Episode to examine compulsion to hoard

SPRINGFIELD — Of mice and a woman.

Maybe that’s what the late American novelist John Steinbeck would have called this Sunday’s episode on cable channel TLC that will take viewers inside the home of a Springfield woman who suffers from the poorly understood disorder known as hoarding.

However, TLC, formerly known as The Learning Channel, is calling it “There are Mice Everywhere.” The episode airs at 9 p.m. and again at 11 p.m. Sunday as part of the third season of the reality TV show “Hoarding: Buried Alive.”

The episode title pretty much sums up a home so piled up with stuff that it was hard to navigate through, and where mice scampered around and could be heard scratching in the walls.

Kristin Bertilson, a professional organizer from Corvallis and a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers, was contacted last winter about appearing on the show, which pairs hoarders with organizers, paying them both an undisclosed stipend.

That’s how Bertilson met a woman named Kathleen, whose Springfield home was infested with mice and clutter and all the signs of hoarding — the compulsion to accumulate and store large quantities of nonessential things.

Bertilson would not disclose Kathleen’s last name, and it is not revealed on the episode. Kathleen could not be reached for comment for this story.

The episode was filmed during a weekend in March, and then a follow-up review shoot in late April, said Bertilson, who started her organizing business, Queen B Organizing, last year and estimates that a third of her clients are hoarders. In between the March and April shoots, Bertilson worked with Kathleen during six weekly sessions.

The girlfriend of Kathleen’s 18-year-old son, who lives with her, contacted the show to nominate Kathleen and her home for it, Bertilson said.

Bertilson ranks hoarders’ homes on a scale of 1 to 5, and said Kathleen’s home was a “high 4.” The only thing that kept it from being a “5” was the fact that Kathleen was still able to function in her home, allowing for a 1-foot-wide path through the living room into other rooms, instead of having so much clutter you had to crawl over it to get anywhere.

The episode focuses on two rooms in the house, the kitchen and Kathleen’s bedroom, which was so full of clutter she didn’t sleep there, opting instead for a love seat in the living room.

Her bedroom was full of clothes and memorabilia on the floor and bed, and also had mice excrement on the bed, Bertilson said. Bertilson said she saw about 15 mice and heard many more in the walls.

According to the TLC show’s website, hoarding “is a symptom of a mental illness, an anxiety disorder — some experts say obsessive compulsive disorder, while others say it’s a category unto itself. It’s defined by three primary traits: the obsessive collection of objects that seem useless to almost everyone else, the inability to get rid of any of them, and a resulting state of distress or peril.”

Bertilson said her experience has been that hoarders either learned the behavior from their parents, or some “big event” has happened in their lives, usually a tragedy such as the death of a spouse or child that triggers an obsession that prevents them from throwing anything away.

Kathleen has had to deal with a couple of tragedies, Bertilson said.

A Eugene therapist was brought in to work with Kathleen but was unable to build a constructive relationship, according to Bertilson, who ended up filling that role and is shown on the episode interviewing Kathleen about her hoarding.

“Kathleen still had a hard time changing her mindset,” Bertilson said. “She wanted to sell most things in a garage sale” instead of getting rid of them, Bertilson said.

But “huge progress” was made, especially in the kitchen, where the stove had never been used since it was brand new seven years ago, said Bertilson, who has clients mark items with such tags as “love it,” “could live without it” and “don’t need it” to help them let go.