I spent every vacation (summer, spring break, winter break) from
college in their house cleaning non-stop...

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted on
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 08:19 PM.


Relationship : Daughter

Message :

Both of my parents are hoarders.  I'm almost too overwhelmed
to describe the chaos in their home.  What my sister and I (I have 3
sisters, but only one of them besides me will admit that the way our
parents live is neither normal nor healthy).  They are in their 60's now,
and for most of our childhood, the hoarding was not so evident due to
the fact that our father was in the military and we moved so often.
  There was a weight limit to the amount of household goods the army would
move for you.  But it was almost always messy and chaotic.

After he retired from the military (when I was a sr. in high school --
1987) the hoarding began in earnest.  Their small 2 bedroom, 2 bath
home, with attached garage that had been converted to a family room,
quickly began to fill up.  First, it was the "back room" (aka converted
garage).  It was easy to shut the door on this room and pretend it was not
part of the house, then it spread to the back patio, which quickly
filled up with junk -- old kids toys (for their grandchildren), a plethora
of weather-worn outdoor funrniture, cat cages, yard tools, old towels,
cushions, etc.  I can't even describe the chaos in the kitchen or
bathroom cabinets.  There was (and still is) always one semi-functional room
in the house -- the living room.  Although at times it may seem messy
or cluttered, it is not the scene that would cause anyone to think
there was something amiss in the house.

I spent every vacation (summer, spring break, winter break) from
college in their house cleaning non-stop.  I am the youngest child, so there
was no-one else around during the day to get in my way as both parents
were at work.  They would come home to a clean, somewhat organized,
much nicer looking place than they had left.  But they always wanted an
accounting of what I had thrown out.  I learned to lie, knowing that they
didn't even know half of what they had in their home.

I always left them with a nice place, and I always returned to a very
messy, chaotic, sometimes disgusting home.  And I was always greeted
with guilty excuses by my mother, who knew she needed to 'straighten up'
she had just been so tired, or working so much, or overwhelmed with
grandkids, etc. 

My parents always blamed their less-than-desirable living conditions on
the fact that they did not like where they were living at the time
(California), and that once they got their dream home in COlorado,
everything would change.  Well, in 2001, they finally did it -- their
purchased their dream home and they packed up and moved.

Not before all myself and all my siblings came home and helped them
clean everything (all of the "junk") out of their house.  We were there
for a week and as we deemed certain items "trash" and threw them out, we
would find that my mother was grabbing everything back out of the trash
pile -- old belts, single socks, old scraps of paper, etc.  It was
very frustrating, but we managed to get them packed and out of there.

Then they moved into their dream home, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, big
open kitchen, attached garage, unfinished basement, living room , family
room with fireplace, and to top it all off, a barn out in the back 4
acres.  I am sure you all know what they did to their dream home.

They started filling it with stuff.  And since we got rid of most of
their stuff in the move, they quickly started going out and buying more
stuff.  More clothes, more tools, more boxes of food (in bulk, from
Sam's).  They filled all the closets.  They filled the kitchen pantry.
  They filled the kitchen cabinets.  They filled the basement.  They filled
the barn.  They built shelves in the garage and filled those, too. 

They filled their bedroom closet with clothes.  So they hung 4 more
improvised closets in the basement (rods suspended from the ceiling),
which they filled, too.  They purchased cheap, particle board wardrobes to
put along the basment walls -- they filled those, too.  They finally
went back to Sam's (their favorite place) and purchased metal closet
systems, that they assembled along two of their bedroom walls, and they
filled those, too.  They now sleep in a bed that is basically the interior
of a gigantic closet.  And it's a messy, messy closet. 

They used to have a spare room, but that's quickly filling with stuff
-- now that my grandmother has died and they are planning to go pick up
her stuff, I know exactly where it's going to land.

They have mounds and mounds of bathroom stuff: 3 packs of toothpaste
from Sam's, gigantic polident boxes, cleaning supplies, lint removers,
rags, bandaids, lotions, sprays, brushes piled on TOP of their bathroom
countertop.  The reason it's not stroed below in the cabinet?  Because
it's filled with all that stuff, too.

ANd yet, they CONTINUE to make the WEEKLY trip to Sam's where they
manage to fill an big cart with more stuff that they need.  It's crazy,
insane behavior.  I am thinking of circulating flyers of their pictures to
be distributed to all Sam's in the area and asking that they be
refused service. 

I can't even think about all the money they waste, buying more stuff
that they need when they dont even know if they need it byt they might so
they stock up.  It's really insane. 

WHen I recently went home to visit with my new husband and new baby, we
stayed in a hotel.  My parents were so hurt, and 2 of my sisters
thought that I was so mean, for not staying in their home.  But I cannot
live in that chaos (even for 5 days) and I certainly wont ask my husband
or child to do so. 

I have noticed that a lot of people out on this site are around my age.
  Meaning, all of our hoarder parents are around the same age -- is
this a new phenomenon that started with their generation????  So crazy.