Just last year, hoarding disorder was added to what’s called the DSM-5, the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Steri-Clean was started by The Hoarders’ A&E TV series host Cory Chalmers but also recently became franchised in Richmond. The company started as a crime scene cleanup company run by Amber Voss and her husband.
“We had a call come in for a crime scene, there was no blood; it was a hoarder. I said where’s the crime scene, she said this is it. I said oh my!”
She did some research and reached out to Cory Chalmers.
Kyle St. George of the California Steri-Clean office helped with the franchising process. He says the story of how Cory got into the business was similar to Amber’s.
“It started out strictly as biohazard. He was an EMT and he went to a scene that was pretty tragic. The husband took his own life. The wife was distraught, covered in blood, hugging her husband and she asked Cory the question ‘who cleans this up?’ And that really bothered him because there weren’t any companies back in 95’ that did it.”
Cory shortly realized that there weren’t any companies to help hoarders through the cleanup process, either, though hoarding has been an issue in Virginia for far longer than the Hoarders TV show has been around. Fairfax County was one of the first to create a Hoarding Task Force which Rachael Perrott has been serving on for nearly 10 years.
The task force meets quarterly and brings more than 20 different agencies to the table to address issues at hand.
“It’s now a group that kind of gets together and problem solves cases. Maybe mental health has received a complaint and they don’t know how to fix the structural problem, maybe we have a complaint for the structural problem and we don’t know what to do with the family inside. So it’s a good way that we can network and help each other resolve a countywide problem.”
Perrott says as far as the mental health component, some people prefer a more non-traditional approach to getting help. Steve Conlan is co-founder of the company MoJo Life Coaches, which provides coaching sessions and facilitates group phone calls for individuals struggling with hoarding.
Conlan says positive reinforcement and encouragement, such as calling a client a clutter bug instead of a hoarder, can help break negative cycles of behavior. It's about shifting one's identity from one that is self-sabotaging to one that serves the person, he said. And it definitely worked for the woman they call "Bountiful Barbara."
"It's hard to reiterate all the breakthroughs I personally had, and I think anyone would have. It's dramatic. It's dramatic, it's exciting, it's liberating."
And it's not just Barbara. "Messy Marlene" became "Marvelous Marlene" and was inspired to renew wedding vows with her husband after deciding to not let clutter get in the way of her relationship. And now, Conlan and co-founder Elaine Stephanos are working with Victorious Viki. Conlan said she's been victorious in her improvements so far.