Does anyone else feel like their parent's house is driving them crazy?
I have to vent to someone. My mother's house is so cluttered. She has so much furniture and so much stuff that it is impossible to clean. Her bedroom is beyond description because of her mental problems. She has two quilts spread out on the floor and two huge suitcases at the foot of her bed. She has blankets stuffed under the bed. There is so much furniture in there. I've tried to straighten it, but she quickly undoes anything I do to return it to a state of filthy chaos.
She does the same to the living room. She has medications, lotions, and toilet products accumulated over the years set out on the tables so they will be handy. Cough medicines, eye drops, nose sprays, toilet tissue, Kleenex, multiple water bottles, ... I try to keep it down, but she puts it back out. If I say anything, the answer is that it is her house and she will do what she wants. Well, her house is nasty and cluttered and I hate living in it.
It's not a dementia thing. It has been like this since first three kids left home. People tell me that I should just do the best I can and let other things slide, but the truth is that it makes me ashamed.
I wish my mother weren't so dominant. It would be easy to fix things if she weren't so insistent that everything has to be for her convenience. And she absolutely refuses to get rid of things. I cleaned out the initial hoard, but the excess furniture, bedding, and ton of clothes are a hoarding stronghold. She has things stuffed about like she is trying to keep evil spirits out. She occupies most of the house, so I feel like I can't even go out of my room without being disgusted. And I am so darned tired of cleaning while she sits in her chair watching TV all day long. And I feel ashamed that, as capable as I am, that I cannot work against the tide of disorganization and filth that owns the house.
Vent over.
JessieBelle, do you have any leverage? Could you threaten to move out unless she allows you to make the house more livable? Is moving out even a possibility for you? She greatly benefits from you being there and it's your home too now. If you haven't found some of the wonderful resources on the internet for children of hoarders please do some Googling, it will help. You have nothing to be ashamed of, this is one tenacious disorder that brings the families down a tough road.
I know you weren't asking for advice. Feel free to ignore it.
Midkid, I like your paperwork file. A few weeks after my father died I bought a huge shredder and spent about a week shredding boxes of files dating back to the 1980s. Every bit of bank, medical, utility, and financial information was saved. The boxes occupied the entire dining room. My mother wasn't too happy with my shredding, but she liked having her dining room back.
One thing that I did like when she was taking the Remeron is that my mother got motivated to shred all of her bank statements -- about 20 years worth of them that included monthly statements for about 10 CDs, in addition to her savings and checking accounts. She worked on it for 3 days, but got it done. That was nice. The only trouble came when getting her to stop shredding things. She liked shredding so much that she was looking for stuff to put in the machine -- cardboard, bags, anything. I had to rescue my shredder before she killed it. It was the Remeron that did that a bit obsessive. It's funny now thinking back on it, not so funny at the time. Anyway... it was nice to see her get into the spirit of cleaning things up. Too bad the Remeron was too much for her, since it gave her some energy.
I've always felt that materialism is rampant, and dominant in American culture. I'm sure it exists in other industrial and post industrial countries as well. Marketers make sure that we feel inadequate if we don't have picture perfect white teeth, beautiful smiles, molded (if not through a gym, through plastic surgery) features, expensive cars...you name it....there's an alleged positive and socially accepted influence for so much of the goods produced and sold.
"Things" are apparently seen as status symbols, indicative of a certain kind of wealth. The more visible symbols of wealth you have, the more you can (a) impress the neighbors, compete with the "Joneses", (b) feel wealthy (c) feel good about yourself.
Could this by reflected in some of the people who do end up compulsively collecting? Could it be a method by which they are trying to fill fulfilled for some inadequacy in their life, or in some perverted way to feel as if they still have status even as they segue into poverty and unhealthy living?
Just some thoughts that popped into my mind....
Ultimately, serious hoarders do end up building a fort around themselves. Their family and company can't visit because there is no room to sit or sleep, and the house is too disgusting. So the hoarders become isolated in their forts. To the world they can seem like normal people. To see their homes can be a shock.
Something that is funny now. My father spent his last 20 years sitting in a chair all day. He built a fort of plastic baby-wipe boxes around his chair. I thought he probably had all the things he used in the boxes. After he died, I started to work removing the fort. The boxes were almost empty. Some of them had one or two worthless trinkets in them, but otherwise there was nothing. It was like the twilight zone when I realized it was just a fort, instead of being anything useful.
I am the lucky recipient of all the family heirlooms, things that just couldn't be sold or given away but nobody seems to want; quilts, china, pictures and the like. I have an ugly blanket woven on a loom by my great grandmother from home spun yarn... what can you do with stuff like that???
I agree..it's not the actual home, it's the junk. Mother had a huge house jampacked with stuff we had to pare down to fit into the smaller apt. It was beyond horrible.I grew up in the house my folks left and after cleaning for 3 years, I was glad to see it sold. I do not and never will understand the need for all the junk. I wish I could get mother to buy things for Humanitarian packages that I make...instead of more books, puzzles and clothes. But she won't part with a nickel. She complains nonstop about barely getting by on her SS checks, but she always has new clothes, and PLENTY of "toys". I'm really trying to be patient..and in the end I WILL "win"...so as long as I am the only one bothered by this, I will just grin, bear it and try to do a little each week.
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