I get paid to clean hoarder houses – clients stash £50 notes in bizarre places, keep faeces & risk being buried alive

A WOMAN who gets paid to clean hoarder houses has revealed some of the most extreme cases she has had to deal with.

Victoria Gordon, 41, is a biohazard cleaner, which means that she cleans up after extreme situations, such as crime scenes, hoarder houses or needle sweeps.

“There’s nothing we won’t do,” she told Alex Light and Em Clarkson on their podcast Should I Delete That?

Victoria revealed in hoarder house situations, it is often not the hoarder themselves that call her but other parties such as social services or environmental health.

She said a lot of the time, the hoarder does not want the clean to happen, so she has to spend lots of time gaining their trust.

“Some of the houses we go in to are clearly not safe to be lived in. The risk of being buried alive is huge,” she said.

“We were in a house once, and the lady was sat in the living room whilst we were [cleaning] and she didn’t feel well so went upstairs to bed…

“One of the team went to take some rubbish out to the skip and she was at the bottom of the stairs under a pile of things.

“She’d stumbled on the stairs, fallen backwards and landed under just a huge pile of stuff we hadn’t got round to [cleaning] yet.

“If we hadn’t been in the house, she would’ve probably passed away there, she would’ve laid there for days or weeks,” Victoria said on the podcast.

The woman in question was “hoarding papers, magazines, newspapers, books, CDs”.

“Old paracetamol boxes but every single thing needed checking because we were finding thousands of pounds in a little paracetamol box, or notes stashed inside a book”, she added.

Victoria shared an insight into a hoarders lifestyle and explained how they often isolate themselves from friends and family, as they know that they shouldn’t be living like this, and are often found out after a neighbour or someone who comes to check the gas meter.

The extreme cleaner explained people often think hoarders are “lazy” when actually hoarding is a mental health condition.

“It can be triggered by all sorts of things such as trauma and grief,” she said.

Most people are also not receptive to the help. Victoria said how hoarders refuse to leave their homes whilst they’re being cleaned, meaning that she has to spend hours persuading them to throw away their stuff.

“Some haven’t thrown rubbish away for decades,” she said. “You can end up being in some people’s houses for weeks, if they’re really resistant.”

On top of newspapers, CD’s and books, Victoria has come across some hoarders who have kept urine and faeces, whilst others refuse to hoover up cobwebs.

Because of this, most of the hoarders have rat and mice infestations, which can lead to extreme health hazards.

Victoria said that the process of cleaning the houses can be very traumatic for the hoarders, which often makes her very sad.

She added sometimes she has to return to the same house twice, as hoarders often revert back to their old ways.

“Sometimes it’s like sticking a plaster on a severed artery,” she said. “They aren’t getting any help with the actual mental health condition.”

She said often hoarders are offered therapy, but rarely take it, so their problem is not properly tackled.

When she first started the job, Victoria used to judge the hoarders, but now understands that they are really struggling and often have trauma.

She said sometimes the hoarders don’t believe that they are deserving of living in a nice home, which is why they are unable to clean their houses.