The front door reluctantly crept open inch by inch, revealing one item … then another … then another. With every crack of daylight into the house came a new stack of belongings until there were too many to count. 

Piles of forgotten possessions towered over the living room, while rotting food and unknown smells lingered like witnesses to a home overtaken by its belongings.

A narrow pathway led to a bedroom engulfed by a lifetime of collection. Almost unrecognizable beneath the accumulation was a bed with only a thin strip to be slept on.

It was there that Jennifer Hanzlick sat frozen in thought, almost swallowed by the avalanche of “stuff.” 

It wasn’t the clutter that frightened the 40-year-old Coloradan, it was realizing that her grandparents had somehow been living inside it. 

With her grandfather set to return home from a monthslong hospital visit, Hanzlick and her mother came to prepare the house for his arrival, only to find the secret her grandparents had been hiding.

“It was horribly, horribly sad,” she said. “The biggest emotion was shock because we couldn’t understand how they were living. Nothing was accessible. I don’t know if we even judged it at the time, but it was so imminent that we started cleaning right away.” 

What they expected to be a simple cleanup became a three-month project involving the entire family. 

“It was mainly my grandma’s mess, but I have to say now, we did it all wrong,” Hanzlick said. “We told her what we were doing, but we didn’t get her input. It was just so much stuff all the way to the ceiling. At one point she called the cops because she was so distraught. In the middle of that, I came to my mom and told her this is what I wanted to do.” 

Just months earlier in 2008, Hanzlick had been laid off after 11 years as a financial adviser in Aurora. She took her severance pay, bought a truck and turned her family’s experience into one of Colorado’s first hoarding cleanup companies: Clutter Trucker. 

The name was intentional, Hanzlick said.

To most cleanup companies, the overflowing homes looked like junk waiting to be hauled away. “Junk removal” their ads read. 

To Hanzlick, the so-called “junk” represented someone’s life story.

“There are plenty of junk removal companies,” Hanzlick said. “But this isn’t junk to them. We were the first company in Colorado to focus on hoarding, and we’re one of the few in general to recognize that.”

Instead of operating from a warehouse or office, Clutter Trucker quite literally began in a truck filled with Hanzlick’s family, including her husband, twin daughters and son.

But over the past 18 years, that family operation has grown into a company of about 30 employees, helping thousands of homeowners between the areas of Boulder and Colorado Springs. 

While the mobile business originally focused solely on hoarding cleanup, it has since expanded to include full deep cleaning services, restoring homes that often go years without being properly maintained. 

But as the business grew, Hanzlick, now 58, realized clutter was rarely the real problem.

“What’s really fascinating is the energy in these homes,” she said. “It’s a lot of depression, heaviness and despair. Not always. There’s some that can be organized, but no matter what, it’s always hidden behind closed doors until something happens, it comes to light and they’re in a rush to get it done.” 

That realization shaped the company’s approach. Rather than rushing through homes with dumpsters and garbage bags, Hanzlick’s family focuses on the emotional weight each item might carry for its owner. 

Among those leading that approach is Hanzlick’s daughter, Brittni Jefferson, who grew up watching the family business evolve from a single truck into a statewide cleanup company.

“We take our time and look through everything,” Jefferson said. “We’re not just in a rush to throw it in a garbage bag. We’ll go item by item if we need to, and I know the clients appreciate it. It makes it a little less overwhelming when they know they get to pick and choose.”

Years into building Clutter Trucker, Hanzlick’s approach caught the attention of television producers. She said the company advanced deep into the casting process for the reality series “Hoarders” but ultimately walked away.

“The show was great at giving awareness, but I also think it was a little sensationalized,” she said. “It put people in a traumatic state for views. They told me, ‘If you don’t have someone, we’ll create someone,’ which I never really agreed with. That’s when I realized televising it wasn’t for me.” 

In 2017, Hanzlick decided to create the Colorado Hoarding Task Force, a partnership with public and private agencies dedicated to providing awareness, education and resources for those affected by hoarding.

“There’s so many people out there that want or need help but maybe don’t have the financial means,” she said. “The most common fear is that people won’t have a say and think they’ll be judged or turned into authorities. Even if it feels like it can’t happen for you and you’re super defeated, once you kind of commit to the notion of getting help, it’ll usually work out.”

Today, Clutter Trucker has grown far beyond the single truck Hanzlick purchased after cleaning out her grandparents’ home. Now, the company is expanding into the Lone Star State, as Hanzlick leaves the Texas expansion in the hands of her daughter. 

So while Jefferson has begun offering Clutter Trucker’s services in Denton, Texas, and its neighboring cities, her siblings keep the business running in Colorado.

And what started as one family’s attempt to clear a house has become a mission shared across generations, with each member carrying the same approach Hanzlick first envisioned nearly two decades ago: helping people, not just hauling away their belongings.

“It’s almost humbling because our mom did something so unique and successful,” Jefferson said. “I want to follow in her footsteps and keep it going. We’re super proud as a family that it’s been running for so long, and we just want to keep it going and pass it down to our children for as long as we can.”