'Hoarders' keep one Tampa Bay business busy

TAMPA, FL -- Hoarding is an obsessive-compulsive disorder marked by an inability to throw things away.

It's a hot topic these days, from national talk shows like Oprah to a series on cable television, and one local business is keeping busy because of the spotlight on the problem.

So many, it's hard to imagine anyone walking through the room without trouble.

"Everybody has a different thing that they like to hoard and his particular thing was beer cans and newspapers," said Laura Spaulding.

The disorder called "hoarding" is keeping Spaulding busy. She's cleaned up loads of clutter from hundreds of homes across Florida and beyond.

It's not easy or clean work but the jobs have been plentiful for Spaulding who owns a professional crime scene cleanup company called Spaulding Decon.

She takes on two or more hoarding cleanup jobs a week, compared to just one per month about a year ago.

"You just kinda start at the beginning, work your way all the way to the back of the house. It really helps if there are family members there. They can calm down an individual who has the disorder or remove them from the home until we get it done," Spaulding says.

"It's a memory for them. Something tied in with something important but it's of no value if you look at it from a distance," said Dr. Walter Afield, a Tampa Bay psychiatrist.

Dr. Afield says hoarding can be a symptom of mental illness including dementia or something more serious. He explains many times, it's elderly shut-ins who become hoarders and their families become burdened with cleaning up the mess.

She says it took two days to clean that Tampa apartment filled with aluminum cans. When they were done, she took 160-pounds of aluminum to a recycling yard.

"Some of them have issues with letting it go. Even though it looks like trash to me, they are very attached to it," Spaulding points out. But whether the number of hoarder cases is increasing in Tampa Bay is hard to say.