Weekend Update: Why My House Currently Resembles a Walmart

As promised in the previous post, this is the other half of the story: My parents were both hoarders and compulsive shoppers and I am now dealing with cleaning out their three bedroom, 2 bathroom, full basement condo. My brother has been MIA during the process, but that's another story.

After my father passed away, I began telling my mother to not go down to the basement, because I was concerned with her falling. She was firmly convinced that her furnace filter needed changed every month, so I would go down there to do it (with her accompanying me because she had to supervise). That's when I discovered, for the first time, the tons of boxes and miscellaneous crap that was being stored down there. Over the past year, I would bring up a few boxes at every visit to take home. She would insist on looking through each box and often tell me she wanted to go through things like calendars and dish towels from the 1960's. Sometimes, I would bring Middle Child along, just to distract my mother while I took boxes out to my car.

While there were some fun discoveries, most of it was junk that needed to be disposed of. A LOT of tax returns, credit card statements, etc. that needed to be shredded. Luckily, my city has a biannual shredding day where you can bring as much as you want to dump into a truck. To date, I've taken at least a dozen large boxes of papers to be shredded. And I've also taken about 50 paper grocery bags of paper to the recycling center, because I do not need the hospital bill from when I was born or this:

The receipt from my first bike

What I wasn't aware of until my mother was hospitalized was what was behind bedroom door #3 (the one that was always kept shut). You could barely open the door because the room was stacked floor to ceiling with 'merchandise.' You could not walk into the room. You name it, you could probably find it in that room. And the closet was filled with over 100 boxes of women’s shoes, most of them never worn.

So, two months ago, we began the process of cleaning out the place.

The kitchen, where she just kept buying food and stacking it wherever there was space, including the floor. The cupboards were jammed with food and at least 40 coffee mugs.

Food and household cleaners stacked along the wall into the laundry area. My son helped me with this one day. 80% of the food was expired. I was still able to take a dozen grocery bags to the local food pantry. And I now have enough tea bags and kcups to last me for the rest of my life.

Master bedroom closet. Note the bags of clothes, sheets, etc. on the floor. The crazy part is that she managed to get rid of most of my dad's clothes since he passed in 2018, but where had it been stored??

My husband has been a complete lifesaver through this whole process. He's left work early and just gone over by himself to clean things out. We usually go to the condo three times per week and work about 4-6 hours at a time (that's as much as I can handle). My oldest daughter and my son have both taken quite a bit of the furniture, so that has been helpful in creating space for us to work. In the beginning, I'd go over by myself and just wander room to room, completely overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. We now have a system of garbage, charity, and take home. Fortunately, there is a Goodwill store a mile from the condo. Unfortunately, we have to take the garbage home with us because of that city's rules of only one garbage can per week and you can't put it out until dusk the night before.

Meanwhile, I've organized the usable stuff I've brought home for my kids to go through and take what they want. I will eventually give more to charitable organizations that I think are better than Goodwill.

Bins of toothbrushes, lip balm, etc. I’ve now seen the monthly drugstore receipts, where she just kept buying things she didn’t need.

Just gloves, all brand new

Just jewelry. Yes, most of it was purchased on QVC.

One of the oddest things was the sheer quantity of foot products. I wish I could say she stockpiled useful items, such as toilet paper or hand soap, but there was surprisingly little of that sort of thing. Nope, I'm sitting on 40 bottles of Febreeze. I did manage to give that away on a local facebook page called, 'Buy Nothing.' 

And as much as I am a stickler for recycling, I have thrown away pounds and pounds of pens, notepads, rubber bands, etc. because you get to the point where you just can't deal with the minutiae. We do have to be careful with just dumping drawers into the garbage bags because I've come across quite a bit of cash socked away as well as savings bonds from the 1970's. Oh, and the postage stamps. I have every denomination you could want! I doubt I will ever need to buy stamps again.

So, that's what I've been up to. We estimate it will be another two months of emptying the place, then we will have to get new carpeting and fix a few other items before putting it on the market. And I can't wait to get my house back and return to my own minimalist lifestyle.

  PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS TO YOUR NEXT OF KIN!