From large piles of food boxes to dozens of cats running amok, Lee Rose has seen homes at their most unlivable.
“There are times that I will meet someone on the worst day of their life,” Rose said. “We help them through it, not necessarily by cleaning their place but by making it safe again.”
Rose is a general manager for Steri-Clean, a national biohazard and extreme cleaning company based in California. The company cleans up after deaths and also clears out residences of hoarders, who often make their homes uninhabitable or dangerous by accumulating large amounts of clutter and trash.
From his home base in Orlando, Rose oversees seven of nine Florida franchises that cover 10 counties with roughly 16 million people. Rose's crews have been featured on an episode of the A&E show "Hoarders."
Rose said he worked in corporate America before deciding he wanted to take on a job he felt helped people. He's now been in the biohazard remediation and extreme cleaning industry for 22 years.
The job obviously entails getting dirty. “You have to be willing to immerse yourself in this,” Rose said. “Sometimes there is no place to sit down.”
Moreover, he said, online shopping and delivery apps have changed what he sees these days. “One of the interesting things we see now is the shopping hoarder,” he said. “I’ve cleaned out homes that are not dirty, filthy homes. They’re just overrun with clothing.”
But every job also requires a remarkable amount of sensitivity and empathy, according to Rose. “Being nonjudgmental comes along with the work,” he said.
Rose met with Homes.com at an Orlando café to give some insight into how he handles some of the most severe cleaning tasks.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the first step when you’re working with a hoarder?
The first, most important thing is to listen. To be patient. To be able to empathize. We’ve all dealt with a certain amount of tragedy. Being able to use and share those lessons to help others is very important. Sometimes people can be irrational. You’re dealing with shock and grief. Sometimes, when you’re dealing with hoarding homes, you’re dealing with depression. [Hoarding] is typically born of trauma. People fall into depression and they don’t take care of themselves or their dwelling.
We’ll meet with you, we’ll get to know you, we’ll see if it’s going to be a good fit. I want to understand your backstory. I want to understand how you got here. We have to be able to connect in order to be able to touch your most personal things. We’re not the junk guys.
I meet a lot of very interesting people. And we’re all collectors to a certain extent. We all have passions for things we like to collect. The problem is when the collection gets out of hand.
If a hoarder is still in the house, how do you determine what to trash?
The client has to be in control. We’re the arms and legs, but you’re telling us what stays and goes. And that helps people feel more at ease. We’ll push a little bit. We’ll help you make decisions. But we won’t throw things out without telling you.
We divide most of it into three categories: keep it, dispose of it and donate it. We donate a ton of stuff. We pore through it first to see what’s donatable. A number of local charities, they know when our trucks come. That’s a blessing to somebody on the backend.
We sometimes have a fourth category we call "maybe." Maybe is, you want to keep it, but I think you don’t. I’m not going to debate it with you now, because we have to move along, so it goes in the maybe pile. Sometimes the maybe pile is bigger than all of them.
If they’re really worried about something, what we say to people is to take a photograph of it. Because you’re more likely to look at the photograph than something stuffed in the back of a closet.
What do cleanups cost?
It’s often more expensive than people think. I’ve been on clean-outs that have been $1,500 or $2,000, and I’ve done them that have been $40,000 or more.
A lot of it will depend on how much time we have to spend with you. One of the more popular kinds we get is crafters. It’s very difficult to clean out any kind of crafting hoard, because they have a bazillion little things and they don’t like to throw out anything. So, it takes a long time with a lot of people to go through every bit of everything.
People who suffer from depression don’t have the same stamina. After lunch, they’ll say, 'You have to call it for the day.' And what happens is the crew gets paid for a full day. So, it could take twice as long and run into the thousands.
What should people consider?
When you die, someone has to clean out your house. They have to go through what you’ve left behind. It’s given me a new respect for how people prepare, even when you don’t want to deal with … the inevitability of not being here. But understand that we’re leaving a chore behind for somebody.