Will A Germophobe Let Hoarders Throw Out Anything Her Mouse Friends Have Pooped On?

Severity Of Hoard

Former food service worker Judy, of Vancouver, WA, can no longer sleep in her bed, instead sleeping sitting up in a lawn chair in her kitchen, which has led to swelling in her leg (I'm guessing due in part to diabetes, though that isn't specified). The house is overrun with mice, but she won't let anyone exterminate them and, in fact, has started feeding them because she feels bad for them, knowing they're hungry. She apparently has no running water, which is a problem for all the obvious reasons but particularly since the packages of adult diapers in evidence strongly suggest that she has issues with continence. Severity Score: 8

Relevant Hoarder Backstory

This is going to sound like an incredibly sick joke, but: in addition to being a hoarder, Judy is a germophobe. According to her daughter Sherri, this dates back to Sherri's childhood, when Judy would make her wash her hands and shower whenever she returned from being outside the home. Judy has inscrutable standards for what constitutes cleanliness: when Sherri comes for a pre-cleanup walkthrough, Judy refuses to let her enter a room she says she's "cleaned," but which, piled with garbage bags and undifferentiated debris, looks no different to the average person than every other area of the house. She also has what the Black Screen Of Judgment terms "misconceptions about sanitation" -- to wit, on sunny days, she'll put household items outside on the lawn to be "sanitized" by the sun. A neighbour and informal caregiver named Renae (whose car Judy won't ride in without putting newspapers on the seat because she thinks it's not sufficiently clean) says that Judy typically washes loads of laundry up to eight times each. Both hoarding and germophobia are OCD behaviours, so it's not that weird that Judy evinces them both, but it is a bit incongruous seeing her putting on rubber gloves to tidy up around the mouse shit that's everywhere. Backstory Score: 10

Native Likability Of Hoarder

Judy doesn't seem especially nice to this viewer, but apparently Renae was so moved by Judy's plight and the amount of help she needed that Renae went to school to learn how to care for her. Likability Score: 7

Anxiety Of Family/Other Enablers

Sherri's horror about Judy's current situation is moderated, in my opinion, by ongoing resentment of the way Judy's illness affected her daughter during Sherri's childhood. Anxiety Score: 5

Inciting Incident

Someone has called Adult Protective Services. Incitement Score: 5

Assigned Experts

Judy is visited by what I consider the B-team: psychologist Dr. David Tolin (no Robin Zasio) and cleanup expert Cory Chalmers (no Matt Paxton). Expert Score: 4

Success Of Cleanup

Low! Judy has a high degree of stress regarding papers and receptacles, and makes Sherri unfold every ancient newspaper circular and turn inside out every bag they tell her is empty to be sure they're safe to dispose of. At the end of the first day there's basically half a carton in the 1-800-Got-Junk truck, requiring Dr. Tolin to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with Judy on the lawn. (Judy's claim that "Those are good pants!" does not move him.) When Judy, in weepy frustration, finally explodes at both Tolin and Chalmers, giving up, Chalmers refuses to proceed, and Dr. Tolin agrees that continuing would traumatize Judy. I feel like you take a yes, even one that isn't sincere, for the sake of the greater good? But I don't have any training. Chalmers, Tolin, and Sherri finally do convince Judy to let them do the absolute bare minimum to make the dwelling livable, which basically just amounts to shoveling out the paper that's blanketing the floor, and only very reluctantly does Judy agree; the result still isn't exactly "safe" or "healthy" or "acceptable by any civilized standard," so Tolin tells Judy that he's going to alert the authorities about the place anyway. Cleanup Score: 2.

Epilogue

Judy also tells us she wishes she could have done better and that she knows she let herself and Sherri down. True! Epilogue Score: 3