Inadvertent hoarders

After several years of the A&E documentary "Hoarders", we won't go into the many reasons and intricacies of this behavior.

Suffice it to say, seeing it is weird. From a front porch in Chicago, Ill., we had the perfect view of the hoarder family across the street. They had one house they and the dog lived in, another house next door that was full of shelves, even in front of the windows. And they had two vans parked on the street in addition to their cars. The vans were full of stuff too, mobile shelf space.

If A&E ever runs out of hoarders, may we suggest an even better subject: inadvertent hoarders.

Inadvertent hoarders are people who donate storage space for a supposedly limited time to friends, family, neighbors, only to find that nobody ever shows up to retrieve their stuff.

You can see the appeal of a series on this. As a producer, you are not limited to at max a small family shoving objects into every nook and cranny of their house or apartment. With the inadvertent hoarders you get a whole other set of protagonists to track down and interview! It can inject a bit of "History Detectives" or "Antiques Roadshow" into a format that some have seen as tired after the first handful of episodes.

Plus, it can be done better internationally. American style full time hoarders are, we claim without too much data, pretty rare in most countries. On the other hand, the kids who move out or the friend who puts some boxes into your attic or basement are something many people can relate to.

Those accepting the gear are in the great majority not plagued by some brain chemistry issues, they are people like you or me, helpful folks.

Time to go an pick up that big orphaned Toshiba laptop from ca. 1989. Will it work?