Reply #107: The people on TV at least realize they have a problem.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

My mother had NO IDEA she had a problem. She did not have a problem with it, her family did. Her junk was more important than her family. More important than her husband, her only child (me), and her only grandchild (my daughter).

Grandma spent two years in a nursing home and when they cleaned out her room when she died, they found 287 clean washrags in her bureau drawer. She was going to be clean.

I cleaned out a shower stall that was used as a closet, after Mom died (Grandma and Mom both lived in this house previously). I found 132 purses and took them to Goodwill. I went through her old patterns and material and sewing stuff. After I threw out the stained and rotten stuff, I had 40 banker boxes of usable stuff I took to a thrift store in Houston.

And as I said above, Mom and Grandma were NOT poor when they were in the depression. We took mom to a shrink for an intervention and it did nothing. He had to yell at her to not interrupt him and he told her she would never live long enough to sort it all out. Which she did not.

My dad had the patience of a saint. He threw her out of their bedroom back in the 1970s, when I was in high school, because of her creeping junk. She had a spot on the bed in my former room where she slept, and it was piled up with junk all around.

I have no idea how long it's taken me to clean out since she died nearly 9 yrs ago, or how many cubic feet of stuff I've given away/thrown away/left at the curb.

I had no idea that mom had multiple personalities when she dissociated from the stress of somebody throwing out trash.