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‘Hoarders’ TV show wrapping up shoot in Greenport

PAUL SQUIRE PHOTO | TV producers and home remediators are wrapping up shooting for the television show “Hoarders.”

A team of professional cleaners and TV producers descended on Greenport this week to help a local woman manage her compulsive hoarding habit as part of a popular television show.

“Hoarders,” a documentary series on A&E that highlights the struggles of people who cannot part with their belongings and helps to find them treatment, filmed an episode on Carpenter Street this week.

The show began shooting Monday and wrapped up Wednesday, said Ken Olsen, owner of the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchise in Bohemia, who is working with the producers to clean out the house.

Mr. Olsen, whose company helped “Hoarders” at another shoot in Suffolk County, said the hoarding featured in this episode wasn’t as bad as some of the more dramatic cases in previous episodes, which sometimes feature squalor or unsafe living conditions.

“There are these full-blown hoarders, the kind you see on the show,” he said. “That’s not really the case here.”

Producers for the show declined to comment on the shoot.

The junk removal service used four trucks and eight employees to clean out the two-story house, working with the show’s hosts and psychologists to help the woman choose which items to keep and which to throw away.

Most of the belongings removed from the Greenport home will be recycled or donated, Mr. Olsen said.

On Wednesday morning, crews worked in the rain to carry old furniture and assorted junk into the waiting trucks parked in front of the house while the owner was away.

Mr. Olsen said the crew would stage the house once they were finished cleaning for the big reveal for the homeowner at the end of the shoot.

“She’s going to walk back in and be wowed,” he said.

The episode of “Hoarders” featuring the Greenport woman will air sometime in the next two months, a producer for the show said.

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