Man, I’ve been reading this thread in queasy fascination but haven’t replied yet on account of my grandmother and her house. It’s been over twenty years but it’s still clear in my mind what it was like to dung out her place.
Grandma lived in a single wide mobile home with two pullouts in the living and back bedroom. Nobody had been in her place for years, she wouldn’t allow anyone to come in at all–even when she had heart attacks she’s call the EMTs but wait for them on the stoop to take her to the hospital. We started REALLY sniffing a rat when she went to the hospital with heart pains but wouldn’t allow anyone to touch her purse; turns out she had over $7000 in cash and uncashed disability/SS checks in there. The nurses finally got it away from her by promising to lock it in the hospital safe until someone in the family took it and deposited the checks and cash in her bank account. Apparently she was convinced the government would stop her checks if she actually put them in her bank account or something. She would come stay with my mom or my uncle for months at a time because she didn’t want to go to her place. I was in my early twenties when I finally guilted my mom and aunt into cleaning the place out and moving her into a place where she could be cared for–we told her we were going to do it and told her she didn’t have a choice and no matter what we would never reproach her for what we found.
And we certainly did find a whole lot! We went into that place and found the entire house was a rat warren, floor to ceiling piles of junk with tiny paths maybe a foot wide going from the front room to the kitchen, and about two feet x five of the bed was clear enough to sleep in, although it wasn’t possible to get under the bed clothes and I remembered the coverlet from when I was a small child and came to visit. The kitchen was a horror–fossilized crusted out food in the sink that was so old the dishes would have to be chipped apart, drifts two to four inches thick of dead ants cemented together with bug spray (scores of cans of empty poison all over the counters and floor,) piles of opened cans of food all rotten and fossilized, the stove covered with inches of spilled and baked on food and grease–the stove didn’t work at all, literally NO room to move in there and the refrigerater couldn’t be opened. This was just as well as it also wasn’t working and there’s no way to tell how long it had been that way. After the kitchen sink became so clogged it wouldn’t work she moved on to filling up the bathroom sink, then the bathtub. Full of dishes covered in filth, and no place to bathe or clean herself available in the whole place. The built in washer/dryer hadn’t worked since who knows how long.
We found pill bottles from 1953 with one pill in them (we tackled this project in 1984!) and magazines and newspapers dating back to then as well. We found unopened boxes and bottles of cleaning materials, hundreds of different kinds–obviously she really intended to clean it up someday but so much of the stuff was so old it wasn’t even manufactured any more. We found a fish tank with streaks down the sides as the water evaporated, with the papery remains of fish stuck to the gravel in the bottom. We found a couple of dead birds that must have flown in sometime and couldn’t figure out how to get back out–they were stuck to the carpet. I had to clear out the front bedroom, being the only non cat-allergic person involved–there was cat hair stuck over an inch thick to the carpet and curtains in there and we know she hadn’t had a cat in close to twenty years. At one point I found myself laughing hysterically and saying to mom and aunt “who says grandma doesn’t have any pets?!” I found stuff that I played with as a small child and used to visit her–still in the drawer where I left it, never touched.
She had twenty or thirty unopened large size boxes of sanitary napkins–the woman was in her 70’s! What did she need those for, anyway? Five or six weed whackers. Two lawnmowers, never used. Incredible amounts of hoarded crap jammed into such a small space. Luckily for our sanity the really gross areas were confined to the kitchen and bathroom; the rest of the house was horribly jammed full of junk but at least it wasn’t rotten! The part that made me cry, though, was that she had collected so much crap that there was no place to sit down anywhere, the TV was inaccessible–basically she spent all her time there laying in that little section of bed with nothing to do but read old newspapers or listen to an AM clock radio. No wonder she camped on family members for months!
We pulled out enough garbage to make a pile of thirty gallon trash bags twelve feet square and eight feet high–had to rent a drop dumpster to get rid of it all. On the plus side so much of the furniture had been buried so long it was actually in decent shape–way fifties retro but okay–and we pulled out enough usable stuff to furnish a one bedroom apartment. To this day I still use some of the spools of thread I rescued out of grandma’s place–she had a ton of sewing and needlepoint supplies and I’m kinda crafty that way too…
On the plus side, I think she was one of those people who just got overwhelmed after grandpa died and let it get away from her rather than it being attributable to mental illness or OCD. After the initial resistance when I just told her flat out that I couldn’t bear to see her live that way one more minute and that’s that she seemed almost relieved to have the subterfuge done with and to have the responsibility for her situation taken out of her hands. To be fair, I was probably the only person she would have listened to; we always were very close. We moved her into the tidy little apartment where she lived for almost six months before finally succumbing to a combination of cancer, emphysema and a dicky heart. At least I knew she could invite people over to see her that last few months and she no longer had to be ashamed of the way she lived. I bought her a plant as a housewarming gift that I brought home after she died–I not only still have it almost 25 years later, but I’ve taken clippings from it and both my kids have a plant from it too. Heck, I’ve had to cut so many runners off that plant I could probably have grown a forest of the stuff!
Another good thing that came from this experience is that I learned that I too have inclinations toward hoarding that have been reinforced by others seeing me as the “reliable one” who can keep track of crap they leave with me for safe keeping. When I moved to Oregon we came here with one Toyota pickup truck worth of stuff and put the rest in storage. Six months later we picked up another full sized pickup load of useful stuff (like my books!) and dumped the rest. I decided that stuff like furniture is ephemeral and seldom worth moving around, especially if there’s nothing unique about it. I decided that I generally prefer recycling furniture and that way when I get tired of it or it doesn’t suit my lifestyle I just donate it back to Goodwill and it doesn’t bother me because it didn’t cost a lot in the first place. I know I’ll never stop being a bit of an accumulator, but I’ve also acquired a taste for dump runs and we take in loads of busted up useless crap once or twice a year and do my best to avoid buying things that are cluttery and have no real use. Also, anything aside from tools or camping equipment that’s been in a box and/or not used for six months gets pitched. The only bete noir I still have is collecting books–it’s very difficult for me to give them up since I do re-read books and have had too many instances of books I owned going out of print and becoming unfindable to dispose of books with equanimity. On the plus side, my grandchild shares my tastes in literature so I plan on leaving him the books and I make a concerted effort to use the library whenever possible rather than buying more books.
Hoarding and squalor are horrible but I think there’s something about the way Americans relate to STUFF that encourages it. The overwhelming message is that more crap is what makes you more happy; that buying stuff and having lots of stuff is the basis of comfort, stability and safety. Somewhere along the line a switch gets flipped and people become victims of their own stuff–they’re trapped and surrounded by their own need for safety and those piles of crap equal comfort. It’s sick, but as long as US culture equates lots of stuff with success and happiness it’s going to result in hoarders and those who live in squalor.
