Oprah Winfrey visits woman who filled her home with 75 tons of garbage

A US TV show went into the home of a woman who managed to fill her 3,000-square-foot house with 75 tons of garbage.

An Oprah Winfrey Special, 'Inside The Lives of Hoarders' revealed how shopaholic Sharyn Dorfin had accumulated the mass amount of junk over the last 10 years.

Oprah and her producers were alerted to the story by a heart-breaking home video sent in to the show by son Steve and sister Jodie, who were concerned that their parents were going to be buried alive by clutter.

Sharyn told Oprah she blamed herself for the mess.

She said: "I'm a shopaholic and I just buy and buy and buy."

She added: "If there's a sale sign in a shop I am drawn like a magnet to it."

Husband Marvin believed his wife kept the miscellaneous belongings because she was missing her children, who moved out in 1997.

He said: "She was trying to replace the kids with things, because she missed them. It wasn't like this 10 years ago before the kids moved out."

When asked why he hadn't noticed the house filling up with junk, Marvin said: "You become so used to the space you are in, you don't know any different."

He added: "I started to realize there was a problem when I couldn't see the TV because there were some things in the way."

Experts estimate that nearly 6 million Americans have a hoarding problem that affects their quality of life.