Hoarders Help

I enjoy watching the show "Hoarders: Buried Alive" on TLC, but I'm not sure why. There's the voyeur's perspective, of course. What we're looking at isn't appealing or attractive, it's pretty repellant -- food on the floor, flies, dead animals and lots of dirt along with stacks of stuff, and cheap stuff at that, still in their Target bags. So is it a horror reaction? Or an aghast reaction, wondering how the hell anyone could live like this, and think for the most part it's fine.

Then there's the broader question of the origins of our disgust. Is it simply the sanitary and safety issues? (more than one household lacked running water; another house was filled with loaded guns under the piles of stuff). Is it the awe-inspiring depth of cognitive dissonance as the subjects claim that their homes might be "a little messy"? Is it the cheapness and chaos? The rampant consumerism of it all?

Help me crack the nut that is "Hoarders: Buried Alive" !

p.s. I went to the TLC site to fetch the link for the show, and there's a quiz you can take to assess whether you might be a hoarder, or merely an indiscriminate collector, with a teaser which starts "Do you have a doll collection that's getting out of control?"