Workers in masks and gloves hauled black trash bags out of the home in Franklin’s Oak Leaf Manor neighborhood.
Boxes of items sat in the yard, waiting to be discarded. A trailer had been filled with tree branches, cleared out from the overgrown backyard.
“Hoarders,” the A&E reality show, has been in Franklin all week to film one of their episodes. Crews first showed up on Monday at the home on Oak Leaf Road as the work of filming segments and cleaning out the house progressed.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryBill Oakes and his wife, Fran, live in Oak Leaf Manor. They had no idea any filming was going to take place until one afternoon when portable toilets and a handwashing station showed up in a nearby home’s front yard, he said.
Information was trickling out on the neighborhood’s blog, and a post from the homeowner’s association board president explained that there had been a situation in the home that was being resolved.
“You had to know something was up. Unfortunately, the property had been in a state of decline for several years. You were obviously worried about the property and the property owners who were there,” Bill Oakes said.
“Hoarders” focuses on extreme hoarding, a mental disorder marked by the obsessive need to collect items and the inability to throw anything away — even spoiled food or garbage.
Each episode tells the story of a particular person or family struggling with their hoarding. Experts come to help the residents clean the home, get rid of what they don’t need and try to overcome their disorder.
Between the technical crews from A&E and the workers cleaning out the home, it made for an unusually cramped situation in the Oak Leaf Manor neighborhood.
“A ton of traffic. I passed by there one day and counted 18 cars around it,” Bill Oakes said. “It’s been congested there all week.”
The commotion was enough that a complaint was made Thursday to the Franklin Police Department about the dozens of cars, vans and trucks parked in front of the home.
Officers addressed the parking issue with producers of the show, and several of the vehicles were moved.
Johnson County Animal Control also was called to the scene after reports of animal concerns at the home, including wild ferrets running from the area. But animal control director Mike Delp said there was no animal hoarding or problem at the home.
Representatives from A&E declined to share details about the situation in the house nor when the episode would air.
