My Mom, the Packrat

[Ghel]

My mom died unexpectedly about 3 weeks ago. I'm sure a lot of you will offer your condolences, so I want to say "thanks" to everybody right off the bat, because that's not what this thread is about. It's about the sometimes amusing things we've discovered as we've gone though Mom's house cleaning it.

You've probably seen an episode or two of Hoarders or similar shows. Well, Mom's house wasn't quite that bad, but it was bad. She had a small path to get through the living room, and the rest of the floor was covered in junk. Her bedroom was almost as bad. In the room where her computer was, you couldn't even move the office chair because of the cords trailing across the floor. The basement was really the only clean place, but that was only because she never went down there.

She realized she had too much stuff and needed to organize it. But her solution wasn't to get rid of the stuff she didn't need (which was most of it). Instead, she bought more storage containers and sets of shelves to put stuff in or on. In fact, she had just ordered new shelves and organizer thingies which were still arriving as we were at the house cleaning two days after she died.

I tried to help her go through things a few times, but just walking into her house would sap my strength and make me want to go home and clean my own house. I could never have just pitched things while she was alive. Not the way I am now. She would have had a story, a memory, or something associated with each thing.

Most of the multiples of things we've found were scattered around the house. A few pens here, a few there, and eventually we gathered hundreds of pens, pencils, markers and highlighters. Most of which still work. There were refrigerator magnets on her fridge, freezer, dishwasher, filing cabinets, and even on the insides of the front and back doors. Some of them were stuck so that I had to get my nails under them to get them off, and they took some of the paint with them. We found at least 50 pairs of scissors. A dozen sets of nail clippers. 20 or more hairbrushes. Bunches of notebooks with only the first 2 or 3 pages written in, like she had started to write something down, then lost the notebook under a stack of papers and started a new one.

Her books were haphazardly thrown wherever they would fit. She had a diabetic cookbook next to a book called "The Carb-lover's Diet." I threw out dozens of magazines and pamphlets. We found 8 copies of a booklet called, "The Idiot's Guide to Diabetes." Yes, she was diabetic. But we also found many dessert cookbooks. Most of these books looked like they'd never been opened.

Her fridge and freezer (a large chest freezer) were full top-to-bottom, but we ended up throwing a lot out because it was either spoiled or freezer burnt. I don't understand why she had a 10-lb bag of potatoes in her fridge with only her in the house. It's like she was still shopping for a family of four.

Today, I was working on cleaning the bathroom. I found enough travel-size shampoo and conditioner to outfit a large hotel. About half of the hairbrushes and combs we found were in the bathroom. I kept finding bottles and containers of things that were empty: baby powder, conditioner, hand soap, hand lotion. But for whatever reason, Mom hadn't thrown them out. I found at least a dozen disposable razors, some used. But the worst thing I found in the bathroom was an enema bag.

It's been kind of an adventure cleaning out my mom's house. We've taken two trips to the dump so far, and we'll probably have to go a few more times.

[MoonCat]

I do offer my sympathies, Ghel. Sorry to hear that!

Your mom's house sounds a bit like the house of a friend of my brother's. The man passed away in 2006. My brother rented a room from this guy and his wife. After his friend passed my brother helped the wife clean out her husband's stuff. That man collected anything and everything. He gave us two old milk crates packed with cookbooks, plus a bookcase to store the books in. He took boxes and boxes of stuff to the AmVets thrift store, bags of clothes, all kinds of stuff. Their basement was packed from floor to ceiling with stuff, most of which was never used.

[dalesys]

My children are hoping that I'm living in a trailer when I die...

So they can just hitch it up and drive to the dump.

[Aethian]

Have you been able to thrift store, donate, or freecycle stuff?

[Draper Mel]

Yeah, we're going to have to do this at my parents' house soon, after I move out. They were pretty good about throwing things out periodically, so it's not like something out of Hoarders. But they have a lot of stuff accumulated over 40 years of being here. Tons of books, lots of artwork, and my Mom has 4 built in closets full of craft and art supplies.

[Der Cute]

Can you put together the pens and small travel/cleaning bottles and take it to a food bank/shelter? Or the pens to a batch of cashiers LOL. You might be able to take the books to a Half-Priced Books store if there's one local, or donate it. Please.
Sell the deep freezer. Are there any craft supplies or books that are still kosher? Ask a retirement home or such if they'd take it.
I know it's easier to shovel and trash, but since I volunteer @ a food bank and know what shelters are like, I can see a use for it all.
I'd probably trash the furniture (eew), but find a home for what you can.

If it's super stinky, put vicks under your nose. You could also open the windows a bit, I heard it snowed in Chicago...cold air = less active smell.
Hugs for the WORK.
*sending rubber gloves, bleach, mops, sponges and flame throwers if you need that*

[42_42_42]

The notebooks can be used. Tear out the few written in pages. I'm sure there are plenty of teachers who would be glad to have them. There's always students who don't have notebooks or run out of room in them.

[protege]

My granddad was a bit of a packrat. You name it, he probably had it hidden somewhere around the farm. I guess it was because he grew up on a farm, and endured the Depression. Money was hard to come by then, and things had to last. Doesn't explain some of the things that were left behind when he died in '89.

The family had a feed store. After it closed in the '60s, most of the business records ended up in one of the outbuildings. Picture the lower half of a 16-by-20-foot building with boxes about 3 feet high over 75% of the floor space. All that paper, which was really worthless by then, combined with old car parts, scrap wood and anything else he decided to save.

About a week after the funeral, Grandma decided that all the crap had to go. Multiple trucks hauled away most of the larger junk. What was left, my dad and I hauled away in the station wagon to sell. Things like old tools--shovels, hoes, spreaders, and other farm tools were in multiple sets. Apparently, Grandpa had at least one set in each barn. She had me haul all of the papers into one of the fields and torch them. I did as she asked, but I wish I could have gone through them first! Unfortunate, since I really didn't know about that part of my family's past.

[Kristev]

My condolences.

[telecom_goddess]

What is it about these older women and enema bags? My mother had one too. I've never owned and never will.

My mom wasn't too bad of a hoarder really but she did save lots and lots of a couple of weird items. Like plastic storage bowls with lids. They filled cupboards. And empty plastic prescription bottles. Shoeboxes full of them.

Other than that she was good.

[Ghel]

I had my mom's mail forwarded to me, and I'm still receiving packages of stuff that she ordered from some mail-order catalog. I guess I'll be giving most of that stuff away as Christmas gifts.

We're trying to sell as much of the stuff as possible. We're hoping to get enough from the sale of the house, truck, and atv to pay off the loans on each of those. We'll be selling the lift chair, hospital bed, freezer, and lawnmower. A lot of the clothes are going to my sister-in-law and her daughters. Then we'll donate whatever else is still in good shape.

But so much of it is junk. We have to trash things like expired food and medicine. Ragged clothes and blankets. Chipped plates and glasses. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with her collections of figurines, thimbles, and shot glasses.

[XCashier]

My condolences on your mother's passing.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with her collections of figurines, thimbles, and shot glasses.

eBay them if you have the time and packaging supplies. Those things do fairly well there. If not, try consigning them to an antique store.

[Andara Bledin]

I guess I'm fortunate that I won't have to be dealing with that stuff with my mother.

My dad would have been a problem, but he's so far gone, mentally, that he isn't capable of packratting it up any longer. But back in the day, we let him have use of some of our garage space and the detritus included such lovely items as broken plastic bottles and jugs, several bedpans stolen from hospitals, and a trash bag filled with dirty socks and briefs, neither of which he even wore, which just adds to the ick factor. *shudder* When we cleaned up, we filled a 10 yard roll-off twice with nothing but pure trash, and then a third time with stuff that might have been usable if it hadn't been tossed in a garage with the trash for 5 years.

My mother and aunt, however, keep things pared down and make a point of actually disposing of those things they have no use or need for.

^-.-^

[taxguykarl]

My condolences as well. My mom had to go through the same sort of thing when my grandmother died. She was the packrat's packrat....she would not have been out of place on Hoarders.

[Ghel]

I was going through my mom's walk-in closet this weekend.

She had a stack of about a dozen clear plastic containers, each with papers in it, stacked by the door. It looked like she was trying to organize important documents, so I went through that first. One box was hymnal sheets. One was photocopied recipes. Another was printed emails (the kind of stuff that gets forwarded but nobody really reads). One did have bills in it, but it was old bills from 2005. So I ended up throwing most of it out. The nice part was I got about a dozen clear plastic containers that I can put things in to take home with me.

Also in the closet were kitchen items that she didn't use very often: 2 hotplates, 3 crockpots, 2 or 3 cookie sheets, a stack of holiday platters, and about a dozen silicone cupcake trays. Most of the stuff looked like it had been used, but was in good shape, so I set it aside. The cupcake trays, however, looked like they'd only been used once. I'd say they looked brand new, except they hadn't been cleaned after the one time they'd been used.

My hubby was helping clean that day. I kept saying, "who does this?" And hubby kept responding, "your mom!"

I also found two rings that day. One was my stepdad's wedding band. It was laying in a dresser drawer. The other was a ring with my dad's initials on it. It's just a cheap, tarnished copper ring, but I snagged it anyway.