Every now and then we see in the news where someone is discovered to be living in a home so full of trash and clutter, that we wonder how they can possibly live in such horrendous conditions. I once had a friend who lived in such filth. I tried endlessly to have her allow me to help her clean up. It was an impossible feat. I could not make a dent in her house. She refused to throw anything away. She had bags and bags of junk mail that had accumulated for 20 years. When I suggested she throw the bags away, she argued that she needed the paper to write notes on. I tried to tell her, I’d buy her a note book to do that. She would not budge.

I found hundreds of folded up cereal boxes in her cupboards. She refused to get rid of them too. There were roaches everywhere. She claimed she had a sofa buried under the mountain of boxes and who knows what. But I never even saw the floor, let alone a sofa.   I suggested that we dig out the sofa, she worried about me moving things and she would not know where to find them.  It was a losing battle.

I saw on the news where they put a woman in jail for having a cluttered and filthy house. They said it was a health hazard. She was given 6 months in jail. These people have a Mental Illness. They can not help themselves. They need counceling. NOT PUNISHMENT AND JAIL TIME. That will not help. What is wrong with our correction officials? They think that locking up people for every little thing, is the answer and a solution to the problem.

Eventually her landlord had to go inside the house to fix  a broken water pipe. He saw the deplorable conditions, and called authorities. She was evicted, and the city cleaned out the house and tossed everything in the trash. This devastated her. They didn’t even allow her to dig out personal or sentimental items, such as family pictures.

My suggestion would be to hospitalize the person for a few days, where they can get help and counceling for their condition. In the meantime church volunteers could clean the mess, and set aside items that could be kept to help the person start over again. Then home visits would need to be done to make sure that the conditions did not re-occur. Where is our humanity?  Where is our compassion?