- Hey, everybody, welcome to "You Oughta Know."

I'm Shirley Min.

Let's get right into tonight's show.

It started as a hobby, but ended up as a family business.

- [Woman] One of his coworkers loved the Salted Caramel Club.

- [Shirley] From audio books to podcasts and music, this local recording studio will show you how to make it happen.

- [Teacher] Our oldest student is 74 years old.

- [Shirley] Plus, blind and visually impaired artists bring their vision to life.

- [Teacher] Everybody has art in them to do.

- Our first story takes us to Mount Airy, where blind and visually impaired artists are using their creativity to create sculptures.

- I found Vision Through Art by accident.

- We call it art beyond sight.

I was born an artist.

At an early age, I had bad eyes, myopia, cataract, glaucoma, red detachments, loss of one eye at 17, the other eye in 33, now I'm 87.

I was a chef for 38 years.

I have a long record of my culinary arts.

I love my art.

- We're gonna actually start a project today.

Now these guys are great artists and some of the people here always do their own work and some of them do projects, - Vision Through Art, everybody has their own vision through the way we express ourselves.

And vision is also the vibration and everybody in here feels it and feels it in their own unique way.

- Vision Through Arts is a program that started in 1988 by a community member for 20 years.

He just taught the visually impaired and blind artists to just create through sculpting and through different techniques with clay.

And it's just become such a major part of our institution that 37 years later, we're still here.

Then in 2014, Allens Lane said, you know what?

We wanna make sure that all has access to this space.

And so we made it tuition free.

We made sure all the supplies and materials was included in the classes and that allowed more people who were interested but may not otherwise been able to come into these doors and enjoy this space to be able to do so.

When students arrive, they're greeted by their instructor.

Our volunteers are there, they're helping them.

- The volunteers and everything assist me with their eyes.

I'm like a surgeon and operating and they gimme everything I need to operate on this here body or a clay or whatever I'm doing.

- Think of like the edges and you can actually think-- - And an instructor is either giving them a new demonstration of a project that they can do that day, or they're getting their materials and they're getting their projects that they've been working on.

They're going diving right into it and they spend that whole entire two three hour block working on their collection.

Our goal is to have a annual VTA art exhibit for our community to come and see all the amazing work that they do.

So many people had their work sold and bought for the first time, and to me, that's a form of empowerment that their work is seen by someone that connects with it and connects with their stories and that motivates them to want to continue.

- Art is universal, everybody has art in them to do.

- I think that there is an untapped pool of so many different artists that still hasn't fully been realized in the art world, should be seeing more of.

And I think that Allens Lane's Vision Through Arts is a great place to start.

- No matter your age or experience, you too can make your own record and Lil'Drummaboy Recordings is the place where you can do it.

- I'm Samori Coles, founder and CEO of Lil'Drummaboy Recordings.

We're located right in the heart of Philadelphia.

Lil'Drummaboy Recordings is a full service recording studio.

So we record, mix, master all different types of music as well as audio books and podcasts.

And we also have a school where we teach audio engineering, music production and the music business to independent artists out there.

I moved from Omaha, fall of '97 and my mom wanted me to come back home.

She sent me an envelope with some pictures in it.

When I opened the envelope, the first picture was me on my first drum set and I just looked at that picture, I said, Lil'Drummaboy and it stuck.

People who want to be artists who have a passion for music, for songwriting, maybe they've always wanted to do it.

They can definitely come to Lil'Drummaboy Recordings.

We have professional engineers, producers on staff, and we make it such a painless process.

So if you are working that nine to five job and you're like, I always wanted to make music, maybe it's a little too late, Lil'Drummaboy is definitely the place for you.

Our students that come in, they range from absolute beginners.

They don't have any gear to folks who've been doing it a while at home.

Maybe they've invested in a bunch of gear and they don't really know how to use it and optimize it.

So students when they come in, they're gonna be paired with an instructor and these are one-on-one classes.

We meet them exactly where they are and we have structured programming and we have a curriculum that's been developed over the past almost 25 years.

We work with artists of different genres whether it's hip hop, pop, singer, songwriter, R&B, rock.

And we will record them and give them that major label quality on an independent budget.

For those artists that don't have music, we do have an in-house production team, so we can make those original beats for you.

We also have a network of musicians.

Even if a person just writes music and they don't have any connections, when they come to Lil'Drummaboy, we can definitely help them get their music produced.

- I got an idea where we could put in there.

We could put like, after I say shot my shot, like I match it, call it easy-- - For our students, it's a project based program.

So as they're learning, they are mixing real recordings.

If they're in our audio engineering program, if they're production students, they're producing their own music.

So our students are definitely creating as they learn.

Our oldest student is 74 years old.

We really work with a lot of people who work nine to five jobs.

Our manager at our studio, his name is Mike Moore.

Mike makes beats, he is an audio engineer, records a lot of the sessions.

- When they come in the door, I'm very, very open with them.

I wanna find out what their goals are, what are they trying to accomplish, and that way, I know how to navigate that session.

I wanna make sure that I'm managing the session in a way to where they can officially and quickly get done.

After interacting with them, figuring out what they're trying to do, I get them in a booth.

Caleb is an amazing, amazing performer.

He has a theater background and when we get him on a microphone, you're not just getting an artist who wants to record vocals over an instrumental, you're getting an artist who wants to deliver a performance.

Some people come in here, they've never ever been on a microphone before and that's always interesting for me.

So I always give them tips and notes of how they can deliver so that they're comfortable.

And after a while, then it becomes like second nature.

It's a magical experience.

Lil'Drummaboy Recordings really is the hub for creatives.

We believe that we have a incredible education component here that's not just about teaching you the craft or just it's not about just teach you a specific skillset, but it's about putting you on a pathway to where you can be self-sufficient in your journey.

- No matter the age, no matter what you do in life, it's never too late to pursue your career in music and the arts.

- According to the international OCD Foundation, there are between five and 14 million people in the US with a hoarding disorder.

Here to tell us how this disorder impacted her life is Melanie Szymborski, whose YouTube channel, A Hoarder's Heart, is helping her and others to recover.

Melanie, welcome to "You Oughta Know".

- Thank you so much for having me, I'm so excited.

- I wanna talk about how the hoarding disorders began with you.

- So I shared signs as a small child.

I was always collecting everything, My Little Ponies, toys, cards.

But as I got older and I started getting bullied in middle school, to cope with the bullying, I would escape home to all my collections, all my toys, and it was a way I could escape the pain of the children teasing me, and I could control my own environment and I felt safe with all the things.

- And so as this disorder had progressed, as you grew into adulthood, you have decided to stop hoarding.

Something prompted you to stop hoarding and you were documenting your recovery on YouTube.

So talk to me about your YouTube channel and why you decided to document your journey.

- Well, I started to document my journey because of my children.

They were the reason for my change because they had mentioned how they wanted to live in a clean house and not in a hoarded house.

So I decided that, you know what?

There's no help for hoarding disorder because there's so much negative connotation to it that we're too scared, we're too fearful to get help.

So we hide it and to hide it, we just hoard some more to deal with the pain.

And I thought I wanted to break the cycle.

I felt like if people understood why people hoarded, the mindset of why they held onto this stuff, then maybe they could find compassion for our disorder so that more people can finally break free and start to get help.

- And I think what's such a great thing about your channel and A Hoarder's Heart is that you are showing that hoarders are not lazy.

They're not messy, they're not dirty.

And so I'm sure that that was a big part of the mission behind this channel.

- That was a huge part 'cause every time someone would try to show their horn and explain it, the backlash and the negative comments would just eat them alive.

And you could see they were like, but I'm just trying to explain it.

And it just makes them hoard more to deal with the pain.

And I just wanted people to understand the concept of this is the reason why it's a mental disorder.

It has to do with being lazy or dirty, it has nothing to do with those things.

- And I think for you and maybe for others in recovery, it's a community of accountability in a way.

- It is, because as I started filming and I started explaining the feelings attached to it, many people were like, wow, now I understand what you're going through and I'm really proud of you.

You did really good.

So all of a sudden, decluttering started getting positive reinforcement in previous years because it was attached to my anxiety and my PTSD, decluttering was a scary thing.

So I avoided it, I didn't wanna touch it.

But now we started recoding where decluttering is positive.

- So what tips would you have for those who are looking to stop hoarding but really don't know where to start?

- So for me, where I had to start, you have to start where you are.

I had to do baby step decluttering, which was literally the smallest room in my house with the smallest drawer.

It's what I could handle.

And I would just go through every item and say, can I get rid of this?

Can I not get rid of this?

And I never overwhelmed or pushed myself to let go of something that I wasn't ready to let go of.

Because if I did that, then decluttering would be scary and my anxiety would be triggered.

I wanted to keep this a positive thing.

So once I was done, and if it was just a drawer, I congratulated myself like, look, I decluttered that drawer.

I did good.

Because I know that as much as a hoarder would love to be able to clean out your entire house, it's too drastic, it's too overwhelming.

Your anxiety and PTSD or whatever vice holds onto your hoarding, it's just very hard to navigate all those emotions at once.

- You need to have just a little victory.

- Just a little victory.

And then over time, I could do the drawer.

Then I could do two drawers, then I could do the room and it just grew over time.

- Well, thank you so much for being open and sharing with us, we appreciate you being on "You Oughta Know".

- Oh, thank you so much for having me.

It was such a wonderful experience.

- Well, this next story may help you eliminate some unwanted items.

Good Haul is a Philly-based program that will take those items that may be cluttering your home and give them to those who need them.

- My name is Mark, and I was a participant here for Pathways to Housing.

And then I got hired again when they opened up a company called Good Haul.

- Good Haul was founded in summer of 2022.

It is a social enterprise revenue generator for the Philadelphia Furniture Bank.

Philadelphia Furniture Bank was founded in 2014 and we serve 1100 families every year by providing furnishings for their new homes when they're exiting homelessness.

We have done everything we can to keep the cost as low as possible, but that means that we are not generating enough revenue to cover our operations.

So we wanted to come up with something to supplement what's coming in through philanthropy so we would have enough money to operate and continue to operate for years to come.

Good Haul is a revenue generator to help us cover some of that operating expense.

There comes a time where you have stuff in your house that needs to go somewhere else and you have no way of doing it on your own.

So you would call Good Haul, set up an appointment, and our team would come out and take whatever it is you need to be removed from your house.

It could be usable goods, it could be furniture, it could be whatever you wanna get rid of.

And we will measure the cubic footage of your items on the truck to generate a price for you and we'll take away your stock.

We will do the sorting on site at our warehouse, and then we take care of the donations and the recycling and the trash removal.

- Good Haul is a major part of this program now.

We have three trucks that go out.

We have three 16 footers at a 20 footer and Good Haul, it helps with the furniture bank.

When we get good furniture, we bring it there.

The good stuff, we get sofas, even sofa beds, chairs, dining chairs, tables, dressers are major.

There's certain size tables we need.

We'll look at it all and we'll see if we can fit into someone's home.

- We operate the Work First program out of our warehouse that houses both the furniture bank and Good Haul.

Work First is a transitional employment program.

So for people who are just getting back into the workforce after a long break, they've experienced homelessness or housing insecurity, or they have some other issues that are going on in their lives, we will invite them into the program where they will work part-time for wage paid work.

We have some folks that go out on trucks and do deliveries, some folks that focus on cleaning and organizing the warehouse, some people that help with personal shopping and help people at the furniture bank.

Clients come in and choose their furniture and at the end of a year, a year and a half, they've built up enough experience and life skills and work skills that they can then graduate and go on to full-time work outside of our organization.

And that's exactly what Mark did.

So Mark, he was actually one of the first people in our Work First program probably eight or nine years ago, and he graduated.

He went on to be working full-time outside of our organization for years.

And in the meantime, he graduated from our housing program through Pathways to Housing PA, and he decided he wanted to come back and volunteer at the furniture bank right around the time we were talking about launching Good Haul.

So when we were deciding to hire a full-time mover to work for Good Haul, Mark was the first person that came to mind because he had worked with us before.

We knew he cared, we knew he had a passion for the work and he was volunteering with us already.

So it was a really easy conversation to say, hey Mark, would you be interested in helping us to launch this new venture and of course he said yes.

And it's been two and a half years.

We love working with Mark, we're so glad he's here.

We're also really glad to see what recovery looks like for people who go through our programming and how it can really help to transform lives.

- People helped me a lot through this company and through other organizations, and I love doing this.

It makes you feel better about yourself anyway, that you're helping others of the situation that you are in, especially part of my life now.

- The Wardrobe is another organization that can help you declutter your closet.

This year, the nonprofit celebrates 30 years of outfitting customers and eliminating clothing insecurity.

- The Wardrobe opened 30 years ago as an organization to provide professional interviewing attire to low income women who were at that time transitioning from welfare to work.

We were very successful in that mission and saw that our community has more clothing needs than just professional attire.

Today, our mission is to eliminate clothing insecurity.

- Alright, so let's go look at the suits.

- [Sheri] And to provide a sustainable source of clothing for people no matter what their needs are or their income level is.

- What's the occasion?

- Just for an interview.

- Just for an interview?

- In 2009, we opened the first Wardrobe boutique and we now provide both clothing for sale and free to anybody who has a clothing need in our community.

- You want that one for sure?

- We take hundreds of thousands of pounds of gently used clothing that's donated from individuals cleaning out their closets to retailers who have excess inventory and wanna donate it to help the community.

And we cherry pick the best of that, put it out on our floor, and that allows us to earn revenue in order to support our programs as well.

All of that keeps the services for anyone in need free.

- I'll go look for shirts.

I'll set this aside and you try that out.

- Look at you.

First and foremost, how do you feel?

Working with Nayira is a good example of what our stylists do in our stores every day.

We learn a little bit why they're coming in.

Is it an interview?

- This outfit is going to be for a job interview.

Hopefully I get the job.

- Fingers crossed, when they're starting their jobs, maybe they need a little less professional, a little more business casual.

- So you have six pieces that will go together, plus accessories and outerwear and everything else you need so that you then have a couple weeks worth of clothing.

- And we also try to find out what they like, because ultimately when you're wearing colors or shapes or patterns that you love, that's gonna resonate throughout your whole spirit and it's gonna help boost your confidence and make you feel great when you look in the mirror.

- We serve 10,000 people a year and we sell an additional $300,000 worth of merchandise a year here in Philadelphia.

All of that is being saved from going to a landfill.

We're giving everything that's donated to us the opportunity to have a second chance.

Building a sustainable wardrobe means how do you put together resale pieces to sustain the lifecycle of a garment, but also how do you create a wardrobe for yourself where you can reuse things and rewear them and mix and match and prolong the lifecycle of the clothes you own.

We do have over 300 community and government partners who are signed up to proactively refer people to us.

We work with homeless housing and substance abuse programs, so they might be working with people on the street who just need casual clothes every day.

People can come to us to meet those needs through that referral network.

We're also open as a resale store.

The Wardrobe has locations in Philadelphia, Upper Darby, Kennett Square, Exton Square Mall, and we serve folks throughout the region through our virtual Wardrobe Box program.

- We send clothing to our clients who are unable to visit us in store, whether it's for childcare, transportation, or they just live too far away from one of our sites and we just mail that directly to them.

- I'm really excited about how our community has grown and how we've been able to tailor our services to meet the needs in the community.

When we started, it was low-income women who were transitioning to work.

Now we have our returning wardrobe program helping returning citizens who are largely men coming out of incarceration.

We work with the transgender and non-binary communities where clothing is a signifier of what your gender identity is.

And the other place we see that is with youth.

So we work with high school students, with young college students who might be on scholarship and not have those financial resources to really start creating an adult wardrobe and presence in the world.

It's incredibly important that we have people in our lives who are able to advise us and give us that boost of confidence.

And so our goal here at The Wardrobe is to make sure that everyone leaves not only with great outfit, but the smile and confidence because when you look good, you feel good and you do good things.

- This looks amazing, thank you.

- To learn more about The Wardrobe's upcoming event where women can receive free bras, clothes, and more, head over to their website.

Hope's Caramels is a small business in Wilmington, Delaware.

Their mission, to bring the sweet life to everyone in more ways than one.

In this commercial kitchen is where Hope and Brady Schuert make Hope's Caramels, all of it handmade in small batches.

(light music) - We make soft artisan caramels in a variety of flavors.

We use simple ingredients, ones that you would find in your home kitchen, no preservatives, no artificial colors.

- [Shirley] But before caramels, Hope made cupcakes.

- I made a salted caramel cupcake.

- So good, so good.

- And it was just a vanilla cupcake with a soft caramel core and then a caramel frosting.

And at the time, Brady was working at the hospital and he usually took stuff in and one of his coworkers loved the salted caramel cupcake.

- So he was like, these are good.

Is it any possible just to get the little bit in the middle?

I'm like, I don't know.

I'll ask her, like, let's see what can happen.

- I was like, okay.

And kind of figured things out and cooked it a little longer and cut them and wrapped them and wax paper.

And that's kind of where it all began.

- [Shirley] What was really more of a half-baked hobby grew into a family business.

Eventually, Brady quit his job at the hospital to pour all of his efforts into caramel.

- The first year at home was okay.

The next year we doubled, the next year we doubled, and so on and so forth.

We're adding 50% a year currently.

And certainly there's some weekends where we'll do more than we did the first two years altogether.

- But Hope's Caramel's mission goes beyond all things burnt sugar.

They devote 10% of their profits to organizations fighting against human trafficking.

- We would really love to get to the point where we're employing people and being a next level beyond kind of a shelter and a rehabilitation center.

- Together, Hope and Brady are working towards that goal by continuing to build their business in small 22 pound batches at a time.

Hope's Caramels really are so good.

They're soft, but not too soft.

They're rich in color and they have lots of different flavors.

They're sold at farmer's markets, flower shows, and of course online.

I would've brought some on set, but my children ate them.

All right, that is our show everyone.

Thanks so much for watching, good night.

(upbeat music)