'You Can't Live Without Something Like This. I Mean, That's What You Think. People On TV Tell You That, Too.'

Like disgusting snowflakes, each hoard one sees on a hoarding show is unique. Sometimes the hoarder is relatively benign, filling his or her home with used paperbacks and vintage magazines. Other times, the hoarder regards "Best Before" dates on food packaging as rough guidelines, at best, and refuse to get rid of burritos from the '90s because if they were in the freezer, they're still just fine to eat. But one thing the viewer is likely to see in a majority of hoards is at least one box printed with the telltale logo of a home shopping channel. It's a problem. And I think I may have the beginnings of a solution.

I am not a crackpot. I just think QVC and HSN need to show a little compassion and regard for their more troubled customers and acknowledge the harsh realities of compulsive shopping.

If you listened to the first run of the Extra Hot Great podcast, you know that I have, over the years, advanced some bold proposals with regard to solving the problem of hoarding as portrayed on (then) Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive. It might have been in the very first episode, in fact, that I recommended moving hoarders, post-cleanup, into spartan rooms in a nursing home-type facility, where they'd be forbidden from keeping anything that wouldn't fit in a shoebox; if they could demonstrate a sufficient degree of responsibility, they could then graduate to a file box, and maybe, eventually, a small trunk. Even I will allow that this suggestion is kind of extreme. But if most episodes of Hoarding demonstrate that compulsive shopping and compulsive hoarding tend to go hand in hand, would it be so crazy for the home shopping channels to make like the gaming industry and produce a few PSAs about responsible spending? "Know your limit, shop within it"?

It's not as though the home shopping channels don't know what they're doing and whom they're targeting. The reason HSN and QVC appeal to older people more so than, say, eBay, is not just that the elderly aren't great with computers. With eBay, you also have to have a specific thing in mind that you're looking for. But with QVC, it's just a parade of things you can passively observe, while friendly people -- people that, if you're isolated and lonely, you come to know and like and trust -- tell you why it's so important that you buy it and how many of your problems it will solve. In fact, maybe you shouldn't just get one! Maybe you need two or three! And these products are specially selected for their value; your friends wouldn't mislead you about them! If you can't fill the vacuums in your life with human interaction or meaningful work, then maybe you can fill them with telescoping mop handles.

But from what we've seen on the hoarding shows, not only don't these products fill the voids: they often don't even get unboxed, which traps their buyers in another way. A sealed HSN box doesn't only block a path of egress, but it slows down the cleanup process because the hoarder insists that it's still useful and that he will use it -- or, if he can stand to part with it, that he will not donate it, but will only sell it, for the full price he paid, because it's so valuable. After all, the hosts might have convinced him to buy it in the first place by touting that its value would only go up.

The home shopping channels are not the only outlets to feed shopping addiction: those hoarders who've come down far enough in life to have maxed out or lost their credit cards will still find ways to hoard up their homes with useless crap -- at yard sales, or Goodwill stores, or even store dumpsters. But the home shopping networks bear a great deal of complicity in helping people ruin their lives; their business model depends on it. And while I'm up: credit card companies could also put HSN and QVC on watch lists and alert cardholders if their purchases in a week or month go over a certain amount. Yes, it's a nanny state solution. But when you see an elderly person -- like Fred, last night -- talking about how bereft he felt even after buying the products he'd seen advertised on TV, it's hard not to think that the only thing that might change his behaviour is intervention at the source. I am not a crackpot.