Holy Cow-- I just watched the biggest train wreck of a remodeling show episode. Here's the description of the episode of Clean House:
Clean House Niecy Nash and her team of experts reconcile this battling mother and her college-age daughter by dragging out
the ugly excess, re-doing the living room, & the daughter's bedroom. (TV-PG)
And here's what ACTUALLY happened (I couldn't believe what I was seeing!)...
Ok, so the show starts off with the daughter looking like kind of a brat and definitely like a big slob. The girl's in college, and her mom is paying for her daughter to go to college. And the mom is playing the martyr in a BIG way for all of her efforts to help said daughter with school costs. Sorry-- but in the modern age, a responsible parent kinda needs to anticipate helping their kid w/college. It's cool the mom is helping, but egad, if I had to listen to her going on and on about her "sacrifice," I'd take out loans!
So, anyway, this house is a DISASTER. Again, as the show starts out, it seems the daughter is kind of a bratty slob and might be to blame for things being as cluttered as they are. However, as the show goes on, it becomes VERY clear that the mom is N-U-T-S...way, way NUTS. Like where are all the cats??? That's the one thing missing from this lady's place. She's got all these crazy lamps that are horribly ugly. She's also got this nasty couch she's WAY attached to. Claims it's really expensive and kinda new...if she paid for it new from a store and paid more than MAYBE $200, she paid too much, IMHO. Apparently, she actually paid more than $1400. I don't know what she does to earn a living-- I heard some reference to her being a judge. I can only hope that's not true.
The daughter's room is a mess, but part of the problem turns out to be that the mom buys the daughter all kinds of crap the girl doesn't want. Then, the mom yells and cuts into the daughter for being such a cluttered slob. Claiming this messy state of affairs only happened when the daughter moved back in and cluttered up the whole house (which I _DO NOT_ believe), the mom takes no notice of or responsibility for her own crazy inclination toward clutter...all those lamps. Wow.
So, anyway, the first step is to empty things out and have a yard sale. The Clean House team manages, after a lot of effort (at one point, the whole team wanted to leave, but the host said, "no, we've committed to doing this and we have to say"), to get the mother and daughter to put some stuff out to sell. They actually manage to convince the mom to part with her heinous couch, but then the crazy woman starts getting in the face of someone who want to buy the couch and passive-aggressively (of course!) going on about how she has been "forced" to get rid of the couch and wants to keep it. The team managed to finally get her to let it go-- to their regret. In the end, the tag sale yeilds like $700, which Clean Sweep matches, for a total remodel budget of $1400. Not bad. Of course, the mom quips, "WELL, that's less than the couch cost. But, that's ok. Fresh start, yeah." CREEPY CRAZY.
Ok, so the team sends the mom & daughter off and makes the place look hip and cute. The mom/daughter return, and the daugher is really happy with her new room, but the mom already starts freaking out over some fluffy pillows and the fact that the Clean House team painted the boring dresser set she'd pushed on the daughter. The mom said, "those were REALLY expensive-- what did you do to them?" You can imagine when they next moved to the living room. The mom actually started CRYING and yelling and whining on about the colors and the layout. She said, "I'm going to throw up." See, usually, the volunteer people come in and are surprised and excited and-- even if they're a little overwhelmed-- they at least say thank you. Not this woman. Wow. I don't think she gets much by way of interaction. You can tell by how freaky-weaky she is. If you don't get much interaction, you turn a little weird. And, no, cats don't count as real, demanding interaction partners. Still, they might be a step up for this chick.
Moral of the story: some people are really odd and surround themselves by clutter to keep others away. In this case, the mom obviously projected her own insanity unto the poor daughter. The daughter really needs to MOVE AWAY from that whole mess like NOW. I've met other people like this over the years and they're often so surrounded and overwhelmed by stuff that it's scary but in a sad kind of way. They seek help (like in this case-- I'm pretty sure the the mom called the Clean House people) but don't really want it and so the whole effort turns into a passive-aggressive mess, kinda like this episode. I feel bad for the Clean House staff-- YIKES!!