On Hoarding:

Having experienced a real life hoarder has made me extraordinarily clean. I enjoy the tv Hoarding:  Buried Alive and Hoarders, maybe a little too much. I DVR them because they usually come on at times I'm unable to watch. I've always enjoyed watching these shows, and I felt like it wouldn't be a big deal to experience a hoard in real life. So when a friend asked me to help clean their house for a decent payment, I didn't turn it down. I've seen it on TV, right? As much as I've watched, I might as well be a certified professional organizer, haul-away expert, and therapist all rolled into one convenient package.
I went through all the motions, sort of mentally preparing myself. I'd known this person for awhile and I thought they might be over-exaggerating their mess. I expected unopened boxes and bags and maybe some dirty laundry and probably some dishes. I was told it was bad, but I had a hard time believing it. We shopped prior to the reveal - trash bags, gloves, bleach, glass cleaner, very basic, important cleaning supplies.
I WAS NOT PREPARED.
The conditions were deplorable at best. This beautiful, modern home was filled with filth and garbage. The air was stagnant, warm, and worst of all filled with gnats. The corners were thick with cobwebs, every surface had rotting food stuck to it, cups and bowls filled with molding and rancid liquids, plates with molding who knows what, and the corpses of thousands of gnats, maybe hundreds of thousands. There was no visible floor. 20+ bags of garbage were in the floor besides the floor being covered in a carpet of fast food wrappers, garbage, crackers, chips, and cookies that had been walked on and crushed, spilled liquids, sticky, and clothing. The kitchen had more filled garbage bags all over the floor, the plates and dishes that had made it back into the kitchen were covered in gnats, flies, and dried food. The half bathroom adjacent to the kitchen had never been cleaned. The toilet was breeding gnats and the water was brown. The bowl was stained. The sink looked slimy. It was disgusting.
But, even this was nothing in comparison to the upstairs.
Upstairs was a breeding ground of filth unlike anything I'd ever witnessed before in real life. You see, on the TV shows, I've seen older adults who have let themselves go, let their homes go, they use adult diapers and then pile them in the corner of their bathroom. It's gross to watch, but they can't show but so much of the muck on TV and still be able to show it on TV, and of course, you don't witness the smell.
This person's child at 5 years old is not potty-trained and still uses pull-up type diapers. By uses, I mean, this child uses them as diapers, as in regular urination and defecation, not containing accidents. There was a pile of these used diapers nearly three feet tall and 5 feet across along one wall in the upstairs hallway. There was another pile inside the master bedroom. The smell stench was reprehensible. I gagged. I heaved. I had to go back downstairs. Downstairs smelled like a dumpster, upstairs smelled like a port-a-john without a flush in 110 degree heat after being used by 20 truck drivers after 10 hours of bean burritos and driving. I could deal with the dumpster.
I cried. I asked the person why they were living like this, how they deserved better. And then, over the course of the next few days, we cleaned it up.
It was tragic, really, being invited into someone's house, experiencing their own personal hell, and holding it inside. I came home after this experience and didn't talk much for a few days. My husband asked if I was alright and I told him, very honestly, that I felt I'd been scarred for life. I was paid well, mind you, and maybe the scarring was worth it.
Before, I was a mediocre housekeeper. I kept the dishes washed and put up, I made sure the laundry was done. I vacuumed once a week. I dusted if I noticed dust.
Since then, I bleach every surface in my bathroom and kitchen almost daily. The rest of the family hates it, but they didn't have to witness what I did, and at least the strong, chemically, bleach-y scent of Clorox Clean-Up lets me know it's disinfected. (I'm not paid to endorse Clorox, by the way, or any retailer that sells Clorox, it's just what I use, and I purchase it in the bulk size indicated in the link at the local Sam's Club in my town.) I dust almost every single day. When I see a gnat I immediately throw out anything that could possibly be bringing them in and then stress over it for days. I had to wait for some bananas to over-ripen recently so that I could bake banana bread - I was stricken with overwhelming anxiety as I thought about the then-spotting bananas drawing gnats or fruit flies, reflecting back on the air quality in the hoard house - so thick with gnats you couldn't breathe without a cover over your nose and mouth. I made the bread that evening, and then took the trash immediately outside.
I don't know if we are born with obsessive compulsive disorder, if it lays dormant and waits for a trigger, or what - I'm definitely not a psychologist. I don't know if I can be classified as obsessive or compulsive because of my new cleaning habits after having dealt with a real, true-to-life hoard. I haven't seen a therapist although maybe I should. I sometimes dream about it, or maybe it's nightmares. I still can't come to terms with how anyone can exist in such conditions, because even though they're alive, they're not "living" in those conditions.