Laura Spaulding can always tell when the calls for her Lutz-based waste disposal company are about to double.

A&E's Hoarders must be back with new episodes.

Since 2005, her company Spaulding Decon has provided cleanup and decontamination services for all sorts of locations -- from crime scenes, to homes where owners have died or police have busted methamphetamine labs using dangerous chemicals.

But about 50 percent of her business these days is cleaning up for people who collect or hold onto things until their homes are jammed with junk -- commonly called hoarders. And with A&E's captivating series exploring this condition returning for its second season of new episodes at 10 tonight, Spaulding knows she's likely to see a jump in customer calls.

"Kids are starting to notice -- 'Hey something's not right; we're not like everybody else on the block,'" said Spaulding. "I just think people have no idea how many hoarders there are. From the outside of their houses, they look like everyone else. But inside, it's a different story."

For proof, look no further than tonight's Hoarders episode, featuring a 68-year-old Louisiana woman named Augustine. She lost custody of her son 14 years ago due to hoarding which turned her home into a haven for cockroaches, stray cats, mildewing clothes and rotting food. But even though her son Jason was placed with Augustine's oldest daughter, she never resolved her hoarding enough to take him back and he moved away to Seattle.

Tonight's episode features Jason and his sister returning to their home with a cleanup crew to keep Augustine's home from being condemned by the parish where she lives. That's the kind of crisis which makes Hoarders stand out, according to executive producer Jodi Flynn.

"I really think the crisis moment is what's unique about our show," said Flynn, whose Screaming Flea Productions developed Hoarders for A&E as a companion for its unscripted addiction show, Intervention. Their eureka moment came when producers decided to profile hoarders in crisis -- they're about to be evicted, their family is about to leave them or children may be removed over the hoarding.

"You can't treat a hoarder in a short term manner...so the key was to find a way to present a slice of what these people are going through," said Flynn, who added the show also looks for people with family members or loved ones willing to appear on camera."We don't claim to cure anybody. We claim to help them; get them on the right path, if we can."

In Augustine's case, that involved bringing a therapist and a cleanup crew to her home. Producers spent an hour telling her story, detailing how a woman known for always looking nice and well put together, could become so debilitated by hoarding she loses custody of her child and crews pulling mounds of material from her home discover two dead cats buried under the refuse.

And while it may be frustrating for viewers to watch therapists try to get hoarders to sort through and pick out the stuff to be tossed -- Spaulding cites one family who sent a hoarder on vacation and then hired her company to clean while her was gone -- experts say participation is key to dealing with the disease.

"The person has to own up to what they want, if they want to get better," said Eric Storch, who treats hoarders as director of the obsessive compulsive disorder program at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg.

Though Storch worries that programs such as Hoarders can be too melodramatic, he agreed that the subjects -- who sometimes cope with stress by adopting hoarding habits, in the way OCD sufferers develop debilitating rituals -- must participate in their recovery to avoid falling back into the same behaviors after the cleanup is done.

Flynn doesn't avoid the notion that there's a bit of a bargain here -- hoarders trade exposing a normally secretive, embarrassing illness for the resources to clena their homes and therapy to get better. But she said the show offers some aftercare, sticking with subjects for an average of six months to help them get better.

"Many of these peole have spent most of their money on hoarding," said Spaulding. "and this is one of the few servicxes we offer whih isn't covered by homeowner's insurance....So (appearing on the show) sounds like a win-win to me."