When Christine Benedict was diagnosed with cervical cancer in October 2007, she began fighting for her life. Her husband Bill and daughter Katherine rallied around her as she endured more than 18 months of medical treatments, which were difficult but ultimately saved her.
During that trying time, the Benedicts put housekeeping and other chores on the back burner at the family's small Cape Cod home, which is on a quiet street in Wayne. Christine emerged as a cancer survivor, but the family home never recovered from the neglect it suffered during her illness. In fact, the messy house got worse.
More than two years after Christine was diagnosed, the Benedict home was cluttered and brimming over with papers, toys, clothes and boxes. There was no room in the living room to live. Stuff was dumped on table and chairs, and one could barely walk through the rooms. Entertaining company was out of the question.
Christine and Bill, both 40, had a bedroom strewn with laundry. They sometimes couldn't find their bills in their piles of paper, so they were late paying some of them.
But that's just changed, because Christine decided to get help from one of her favorite TV shows, Style Network's popular home-makeover series "Clean House." Last week the show's crew and cast was in Wayne filming at the Benedict home. "Clean House" made over the home this weekend, while the family stayed at a hotel. The show will finish shooting this week, revealing the makeover to the family tomorrow.
The episode will air in either May or June on Style Network as part of the "Clean House" event "The Search For The Messiest Home in the Country."
Usually "Clean House" just cleans up and makes over cluttered homes in the Los Angeles area. But for the "Messiest Home" event, it goes to houses all over the country. The Benedicts were chosen for that event after Christine contacted Style Network with her story last summer.
The Benedicts and 9½-year-old Katherine want to rid their house of any objects that trigger memories of Christine's illness, or remind them of the intense emotions they were feeling during that dark period.
"At this point we are looking forward to a long, healthy, happy life, and a good way of reinforcing that for me health-wise would be to have a clean environment to live in," said Christine, a brunette with long curly hair. "We don't want to be reminded of a time that was so difficult for us as a family."
"Clean House" crew member Matt Iseman, the show's "Go-To-Guy," was at the Benedicts' Wayne home for the shoot, and saw the mess firsthand.
"The romance is gone in the bedroom, because they keep the laundry in there," he said. "And they have a lot of bad memories. That room is the same as it was when she was lying in there, for however many months it was, facing death. They just want it to be a complete fresh start."
Iseman is part of the "Clean House" team of four experts on design, clean-up and renovation. The show's usual host, Niecy Nash, was not in the Benedicts' episode. But in addition to Iseman, interior designer Mark Brunetz and "Yard Sale Diva" Trish Suhr were all present and worked with the family at their Wayne home.
"Clean House," Style Network's highest-rated show, helps homeowners whose abodes are so cluttered one can barely walk around in them. The show team will go through the belongings of the family members and convince them to sell items, even those that supposedly have an emotional value.
The more items a family is willing to part with the better, because the chosen belongings are then sold at a yard sale. Its proceeds pay for "Clean House" to do the makeover. The show also matches up to $1,000 of the yard sale's take.
For Iseman, the trip reconnected him to his New Jersey ties.
"I was born in Bergen County, up in Englewood, and I went to school at Princeton," he said. "So it's nice coming back. I'm returning to the roots, although I did grow up in Colorado since I was a year old. But I have a little of Bon Jovi in me."
Iseman said that there is typically some trigger, not laziness, that prompts families to let their domiciles turn into a hoarder's dream house. Then they come to "Clean House" for help.
"Usually there's some life event... something that starts the clutter up and then they just lose control," he said.
In the case of the Benedicts, Southern-bred Suhr said, "They really shut down for two years. Life just piled up on them. Their house has lost function."
After Christine learned she had cancer, for a period she traveled 45 minutes each way, every day, to begin undergoing treatment at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston.
"They're fabulous, and they are the premier female cancer center in the state," Christine said.
Her husband, a self-employed tax accountant, had to take off time from work to make the 60-mile, daily round trip to drive Christine to the hospital's Gynecologic Cancer and Pelvic Surgery Center.
"Bill the husband really took on every single role, from Mom to dad to caretaker to breadwinner," Suhr said. "It was everything."
Christine's battle to beat cancer wasn't easy.
"We went through months of radiation, chemo, six minor surgeries," she said. "At that point we had to stop treatment and give me time to heal. And once I was strong enough, probably six months after that, then they brought me back in and they did a major surgery to remove anything that was remaining....And we're still dealing with some repercussions from that."
Image
