NEVER ENOUGH
TRANSCRIPT
01:00:17:00
TEXT CARD: UPPER WEST SIDE OF MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY
Ron: All right? Just take all that stuff and dump it. Here, wholesale it. Right inside here.
Michele: I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
Ron: I can.
Michele: I don’t want …
Ron: I know you don’t want to. But I have to get rid of this stuff here.
Michele: No, this stuff stays.
Ron: That’s going. This whole row. It’s going. Are you keeping all those?
Michele: Yes.
Ron: Where are we going to put them?
Michele: I don’t know.
Ron: OK.
01:01:00:00
Michele: Take the goddamn tree.
Ron: I can’t get to the friggin’ tree. I’ll get to it when I get to it. I know you hate it, but one thing at a time.
Michele: I don’t hate it. I love it.
Ron: Well, we need to … Do you want this stuff?
Michele: Yes.
Ron: Then put it over there in the keepers.
01:01:20:00
Shooter: If you could just save some essentials it would be wonderful.
Michele: Essentials? I don’t know what the essentials are. What do you think are the essentials?
01:01:33:00
OPENING TITLE SEQUENCE:
Never Enough
A film by Kelly Anderson
01:02:13:00
Michele: Growing up … I grew up in Great Neck. I was an independent kid, a tomboy.
TEXT ID: MICHELE GITLIN
Michele: I went to various colleges. I studied philosophy. I used to be a computer users’ manuals writer. I had a stroke, and the languages that I had: French and Russian and the computer languages were gone. So I couldn’t use a computer afterwards.
01:02:48:00
I collect anything. Well, not anything. I don’t collect junk. I don’t collect garbage. I don’t collect newspapers. What I collect is earrings, rock ‘n roll, or musical things, I have classical, jackets, coats and my sweaters.
01:03:16:00
I spend many a lovely evening alone with my tea and a stapler and my collection of ties. They’re just beautiful, when they hang up, it’s artwork to me, it really is. So this is part of my collection. I’m using collection in the worst sense of the word: my hoarding ties, okay?
01:03:58:00
I love every single thing that I’ve collected, it’s a part of me. Or it’s a part of me in the future. Like, this dress was bought for Christmas. I never wore it. Here’s a bunch of shirts. I come in here and the shirts are … okay, which one goes? And if I feel terrifically brave I can pick one out that can go out, that can go to a thrift shop, that somebody else can use. But that’s only on a good day. That’s really a very sunny day.
01:05:59:00
TEXT CARD: QUEENS, NEW YORK CITY
Ron (on phone): We’re going to go to the Upper East Side, I need to come see you, I need to see your stuff, I need to talk to you. I need to do a lot of things that would give me an idea of what it’s going to take for me to help you get out of the mess that you’re in. You’ve got to understand one thing very clear: clutter didn’t happen overnight. It’s been going on for a while.
01:05:21:00
TEXT ID: RON ALFORD, OWNER, DISASTER MATERS INC.
Ron: Clutter begins in the brain and ends up on the floor. And part of the process of what I do for a living is to help people get uncluttered from their lives. Look around, everything that’s in here I brought in and I have here for one of three reasons: I like, I want it or I may need it one day. And the other thing is that stuff that I’m not sure about, like this stuff over here, if you look through here, there’s a whole pile of stuff over here. And this is no different than them. Who are they? They are my clients. How do I know what they are? Because I, too, am one of them. The only difference is I know the difference and I’m able to act on it. These are decisions that I have yet to make. So the good decision is to throw this in the trash or to put it someplace or to deal with it. The bad decision is not to do anything with it but to let it sit there and pile up.
01:06:17:00
Here is the Disaster Masters website, “The Right People To Know Before Things Go Wrong.” The other tagline is, “The Right People to Call after Things Have Gone Wrong.” And here is the piece de resistance: Disposophobia.com. If you type in the word “clutter” you’re more than likely to show up here. Disposaphobics are generally very smart people who basically can’t, don’t or won’t make fast value judgments about their stuff. Their solution for their dilemma: they keep everything. We help these people make those decisions in an easy and non-threatening and non-judgmental way.
01:07:14:00
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that people can do with their brains and their minds once they understand how it works. And the more I practice this stuff the more I understand it. The only thing that has no help left is this chicken!
01:07:32:00
Michele: I called up Disaster Masters and I got Ron and I sent him a check, and he came to make an assessment. So he made the assessment and I was a hoarder, and he changed my perception about me as a person. Because a hoarder is a little bit different than a “supercollector” or a “megacollector” or somebody that gathers things.
01:08:32:00 TEXT CARD: FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA
David: All my collections were started before I ever got married.
01:08:44:00
TEXT ID: DAVID GUESS, RETIRED MILITARY PILOT
David: As a single guy and somewhat successful, I had the means and the ability to do this stuff.
When my father passed away in ’95, there were several things that he and I enjoyed that I felt brought us closer together, and one of those things was he was a clown in the Shriners. So I started collecting these clowns from Ron Leigh, and as you can see, I have a nice little collection. I don’t think that I have gone to excess.
01:09:16:00
When I turned my 20 years over in the military I bought me a brand new Harley Davidson, so I started collecting these motorcycles. And collecting is really not collecting unless you have everything.
01:09:36:00
I’m working to try to get rid of stuff but it just seems to accumulate more. Now that the baby is here, she accumulates a lot of stuff. But we do have room, we may not have enough room, and I feel like the “clutter,” as they refer to it, doesn’t really bother me as much as it bothers my wife.
01:10:05:00
TEXT ID: LYNETTE GUESS, DAVID’S WIFE
Lynette: There’s just the problem of it existing and, “Look at the garage, we can’t get through it, it’s a problem, we can’t stuff anything else in it.” So we take everything out and think that we’re cleaning stuff up and getting rid of it, then we put it back and it looks the same.
01:10:20:00
Lynette: When I first moved in we had probably, I want to say, about 200 of those plastic cups that you get at sporting events. And, you know, a few are nice to knock around but you literally opened the cupboard and it would explode all over you. So I went through and kept the World Series and Super Bowl ones, and all that, and put the rest in the recycler. Not three days go by and they’re back.
01:10:44:00
David: Hello?
Ron: Paperman!
David: All right!
Ron: You must be David.
David: Yes, sir. How are you?
Ron: I’m Ron Alford.
David: Ron, it’s a pleasure. Come in, please.
Ron: Good to see you. Oh man, do you know how hot it is out there?
David: Well, that’s not hot yet.
Ron: Nice house. You live here with whom?
David: My wife and my daughter. That’s our little family wall there. She’s eighteen months.
Ron: All right. I’m here to help you do what?
David: Organize my garage.
Ron: Now, you and I both know that military pilots are among the most organized people on earth. So why do you need me?
01:11:25:00
David: Well, this whole process started with my wife wanting to make more room for the baby’s items, which is her stroller, her other items in the house that could be kept in the garage.
Ron: Oh, it’s a territorial issue. A territorial war?
David: Exactly. Now they want to invade my comfort zone in the garage. And so, through some of her friends it became apparent that we needed an “Organizer,” which I thought was totally ridiculous. I mean, who has a job as a professional organizer? I laughed so hard about that.
01:12:04:00
Ron: Oh my god, look at this! This is my kind of place! That’s a beauty.
David: So what do you think?
Ron: I think that you have far more stuff … there’s a law of stuff, and no matter how you organize it, you’re never going to organize all this stuff to be efficient.
David: Well, I agree that a certain amount has to be dealt with.
01:12:34:00
David: I’m not real happy about this room.
Ron: Oh, this is the room that I have photographs of.
David: Yeah.
Ron: What’s in the boxes over there?
David: Beanie Babies.
Lynette: Actually it was the Beanie Babies that were in a secret room that he wouldn’t tell me about for several weeks after we met. I didn’t know what was in there, I thought maybe he was a pervert or something.
David: I have close to probably about 7,800. They go from this size to this size. And most of them are all individually packed, so they’ll be safe. And I did this mainly because of investment. I thought I would resell them and make a few dollars on each one, and it just to instead of selling them into thinking of collecting them. And it started like a snowball, once it started I just, “more, more, more” because of great merchandizing from the company that makes them, because they come out with 14 or 15 new ones every quarter, and you gotta have them, so if you buy one or two of each one every quarter you can see how quickly they can add up. They’re so pretty, the colors and the quality I think. You have the monkey, and you have the fish.
01:14:07:00
Lynette: I think that having stuff kind of gets in the way of living your life and being happy, just basically. I think a lot of just the stuff, and the maintenance of the stuff, and cleaning the stuff, and putting it here and putting it there and creating room, takes away from time together, which I’d rather be doing.
01:14:28:00
David: It probably would be a good idea to get rid of some. Anything to make the wife happy. Beanie Babies are a very sore issue with her, I think because they take up so much space. But the Beanie Babies were here before she was.
01:14:49:00
TEXT CARD: NEW YORK CITY
Barbara: I threw all the napkins out. Even though they were perfectly fine napkins. I threw them out. How pathetic is this? But I started to do stuff like that. Okay, I got through one drawer.
Ron: When you did that, what was going on, how did it make you feel to do that?
Barbara: There was part of me, the old thing, that was like, “Why are you throwing those napkins out? They are perfectly good napkins! You already need napkins.”
Ron: They’re gone, now how do you feel?
Barbara: Well, good.
01:15:21:00
Michele: I got this letter today. “You are hereby notified …”
Ron: Oh, oh.
Michele: Yeah, it’s one of those letters.
Barbara: For you? You’re being evicted?
Ron: Let me see it. Yeah, this is … “Accordingly the undersigned landlord hereby demands that tenant cure said defaults on or before July 15th.” There you go … that’s it. You’ve got ten days to fix this. “And if tenant fails to cure said default within such time period, tenant’s tenancy shall terminate upon the expiration of 30 days following the service of a notice of such failure to cure.” Which means they will get the sheriff, come over and unlock the door and throw your ass out.
Michele: I can’t move fast. I mean, that was the first thing that panicked me when I got the letter. I’m attached to everything, and I’m clearing, but it was much slower. Every single time a bag left I went through mourning, I went through, “Have to get the bag back!”
Ron: This is real, real pain. That’s serious pain. I’m committed to keeping my ass out of the sling, I’m going to take my crib, empty it almost to the bare walls, that’s going to give me a whole new outlook on life because now I have something to look forward to, rather than looking in the behind. Because up to this moment you’ve been living in the past.
01:17:13:00
Jay: The things you’re looking at, this is the story of my life. I designed folk, square and social dance costumes.
TEXT ID: JAY HELFENBEIN, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
Jay: People would come in to me at the house, “I need a dress for such and such an occasion.” Boom, I’d sit down with a sketch pad, sketch it out, do the alterations on the sketch, ask what kind of fabric they want. Come back in a week and it would be on the mannequin.
01:17:57:00
I saw this on one of the home shopping things. And it was so exactly to what I did that I had to get the set. There’s the box, see it? And there’s the doll. We put on the show, The Sound of Music. So up in the corner over there are eight plates from The Sound of Music. I had to have it.
01:18:31:00
Ron: This project is a male, about 50-some-odd years old. He came into a substantial sum of money from an inheritance when he parents passed away and he sat around the house, according to his sister, and bought stuff on QVC. It got to a point where she figured out she needed to do something because the building owner came in through the window because they couldn’t get in the door to deal with a plumbing problem, and they discovered this fellow living like this. And now he’s on the brink of being evicted from this place.
01:19:12:00
TEXT ID: FLORI KOSTOFF, JAY’S SISTER
Flori: Jay is a unique personality, a unique character, and very creative and artistic and he’s full of life and just loves everything that comes in contact with him, obviously.
01:19:29:00
Ron: He’s right up there on the clutter scale, probably 8 and a half, because you can still see his bed. I mean, he has to negotiate the thing and back into the thing, I’m sure he doesn’t go to bed face first, he has to back into it this way. A lot of people live just that way, they have a methodology to function.
01:19:51:00
Flori: He’s obsessive, obviously. Possibly bipolar. He has his mood swings up and down, he goes through shopping sprees up and down, and once he was on a roll, you couldn’t stop him. He would be on the phone to the shopping channels all night, just in case he missed something that he had to have.
01:20:18:00
Ron: Why do you have all this Diet Coke and Pepsi?
David: It was a bargain.
Ron: So you’re a sucker for bargains?
David: I love a good bargain. When I’m feeling down sometimes, I love to go spend money and buy stuff too. There’s nothing that takes your mind off your problems like spending money.
01:20:37:00
Lynette: He went out and got some cartridges for the sink in the kitchen, and maybe a week or two later he’s got this bargain on one of these water coolers, you know those things that you have to put the big bottles on? And I’m like, “Why?” “But it was a good deal, it was like $5,” or something like that. “But, we don’t need it.”
01:20:55:00
Ron: You and the world has been trained to think like public opinion: more is better.
David: Exactly, I mean, 2 for five bucks or just buy one for $2.50.
Ron: Bullshit. You’re wrong. The guy at the supermarket is smarter than you are, no offense. You know why? Because he puts all the shit there on the very end of the aisle and you hit it, knock it over when you go around the corner, “Oh, look, three for five dollars!”
David: I never really thought of it that way.
Ron: I know you haven’t. Whenever you start feeling like you’re going … what they call “going with the flow,” question the system. Say, “Wait a minute, why am I buying this shit? Is it really cheap? Am I saving money?” You know how you save money? Don’t spend it.
01:21:34:00
David: These were the McDonald ones I was telling you about. What an anal person I was doing that.
Ron: The good news is that you’re starting to admit it.
David: These were their Holiday collection here. This is a Beanie Baby Collectors’ Guide, this tells you the value …
Ron: You know who makes money in that business? That son of a bitch right there is the guy that made more money on Beanie Babies than anybody else. The guy that’s in the publishing business that determines the alleged value of the product.
David: I think that’s a scam.
Ron: Well, welcome! Hello!
David: God Bless America!
Ron: I think I want to cry.
01:22:25:00
Michele: There’s a physical pull for me to go to the thrift shops, and I have to think of other things to do. Shopping raises endorphins, that’s what shopping does. All these things that people do make them feel better, and then it makes them feel worse, if they’re addicted to it, because they’re not doing it. So they do it more.
01:22:55:00
Jay: I’m very nervous right now, very very nervous right now.
01:23:17:00
Jay: Keep, keep, keep!
Jay: In that basket is something that I’ve been trying to get to and I can’t get in there.
Sandy (Worker): What it is?
Jay: It’s a fuzzy animal.
Sandy: Fuzzy animal! Does it bite? I hope it’s not part of those guys that we found?
Jay: No, no, no. It’s a teddy bear. There’s a whole bag of the different outfits.
Sandy: Let me make this man happy.
Jay: I’ve been trying to get them for months and months.
Don’t throw that out, please.
Ron: The de-icer? Do you have a car?
Jay: Yes.
Sandy: That’s garbage.
Jay: No, it’s not garbage.
Ron: You know why? You know what it is?
Jay: Yes.
Ron: What is it?
Jay: It’s from my fan in the bedroom.
Ron: Right, and it’s broken.
Jay: It needs a new bracket.
Ron: Where do you think you’re even going to get one of those?
Jay: I can get one from Home Depot or one of the other places.
01:24:29:00
Ron: Here’s the kind of crap that people buy from QVC. It comes like this. They show it in an exquisite manner on television and they have this enormous patter that they go through. They have some of the best telephone people on earth. “Hi, Jay, you are you?” When the phone rings they know exactly who the caller is, it rings on the screen and they go, “Oh, there’s Jay. What did they say about Jay last time. Oh yeah, he likes this. Jay, how are you doing? How’s your dog, Nathan? Do you like your dog? Blah, blah. What do you want to buy today, Jay? Let me see how much you’re doing to get. Oh, we have your credit card number. How many do you want? One? Well, we have a sale on. If you guy one, you get fifty more for another $49.” “Oh, well, that’s fine. You remember me, you remember my name, you remember my dog.” Jay gets this shit in the mail two days later, he opens it up, looks at it and that’s the end of it. It becomes another fucking problem just like this.
01:25:38:00
Flori: I was in touch with the shopping channels, and they looked up his record and said “Oh my god, he is a compulsive shopper and he’s been a very good customer.”
01:25:49:00
Ron: I can only surmise that because America is glutted with crap, and we have five or six, is it, 24-hour a day, 7 days a week, shopping networks, and credit cards and instant gratification, that the problem is getting worse because, the problem is, where do people put all this stuff?
01:26:17:00
Ron: You dance pretty good, David!
David: Yeah, I follow orders well, don’t I?
Ron: Yup, you do.
Ron: Kids’ stuff.
David: This is my, “To be Ebay-ed” section.
Ron: Garden. Garden. Yard and garden. Yard and garden. I tell you, you and Home Depot are good buddies. So do you own stock in Home Depot?
01:26:46:00
Neighbor: Are you having a garage sale today?
David: No garage sale today.
Ron: We may have a garage sale.
David: Most of this stuff is the business that I do, to make a living at.
Ron: Even so … where it is going to go? You’re never going to get it back in there so that it will be efficient. It won’t happen.
David: Well, I mean, efficient is one thing, but being … throwing it away and making a bad decision is another.
Ron: How are you going to manage all of this if you continue to make all the decisions, if all the ones you made here before have been to end up with too much of this stuff?
David: I could have hired 25 old ladies from a retirement center to give me as much advice as he has. Hell, they’d have the same idea.
01:27:33:00
Ron: Turn around, just stay right there. As a matter of fact, come over here with me, because I want you to look at the man and his stuff.
Lynette: Where is he at?
Ron: Turn around and look at this happiness.
Lynette: Holy smokes!
Ron: Man, she has a big smile on her face.
David: I don’t think I’ve ever put a bigger smile on her face than that.
Ron: Well, what can I tell you, son? Some of us have talent and others of us wish they did!
01:28:02:00
Lynette: We haven’t seen this rug in years. This is absolutely amazing. It looks like a room.
Ron: Did you give him a hug yet?
David: I’m too sweaty, too stinky.
Ron: No, no. That’s bull. Did you give him a hug yet? If you don’t, I’m going to.
Lynette: I’m trying to and he’s running away.
Ron: Well, give him a hug for me. Go on, give him a hug, because he deserves it. Go ahead, you can hug her.
David: I don’t have to do anything, I’m on top.
Ron: There you go.
David: I did this for you, so you better be happy.
Lynette: I’m happy.
Ron: Hey, what about doing it for yourself?
01:28:39:00
Ron: You know why people clutter?
David: No. I’d like to know, because apparently I do it.
Ron: One of the reasons is, it’s a proof of your existence on earth. It’s the way that you document who you are. All this shit around you is something that you created. And as it sits around, you look at it and you say, “This is me.”
David: Well, you know what? I really don’t feel like this is me.
01:29:13:00
Ron: You’re going to be better. You were about as worse as you could get when I walked in here. Things are going to go up from here. You got that? Feeling sorry for yourself is not going to help either.
Jay: I’m not sorry for myself.
Ron: All right, then what are you doing? Talk to me.
Jay: I’m trying to figure out, what do I do now?
Ron: What do you do now? I’ll tell you what you do now. You start going through this stuff and seeing what you really absolutely positively …”
Jay: You don’t understand what I’m saying.
Ron: Go ahead.
Jay: You’re telling me I should go through … I can’t handle this. I am absolutely …
01:30:01:00
Ron: An addiction’s an addiction, you know. It doesn’t matter. There are people that are collectors, or people that are cocaine addicts, or people that are mail junkies. Their whole day is waiting around for the mail to come in so that they can get four or five pounds, because in some cases these people are so desperate that they think somebody gives a shit about them. This is a sad society of isolation is what it really boils down to. If I could give them a piece of information that would get them out of their depression, I’d do it.
01:30:57:00
Ron: Out, quick, quick, quick.
Michele: Get the tree out.
Ron: Good. If you want to keep the socks …
01:31:39:00
Are those keepers?
Michele: No, they’re to go.
Ron: Then let me get a clear bag for you.
Michele: I have one. I don’t have a servant kind of mentality.
Ron: You mean you’re not obsequious enough? You like that ten-cent word? You didn’t think I knew that one, did you? Obsequious?
Michele: Obsequious.
Ron: Obsequious. See, I didn’t know it.
Michele: You did know it, but you mispronounced it.
Ron: Well, I’m Southern. You can blame it on being Southern. Let me take that. You’re doing such a great job, I need to give you a hug. Come here girl, let me give you a hug, I just feel like a hug. Every once in a while … this is called love. She loves to be loved. Give her some love, listen to her. Are you all right?
Michele: I am slowly extinguishing myself.
Ron: No, you’re not. We’re all dying slowly, we’re all dying slowly.
01:32:44:00
TEXT CARD: FOR MY DAUGHTER SOFIA
END CREDITS START HERE
01:33:14:00
Ron: The books, we’ll recycle those. These here will go to a placed called St. Mary’s over in Brooklyn. We’ll take it back to our office, they’ll send a truck over and collect it and they’ll be very happy. Then Michele will be able to go back over to St. Mary’s and buy the shit all over again and start again.
MORE END CREDITS