The Strange and Disturbing Lives of Hoarder Cleaners

As a warning, this is the least gross image you'll see on this post. Source.

There's a show called "Hoarders." If you don't know or couldn't gather from the name, it deals with people whose mental illness involves cultivating a mountainous collection of nonsensical clutter and an equal amount of sad. But it's not the subjects of the show that interest me. Yeah, the hoarders have mental issues and need help, but there are ancillary characters involved in the show I'm much more interested in: the people who clean up the hoarders' houses.

In their own parlance, they refer to themselves as "clutter cleaners" and I am fascinated as to how these people find and maintain relationships.

WARNING: In case you couldn't already surmise from the subject matter, things are going to get a little gross from here on out.

Let us take a mental journey through what a first date must be like for these filth farmers...

Setting: Presumably an Olive Garden, because really, can you imagine a person who cleans up after a hoarder eating anywhere else?

Girl on First Date
"What do you do for a living?"

Hoarder Cleaner
"Oh, you know, I shovel mountains of human feces from mentally deranged peoples' homes through a labyrinth of stacked newspapers, cat carcasses, empty cans of spoiled food and empty souls. How about you?"

Girl on First Date
"I teach kindergar...you know what, nevermind, date over."

 End Scene

***

Most people talk about their work day with their spouse. Do these people? Here's how I imagine that going...

Setting: A dirty kitchen, because really, after cleaning stacks of urine-soaked newspapers by the truckload, what are the chances these people want to detail their own kitchen.

Husband
"Hi, Honey, how was your day? I made us meatloaf."

Hoarder Cleaner
"I had to clean the residue left when they had to surgically remove a woman whose buttocks and thighs fused to the toilet after sitting on it and not moving for more than two years."

[Editor's Note: This actually happened. Click this link to read the article if you want the opportunity to have an excuse to spoon out your own eyes or an excuse to shoot heroin.]

Husband
"Enjoy your dinner, I'm going to the shed out back to huff paint fumes in the desperate hope I can erase the mental image you've burdened me with. Be a doll and drown the kids for me so that they don't have to endure the cycle of misery in which you daily immerse yourself."

I didn't show the image of the woman fused to the toilet because I love you. And this is way way way less sad, even accounting for the trash in the bathtub in the background. Source

***

Even if the cleaners are well-adjusted, happy, able to detach his/herself from the work, there's still the issue of what do you talk about to your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/transitioning transgender partner? What's pillow talk like?

Wife
"So, what kind of crazy crap did you see today?"

Husband
"Well, funny you should ask because I saw literally crazy crap. This guy was writing out the complete works of Shakespeare using his own turds...Wait, where are you going?"

Or, he could respond like this (aka Take 2):
Husband

Looks like it's about to vomit. You're welcome for the visual. Source

"You should have been there, Mike was in his hazmat suit cleaning the bedroom closet which was converted into a scab collection pile, when he comes out with this 50 pound rat that's too obese to move. It's all wheazing and stuff and Mike--ha ha ha--Mike throws it at me and it explodes into a confetti shower of maggots! Ha ha ha ha ha! Isn't that hilarious? ...Oh, well I guess you had to be there. [Jeez, just like your mom, no sense of humor.]"

***

Maybe all clutter cleaners (nice way of putting such horrors, hoarder haulers) are poets and not desperate money hoarders. Maybe. Maybe they are interested in helping society and not people desperate to earn a dollar, staving off the creeping desperation that causes a person to turn into a scofflaw (funny word!)