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Warning, the following may be disturbing to those with sensitive stomachs...

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/couple.squalid.living.2.1713385.html

An elderly couple is hospitalized in intensive care Tuesday hanging on to life, after being rescued from their own home.

Police say they were trapped in their own garbage for days, possibly weeks. There are reports they were covered in rodent bites and both were in critical condition when taken to the hospital. It was so severe that firefighters had to don hazmat suits before they could go inside the home in the South Side's Grand Crossing neighborhood.

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Hoarding is one of the most bizarre conditions I've ever seen.

Curious what triggers that kind of lifestyle...

There's a whole show based on this. Pretty scary stuff to have things go that far.

I hoard ketchup packets in my desk at work. i like to have a couple extra, in case they forget to give me one at the drive through.

But then, eventually, my 'couple extra' fills up a whole desk drawer. When that happens, I take them all home, and don't buy bottled ketchup for the house for a month.

I so tried to put in a picture of Brent & Cole trapped under the pile of comics, but I failed.

I could seriously see my wife getting this way. She never wants to throw ANYTHING away and it's always a fight. We have so much crap everywhere it's frightening.

Dave said:

I so tried to put in a picture of Brent & Cole trapped under the pile of comics, but I failed.

I could seriously see my wife getting this way. She never wants to throw ANYTHING away and it's always a fight. We have so much crap everywhere it's frightening.

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My wife is like this too. You know what I do? I throw the shit out anyway... We're talking about things like ancient Ping-pong tables, a broken treadmill, an old computer monitor circa 1991. She thinks these things still have value and use!

Hmm... This reminds me of my ex-girlfriend's place. I just thought she didn't bother cleaning up, but she did have a good, ankle-deep layer of garbage lying on the floor of the condo she had moved in TWO MONTHS EARLIER! by the time we broke up.

I'm not too keen on cleaning either, but at least my junk's pretty orderly and draining away in dribbles (eg. four piles of old university study guides, thesis notes, handouts, pamphlets and stuff that I have in my den, waiting to be sorted and thrown out).

I'm a bit of a pack-rat, but every time I move, I toss out the majority of it (or give it to charity). It doesn't really spill out into our living areas, but tends to take up any storage spaces available. I don't know why I hang on to certain things. THis last move, I tossed out like 10 IDE cables, 3 universal remotes, some AV cables, and whole shoe box of outdated computer parts. I've had that box since around 2001.

As for cleanliness, my wife and I keep the house fairly orderly. Clean house thoroughly at least once a week, but we don't go nuts over every bit of dust or slight mess. My sister and brother are so dirty though. I don't know why. Their houses are always a mess. Piles and piles of stuff everywhere. My mom and her mom are super-neat freaks. Major neat freaks. My dad's side are slobs. I fall somewhere in the middle, but lean a bit to my mom's side.

As for the article, my bro-in-law has some awful stories about the condition of people's homes. Feces all over teh ground, cockroaches everywhere, and little babies crawling in that filth. Oy.

It's really difficult for me to throw things out, but in my case, a little more so.. I get those extra ide cables, parallel cables and much more and I think "What if..that ONE customer comes in looking for just such a cable?" ..so in my mind, I have to hang onto it and find a box for it to fit into. The other thing is, there's a major parts store, Norvac, in my town not too far from me. I CAN get rid of it!

I presently have a "Junk corner" full of recycled parts that need to be taken to the recycling station. SOME of them have been useful - pulling good capacitors from boards, even yanking an AMD cpu bracket from one motherboard to replace one that had snapped. It's starting to overflow though.. I don't want it falling on me!

My husband keeps everything. So do my parents. Me, I throw it all away. I hate clutter. My house right now drives me nuts because, in my mind at least, there is crap everywhere. I'm not a neat freak, but I don't like having junk laying around. With 2 kids getting into everything it usually looks like a bomb went off in my living room.

stuff like this, and getting so fat that you can't walk anymore are two things that I just don't understand. Don't get me wrong though, I'm messy and I'm fat but not to the point where I'm in danger of having rats and stuff show up in my room or to the point where I need to ride those scooters at wal-mart.


This makes me want to clean my room and work out just out of paranoia of what might be.

I'm annoyed by the boxes lining some of the walls. None of what's in them is mine, each box has been opened once, to see what was inside. Right now it's a case of not having enough room for everything, but I know that when I have a house, these same boxes will go up in the attic or garage and collect dust.

There are also games I think could be traded to Gamestop or sold on Ebay because we are never gonna play them again, but no, because we might feel like it someday...