Pack rats beware: The home-improvement shows know where you live, and they are eager to expose you. After you’re embarrassed on national television, you’ll have your personal effects sorted (with the unnecessaries being sold or discarded) and your rooms organized and made over. Not a bad deal in exchange for a little humiliation.
On TLC, the “Clean Sweep” team helps a becluttered couple reinvent two rooms in 48 hours. Host Tava Smiley makes a path through the disaster area/home, where closets often double as Dumpsters, and you never know what you’re going to find under beds.
Homeowners cower in shame and giggle with self-consciousness before they’re commanded to stuff their belongings into laundry baskets and haul them to the yard. They have 30 minutes to divide the items, including furniture, into three piles: keep, sell or toss.
Inside the house, one of four designers (they alternate episodes) is at work sharing his or her vision with carpenter Eric Stromer and organizer Peter Walsh. Stromer usually makes the furniture himself, incorporating built-ins to conserve space and money.
Walsh heads back out to the yard to check on the progress of the couple, who almost always fight over what goes and what stays. Bickering ensues. Walsh cajoles, persuades, mediates, soothes. Smiley helps the couple price the items for a yard sale, and the spouse who raises the most money can keep a prized “toss” item. In the meantime, the rest of the team redecorates the rooms.
After Stromer, Walsh and the designer say how much they’ve spent on each room, the couple is allowed back into the house to see the transformation. But will they keep it clean?
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HGTV offers a much less frenzied alternative in “Mission: Organization.” Host Gail O’Neill is calm and cool no matter how messy and out of control she finds any domestic disarray. She interviews family members at length about their likes, dislikes and goals for each room, nodding sympathetically.
“Everyone’s stuff is in everyone else’s space,” says one homeowner.
O’Neill calls in a “professional organizer” to cure the catastrophe. Overflowing closets, unfinished projects and old clothing are scrapped. Methodically, the family goes room by room sorting and throwing things away. Of course, spouses and siblings don’t always agree on what should be pitched.
Unlike “Clean Sweep,” a lot of custom furniture is created for “Mission: Organization.” It has more of a professional look, but also fewer projects that viewers can do on their own. And the series also fails to mention how much the makeovers cost.
“Clean Sweep” and “Mission: Organization” are slightly reminiscent of the BBC America series “Life Laundry.” (It airs here on WTTW-Ch.11.)
The British series is shot documentary style, and traces homeowners’ sometimes emotional parting with possessions they’ve stockpiled over the years. Along with the host, an antiques dealer determines whether the throwaways are worth anything. The jocular “Clean Sweep” and dramatic “Life Laundry” run rather long, however. But there are plenty of pack rats to go around on both sides of the pond.
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Carmel Carrillo is assistant editor of Real Estate. You may contact her at [email protected].