Matt Paxton Goes Inside 'The Secret Life of Hoarders'

May 10, 2011— -- Matt Paxton, star of A&E's hit show "Hoarders", has helped dozens of people struggling with the disorder. In his new book "The Secret Life of Hoarders" he gives readers an in-depth look at some of the most extreme cases he's seen and he explains why this happens.

Read an excerpt from "The Secret Life of Hoarders" below, then check out some other books in the "GMA" library.

It was the summer of 2006 and I was desperate for work.I was living in Richmond, Virginia, and sleeping on abuddy's couch after a few adventures with jobs that wentbad and an attempt to start my own business that failed. Iconsider myself to be a hard worker and usually have greatideas, but this time I just didn't know what to do.I decided to try to pick up a few cleaning jobs to earnenough money to help my buddy pay rent. I printed up someflyers and stuck them in mailboxes in an upscale neighborhood, and the next day I got a phone call. An older couplewanted me to empty out their son's house and organize anestate sale. The son, Timothy, had died recently, and theysaid there was just too much stuff for them to handle.I agreed to a price of a few hundred dollars. If I had hadany inkling what I was heading into, I would have chargedthousands. I had cleaned houses before, mostly helping mygrandmother and aunts, and I wasn't afraid of mess. But thisguy had been collecting things for decades. When his parentsshowed me into the house, I was overwhelmed by thesheer volume of clutter. Every room had stacks of dustcoveredboxes, bags, and cartons piled up to six feet high.Narrow, dark corridors snaked between the walls of stuff—Ihad to turn sideways to get through some of the tight spots.On my second day of trying to pull items out of the houseto sort and price for the sale, I realized I was in over myhead. I called my buddy's brother, Colin, and asked him tohelp. We needed a truck, so he grabbed another friend whohad one. Both of them were still in high school so we wereonly working late afternoons and weekends. It took us threeweeks to finally empty out that house.

Although Timothy had the most cluttered house I hadever seen, the stuff that he'd collected showed that he had alot of interests, ranging from music to German toy trains toantique furniture. Evidently he went through periods of collectingeach one of those, which we could tell by the layersof stuff and the dates on the letters and magazines in the layers.It was like being on an archaeological dig. We could tellthat from 1975 to 1980 he was into high-end stereo equipmentand vinyl recordings. Then, from 1980 to 1984, heslowed down and was mainly hanging on to mail and magazines.He started saving musical instruments around 1985,and then a few years later added the trains. He collectedboard games too.