I have tried talking to my mom about all of this and so have my other
siblings.  I am angry at my dad, too, for doing nothing to stop this.
  My mom says she will, "do it herself,"  but I know this isn't true...

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted on
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 04:23 AM.


Relationship : Daughter
Source : Oprah
Message : The last time I was home my gracious husband, along with my
two brothers and one of my sister’s and I, spent an afternoon cleaning
out the refrigerators that were full of moldy, spoiled food, dripping
with juices from meats or unclosed pickle jars, or unrecognizable food
and the turkey carcass from that past Thanksgiving was still sitting in
its pan.  My brother had killed the turkey and I don’t think my mom
could get rid of it.
I also spent the better part of a day sifting through and shredding old
bills before my mom got home….she says she knows everything that is
in those boxes, but I know it isn’t true.  My brother’s could
barely make it into their room since it was full of garbage bags of clothes
and just stuff, and the room we were in was piled high on one side with
things like sweaters I had grown out of and handed down, but were not
ever worn and we weren’t allowed to give them away. 
When I moved out after college, I was frantically sneaking certain
things out so I could get rid of them, or give them to Goodwill.

I know my mother has always hated to clean.  But I don't remember our
house starting to get out of control until a move when I was 5. My
grandmother had just died from alzheimer's and my dad left one job for
another.  There was only one room in the beginning, "the little room," that
was filled with unpacked boxes, and it became the junk room, or the
room that paper bags filled with clutter that had been removed from the
table before guests came-usually unopened junk mail, and maybe a few game
pieces or random toys and pens and tiny pencils, were stored in.  (My
mom had a thing for tiny pencils.) Then it took over her bedroom.
  Eventually, any of the 10 rooms in our old parsonage, were added.  My mom
once told me a story about a childhood move from one state to another
and her own mother, without her consent, had gotten rid of her favorite
doll.  This sticks in my mind as a formative event.  But then, so do the
stacks and stacks of physics and science magazines and mail, and old
bits of stuff that filled her dad’s home, and that now fill one of her
sister’s homes. It seems like it is genetic. 

But if we had company then, things were put in bags and shoved into the
'little room' or my parent's bedroom.  At one point we had to move
down the street since the church sold the parsonage due to a home that was
left to them by an old parishioner.  In that house there were eaves,
and by that time there were four children.  Four children and more
stuff.  We were always given hand-me-down bags but the clothes that didn't
fit us were kept in the garbage bags they came in and thrown into the
t.v. room, stuffed under the eaves or attic, or kept in the corners of
our bedrooms.  Clothes that we outgrew we were never allowed to get rid
of.  If my mom had more children, then they could be for them, or she
was saving the bags to give to someone she knew.  But the clothes would
never make it to us, or to the people she knew to give them to.  One
time we were having an open house for the church members to see this new
house we had moved into and that had been renovated for the current
pastor and his family, and we were frantically stuffing things into the
eaves and in closet in order to hide it all because by that point the
stuff had taken over all the rooms.  My dad even had just begun living with
unpacked boxes of books in his home office, but he might open one in
an effort to get a book out that he needed, never close the box and it
would inevitably become a dumping ground for an old frame, paper, old
magazines, etc.  The stuff would end up in drawers.  It would end up in
kitchen drawers, the dining hutch drawers- where piles of family
pictures, old broken candles, old Christmas ribbons, and wrapping paper, lost
socks, baby booties, puzzle pieces, and Barbie shoes are all stuffed. 


When we lived in that house, my sister was diagnosed with leukemia.  My
mother never let her or any of us get rid of the clothes she wore
during that period of her life, and my sister now is very much showing
these same hoarding tendencies as my mother.
We moved again because my dad changed churches, and it just got worse.
  My mom always employed all of us to do the cleaning, though.
  Cleaning, but not de-cluttering.  We'd clean if church people came over, or
old long-time friends.  It would be a long affair and we'd be scrambling
to hide things in closets again until visitors pulled into the driveway
or rang the doorbell.  Suddenly someone would yell, "They're here!"
  And we'd all come out of the rooms we or attic that we were frantically
carrying bags of stuff to hide in.
My parents moved 5 more times after I left for college, and during that
time my mom had one more baby.  There would be problems with the
churches my dad pastored in and they would have to leave, and then dad would
be out of work, or working at the Post Office, or Walmart until he
found another job.  My mom was angry, depressed, exhausted, and feeling
unsupported and couldn’t deal with things.

Nothing was really thrown away during these moves.  She would say she
didn't have time to sort and probably with 4 other kids, didn't.  She
would save bags for people she knew who needed stuff, instead of giving
them to Goodwill, but it would never make it out of the house or out of
boxes.  She saved all of her old schoolbooks, magazines with recipes or
gardening tips from the 80's that she never used, and that had begun
to mold. 
We would never really have friends over.  My mom would get mad at me,
at us, because we didn't ever invited friends over and be mad that we
were ashamed of her.  I would always go to friends’ homes because
things were in order and uncluttered.  Stuff wasn’t everywhere at their
homes.  Everyone else’s homes were always nicer.  Whatever anyone had
was always nicer.  

Eventually, stuff would be piled on the sofas and chairs, floors, and
waist or shoulder high.  Old Christmas popcorn drums would be filled
with clothes, toys and other objects.  We would just sit on the laundry or
stuff in the chairs because there was no where else to sit, or we
would just kick something out of the way or walk on it. It became too
overwhelming to deal with ourselves.  My mom used to come into my bedroom,
“Because,” she said, “it is such a sanctuary, and so peaceful.”
  That was because I was so organized and everything was in such order
I could tell if someone had come in and moved something and inch.  I
think I grew up hating my mom for all of this.  I don’t know if deep
down I truly accept her because of it, and I think she knows this and it
makes me very sad.  I have found myself being very critical of her and
unaccepting of this behavior to the point that whenever I go home it is
hard to have kind conversations because I am so angry inside about how
chaotic things still are for my youngest sister.  None of us can
really go home and be comfortable and relaxed. When my mom asked if I
thought it was relaxing the last time I was home, I lied and said it was, but
we were out in the back yard eating at the picnic table, and that was
relaxing. 

I have tried talking to my mom about all of this and so have my other
siblings.  I am angry at my dad, too, for doing nothing to stop this.
  My mom says she will, "do it herself,"  but I know this isn't true.

I don't want to have to tell my mom that we won't come visit until she
gets help.  It would break her sensitive heart.