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.
Since I have been sick, he has discarded my furniture and brought in a moldy, rusted
heavy metal and wood work table.
He is in so much trouble for this betrayal, I cannot say.
I am so done!
I also came across receipts and instruction books for appliances my parent no longer had. I also had to tear up decades old insurance for the car and the house.
Dad said there is still a box in the attic filled with paperwork... oh good grief, and the only way to get to that attic is to pull the car out of the garage, drag over a super tall ladder and hoist yourself up into the small opening in the ceiling, don't think I will be do that any time soon. Plus I bet all that paper has been mice nesting paper over the past 3 decades.
There is even in that attic an encyclopedia that is dated back to the early 1900's. Sadly that probably has been destroyed by the heat. I noticed the other day my parents still have the encyclopedia I used in high school back in the 1960's. Dad thinks it is worth a lot of money. I doubt it, but I bet that early 1900's would have been.
But why she kept the paperwork from the time the dryer was repaired back in 1994 or four expired library cards or a vet bill from the cat who died in 2003 or proof that she paid her car insurance back in 88....beats me. Probably the funniest (or weirdest) discovery was the books of matches she put in the fireproof strongbox for some reason...the logic there escapes me.
Anywho, while roaming upstairs I noticed Mom had things not in order, especially with clothes. I was looking for winter clothing to take to her at the nursing home and I had a heck of a time trying to locate everything. I didn't re-sort as maybe Dad knows where everything is of his, which is also scattered in different dressers, cabinets, closets, and boxes under the beds.
I did find a large box of new things I had bought her as gifts over the years.... my gosh, she was wearing thread worn stained clothing instead of throwing it out and wearing some of her new things.
Sadly Mom is now wearing her new things and doesn't even know it :(
NOW, she meets me at her door with a very small bag of odds'n'ends and says "See? I can throw this out! Go ahead, take it!" She thinks she cutting me off at the pass, I guess. Lately I only clean up after the birds and sweep/mop/vacuum the floors and don't do anything w/o her permission. She told people at the shower that she has to go through the trash after I clean b/c I throw away all these important things. Instead of making me look bad, it makes her look more like a little hoarder.
When she's in the hospital and rehab center, I plan to scrub down her walls and wash all the curtains--stuff that she would NOT allow me to do if she were there and she won't even notice. HOPEFULLY we can replace some of her carpeted areas with linoleum--easier to clean and doesn't hold the smell at all.
Recently he has taken to tearing (into strips)the newspaper and his weekly magazine. He says the strips take up less space!! Go figure!
And sticking with the paper theme, she does this annoying thing with tissues. She'll grab one from the box and just crumple it into a ball and not use it, hold it for a while then tuck in under the sheet or blanket for "later". Then she'll do it again. So by morning there are a dozen wadded-up tissues tucked here and there in the bed, so I have to always check before I wash everything lest a tissue gets in there and lints everything all up. It drives me insane. Cough drop wrappers too.
Or you could use it as a therapy rabbit.
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.
cwilllie - I am the holder of the family heirlooms too. Curtains that my grandmother embroidered with a design my grandfather made, a variety of other embroidered items, tablecloths, yes, pictures and so on. I have packed up the family silver and am sending it overseas to a nephew who wants it.
It is a fact that some people have concern only for their own needs. Mother is a narcissist. Even on his death bed my father was concerned that I had somewhere comfortable to sit.
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 guess what gets me is the total lack of consideration that her choices have a significant negative effect on my life, and also that there is no gratitude for the work we have done and still do.
sunny - knew someone who kept tins and plastic containers for crafts. Her bedroom was piled ceiling high with boxes of these things many of which she had brought with her when she moved across the country. She also kept styrofoam food trays.
In her adult life, she liked to always keep 50 cans of cat food, 3 boxes of popsicles, 5 containers of coffee, 39 note pads, etc. Who knows where this comes from. She also ordered lots of clothes she never wore.
My mom stayed with her for a few weeks once when she broke her ankles and while there cleaned up the house, since she was in the bedroom and couldn't see what was going on in the rest of the house. A month after my mom left, she called her in a panic and wanted to know where her empty plastic butter and milk containers were! My mom said she had no idea. lol
Hug and smile to you my dear!
Just playing. I did enjoy seeing the moon disappear. Still waiting for it to come back. What if it's gone? Hope not. Many here would probably be accused of stealing it. :-)
She wants to get rid of stuff but just CAN'T. Since the kids and I have moved away the stuff has expended into the former bedrooms. It's a big house, but the clutter is starting to spill out into the rest of the house too. I shake my head when I visit there... I was once the main housekeeper/child caregiver there, and had some pride in the appearance of that place. It doesn't help that BIL hoards too, but all HIS junk is valuable LOL!
One day after mom is gone I will try to help her, if the kids don't hire a dumpster and toss it all first.