In many ways, I am very much my parents’ daughter. I get my freckles, sarcasm, and love of puns from my dad; my thick thighs, sensitivity, and penchant for sales from my mom.
What I don’t get from either of them is their hoarder’s mentality.
I am a purger. They are not.
Two years ago, as they were getting their house ready to sell, I spent a week there trying to clean out their closets, attic, and garage. It didn’t go well. [Read about it here.]
Fast forward to this past January when they finally moved, and we are once again in a near-hoarders situation.
How?
Because against my sister and my constant warnings, they tried to move a house-worth’s of stuff into a 2-bedroom apartment.
The end result? Closets overstuffed with hundreds of useless items. Here’s a sample of just a few of the items I saw:
- a dozen oversized table linens for tables they no longer have
- bags and bags of river rocks and batteries
- some girl named Kelly Murphy’s softball trophy from 1980
- assorted small appliances and tools that will never be used
- enough Christmas decorations to adorn a small village
Oh, and 14 end tables/cabinets.
You read that correctly — 14. They don’t even have 14 ends to put those tables near.
So, when I went to visit them 2 weeks ago, I took some.
I also took an old desk chair, two TVs, a tiered cake stand, a shoe rack, a circular saw, a box of old lady shoes, and those oversized table linens.
There was so much more I wanted to take, but it’s a start.
My plan now is to make a trip every 4-6 weeks to check in on them and clear out more stuff. Rather than the gentle art of Swedish death cleaning, my process is more like a slow purge against their will. Either way, I’m getting stuff out! If not, I’m burying them with Kelly Murphy’s trophy and those damn river rocks.
Just kidding, Mom and Dad … Or am I?😉
—LJDT
They were not “old lady shoes “, they were ladies’s old shoes.