Top of The Heap

Video

'Clean House' and Clutter

Clips from the "Messiest Home 2" episode of "Clean House."

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

But he relented, and Mindy got out the camcorder and chronicled a horror so gross that anytime the doorbell would ring, the Wheelers wouldn't answer it, embarrassed by their own filth:

In about 1,000 square feet (including a living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom and the walk-in attic at the top of the stairs), the Wheelers were down to two relatively clear spaces: part of a kitchen counter between the stove and the sink, and the surface of their bed, where Phil would spend most of his days and where, Mindy sighs, "I had to do all my Christmas, because there's really no place else to do it."

When you walked in, all you could think was dog pee. (Where? In the rugs?) Clutter was stacked high as the ceiling in every small room, including the plastic-shelf clutter one accumulates in hopes of organizing clutter. There were at least eight computers in different rooms and lots of pieces of other computers, and several dozen black phones that Phil rescued years ago from the aftermath of an office park bankruptcy. He intended to fix these phones and sell them on eBay, and of course he never did.

Piles and piles and more piles: paper, magazines, books, boxes, old video game systems, outdated LaserDisc movies, broken things that were part of gizmo things that once went with other things. Wires and cords. Busted dressers. Heaps of clothes. Lots of board games, which Mindy and Phil say are their favorite pastime, games you never heard of or wouldn't want to play -- Topple and Outburst and Who Knew?

There were, of course, stuffed animals, knickknacks, bric-a-brac, ackety-ackpht! They're always there in such houses: those sweet, cutesy items that are meant to cheer you up but somehow bring you all the way down. There was all of Phil's ham radio stuff. (Are the houses of ham radio enthusiasts ever tidy?) There were even computers in the couple's tiny bathroom, where the toilet and tub have not been scrubbed, at all, in more than a year.

In the messiest part of the house -- the attic -- Mindy poured on a little of reality television's favorite sauce: If the house could somehow get clean, Mindy narrated, she might get what she really wants -- the chance to adopt a baby.

Weeks later, a producer from California visited and took notes.

'Let's Get to Gettin' '

Weeks after that, on a cold, wet, late April morning, the trucks and RVs come to the Allentown Pike and park at the curb, disgorging production assistants, segment producers and post-production producers, a director and an assistant director; an executive producer and a network vice president; sound guys and lights guys and camera guys; hair and makeup people and, finally, the four-person cast of "Clean House," for an 11-day shoot. (The episode will air Wednesday at 9 p.m. on the Style Network.) They all keep asking Mindy and Phil, over and over and over, for the camera, and even when the camera isn't on: How did it get this bad?

"I don't know what happened," Mindy says. "It almost happened so slowly we didn't notice it. But it also happened overnight. You know?"

"Clean House," the Style Network's most watched series, features a bossy, bosomy black woman -- a comic actress named Niecy Nash -- who shows up to people's houses to sass and shame them into getting rid of their accumulated junk. The sentimental things apply, but Nash deems such messes "the foolishness of it all." She wears a giant flower in her hair and a tight outfit with a plunging neckline, swivels her neck and sucks her teeth in soulful disgust and then suh - naps her fingers with a command of "Let's get to gettin'."

On each episode, crappy-on-the-inside houses are emptied of whatever this week's misguided homeowners held weirdly dear -- their gargoyle collections, their Beanie Babies, underplayed compact discs, seldom ridden exercycles -- and sold at a yard sale.

Then a fastidious designer, Mark Brunetz, jumps in and performs interior design hocus-pocus: new paint, sitcom-set furniture and the brutal but true law of less is more. A blond hottie with a Southern accent, Trish Suhr, coordinates the yard sale and makes sense of closets; a hunky "go-to guy," Matt Iseman, makes off-color jokes while wielding a power drill.