Sorry, I read all Pit threads, your vague OP included. Sympathetic yucks or two would be more suited to MPSIMS, I would think.
I hope things go better for you and your family in the new year. I won’t comment anymore in your thread.
Really? All of them? Do you post in all of them too?
No I don’t. Unlike you, I have better things to do than post inane bullshit six times a day, (averaged over a few years) to an anonymous internet message board.
I’m sorry about your Christmas, Misnomer. That was a brief but sad post.
Smeghead, I’m so very sorry you and your wife went through such pain and sorrow. I’ve been there, but thank goodness, not in the holiday season.
Sorry about the thread drift-- my Christmas was one of the few good ones I remember.
While I’m sorry for your experience, I also have to question why this is in the Pit.
If you wanted others to talk about their own bad experiences, there’s IMHO.
If you wanted sympathy, there MPSIMS.
If you just wanted to vent, there’s MYSPACE.
But you have time to read all of the Pit threads? I can post six times in six minutes. Especially if the bar is set at “inane bullshit.”
You know what? I think you’re lying when you say that you read all the Pit threads. And I think that if your post to **Misnomer **is an example of non inane non bullshit, then your vision is so clouded with your own fecal matter as to be unreliable. Ask your friend. He may have some words of wisdom for you.
So your posts in this thread are what? A special holiday bonus for all of us?
Yes, that one sentence of hers sure seems like the perfect opportunity to show off your own awesomeness. Awesome judgment.
This post paints a picture of my mothers kitchen to a tee.
She also hoards food. She has more food in her cupboards and shelves than I have, probably four to five times as much. She lives alone, in my house there are three adults.
“imaginary poverty” That statement hits the nail on the head.
This is my experiance as well. My mother acts as though there is nothing wrong with her place and if I did make a comment it would be taken as harsh criticism. She demands unconditional love, her appearance nor the appearance of her apartment should effect that love so there is no reason to discuss it. Period.
This is the same as it was in my house. It was not until my parents divorced and my mother moved into an apartment by herself that it began. Even then it seemed that now and then she would straighten up. She was working then and had more friends visit along with myself and the grandkids so I think that slowed the process.
She has been on disabilty now for many years so the processed has sped up quite a bit.
As did I.
I do not visit my mother at all. The most I am in her house is to drop off groceries.
There is no place to even set the groceries much less sit at her kitchen table. Even if she clears an area the smell would drive me out in a short time anyway.
I do not clean for her nor do I offer to. Once every six months she has a friend visit from out of town so she pays her grand daughter to come over and help her “clean”. That only consists of the kitchen and bathroom area. The rest is left in filth.
I also do not speak with her on the phone very much as I get trapped into an hour long call that consists of everything in her life in great detail.
I love my mom but I can not let her way of life effect me any longer. I had to let it go and live my life. I will not be responsible for her actions. I know she has a problem. There is no doubt in my mind she is a hoarder and is most likely a form of OCD. I am sure as well that being a depression baby just reinforces the feeling she has to hold on to things.
That said I am one of the lucky ones. It did not effect my childhood and as an adult I no longer let it effect me. I refuse to feel guilty anymore for not offering to help her clean or to feel guilty for not visiting her on a regular basis.
There are times I wish things were different but they are not so I deal with what I have.
Misnomer I don’t know your situation and you have no obligation to discuss it. I understood your brief post as it seems many others did.
It does sound like with the information you have given that your mom is a hoarder. The links that lisacurl provider are great sites. I have spent hours on them myself getting information and support.
Ain’t it the truth.
You struggle and fight and reason and steam until you are finaly ‘allowed’ to help. Then 3 months latter, it’s back to square one.
The last time I really cleaned my Dads house, I used a yard rake and rented a 20 yard roll off dumpster…
Amen. You gotta love the healthcare worker talking about making patients uncomfortable in the hospital. I didn’t care whether someone was black/white/purple/green, Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Atheist/Scientologist, or racist/misogynist/elitest/egotist/[insert your -ist here] when I was a paramedic- they were all treated equally as badly by me.
I will never understand why anyone – who isn’t a mod – bothers to post in threads just to say that they don’t think the OP should have started the thread, or to question which forum it should have been started in. Talk about shutting the barn door after the horse is out, wasting more bandwith than any OP ever could, etc. If you don’t like the topic of a thread, ignore it. This is not the Compulsory Participation Message Board.
I’ve been a member of the SDMB long enough to know that even the clearest, most straighforward of OPs can easily be hijacked and shat upon by some of the judgmental assholes here. Most of the time I don’t bother posting stuff like this at all, but when I do it always starts in the Pit: otherwise, I couldn’t call the two of you (and Chief Pedant) judgmental assholes and tell you to fuck off, now could I? If a thread like this were ever to not go downhill, the mods would be free to move it. But folks like you keep coming through for the rest of us, so it stays in the Pit.
I was part of a team of family members who went in to clean up my SIL’s place. She was a neat freak for most of her life until “Uncle” who lived in a shit-hole for his entire adult life, moved in with her. Everyone blamed his first wife for the squalor situation, but when he moved out, the squalor went with him. This is a guy who fed the dogs by opening a can of dog food and plopping it on the bare floor. A guy whose laundry room was literally packed from floor to ceiling with the dirty laundry of his 7 children. It is a form of mental illness, and anyone who has ever lived with it knows that it is impossible to fix it from the outside. Eventually, the bandaid falls off. My sympathies to the OP. I imagine it is infinitely more depressing during the holidays.
My Wife and I also take care of my Dads dog. We have pretty much drawn a line in the sand about that. We clip her nails and groom her. Still he manages put off about every other time we plan on doing it.
The Friday before Christmas, he called my Mom and asked her to tell me to stop with the animal care. “He knows what’s best” (total bullshit). When my Mom said it was not her place to tell me how to handle this, he started yelling at her and hung up on her.
We get the same reaction when we try to clean.
Sorry about the continued hi-jack.
Misnomer, I for one am glad you started the thread. I know nothing about hoarding and had no idea it affected so many people. Ignorance fought!
Hope things get better for you in the future…
And Smeghead, Jesus H. Christ, that is NOT the way someone should have to spend Christmas. You and your family have my sympathies and well-wishes.
My sympathies for anyone with a compulsive hoarder in the family. It’s a natural reaction to say that if someone’s house is in a bad way you should offer to help clean it up, but compulsive hoarding is a particularly virulent form of obsessive-compulsive disorder that goes so far beyond simple untidyness it’s hard to imagine. My aunt’s ex-husband was, and almost certainly still is, a compulsive hoarder. In addition having to deal with the more commonly known symptoms of OCD, he had to have each day’s newspaper carefully stacked around the house in a certain manner, until the whole house was ceiling high with rotting newspaper and other assorted garbage. You couldn’t just clean it out for him, because disturbing his surroundings in any way would cause him unbearable psychological pain. It’s a pretty awful way to live.
If you’ve been here long enough (as you’ve suggested) you should know better that to expect any certain outcome. I post what I feel, not to meet your expectations. Yes, for your expectations this is the wrong forum. I’m not posting that just to say you are wrong, I’m pointing out that if you want your expectations met there are friendlier places to post.
I’m sorry for your experience at Christmas. I hope things get better.
Misnomer, this thread has also educated me a lot. I knew that hoarding is a tragic mental illness, but looking at the CoH site really hit home and taught me about how difficult it is to love someone with this problem.
It also feels a little too familiar; I can really see my in-laws going this route in the future. For as long as I’ve known them, they’ve cleaned too little and collected too much, but their frequent moves and lack of money kept it somewhat under control. When they moved into a house and stayed there for 10 years, it got so that we couldn’t visit after a while (they said it was too messy, so we met at my BIL’s house). They lost the house last year and are now in an apartment again, but the move was nighmarish for my husband and his brother; the house was full of junk and they had done nothing to prepare for the move. Now their apartment is full of boxes of junk that haven’t been dealt with.
As they get older and all their children are gone, they deal with it less, and now I’m thinking that we may have this in our future too. My MIL doesn’t scream at me if I try to help, but she refuses any assistance and keeps piles of junk mail that she refuses to toss–and she wasn’t quite that bad several years ago. I guess that sounds familiar to some of you?
OK, now that I’ve written that out, I think I need a thread to help me understand this better. Would anyone be willing to start a CoH thread? I completely understand if no one does, since this is such a sensitive subject and Dopers aren’t renowned for their sensitivity.
Smeghead, I am so sorry. Have been through similar situations many times. My thoughts and prayers (if you want them) are with you and your wife. Hug her, hold her, cry with her and tell her you love her.
I will do my best, but could use some support from the other kids of squalor. 
P.S. - Smeghead, I have no words, I’m just so damn sorry.