Just another day...

It's Father's Day.

My parents live about a minute and a half from my house.

And I haven't even gone over to wish my Dad Happy Father's Day... sigh

I really, really, REALLY, don't want to go over there and have to see the mess.

It's one thing to hear about it (which I have from other family members), it's another thing entirely to have to hang out in it! I know exactly what will happen if we show up on the doorstep...

First Mom will make a whole bunch of excuses as to "why" the house looks the way it does (as if it doesn't ALWAYS look that way). Mostly things like, "Your Father needs to take care of his stuff" (five of the five hundred things in the front room belong to my Dad), or maybe "I haven't been feeling all that well" (which seems to occur every time she even thinks about cleaning), or a favorite of mine, "I've just been so busy cleaning the [fill in the blank] that I haven't had time to clean up in here". Keep in mind that "cleaning" means moving things from one room to another, thus giving one room the appearance of being clean while simultaneously piling things to the ceiling in another. I really hate it when she makes it excuses. I think she really believes what she is saying, and that makes me sad... and mad.

Sometimes, I find myself making excuses. It's ingrained in me. I usually force myself to stop (before I start to sound crazy, I hope). But I digress...

As she is rattling off excuses she will start shuffling things about in a mad rush, moving papers from one surface to another, clearing a couple of spots to sit down. I will hold the baby on my lap because it is too unsafe to let her toddle about in the crap and all the other kids will head outside (thank heavens) to play... wait a minute!

HOLD EVERYTHING!

I haven't been over to Mom's since the seasons changed! It turns out we can go over to see my parents today. You see, when the weather is decent we all sit and visit out in the shade of the tree out front. In the summer and early fall, people visiting my parents don't actually have to be subjected to the mess, the excuse making, the overall craziness! It's peaceful and relaxed, almost normal!

Well, I had better go get the kids ready!

Answers...

I've been slacking on my posts lately and I'm sorry... sort of.

There is something else you should know about me, something important. You need to know because it's going to affect my posts.

It's really a few things all twisted up into one.

First, for some reason (and it's always been like this for me) I only write in my journal - you know, Dear Diary, blah,blah...- when I am "worked up" about something. It's kind of sad, really, to look back through my half-empty journal and only be able to read about those times in my life. It's just one of my quirks.

Second, I'm not always mad about the hoarding. Seriously! I go in cycles. Every three months or so it just seems to hit me full force. I get really mad at first, my Sis and I talk it over (every day for a couple of weeks). I stalk around, I "purge" (clean out MY house, because I can), sometimes I try to talk to Mom and try to "save" her. And then,after I realize the hopelessness of the situation, the feelings just kind of dissipate. Afterwords, I distance myself from the hoarding - not only physically, but mentally as well. I pretend it doesn't even exist!

Third (and last), I started this blog during one of those aforementioned times. This past week I was in the process of distancing myself, when I realized that maybe this time I shouldn't.

Maybe I feel so split (that whole "double identity" thing), because I am unwilling to blend my two selves together. Does that make sense? When I am focused on the hoarding issues, I don't allow myself to feel happy and lead a normal life. I don't even think of myself in positive terms, it seems I can't do anything right. And when I am done with that and ready to move on, I don't allow myself to acknowlegde the negative influence of my Mom's hoarding and my past.

I ignore it completely, pretend it's all good. Move on with my life for a time.

But it never really goes away. Hence the "cycles".

(I find this all very ironic having just finished reading "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer - read it and you'll see what I mean) I just had to throw that in.

So I'm going to continue to post. And I'm going to face things this time. I'm going to find my peace of mind. I'm going to finish what I've started and figure out the answers. I'm going to...

go clean the kitchen.

Later...

Why indeed...

Why?

Why, if I don't live there anymore, does my Mother's "mess" bother me so much?

Why do I let her hoarding affect my decision making? i.e. I'd rather throw [any item] out now than end up like my Mother.

Why am I so angry about something I have no control over?

Why doesn't Mom's hoarding seem to affect my brothers like it does my sister and I?

Why can't my Mom share her feelings with me, or anyone else for that matter?

Why did God allow this to happen to our family?

Why is there no cure for hoarding?

Why am I so scared to let people know the truth?

Why am I terrified that my children will somehow "catch" it?

Why do I keep "cleaning out" my Mom's place when I know that it won't last?

Why am I keeping a record of this unpleasant aspect of my life?

Why do I care when it seems that no one else around me does?

Why can't my Mom just be "normal" (if there is such a thing)?

Why can't I find the answers I need to get on with my life?

Why me?

Why this?

Why?

Environ{mentally} conscious...

(From Wikipedia)
"While there is no definition of compulsive hoarding in accepted diagnostic criteria (such as the current DSM), Frost and Hartl (1996) provide the following defining features:
*The acquisition of, and failure to discard, a large number of possessions that appear to be useless or of limited value
*Living spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to preclude activities for which those spaces were designed
*Significant distress or impairment in functioning caused by the hoarding
*Reluctance or inability to return borrowed items"

Here is an example of the second feature described above...

This is the bathtub/shower in the downstairs bathroom at my parents house...

Needless to say it is unusable and has been for a couple of years now.

In the bathroom upstairs it's a whole different story.

This is a picture of the toilet. Mom says it doesn't flush very well (meaning "not at all"), since calling in a plumber is not an option (too expensive, but what she really means is too embarrassing) - my Mom came up with her own solution!

See the buckets of water in the pictures? There are more in the shower. My mom just uses the water in those to flush the toilet. Another excuse for this is "saving money by reusing the shower water".
Crazy or Genius?

You tell me...

The 3 P's

I'm heading out of town this weekend (a romantic getaway), YAY! So don't expect any new posts for a couple of days.

I've been contacted by a woman writing a book on helping hoarders. The author is a certified professional organizer. She wrote:

Hi Jamie,

Thanks so much for getting back to me. I am an organizer and have been working "organizing" hoarders since the mid 90's. At the end of the decade I was ready to abandon the effort as hopeless. Then I stumbled onto a process that actually worked. I would not work with them until they were getting emotional support from a therapist who was familar with attachment issues, OCD and hopefully hoarding. Out of the grew a protocol we call "Collaborative Therapy for Clutter Management" - check out my web site to see more about it.

So now I'm co-authoring a book directed at clueing organizers in on the whole complex tangled web of hoarding. I have been so impressed with COH and the work Donna is doing and asked her for some imput for the book. She suggested I throw the topic out to all of you.

Some questions that spring to mind are: (my answers are in green)

1) What would you like the readers to better understand about your experiences growing up in a hoarding household?

2) Do you struggle with the same clutter issues - or are you a perfectionist/purger?
I struggle in SO many different ways, but I think the main things can be summed up with "perfectionist/purger" and let's not forget "procrastinator"! I just call them the 3 P's, let's talk about them.

First, if things aren't perfect and it looks like I'm not going to get them to be perfect - then I just ignore it completely. It's all or nothing with me. For example, I live in an older home which we are remodeling one room at a time. I have no problem keeping the "newly remodeled" rooms clean and organized. But the older rooms are easy for me to ignore because even when they are "clean" they don't look it (old stains, permanently dirty looking trim, etc...). I know I do this and I drive myself crazy, and yet I can't seem to help myself.

Then comes the procrastinating. I let little things go over time ("I'll get to that later" kind of stuff) until they become big things. I let stuff build up over time and then I look around and see that I've got myself quite a mess! (especially paperwork, it's so easy for me to just stick it in the office with the mentality of taking care of it later).

Than comes the purge! This is where I truly separate myself from a hoarder , I can get rid of stuff with the best of 'em! I only learned one way to "clean" when I was growing up, (it was more like a self taught method when I think about it) but it goes like this...

Push/throw everything into a big HUGE pile in the center of the room. I mean everything, empty out drawers, clear every space! This leaves the outer areas clear and gives you a little space to work with (important if you live with a hoarder because there is usually no real assigned place to put anything so you've got to make some). Then you throw away as much as possible and sort through what is left, finding places around the room to put the stuff.

I never consciously realized the aforementioned method until I found myself explaining to my kids the best way to clean their disaster we like to call our playroom the other day. That is the only room in my house that I would ever allow to reach this point, kids will be kids (right?).

3) How can we help to break the cycle of hoarding? What long term support would be most helpful for you and your family?

4) What are your opinions about "shoveling it all out"/abatements, versus our collaborative therapy approach of supporting the clients emotionally, or another process that has made any real lasting change - if you know anything else, let us know!?

5) Family members can be a strong and important element in our support system. How can we maximize that?

Please don't feel you have to answer every question or if you have some idea or insight I haven't hit upon, talk about that. I will be referring to these responses in the book as coming generically from a COH and can make them as anonymous as you like.

Many thanks,
Heidi Schulz

Heidi Schulz, CPO-CD
Collaborative Therapy for Clutter Management
e-mail: info@heidischulz.com
www.heidischulz.com
805/569-5288

I'm still working on the rest of my answers. Right now I've got to get packed, as usual I've waited 'till the last minute!

An unwelcome sight...

This is pretty much the view you get of the entrance of most of the rooms at Mom's place...

This one happens to be my brothers' old bedroom (the one with all the food storage in it).

More from my sordid past...

Another "Oldie, but a Goodie" post from my COH group. I posted this on July 28th, 2006, I titled it "Knee deep in it and laughing":

Well, It's begun again... Mom's out of town for a week and we started in on the food storage room yesterday morning. We have been able to keep sane using our sense of humor though. Here is a little list of stuff we have found so far:

-4 dead and decaying mice (more to come judging by the amount of mouse feces covering the floor).
-3 cases of pears canned in 1989 (they were black, but kept their shape).
-2 cases of cherries canned in 1983
-1 case of apricots -1984
-2 cases of grape juice canned in '88 (my sister thinks that's a good year and maybe we should test it out!)
-6 cases (a case consists of 6 #10 cans)
-2 five gallon cans full of powdered milk -dates ranging from 1979-1990
-16-20 metal cans of pineapple juice(the big ones)-two of which were bulging so badly at BOTH ENDS that we were afraid to touch them lest they explode on us!
-Hundreds of cans of expired food -everything from spaghettio's to green beans.
-About 60 bottles of vitamins & health supplements - all expired by1998.
-Hundreds of bags and boxes of everything from cake mixes to elbow macaroni, we didn't even have to look at the dates, they were all mice-infested!
-The most disturbing thing that we found was that my Mom (who has always marked the dates of when she buys something on the cans or boxes with a black permanent marker) had been going back through the cans she could find one bag at a time AND CHANGING THE DATES to newer dates!!!! We discovered this through a little simple detective work (why are these smudged and written over?) and because in some cases the dates written were later than the best by date on the bottom of the can.
-We also found about 12 cases of food storage bought from a company in 1980, the shelf life is clearly written to be 15 years maximum for some of the products and 9 years max for the rest, so here we are 26 years later throwing it out!

The irony of all of this is my Mom is always complaining that she never has enough room in her food storage room and that is why there are cases and bags of food all over the rest of the house. She also claims that there is a system in the food storage room and we just don't know her way of organization -LOL!!!
We have already filled the driveway with at least 2 truck loads of stuff to go to the dump and if a normal person took a look in the storage room they wouldn't believe it all came out of there
because there are still boxes piled right to the ceiling with only a u-shaped path throughout it.

Well, give me an hour and I'll be back over there for round two! I hope my Mom is having a nice vacation, because she is going to freak out when she gets home! Until tomorrow, Jamie

P.S. Where is this weirdest thing our parents hoarded contest? My sister reminded me that when we did the cleanout 3 yrs ago we found hair from all our haircuts she ever gave us in our lives, in little baggies with dates and names labeled on them. The weirdest one being from a haircut our 21 yr old brother received before leaving the country. I bet he had no idea that Mom was going to sweep up all that hair off the floor, bag it, date it, and label it for all future generations to cherish!!! Just a note: it was interesting seeing the color changes our hair had gone through over the years - BUT NOT INTERESTING ENOUGH FOR US TO KEEP IT!

My next post was on August 1st, 2006 and I titled it "Not laughing anymore"...

Here's an update on our cleanout. Well, by Saturday morning we were ready to give up. We had loaded up 5 full truck loads to the dump and there were still stacks nearly touching the ceiling in the storage room. It was very depressing to not see much change after 2 and 1/2 days of backbreaking work, but we perservered and somehow got it all out by the afternoon.

The final count on dead mice only reached 8 (surprising) but I'm confident there are at least 20 more in the walls and heating vents. I did find about 25 lbs of split peas from my birth year (1976) and a lot more gross stuff, but the fire in me is gone and I don't have the energy to recount it all.

Mom got home last night and there was a calm before the storm for about 2 hrs, then it all broke loose. I'll probably never hear the end of this one bucket of honey that we threw out (because it had a deep crack in the lid and was covered in mice feces). Mom said we could have scraped off the top layer of honey and ate it anyway. She also said we never should have thrown out ANY food, regardless of expiration dates, because she could have hauled it down to my grandpa's farm (6hrs away) and FED IT TO THE PEACOCKS!!!!

This is where I start to feel myself detaching, I can't stand to watch the craziness come out in her. She actually believes these illogical excuses she comes up with!

After I lay down to go to sleep last night, I remembered when I was growing up and I would clean my room out - I would bag up all the garbage and take it to the outside trash can and just pray Mom didn't know. Then the next day when I would come home from school I would see the broken pencil stub I had thrown out on the kitchen counter and know that nothing actually made it out of the house. Mom would tell me how wasteful I was and how the mess was all my fault and not hers. You know, I am grateful that as an adult I can see through all the excuses, but I can't help but wondering if I would have had a happier childhood if I hadn't believed all the crap she told me. Well, tomorrow's a new day and I'm sure my Mom will start out by calling me and freaking out about the powdered milk I threw out from 1979. Later....

In case you were wondering, we haven't done a cleanout since then. I think my Dad was too scared that she might have a nervous breakdown or some other psychotic episode. In fairness, it was a scary time to be around Mom for a while there.

She is still mad about that bucket of honey I threw out. I get to hear about it on a regular basis.

Mom is going out of town again for a few weeks this summer and she wants us to replace the floors upstairs - Hallelujah!

Of course she doesn't realize just what she is asking of us... IT'S CLEAN OUT TIME!

I will be documenting this one with pictures and will keep you all updated.