KERRYLEA: I had rooms overflowing.
But the only way out in my mind was to buy another house.
At this point, we have two mortgages on each house.
Living paycheck to paycheck.
I'm just hoping not see the sheriff at the door any day.
LAUREN: This isn't weird to me.
I couldn't walk through her living room.
You know, this is normal.
WILL: If I'm working all day and you don't have a job,
then you should be able to tackle clutter.
LIZ: We had a huge argument.
LAUREN: It felt like somebody was just like baring my soul.
[music playing]
KERRYLEA: My name is Kerrylea.
And I'm 55 years old.
So let's here.
KERRYLEA: Dieting is difficult because you can't just
stop eating.
I think hoarding is like that too.
I don't expect probably with any sort of treatment,
short of a lobotomy or something,
that I will ever be hoarding free.
Every item represents a memory, an experience,
a part of my history, of who I am, where I've been.
It's all what makes up Kerrylea.
If I can't see it, it doesn't exist.
I need that visual.
Otherwise, it's gone.
It's like a puff of air, dust in the wind.
My mother was a hoarder as well.
So there was always a lot of clutter.
I didn't think that I had a lot of the problems that my mother
had, although when I started having children,
the difficulty level of everything sort of increased
geometrically.
I found myself doing things like staying up
till 3:00 in the morning trying to find all of the toys
to put them back all neatly lined up against the wall.
There was just a point where I kind of started giving up,
when it started turning the other way.
Once I started that, it was just the beginning of a long slide
downward.
And I never-- never was able to make the correction again.
KERRYLEA: Being a hoarder, there's
always the element in the back of my mind of protecting
that secret.
GEOFF: I'm Geoff.
I'm Kerrylea's husband.
We've been married since 1996.
So that would be 13 years.
I was able to keep the house and situation pretty much out
of the picture for the longest time.
But eventually, I brought him over and introduced him
to the house.
GEOFF: So I just assumed that, oh, well,
Kerrylea just saves a lot of stuff.
Well, yes, she does save a lot of stuff.
But not so much because she's worried about a Depression,
not so much because she hates to see things go to waste.
This is just the disease.
This is just the problem that you can't throw anything out.
GEOFF: You know, I get frustrated sometimes.
And then tempers can flare, like in anything.
Throw that out.
Well, I don't throw it out.
This is valuable stuff.
I mean, I haven't committed suicide over this obviously.
I can live with it.
But it's just no fun.
KERRYLEA: I didn't see a way out.
The only way out in my mind was to buy another house.
GEOFF: And I was against moving at first.
And, well, we've got a house here, why do we have to move?
But as time went on, I just realized
that I don't think this house will get under control.
The only way to do this is to move out, throw these things
out once and for all, move into a new house.
KERRYLEA: And then to ultimately end up with this house
empty and sell it.
KERRYLEA: Well, the move to Vashon
has been fraught with problems.
GEOFF: We were having so many problems with the remodel
of the house that the West Seattle house wasn't getting
cleaned out.
KERRYLEA: We ended up taking out another mortgage on the Vashon
house.
Eventually, that money ran out.
And then we turned to our retirement.
And that ran out.
It was obvious that the house in West Seattle
wasn't going to get cleaned out anywhere in the near future.
KERRYLEA: At this point we have two mortgages on each house.
We're now living paycheck to paycheck,
you know, close to losing one or both houses.
KERRYLEA: They're telling us that if they don't have all
their money by last Tuesday, the property
is going into foreclosure.
So I'm just, you know, hoping not see the sheriff
at the door any day.
LAUREN: My name is Lauren.
And I am 28 years old.
When I was growing up, I guess I was always considered messy,
slob--
you know, choose your adjective--
and probably lazy.
This isn't weird to me.
You know, this is normal.
It's weird to me if, you know, there wasn't anything out.
It's weird to me, like, if I walk into a room
and there's nothing there except for the pieces of furniture.
My name is Kerry McNamara.
I'm Lauren's dad.
We always had a very good home life.
The house was-- our house was always very orderly.
My wife is a very neat person.
My name is Liz McNamara.
And I am Lauren's mother.
I just thought that she was a pack rat, because
in my generation that's what you call people that couldn't throw
things away.
LAUREN: My mom wanted everything to be
in a certain place and everything
to be very neat and clean and tidy.
And if I didn't do it, it always started an argument.
And then it would usually end in me getting upset.
And then she would just do it.
I would just clean it, because it was my house.
And that's-- you know, her room is part of the house.
So I would just clean it.
My name is Will Retzer.
I am 31 years old.
Laura and I have been together for almost three years now.
I guess I would call her my girlfriend, partner.
We own a house together.
We did have separate rooms for a while.
I didn't mean to, but it just sort of--
stuff does follow me.
LIZ: I couldn't believe he could live there.
He didn't appear to be the type of person who would live
in that kind of environment.
WILL: I'm guilty of enabling in some ways.
And I don't know at what point my enabling
it has gone too far.
WILL: We brought the mattress from upstairs downstairs.
Lauren just wanted some time to herself.
LIZ: She prefers to be alone.
I think that the collecting of things is kind of her people.
So she'll withdraw at any moment.
And you don't know why or when that's going to happen.
LIZ: So they were probably there for six months.
We came here, and I couldn't walk through her living room.
And this was the brand new condo.
You could not see the hardwood floor.
And she said, no, I made my bed for you to sleep in the room.
And I said, we can't sleep in here.
I can't even get to the bed.
And that's when I knew this was something big.
This isn't normal behavior.
So I guess I did what I thought I should do
and I just cleaned it all.
I spent the whole day there.
I cleaned the whole thing.
We had a huge argument.
She was very upset with me.
LAUREN: I felt like my privacy was being invaded.
Somebody was just like baring my soul
or like reading a diary or something like that,
because it's my stuff.
WILL: You know, this is a turning point.
Come March, I guess, Lauren will not
have had full time employment for a year.
I've definitely had the feelings before that
if I'm working all day and you don't have a job,
then you should be able to tackle clutter.
LIZ: Right now, she spends most of her time
at home watching TV.
[music playing]
WILL: There's obviously a build up of frustration.
More and more attempts and more and more failures.
LAUREN: I can't really speak for him,
but I would say that he has probably given up.
GEOFF: If you don't have the problem,
then you just don't understand how difficult it is to get
the problem under control.
You can clean the house out without their permission.
That will solve the problem, but it will kill the patient.
Your patient has to survive the treatment in order for you
to call it a success.
And no one has a treatment for this yet.
[music playing]
An organizer will be coming to work with me.
Hi, Kerrylea.
I'm Geralin. - You must be Geralin.
I am.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too.
Welcome.
Come in-- if you can.
Thank you.
I'm Geralin Thomas.
And I am a certified professional organizer,
specializing in chronic disorganization.
GERALIN: Tell me what your goals are.
My goals are to get as much stuff out of this house as
possible with as little personal sacrifice and heartache.
as possible.
Kerrylea is a typically chronically disorganized
person.
It's apparent that she has been hoarding for quite some time.
I have some keepsake boxes here.
I thought while we're doing the moving process,
that if there are things that I see
that evokes special memories, I will pop them in those boxes.
With Kerrylea my plan is to push her a little bit.
GERALIN: What's your most special or favorite thing
in this room?
That wreath.
And what's the story behind the wreath?
That wreath was from my very dear friend Carol.
And she passed away unexpectedly about two weeks ago.
I have a wreath box all ready for it.
What would that feel like if you did get rid of that?
Would that feel like your friendship has been terminated
as well as her passing?
Or what does that signify to you letting the wreath go?
GERALIN: Kerrylea said a couple things
that you'll hear from hoarders again and again and again.
Tell me about all the empty bottles.
Are you saving them for--
She wants someone else to take care of these objects.
Otherwise she can't release them.
I don't know, I was just thinking I might give them
to somebody who does beading or something like that.
OK.
GERALIN: And then the other flip side of that
is that acquiring, that accumulating,
the act of getting things, that usually feels really
good for a hoarder.
It's the reward.
But once they have it, they don't know what to do with it.
And then it becomes a burden.
Clothes, I never quite know what to do with all the clothes
that don't fit and the clothes that need mending.
GERALIN: I know it's going to be very difficult for her.
However, I know how to help her.
But if she resists that help, I can only do so much.
I don't want to damage her.
GEOFF: Physically, it's going to be difficult, because the talk
is we will start at 8:00 in the morning
and quit at 6:00 in the evening, and she's usually
good for about 2 and 1/2 hours of work.
But she also knows the importance
of what's going to go on.
KERRYLEA: I really have to pull out all the stops.
I have to be very brave.
I have to be very disciplined, very
focused, to get enough out of this house
to move on with our lives.
If we don't make a big difference now,
I don't know what will happen to either one of us.
We really can't go on like this.
[music playing]
- Hi. - Hi, Lauren.
Hi. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too.
You ready for the tour?
- Yeah. - Great.
Come on in.
RENAE: I'm Dr. Renae Reinardy.
I'm a clinical psychologist.
Starting off right from the beginning, when I arrived,
I know that Lauren was having a tough time just looking ahead
into the weekend and all that she had to do
and feeling quite overwhelmed.
So this is the living room.
Yes.
Why don't you tell me a little bit about the types
of possessions and how this room usually looks,
if this is typical or not.
This is probably a little bit better than it usually looks.
Most of the older individuals who I work with
have said that they started off hoarding in college or even
as a child.
Hoarding does tend to get worse.
So I think that it's great that she's 28 years old
and she's working on this now.
I think it's going to save her a lot of difficulties
over the next several years, decades really.
When other people do it for me I feel like I can't do it.
I want to feel like I can do it.
Great.
WILL: I would say that unless you tackle the white elephant
in the room, so to speak, it's going
to be hard to move forward.
LAUREN: I'm trying not to really anticipate what's going on,
because if somebody came into my house
and just took stuff or cleaned it,
that would be just totally devastating.
RENAE: I think that Lauren is at a fork in the road.
She can decide to keep things as they are
or to say I think I can change this on my own.
I don't need any help or I just can't do this.
And I think that's going to lead her one direction that maybe is
going to cause some additional suffering
and failed attempts and things along those lines.
KERRYLEA: Of course, I want to let go of stuff.
I want space to get cleared.
But I'm thinking that I'm not going to be up to the task.
I'm going to fail.
Or I'm going to blow it.
GERALIN: Hi, Kerrylea, today's the day.
How do you feel?
Um-- let's do it.
KERRYLEA: Well, this morning I felt a lot like I was on my way
to the executioner just waiting for them to blindfold
me and tie my hands behind my back or something.
This is the homeowner, Kerrylea.
And the main thing that I'm concerned with today
is that absolutely nothing--
nothing-- can be put in a dumpster unless it has her OK.
Again, please be respectful, OK?
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Come on in, Kerrylea.
Let's get started.
CLEANER: We knew that we were getting ourselves
into a big job.
And it was described to us that this was a hoarding situation.
But seeing it firsthand, seeing how these people live
is shocking.
Ultimately, going to be a huge job.
GEOFF: As Kerrylea has said, she's been out of sight, out
of mind person, that if she doesn't see this stuff,
she forgets about it and it doesn't bother her.
But what does bother her is the thought that something
got thrown out.
Did something get thrown out?
And that will eat away at her whether or not
it got thrown out.
So she needs some reassurances that we're paying attention
to this stuff.
And we are paying attention to this stuff.
Be really careful with this stuff.
All of this stuff is you lose it, you die.
Not a good deal.
You lose it and I die too.
Oh, OK.
That's one of the reasons why I--
See you the other side you have.
GERALIN: How you feeling right now?
Fine.
GERALIN: Good.
So far so good? - Yeah.
GERALIN: Great.
Kerrylea likes to tell a story that's
really common with a hoarder.
They have a story about every single thing they touch.
Somebody had asked me if I had ever tried this medication.
And I couldn't remember, I thought I might have.
And so I wanted to be sure and record this with my doctors.
And what year was that?
Back in '95.
OK, so you think you can let it go now?
I am trying to sneak in a little tip
here and there about not acquiring things and thinking
about where these acquisitions are all going to go.
OK, are you going to donate those or keep them?
Keep them.
Do you want to keep it?
Donate it?
I think I'm going to put it in my pocket.
This is actually going to go right here.
Do I want to keep one of these or both of them?
[laughs] Perfect.
Perfect.
This can go.
This is crazy.
It's half eaten by a rat.
You better put those to the side and save.
There might be keepsakes in there.
I think she probably planned to throw it out, but save it.
That's Kerrylea's to sort through.
GEOFF: The guys are really getting gung ho,
and I appreciate them for that.
But they're moving a little bit faster than I can handle.
I'll have Kerrylea pass judgment on that.
GERALIN: How are you feeling right now?
A little stressed out.
OK, tell me tell me what you're stressing over.
I'm stressing over some missing boxes downstairs.
OK.
KERRYLEA: I had five special keepsake boxes.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it,
she had instructions for those boxes were to remain intact
and nobody was to disturb them.
And I think what happened is they moved the boxes
to a different corner.
GERALIN: Well, we know that they're in the house though.
That's a little bit reassuring.
I'm just really have kind of constantly
got that thing going in the pit of my stomach,
where is that box?
Are you OK to keep moving forward?
Yeah.
GERALIN: OK.
All right.
I think-- uh--
Clothing, you got it.
Not sure.
GERALIN: Let's go see what the guys are doing downstairs.
Wow.
What's your reaction?
Yikes.
GERALIN: You have space in your living room.
Yeah, but I'm hyperventilating or just about too.
OK.
Breathe.
Seriously, are you hyperventilating?
My concern is I keep thinking how long can I hold out
before I collapse or begin screaming or crying or frothing
at the mouth?
KERRYLEA: I'm really ashamed, embarrassed.
I'm-- you know, I just feel like hiding under the bed and crying
and never being seen or heard from again.
GERALIN: Here, what are you doing with that?
You're putting that right back.
Well, kind of because--
I don't know.
[music playing]
Hey.
Come in.
Welcome.
Mother.
LAUREN: I have a vision of how I want things to be.
And that vision is just--
it seems like a dream.
RENAE: What we're doing is we're kind of taking it one target
area at a time, going through the house,
working on de-cluttering.
But what's most important in this process
is changing thinking patterns and behavioral patterns.
One of the things I think you guys know about me is like I'll
start doing something, going through a box,
and then, oh, this goes up in the bathroom.
I go up in the bathroom, and then I'm in the bathroom.
And then I hear phone ring.
And then the dog barks.
And--
KERRY: You know, in one weekend, we could--
this house could look mint.
Is she going to want that?
I don't know those answers right now.
LAUREN: So this water container had a leak in it.
There's like no water left in here.
But I saved it, because I wanted to save it.
RENAE: So what's your decision with it?
KERRYLEA: So my decision with it now is that I do not need it.
LIZ: As she's looking through some of the things,
I thought, that is a no-brainer just throw it away.
Um-- this is a nail repair kit.
I don't have long nails.
They don't have to be repaired.
KERRY: Now, those are 4-second answers.
LAUREN: Yeah, but that could be a donate.
To me? LAUREN: Yes.
You have nails.
I know, but I wouldn't--
LAUREN: Repair them?
No.
LIZ: You shouldn't have to think about a bottle of nail polish
that deeply.
You want me to tell you the dates on any of those shoes.
I can help you with that.
I know shoes is your thing.
You can match shoes.
- I can match them? - Yeah.
You want--
Then what are you going to do with them?
Well, then we can decide--
- Oh-- - Where they're going.
I can match.
LIZ: If you just wait till she asks for help,
then you're better off.
LAUREN: Little things--
Want some shoes?
LAUREN: Those are my lawn mowing the lawn shoes.
I see that now.
KERRY: Why are you trying to find a match to something
that's no good anyway?
LAUREN: We're just matching.
We're not deciding.
The process, Kerry, is to get the match
and then have Lauren decide whether or not
she wants to part with her mother's old sneakers
from 10 years ago.
You can see if we can find a matching shoe box.
LIZ: That's an easy decision.
My assumption was that it's one--
one shoe deal--
Yeah, because it's a--
but it goes alternate.
It's not for shoes.
This is like a--
Yeah.
And this costs like $50.
So if I have a foot problem again, I want to keep it.
LIZ: They give you those for free at the hospital.
LAUREN: They don't.
This cost $50.
I had to go to the medical supply store.
They gave a prescription for it.
All right.
Where's the keep it pile?
LAUREN: I think that my relationship with my parents
has been strained because of this.
I don't have a lot of hope that all of a sudden everything
will be OK and they want to be supportive.
But there's, you know, there's only so much that they can do.
LIZ: We came down here because we were hoping that she comes
out of that excuse mode and start learning
certain behaviors all over again, because they think she's
blocked them all out.
Everything she's learned, I think she's totally blocked it
out.
GERALIN: We're having a bumpy road this morning.
GERALIN: Kerrylea, her husband greeted me
at the door this morning and told me she was really upset.
And I said, how upset?
And he said, really upset.
I thought we'd start this morning with a meeting.
Kerrylea and Geoff have asked me to talk on their behalf
for several reasons.
She was just not able to concentrate on anything
except what transpired yesterday.
Some keepsakes that were clearly marked,
her daughter's name Charity, are gone missing now.
We can't find them.
Basically, I felt like I communicated that really well.
And that-- those things, you can't replace.
I mean, it doesn't matter how much money I have
or how much time if they all got carted off because they looked
like garbage or something.
So the priority of the morning is I would like one of you
to go through that stuff and before we haul it out
to the pod, see if you can help her locate what she's looking
for.
One is a panda blanket and a tutu.
It's either a green tutu with white trim or the other way
around, a tutu anyway.
Be on the lookout for that.
All right, let's go ahead and get going, because we have
a very long day ahead of us.
OK?
Thank you, guys.
I appreciate you understanding and listening.
Well, I always like lettering.
All right, good.
Literally, like a piece of tape
and write in marker, Kerrylea's private section, do not touch.
One of those kind of things.
All right, sounds good.
Then maybe even mark it up there.
Caleb's just found the panda and the green tutu.
GERALIN: No way.
Thank you.
It was in this box over here marked towels and blankets
and sheets.
So they must have just got organized, but not thrown away.
How do you feel right now?
Better.
Hoarders have a unique set of challenges when they're
decluttering.
They focus on minutia.
And in Kerrylea's case it's that she has
to touch every single thing.
No, no.
The idea is for me to go through it.
Sorry.
Sorry about that.
You want to save these?
Yeah.
That's good.
I think all that can go.
You want to save that?
Well, no, I didn't say anything.
I haven't looked in this box yet.
OK.
KERRYLEA: I don't know what to do.
Is there anything in here.
KERRYLEA: You know that little half moon desk
that was by the front door.
On it, I kept a little piece of tile.
I don't know if you've noticed, right by the front door,
there's a broken Italian tile.
They're like four broken tile pieces.
And I've got three of them.
They fit together perfectly.
And you know, we were going to be able to glue them together.
But we're missing that one piece.
Did anybody see it?
No.
No?
Apparently, three of them are still here.
One of them is missing.
And so now we have the case of the missing tile, which
is important to her.
So hopefully we can find it.
- It was moved today. - Yeah.
It was moved today when we moved everything out of there.
We'll look around on the ground.
You might want to check the vacuum.
I don't know, they might have vacuumed it up possibly.
We probably would have just mistaken that for rubbish,
because it was--
it was a broken tile.
[vacuuming]
GERALIN: You're not putting stuff in a trash bag, right?
OK.
Do you understand?
Yeah, nothing gets thrown out without the owner's rubbish.
Where's that bag?
Let me-- let me just go get her to proof it, OK?
I have a little hiccup in our plan
is that the people doing the cleaning
didn't know not to touch everything on the bathroom
floor.
So they went ahead and put some things in the trash bag
while I wasn't here and you weren't here.
So if you want to, let's grab some gloves
and just make sure that it's still--
that it's trash.
That's there's nothing special in there.
Just for a second, while don't I
threw everything on the floor.
None of this stuff, did I--
OK, this is all jewelry boxes.
The question is, where is the jewelry that was in them?
GERALIN: Are you positive there was jewelry in there?
KERRYLEA: Uh, I'm positive that at one time
there was jewelry in there.
I was going so great gun.
I was feeling really good, communicating, moving around,
different things were happening.
Everything's going to go great.
We're going to make great progress.
High-high hopes.
And then something like that, it's like--
I don't know how to explain it.
It's like somebody punched me in the stomach, hit me
with a baseball bat.
Why?
KERRYLEA: We're just out of time.
And now I have to basically go through every piece that
was in that bag.
And that just completely demoralized me, deflated me,
de-energized me, de-everything.
So it's like right now I feel like sitting on the floor
and crying and giving up and going home.
RENAE: Day 2 of going through this process,
learning new patterns of behavior and thinking, right?
Mm, hm.
LAUREN: You want to grab the box that's upstairs.
WILL: Do you know where it is upstairs?
Nope.
I think it's in my room.
Can you just get it, please?
Yeah.
Relationship issues are really important in any problem
that people struggle with.
But I see it especially in hoarding.
And what happens is this dynamic gets created where the partner
becomes afraid oftentimes to say or do anything,
because there's such a strong emotional reaction.
Just you don't need to have it in a bin.
I don't want it in the bin.
Just like a pile.
Not with other things, please, William.
LAUREN: I'm sure he'll tell you that there's a lot of times
that he just feels like I'm just bossing him
around all the time.
Uh, weak.
You said just clear it out a little bit.
Yeah, but, like there's some crap on the bottom.
Ah, well, come on now.
If you're in a relationship with a hoarder,
my advice to you is to let go.
Can that not go in a pile of stuff?
Can that go separately, please?
Both of these boxes?
Both of those boxes.
They have--
LAUREN: Like I like having that power or whatever
and I like that he doesn't because you end up
totally controlling somebody.
And then I think they end up just succumbing to that.
And then either they wake up and leave, or they, you know,
just become your robot because they don't know what else
to do.
KERRYLEA: You want to do some of your stuff there.
WILL: Sure.
Think a good place to put it?
Well, just put it in the box.
Getting tired.
Just not getting my 12 hours.
Excuse me.
OK, maybe can we take five first?
RENAE: Yep, we can take--
So I can stop yawning.
RENAE: Five- minute coffee break.
Intelligence-wise, like it's not difficult.
But emotionally it's difficult. And you know,
you have to sort of open yourself up to being able
to change and doing that on your own time and at your own pace.
I always tell my clients I'm just a tour guide.
So look over here, here's something over there.
You can choose to look, not look, continue with the tour,
stop in the tour, take a break.
Any of those things are possibilities.
Yeah, then you're not here tomorrow.
Well, but I'm still available.
OK?
LAUREN: I just feel like there's obstacles.
Yeah.
LAUREN: Because there's not enough space in the hallway.
And there's not enough space anywhere
except for like the stairs.
The closets are blocked to the office.
And then I go up there, it just feels like that's opening up
a whole other can of worms.
She's resting.
And she wants to do that for right now.
She just-- she wanted me to let everybody know that.
Well, how about five minutes.
Then I'll go up and chat with her a little bit
and see what she wants to do the rest of the afternoon, how she
wants to spend the time.
I don't want to just leave and not have a chance to--
WILL: Absolutely--
Talk about what we did, what we processed.
So--
I'm-- her choice is the one that's going to--
- Uh, huh. - Yeah.
Of course.
So let's do five minutes, and then I'll go and talk to her
and just see what she wants to do.
And we'll from there. - OK.
- Sound good? - Sounds good.
- All right. - All right.
Thanks, Will.
It's been tiring.
Yeah, ready for some rest.
[music playing]
[knocking]
RENAE: Hey, Lauren.
It's Renae.
How are you doing?
Sleepy?
Yeah, I know, you're working hard.
What do you feel like you're up to doing?
RENAE: Yeah, it's not easy for sure.
And you know what, most importantly,
right now you have to be selfish and help yourself.
OK?
RENAE: You're not used to that.
RENAE: It's important to change those concepts.
And best to do it now when you're young.
[music playing]
RENAE: This is not an easy thing to do.
So I would hope that she would continue with what we've
started.
Some things went really well.
Some times were really challenging for you.
And that's totally normal process.
And I think it's something that people can't expect anything
different.
Because this is things how things really work.
Right?
LAUREN: If somebody were to walk in off the street
and say, oh, what did you do exactly?
Like, oh, I see a couple of corners, you know,
but other than that, it doesn't really look all that different.
You have all these great intentions,
and you want to get things done quickly, or you know,
other people want to help you because they can do it better
or whatever, but I have to learn for myself
and I have to do it at my own pace.
Ask the owner if she wants to leave it.
Yeah.
If she can just give us some direction on this stuff,
we'd be in good shape.
GERALIN: I'm just--
I want to point out that we are really getting to crunch time
now, OK?
So do you think that you're in a frame of mind
to focus on the big picture?
The really big picture, which is in the next two hours
we have to get this packed, and I
want to know what are you going to do for plan B
if it doesn't get done today.
KERRYLEA: What I'd like to do is get the brown roll top--
there's no way to get to it.
Could we get to the brown roll top desk in computer room
and get that--
You have us for another hour and 15 minutes.
So you just show us what you want removed
and we're going to do it right now.
OK.
Let's go.
OK.
Let's go.
The only thing we're coming in here for is this roll top desk.
Nothing on it.
But it stays in the room.
Can we open that door all the way?
Doorknob.
It smells.
Pull the desk apart.
Pull that top leg off.
I don't want to break it.
That's OK.
It's OK to break it there.
Bring it in the truck, guys.
All right, good job.
We've got a few more things inside.
CLEANER: Towards the end of today,
Geoff and Kerrylea were finally letting us throw things away,
probably more so Geoff.
He was even kind of sneaking some stuff,
trying to hurry up and put it in the truck
before his wife would see it.
GEOFF: Now, there's a mattress in Charity's room, we want to--
Sure--
Take that to the rubbish truck.
So--
KERRYLEA: What's that?
What's what?
That.
That?
KERRYLEA: Yeah.
That's the-- what do you call those--
CLEANER: Roll top.
The roll top desk from the computer room.
I wanted it to go in there or in the garage.
It's been kind of torn up.
I thought you wanted it thrown away.
No, I didn't.
It's-- it's broken.
Kerrylea, remember, we had that conversation
at the top of the stairs about that desk specifically.
What about it?
We went in there with Geoff with the crew
and removed that desk upon you asking us to do that.
Remember that?
Right, that I remember for real.
We had that conversation at the top of the stairs.
That's the desk that you asked us--
Yeah, I wanted to get out--
I wanted to get it out to put it in here.
Not to put it in the garbage.
I told them to put it in there, because I thought
you wanted it as garbage.
Yeah, because you don't listen.
Well-- whatever.
[music playing]
CLEANER: They really wanted to be helped.
But I think they had a hard time accepting our help because they
continue to want to hoard what they had.
And the problem was is there was so much to go through
to get to what actually did matter, Kerrylea,
she didn't want to let go.
[music playing]