Hey everyone, long time lurker here. I have a somewhat unique issue that I don't think I've seen on this sub before. Sorry for any formatting issues, I'm on mobile. I'm not even going to make a throwaway account for this since everyone who recognizes me has either been at my parents house and knows it's a problem or has heard me complain about it.
My parents have always been hoarders throughout my and my sister's childhoods, but it has never been this bad. My mom hoards things around our house, there are several piles of just random shit everywhere, we can't get up stairs in the house, and in their bedroom, if there were ever to be an earthquake, I'm sure both of my parents would be dead since a bunch of piled up stuff would just collapse on them. My dad mainly hoards things outside of our house, we have several pole barns just full of stuff, broken cars, motorcycles, radios, receivers, other various electronics, etc.
The situation has definitely been annoying, but it's been tolerable. For example, throughout my childhood, I wasn't allowed to get rid of anything, I always had to sneak things to goodwill when my mother was out of the house and if she noticed things missing, I'd have to lie and say I lost it. There have definitely been times where I have donated things and the same fucking thing showed back up in my bedroom.
However, things have gotten much worse in recent years when all of us moved out of the house and I left for college (I'm back for the summer). My mother has recently retired which has given her more time to...shop. She has since opened an eBay store and has been thrift store shopping hoping to find the "next big thing", but this means bringing even more random things into the house: clothes upon clothes, random antiques, etc. We have two couches adjacent to each other in our living room and you can't even see the other couch when sitting on them because there is just a pile of stuff in the middle.
Before a few days ago, this was definitely a problem, but it was livable. The other night around 3am, I heard a loud crash. I figured it was just one of the cats getting into something like usual, but I heard lots of following clangs, so I got up and saw my parent's bedroom door jammed open and there just a bunch of stuff littered all over the floor and my mom scattering around trying to pick it all up. One of the stacked boxes of stuff just toppled over and left shit all over. My parents could have gotten crushed if this fell on them and the same with our dog who sleeps in my parents room.
My sister has two young kids (3 and 3 months). After she heard about this, she said that the kids are no longer allowed at grandmas and grandpas until things get cleaned up around here in fear that something will fall on the kids either while they are playing or taking a nap/sleeping in my parents room. (Which I think is 100% warranted). The problem is... how is this even going to get cleaned up? My siblings and I think our mother has anxiety and that's why she hoards so much stuff and isn't willing to get rid of anything.
Whenever we bring up the issue of just bringing out a dumpster and throwing shit away, our dad gets very defensive and doesn't want to start a conflict with our mother. We are convinced that even if my parents manage to sell their house (they have been talking about retiring down to Florida when my dad retires), their next one would end up the same exact way. We don't feel like they'd be willing to go to counseling appointments since they don't seem to think the hoarding is a problem. How do we even broach this subject with them? Has anyone been in a similar boat?
TLDR: parents are hoarders, things have gotten even worse in recent years when we all moved out. Pile of boxes collapsed in parents bedroom a few nights ago. Grandkids not allowed to sleep over anymore until house gets cleaned up in fear of them getting crushed by falling boxes of shit. How do we even broach this subject to our parents?
Submitted August 29, 2019 at 06:13PM by Astrumerus https://ift.tt/2ZkOW86
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