Reply #16: And what you have to do after they die.....

[Manifestor_of_Light]

Spend YEARS cleaning the crap out and throwing it away.

My parents and grandparents all saved all sorts of stuff they didn't need and didn't use.

I think I threw out 300 to 500 large trash bags from mom's house after she died. One bedroom was five feet deep in trash (paper towel tubes etc.) and it was 10 feet by 20 feet. That's 1,000 cubic feet of trash in ONE room. I cleaned out the unused shower stall recently and took 37 purses to the thrift store. I picked up over 100 empty pill bottles in one bedroom in a five minute trip through with a garbage bag in the other hand.

I took several carloads of clothes and kitchen stuff to the thrift store.

I got an auctioneer to come and get the excess furniture and sell it. He had a 40 foot trailer and it was completely full with perfectly good furniture and SIXTY banker boxes of glass and assorted stuff I had packed by hand. And I still have not finished.

There is also an attic and three sheds that are not completely cleaned out. Perfectly good stuff was mixed in at random with useless trash. There was a mahogany bed that had MOLD on it. Mold on the footboard over the varnish. I didn't know that lacquered furniture could get mold since it wasn't porous.

Growing up, I was not taught to clean and sort and throw away things. I have had to learn that when I got older. My mother said we could not have kids over because of the "junk". The junk that she hoarded to assert possession and control of the house over me, my father and my sister. I could not have my own room, because we had a three bedroom house and one bedroom was full of her junk. Fortunately I got along well with my sister, and we had to share a room. I could not have birthday parties. Mom would gripe at me about "not helping with the housework". However, if I threw anything away, like used plastic bags or plastic forks, then I was yelled at and told NOT to throw it away.


Hoarding is a sickness. If you want to know how it splits families apart, read books about hoarding by Don Aslett. He has quoted me in this book for half a page:
http://www.amazon.com/Don-Asletts-Clutter-Free-Finally-Forever/dp/0937750123/ref=pd_bbs_sr_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237526122&sr=8-10

I have not told him about the final chapter -- shipping out large quantities of trash and furniture, and despairing of ever finishing the job. Or the fact that when I was trying to clean out the bedroom that was five feet deep in crud that I literally had to step ON TOP OF, she came outside and started shrieking at me and cursing me. I figured out later that the stress of throwing away her trash caused her to dissociate. I had never seen anyone dissociate before.

:wtf: