire time, my asthma flared up, and the kitchen was so disgusting I kept finding ways to avoid eating food cooked there. My mum always used to use rotten/out-of-date food without a second thought, so now I have big issues around food hygiene.”

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27. A Sister Who Doesn’t Learn The Mistakes Of Her Hoarding Situation After A Flood

When a natural disaster occurs, it can be stressful trying to save as much of your stuff as possible. This becomes a bigger problem for those who are hoarders. They want to save everything, but that’s just not possible, and they can really lose their cool when they discover how much of their stuff they’re going to have to part with. But not Rainbow-Maker’s sister; she focused not on the important stuff but the insignificant stuff that wasn’t even going to help her cope through a disaster.

“Luckily, I was at my parents’ house at the time of the flooding incident. […] Guess what my hoarder older sister was doing at that time? She was busy saving all her stupid junk (never-ending yarns, old magazines, rubbishes, etc.). She didn’t even save her food stocks. […] All she did was complain that her yarns were smelly. She hasn’t thrown out her damaged and smelly cabinets yet. They have started to grow mold. Still, she insists that they are still in good condition. […] She is literally the most useless person you could have during an emergency.”

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26. When There Are More Fruit Flies In Your Home Than People

Fruit flies can be a real pest during the warmer summer months, especially if you have fruits in your home. But they also show up if you have trash bins that haven’t been cleaned up or emptied in a while or spills of soda on the ground that haven’t been cleaned. That’s why they’re a frequent occurrence in hoarders’ homes because nothing has really been cleaned up. Unfortunately for Crazy-Comb, this was a regular phenomenon throughout their childhood, to the point that they thought it was supposed to be normal.

“My [hoarder parent] justified this with excuses about It being normal and not [fixable] with cleaning or changing any household habits. Buying fruit fly traps and leaving them out forever, even once full of dead bugs, was common. The traps were not replaced; only new additional ones were bought. It was always [embarrassing] for me when others could see the fly stickers on our windows from the outside, but for some reason, I never questioned it. I legit thought, until today, that every house has this issue once per year.”

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25. When Hoarding Results In The Loss Of Life

You want your home to be safe in every way possible. That’s why some people invest in the latest technology to do so, whether it’s security cameras or alarm systems. But some people spend their money on the wrong things, and when they don’t learn to let them go, it actually creates a hazard in the home that can have disastrous results. That’s what happened to johnboy11a, who worked as a firefighter and was sent to a house that was on fire.

“Mom and two young children were not home at the time. Upon our arrival, we found the whole downstairs involved. Once we got a good knock on the fire, we found a LOT of junk blocking access to an exit door by the bottom of the steps. We found the deceased father by that door with lots of junk blocking him from getting the door open. There were also no smoke detectors in the house. That evening, I replaced the smoke detectors in my parents’ house and my grandmother’s house.”

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24. A Hoarding Problem That Follows You Across the Country

When there are people you don’t like in your life, it can be a relief to finally get away from them. It could mean moving across the country or just going to a new school. But what can you do when that problematic person decides to follow you instead? No one wants to be that mean person and tell them to go away, but you know if you don’t say anything, you’re never going to find peace again. That’s what happened to gwarsh41 when their family tried to get out of a hoarding situation, but it continued to follow them around.

“My mother’s best friend from her 20s (I think) was a close family friend my whole life. Eventually, my dad got relocated, we moved halfway across the country. A year passes, and then she pops up. She moved in with us because she had legit, nothing, no savings at all [and] she took the big game room above the garage […]. Under her bed was stuffed with old fast food bags, still with food in them. There was a pile of tampons with a towel over it. The storage closets were filled with trash bags pressed on top of all my family’s holiday decorations. The carpet was absolutely ruined. Where she tossed her route 44 sonic cups was covered in mold. The bathroom had been a wonderful light brown tile; it now had black streaks all over.”

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23. Electronics Are Not The Best “Investments”

In this day and age, electronics are being replaced faster than we can blink. Whenever there’s a new development, everyone throws their “old” ones away and decide to buy the new one. So keeping the old ones around doesn’t really serve any purpose. Unfortunately for sleekstability’s godfather, he didn’t get that memo. He ended up with a lot of useless stuff by the time he passed away, and literally, no one could use it.

“Consumer electronics was his go-to girl in this fixation, and as the 2000s came about, many of them were rendered useless and obsolete a year or two after purchase. Me and my mother had to sort through his belonging in his garage, and it was like a time capsule. From floor to ceiling, there were VCRs, calculators, digital watches, portable DVD players, and digital clocks spanning the entire room. All are rendered virtually useless in modern-day society. The price tags are still on them in their original boxes for a dollar or two apiece. Countless yard sales later, we still couldn’t get rid of all of it.”

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22. Less Yard Space And More Garbage

Some people’s hoarding can start to leave their homes and end up spilling out into their yards—old appliances that don’t work anymore, broken cars, junk furniture; you name it. But things can get a lot worse, as Coedster can attest to. They started off working with their father for about five years doing building demolitions when they got a call from the state health departments to go out to a specific house they were really concerned about.

“So we show up to see the place, this 70-ish-year-old man who is legally blind has three trailer houses full of children’s toys and newspapers mostly, 12 cat houses for about 50 cats (town ordinance states there can only be I think four cats per household max) and a few more sheds here and there. Also, his sewage didn’t work for like five years, so he would [crap] in 5-gallon buckets until they were full, then carried them outside about 15 feet from his front door and just leave them outside. About 50 of those buckets outside. We hauled literally 120 US tons of newspaper, toys, building materials, and human [crap] to the landfill.”

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21. Bad Habits Can Make Your Hoarding Even Worse

It’s one thing to be a hoarder and to still be able to take care of your health, but it’s something else entirely if you also have vices like smoking and drinking. Because you don’t have a proclivity for throwing anything away, these things start to pile up as well, which can only make the situation worse. MASSIVE_MISTAKE was asked by a friend to help them clean out the apartment of an evicted tenant, and this was the horrible mess that they had to work on.

“First thing we found out was she was an alcoholic and chain smoker. There were tons of bottles of whiskey and beer cans hidden under her bed and inside the entertainment center, accompanied by what could’ve been hundreds of cigarette butts. Then probably the weirdest thing was how she collected books on pagan summoning rituals and dark magic. There was an entire study room with books about the occult and paganism scattered all over, complete with candles, some plastic skulls, and a couple of Ouija boards. She also had a bunch of DVDs on conspiracies involving 9/11 and moon landings and related stuff.”

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20. The Great Depression Is A Terrible Influence

A decent number of people who are hoarders have lived through The Great Depression. This was a time when people were starving because no one could afford food. This meant that they had to save everything that they had just to be able to survive. AuntIsHoarder’s great-aunt was one such person, and although she meant one, it didn’t make this OP’s visits with them any more enjoyable. In fact, they would consider it downright miserable.

“When I was in middle school, we were looking for something to eat. I found a box of fruit loops. Now, as FAR back as I can remember, for my entire life, there have at minimum been four fruit loop colors (red, green, yellow, and orange). The box I found had only 3 (red, yellow, and orange). My mom told me to go ahead and eat them, saying they would be fine since they were sealed. They weren’t fine…… Just as well, my cousin got sick because my Great Aunt made her pancakes with rancid butter. We have found full egg nog containers in the middle of summer.”

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19. Visiting Friends Can Become A Health Hazard

It’s one thing to have a family member who is a hoarder; that means that you can escape them and stay with someone else if you have the opportunity. But it’s something else when you have a good friend whose entire family consists of hoarders. That makes it difficult to want to hang out with them because being at their home feels more like a punishment than actual fun. bernanner decided to share a list of some of the things they witnessed in their friend’s home that made them sure they never wanted to go over there ever again.

“-toilet paper was never on the roll. But when you picked it up to use it, there were used tissues inside the roll from where someone blew their nose. -I remember as a teenager using their bathroom, and used pads would be open on top of the trash. The last time I stayed there, I was probably 13. I’d wrecked my bike, and they offered me band-aids that were soaking in water on the kitchen counter. I declined. I ate tuna out of the can and yogurt because they were sealed. That night, I saw meal worms crawling through my friend’s carpet.”

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18. When Appearances Aren’t What They Appear To Be

Everyone has skeleton their closets that they don’t want to share with the rest of the world. It could be something embarrassing, horrific, or very private. So when OhShizWaddup started taking piano lessons from a music teacher who lived near to their house, everything seemed fine. That was until their family moved a little farther away, so they had to go to the piano teacher’s house instead. This is the story of what they found inside of the dead woman’s house.

“Immediately, when opening the door (not fully), there are newspapers surrounding the inner entrance, huge piles up to 4ft just at the front door. On the window sills, there were loads of teddies, including on the sills upstairs (viewable from the outside). You couldn’t sit on the couch or anything because there were stacks of music books and sheet music everywhere too. It was insanely crowded. I also remember seeing a television in there from the 60’s hiding underneath a small coffee table.”

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17. A Story Of Another Elderly Relative Who Lived Through The Great Depression

During the Depression, people had to think of more inventive ways to continue doing the things that they enjoyed. They would turn household items into something else useful when they couldn’t afford to buy what they needed. Punk45[Frick] had to endure the remnants of what was left behind when their grand-uncle died, who lived through The Depression. What they discovered was definitely more than they could really handle. Or anyone should, for that matter.

“After my great uncle Frannie died a few years back, I agreed to help my dad clean his house out. Frannie grew up in the Great Depression, so he never threw something away if it could be useful. Among other things, we found a collection of about five hundred five-gallon buckets, countless burlap seed bags, and a cellar full of canned foods, some of which were up to ten years old. I also found a full set of Pyrex bakeware (the good stuff made of actual borosilicate glass) and a bunch of Craftsman tools.”

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16. Renters Who End Up Being Not-So-Neat

Landlords are often considered the bane of society: they can charge whatever prices they want, refuse to fix appliances within the apartment, and are generally not pleasant to deal with. But there are some tenants as well who can end up being absolute nightmares and leave their apartments a complete disaster. Aged_Whiskey_atwork was helping their parents deal with an apartment that had been evacuated by a renter and discovered the horror story that they left behind. Imagine walking into this mess and not wanting to instantly wash your body with bleach.

“One house had been used as a day-care, and all of the stuffed animals that got soiled weren’t thrown away. They just tossed them down in the basement. So I was throwing these things out one of the vent windows down there, and I noticed that the soiling on them was particularly smelly. It was [crap]. I put down the thing I’d been touching, went upstairs, and washed myself with the driveway soap and the water from the cooler, all while retching.”

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15. Housekeeping Jobs Should Never Be This Bad

If you’ve ever worked in housekeeping anywhere, then you have our sympathy. People can be pretty nasty if they’re relying on someone else to clean up after them, although in some cases, some people are just incapable of the mobility that is necessary to keep their homes clean. TheSamhainWitch, who worked such a job, was called by the owner of their local pub to clean his house next door. It would give them enough money, they thought, and maybe if they did a good enough job, they could get a free pint on top of it. The OP of this story could not get out of there fast enough.

“It took me five sessions of 5 hours to work my way around his two-bedroom cottage. On the 5th day, I pulled out his sofa and the table next to it. So I’m pulling, and all this kitchen roll starts falling out. Reams and reams of it, all used. I’m not kidding when I say I filled two black bin sacks with it! I venture upstairs and find the same problem, but stuffed under the bed, bedside table, wardrobes, everywhere [were] his wank piles. I took my money and never went back.”

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14. Throwing The Grandparents Out With The Garbage

A hoarder can look track of all the things they have in their home. There are piles and piles of stuff with things buried under each other to the point that you have no idea what’s under there. It could either be a gigantic pile of garbage, or it could be a pile of valuable things that are worth a lot of money. But when TheAmazingApathyMan decided to help their grandmother get rid of some stuff, the whole family almost lost something absolutely irreplaceable.

“My grandmother was a hoarder and had largely abandoned the house my mother had grown up in (after filling it with junk). While attempting a big cleaning, my aunt found an inconspicuous bag of gravel and went to throw it out. She was stopped by my grandmother, who informed her that she was throwing out her father (who had died and been cremated decades earlier).” Needless to say, there was no way they could have replaced the ashes of their dead grandfather if they’d made that terrible mistake.

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13. Finding the Proverbial Needle In The Haystack

As mentioned in the previous story, you never know if the things people are hoarding are just straight junk or if there are some buried treasures amongst everything. This Reddit user decided to help the family of their wife clean out the home they inherited that once belonged to their grandmother. It wasn’t in the best condition, and there was a visible walking path in the carpet to show where she walked every day around her mountains of stuff. But that wasn’t the only stuff they found.

“I found a shoe box full of tags that you get from shirts that tell you the size dating back to the mid-80s. We found two cans of used cooking oil sitting in the cabinets because, I don’t know, and an unopened bottle of Pepsi with the super bowl 18 logo. The best thing we found was almost 10000 dollars hidden all over the house. We used the money to pay the property tax, install new carpet, and a new water system (those of you that use wells know what I’m talking about).”

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12. Hoarding Can Be An Extreme Health Hazard If You’re a Farmer

Decades ago, farmers used chemicals that are now known to be bad for your health. But for a farmer who is also a hoarder, they may not want to throw these chemicals away because they believe they could end up being useful in the future. KiltedLady’s grandfather probably thought so too, or he just never got around to finding ways to properly dispose of them. Either way, when he died, his family was left to take care of all this stuff he left behind.

“When my grandpa died, we cleaned out his house. All in all, we emptied eight of those industrial-sized dumpsters out of his house, plus made countless trips to the dump to get rid of things that couldn’t go in the dumpster. The strangest thing was his chemical shed. He was a pear farmer from about the 40s to the 90s. When you opened the door, the smell hit you instantly, and after a breath or two, you felt light-headed. It was full of pesticides and other chemicals, most of which now illegal like DDT that over the years had dissolved their cans and mixed into a terrible concoction.”

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11. Gender Roles Can Be Detrimental For the State of Your Home

Misogynists believe that cleaning should only be done by women, which gives them the perfect reason to not clean up after themselves. Hey, expect women to take care of them while they lie around, doing nothing. That’s what rayofsunshine121’s father believed, and perfectly explains the state of his home when they went over to his place to visit. We don’t know about you, but we can practically smell what this story smells like, and it’s nothing pleasant. How could someone let their home get this bad?

“I was helping him clean his kitchen, the walls thick with a gray slime that was a combination of years of grease in the air cooking congealing with layers and layers of dust over time, but that wasn’t the weird thing. A couple of things: 1. A bucket, innocently placed next to the fridge, that was filled up 1/3 with lard, 2/3 with water, with three dead rats floating in it. 2. A shake weight. 3. I found 8 POUNDS OF TURMERIC. The spice. What it GODS NAME, DOES ONE PERSON NEED 8 POUNDS OF TURMERIC?????”

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10. Home Shopping Network is The Worst Enabler For Hoarders

At first, Home Shopping Network made it easier for people to buy what they wanted without having to get off their couches, get into their cars, and head out to the stores. You could find just about anything on HSN, from appliances to jewelry; it was like a shopping paradise! But for people who are hoarders, it takes a difficult problem and compounds it into something that becomes impossible to control. As PeterIraGrinch put it, cleaning out this hoarder’s home was close to impossible to tackle.

“Boxes upon boxes of HSN purchases were stacked 7 feet high, EVERYWHERE. This woman bought hundreds of purchases every week and just let the boxes rot. The house was two stories and had five bedrooms and five baths. Every single room had been filled. Rats ran rampant through every nook and cranny. Each bathroom had been destroyed, and the owner had placed black garbage bags in the toilets, and they were overflowing with [crap]. The kitchen was filled from floor to the 10-foot ceiling with empty two-liter shasta bottles and pizza boxes. The most ironic thing I found, buried under a mountain of trash, boxes, and dead rats in the kitchen, was a copy of the book: “Clear your Clutter with Feng Shui” by Karen Kingston.”

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9. There’s A Hoarder In Every Country

We’re typically only exposed to hoarders that live in America, but they’re not limited to just here. heqbert is apparently from Germany and shared with the rest of Reddit the story of a house they went through when they worked as a cleaning person in Germany. What started off as a simple hobby got somewhat out of hand, to the point that the couple ended up getting quite behind on it and led to a hoarding predicament, despite their good intentions.

“An old couple lived in a small flat, and the only thing they did, was to sort and organize the free newspapers you find in [front] of your door. But [they] had a special way to do [it]. They [cut] every headline, every picture out of a bunch of these [newspapers] and put them into ring folders. They did [this for] over 40 years (we found papers from the 70s). But because [at] some point they didn’t manage to do it right, they [started] to put the newspapers they still have to do on the floor. The floor in the entire flat was full of newspapers up to 50 cm.”

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8. They Might Be Precious To Someone

Have you ever heard the saying, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure?” The problem with hoarders is that they consider all trash to be a treasure. That’s why they have to keep everything because they might need it in the future for something and they don’t want to be without it. That’s one of the reasons, anyway; there is a multitude of other reasons for why people are hoarders, and it’s a very difficult mental condition to pick apart. In Nurum’s story, however, what rhyme or reason could this person have for saving this?

“Rubber maid totes of cat [feces] that were organized by month. She had a bunch of cats and literally saved their [feces] each month and put Jan-March, April-June, etc. There were at least a dozen of them.” Was this woman saving them as memories of her cats? To make sure they were still healthy? Was she saving them for some kind of future project? It’s difficult to figure out since we’re not in her head, but needless to say, this one is definitely a hard one to find the meaning behind.

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7. Hoarding Food Helps No One

One of the strangest things that people can hoard is food. It only lasts a certain amount of time before it goes bad, so there’s no real reason to keep so much of it since you can’t eat it. Yet, there are some hoarders who just can’t bear to throw things away, resulting in freezers and fridges full of food that absolutely no one can eat. On top of that, they just keep adding more food on top of the rest, compounding the problem. This Reddit user decided to share a story of their mother, who was this kind of hoarder.

“After she died a few years ago, I tried to start cleaning approximately 20 years’ worth of junk. This included meat in the completely full freezer (note, we had three freezers) dating back to 2002. I found medicines that expired in the late ’80s in the kitchen cabinets. Currently, in the basement, there are cans and bottles and packages of unopened food that expired years ago and are full of bugs, which is a huge waste. Last year, I tackled the small hill in the corner of the dining room. At the very bottom, I found an unopened giant box with a brand new microwave in it from about 1990.”

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6. This Woman’s Hoarding Ended Up Killing Her

A hoarding situation can get so out of control that a person’s home actually becomes a danger to their health. Rats and flies can start to show up, eating garbage that has been left out, and that makes it easier for them to spread disease. Rat feces alone, when dried and inhaled, can cause respiratory problems that require medical attention. According to anglochilanga’s story that they shared that belonged to their lecturer, this couple’s hoarding ended up causing someone’s death.

“A massively overweight, bedridden woman and her SO/ husband were hoarders. She fell out of bed and, because of all the crap, couldn’t get up. Her SO continued to feed her as was. What neither of them knew was that maggots started eating her from underneath. She eventually died, and she SO was jailed for negligence.” This Reddit story shares an extremely sad case, but it’s also a difficult story to stomach. In the end, it’s sad that their living situation had to get to that point.

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5. Hoarders Come In All Shapes and Sizes

When you work for a moving company, as schmidtaaron did, then you get to see inside of a lot of people’s homes. And some of those people are hoarders. From this list of things they’ve seen, there’s nothing too out there or too gross for people to keep in storage containers or just lying around their homes. Some of these stories include people who’ve passed away, and there’s no one left to take their things.

“Food hoarder: he kept Rubbermaid totes full of water with raw fish floating in them. There were also bills and bills of real cash kept in old board game sets. She stuffed all her old pets and kept them as ornaments. Then someone even preserved baby fetus in a jar. Clothes! This woman had no floor space and mountains floor to ceiling of clothes all over her house, even in kitchen cabinets. There was a retired dentist who kept/collected dentistry tools. It felt like being in a scene out of a horror movie. Pets, too! Someone had a basement which held approximately 50 cats and it was as big as a large bedroom. Then there was one room upstairs full of sand for pet reptiles running loose. Plus there was gum; every square inch of walls has old chewing gum stuck to it.”

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4. Offer a Helping Hand, Get Paid Bupkis For Doing 10 Hours of Work

Cleaning out a home that belongs to someone else is hard work, and it usually doesn’t pay a lot. A home that belongs to a hoarder, on the other hand, is something else entirely. You’re not just cleaning out a home; you’re helping someone deal with a massive problem they don’t know how to get rid of. For VindicatedBury, they thought they were doing a good deed by helping out some people, but it turned out to be much, much worse than they expected.

“At the top floor of the house, there were weird christian pictures and pictures of Jesus and angels and stuff everywhere. We also found a weird collection of Dale Earnhardt stuff. So it starts getting really bizarre when we go downstairs. We found the most massive collection of playboy bunny and penthouse magazines I’ve ever seen, and trust me. You wouldn’t pick them up or even look at them. It was the worst $100 I ever earned, and we were paid by a guy in his 50’s and his 30-something-year-old daughter who thought we didn’t deserve $100 and tried giving us $60 for moving disgusting stuff out of a foreclosed home for 10 hours.”

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3. Hoarding Is A Mental Illness That Requires Help

Seeing someone deal with their hoarding all by themselves causes conflicting emotions. It’s sad but angering at the same time that someone would let their home get this way. But the sufferer doesn’t really understand how much worse they’re making things and believe that they’re making their living situation better by having everything available within arm’s reach. This Reddit user decided to help out someone they knew with their hoarding situation, and amongst the trash, they found a lot of treasure.

“In one place, we found over $10,000 in currency, none in bills over $100, scattered all over, mixed in with papers, clothing, snack foods, and even garbage, and I mean dirty garbage consisting of partly eaten food. Amazingly there was no smell from it because it was in Zip Lock bags inside bigger bags. Usually, less than $500 is found. If you ever clean up a hoarder’s house, get clear plastic bags, not colored ones, because being able to see what you’ve cleaned up can help a lot to later sort it out and recover non-trash.”

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2. The Most Random Things You Can Find In A Hoard

A collection of junk has no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes it’s a collection that’s gotten out of hand, while other times, it’s really just random things that hoarders believe they’re going to need at some point. sicklemoon28 endured such an experience when they went through someone’s home and found this lovely array of random things that you would probably only find together in a museum of old things.

“Taxidermied fox; Windex bottle from 1945 with more ammonia!; can of pears [from] 1963 fruit will eventually eat through the aluminum and leak black tar-like substance; the dead cat house, running tally of between 25 and 29 dead cats; full set Kirby vacuum and all accessories, never opened; once cleaned out a house of a silversmith and jeweler, after the family came in and took what they wanted/valuable there was still a couple hundred thousand $ of jewelry tools and loose gems, we were opening mail from 10+ years ago that still had gems in it.”

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1. The One Things You Really Don’t Need To Keep Anymore!

This story really takes the cake. This item that Jessicaisntthatcool found was not only useless but also pretty disgusting. Why someone would keep it around, no one knew, but the logic it takes to keep something like this around is beyond any comprehension. We hope that they managed to talk the woman out of it so that it could go where it belonged instead of being buried under mountains and mountains of garbage that also needs to be thrown out.

“One time, my friend was helping clean out this lady’s house, and while cleaning out a room, she saw something on the floor buried under a pile of stuff. She said it looked like a dried-out worm, but she thought it was an old rotten flower stem. (I think it was in a Ziploc bag, but I can’t remember.) And she was about to throw it in the garbage, but jokingly asked the lady if it was of any importance, and the lady yelled, “No, don’t throw that out! That’s [son’s name] umbilical cord!” Mind you; her son is about thirty years old.”

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