When I was in highschool, I had a friend whose family were hoarders. This was way before the show, so no one in our social circle knew much about it in terms of being an actual disorder, but we all we knew about her house. We just thought it was the way her family was, kind of thing. She lived in a massive house on a corner lot in an upper-class neighborhood; it was beautiful. But inside it was pretty much unusable. There was the living room with a single chair and a small tv, the rest of the house completely full of things. We had to walk through the halls sideways to get around. Her basement was literally crammed to the ceiling with things, they would just throw stuff down the stairs because there was no way any living thing could ever fit down there. They also had pets, which were all kept in a small corner in the kitchen by the back door. We made lunch at her house once, and had to sit on the floor to make the food because there was no space on the tables or counters, and at the end I chose not to eat anything. It's one thing to see it on TV, but to see it in real-life is almost surreal.