moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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Always fun to hear your mom say shes ashamed of how her kids turned out.
So my mom is moving into my house, and my brother, sister and i have been moving her stuff. Problem is shes basically a hoarder. Not as bad as the people on tv, but pretty bad. Going through her stuff she has 5 vacuum cleaners, 3 of them broke. She had 4 kurig coffee makers. Boxes and boxes of entire sets of dishes, silverware, multiple full sets of pots/pans etc. This has been an ongoing problem since I was born. Every single place we lived, just completely cluttered full of shit she never used. I remember in one townhouse we lived in that had a two car garage, she had it packed completely full of junk, barely able to park her car in the garage.
So this has always been a source of friction between us, mainly because for the past 10 years its myself and siblings that have had to deal with it. When she moved from her condo 4 1/2 years ago, she could have left anything she didnt want behind as they where going to be demolished. Did she? Nope, she absolutely refused to let anything go and guilted us into taking every possible thing we could to her new place. At the time we didnt deal with the problem, as we figured she would actually deal with the junk at the new place. Didnt happen.
I ended up living with her for two years at the new place and she never did anything with the junk, even though I constantly talked to her about it and let her know she needs to take care of it The entire time I lived with her the sides of the garage where stacked floor to ceiling with boxes, the small patio completely filled with boxes and misc junk. After two years I bought my house and moved out. In the space I left, she quickly filled with more junk. The extra room became filled with nothing but boxes, same for the space in the garage I no longer parked in.
So this all comes full circle again when last month my mom was informed by her land lord that he would be ending the rental agreement today(she was month to month, no lease). The big problem aside from the junk that needs to be dealt with, is that she has been dealing with a hernia and was in the hospital due to it when the landlord informed her of this. The hernia isnt a result of just dealing with the junk but she has a very bad habit of needing to completely rearrange her living space every month. A woman in her 60s pushing couches, loveseats, tv sets, dragging them outside to clean them etc. And shes surprised she has a hernia problem.
End result is that after getting back out of the hospital last month for it, she ends up aggravating the hernia last weekend, almost certainly due to her trying to deal with the junk. This causes her to have to go back into the hospital and now she has surgery scheduled in a few weeks to hopefully take care of the problem. During this time I have offered to come over and get rid of the stuff, but just like before she has admittedly refused to let myself or my brother throw the stuff away. If she cant donate it to goodwill or give it to someone she refuses to let it just be thrown away.
So over the past few days of dealing with this stuff(quite a bit ended up coming to my house, a lot we put into storage) we have tried to explain to her the serious health problems that are a direct result of her actions, and that she doesnt have time to sort through this stuff it just needs to go asap as she has to be out of the place in a few days. The entire time she has fought with us, saying we are ungrateful, she cant believe how we turned out after being raised by her, how disappointed and ashamed of us she is, if the rest of her family only knew how we where treating her etc. Pure emotional manipulation. Thing that really got to me tonight, was that I said again, this stuff just needs to be thrown away(she still has a garage full of stuff and needs to be out in 24 hours) as she does not have time to rely on goodwill to take the stuff. She responds by saying that she should just move back to Florida as her sisters there would happily let her live with them.
Not exactly sure how I didnt explode on her then and throw everything in her face and just let her deal with the mess shes created. I just bit my tongue and left.
Put the junk in one of the many many many many public storage places out there. Put 3 months rent down, tell her she has until the end of that time to figure something out. Be very blunt that none of it will be at your house under any circumstances. If she ever asks to move in you will need to be extremely strict about house rules in that area. Legally binding contracts and all.
