Hoarding on the local news

12 February 2010

The Fox News affiliate here in St. Louis, KTVI Channel 2, aired a story two nights ago about hoarding and chronic disorganization. I was interviewed for the piece, along with one of my chronically disorganized clients, LuAnn, who was brave and generous enough to let the cameras into her home in an effort to help others.

Here’s the video:

I have to say that the reporter, Paul Schankman, and the cameraman, whose name I don’t recall unfortunately, were both kind and respectful and made us comfortable. I thought the story was sensitively told, though I worry a little that the footage of the now-deceased hoarder interspersed with that of LuAnn’s home might make confuse viewers into thinking her home was much less livable than it really is.

The “National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization’s Clutter Hoarding Scale allows us to assign a level of disorganization to a home. I put LuAnn’s at Level 2. The highest/least livable level is Level 5. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Level 5 home.

Anyway, I was so proud of LuAnn and impressed by how articulate and honest she was in her interview. I got to hear the whole interview (a fraction of which appeared in the story) and her insights blew me away.

I was really pleased to see that Paul and Channel 2 didn’t sensationalize LuAnn’s story, didn’t label her a hoarder and treated the issue with respect. Bravo!

Tagged with: chronic disorganization, hoarding, television

Comments

Paul certainly did a nice job with the story. Kudos to LuAnn for opening her home to the news team. Unfortunately, as you mentioned in your post, it was quite difficult to distinguish which clip belonged to which home… Quite unlikely that the average viewer could tell the difference… Congrats on the coverage!

Michelle @ [ real neat ] March 13, 2010 01:42 PM