Clean House Sucks Balls.

When I got up this morning Sunny was watching ‘Clean House’ on HGTV.

I despise this show.

The premise doesn’t sound too bad. They come to your house, clean out all the clutter and junk you’ve accumulated, sell it in a yard sale, then use the proceeds to decorate your house.

In practice it’s a little different. For one, all the presenters are self important assholes with delusions of grandeur. Secondly, they’re always way too optimistic in their budgets. “Ok, we’re going to sell a bunch of standard household junk, and we need to raise five grand to do your bedroom!”

The thing that really annoys me, however, is the way they get around this budget problem. They pick a couple of valuable items (that absolutely do not come under the heading of ‘clutter’) and then guilt the home owners into selling them. I’ve honestly watched them spend ages trying to guilt the homeowners into selling a single book or lamp. It’s not cluttering up the house, it’s not getting in the way…but it’s expensive as hell, and the presenters want the money.

The episode today made me want to hunt the presenters down and kill them.

The father from this week’s family had a custom chopper than he’d built from scratch himself. They guilted the crap out of him until he agreed to sell his eight thousand dollar bike for just a thousand.

That’s pretty bad, right? Well, I’ve not even got started.

At the actual sale, someone walks up and shows some slight interest…and the stupid bitch presenter drops the price to $500 in ten seconds.

So she calls the Dad of the family over and asks him if it’s okay to sell his bike for $500. Like any normal rational person who spent eight thousand dollars on building a chopper with his own two hands, he says no. They guilt him some more. He says no. They guilt him some more. He points out that he spent $500 just on the springs for the front end suspension…and they keep guilting him. Guy puts his foot down and says no.

So the presenters bring his kids over who all start acting heartbroken that their daddy is being so selfish and won’t sell his bike so they can decorate their house. The Dad starts to break, because for some reason he doesn’t like all his kids asking him why he doesn’t love them enough to part with a stupid bike.

If Sunny hadn’t been sitting next to me, I’d have been screaming at the screen for the guy to grow some balls.

I’m sorry, but I’d have told the presenters that there was no way I was taking a seven thousand five hundred dollar loss by selling something with massive sentimental value because the basic premise of their show doesn’t work. If they can’t decorate my house for what they can get from selling my household clutter, that’s their problem, not mine.

Secondly, I’d tell my kids to fuck off. Sure, they might want a shiny new bedroom, but it’d be a great opportunity to let them learn the value of money, that life isn’t fair and that you don’t always get what you want.

But of course, this is a reality show, so common sense doesn’t come into it.

The Dad finally breaks because the presenters have his kids crying all over him…and he ends up selling his eight thousand dollar, hand-made, completely custom chopper for two hundred fucking dollars.

Then, just to add insult to injury, they’re still five hundred dollars short of their budget, and once the family have gone somewhere else, the head presenter says

“Well, we can’t afford to do everything, so I say we leave something out of the Dad’s room, because he cost his family some money today.”

I couldn’t stand it. Firstly they were making the guy sell his bike, not because it was taking up space, but because they needed the money for their decorating budget. When guilting him themselves didn’t work, they got his kids involved…and now they were acting like he was incredibly selfish and an all-round bad person because he wouldn’t sell his bike for a sixteenth of it’s value…without even factoring in sentimental value.

Just to put the icing on the cake, during the reveal, they actually rubbed it in. They drew attention to the other stuff they’d have done if the dad had parted with his bike, asked him if he regretted not selling it right away and what his kids would think.

FUCK OFF.

Don’t watch this show. Don’t call them to your house. In fact, write to HGTV and complain about what an awful shitty show it is. Nothing would make me happier than if this shit got cancelled.