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\nMy mom saves newspapers because she says someday she’s going to clip things out of them she wants.\u00a0 She has huge stacks of them throughout the house and actually pays to store more in a storage unit. She also saves magazines and old catalogues.\u00a0 She’s got Christmas catalogues from more than 10 years ago (which she got upset when I tried to throw away). She’s got an entire closet and part of a room stacked with empty boxes that she says she wants to use for things.\u00a0 When she grabs a pen to write with & it no longer works, she puts it back in the cup instead of throwing it away.\u00a0 You can barely walk into her home office and she has so much paperwork and crap piled on her desk that she barely has any space to work. Her bedroom is full of piles of clothes stacked around.\u00a0 Only her office has pathways through it. The rest of the house is pretty well contained but she refuses to believe there is any sort of problem and subjects my poor step-dad to her craziness all the time.\u00a0 They actually have two or three storage units full of all the stupid Christmas and Halloween stuff she has collected (along with her stacks of newspapers).\u00a0 She likes to say that someday all her decorations will be mine and I just tell her I’m not interested.<\/p>\n
I remember my childhood home being cluttered and remember her newspaper problem back then but she has definitely escalated since I\u2019ve been an adult and been on my own.\u00a0 She started this many, many years ago.\u00a0 My biological Dad remembers her newspaper and empty shoe box problem when they were married and they got divorced when I was 2 years old. As far as I know there has never been a traumatic experience that caused her to start this.\u00a0 Her sisters say she\u2019s always had a tendency to collect clutter.\u00a0 Her home is not bad enough to be on any TV show and if 5 is the worst, I would expect people would say she\u2019s a 1 to 2.\u00a0 I know she know\u2019s it not right because when she has company over, she cleans the house and moves all the clutter into other rooms which she does not let anyone into.\u00a0 She likes to make it look like she\u2019s normal.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t help but get really angry and resentful of her.\u00a0 She\u2019s in her 60s now and I know when she dies I\u2019ll have to deal with going through all her useless crap.\u00a0 Especially since my step-dad doesn\u2019t do anything at all about it.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t like it but it\u2019s easier to let her just do what she wants because she get\u2019s really nasty if you try to talk to her about it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even like going to her home because she always has so much dust all over that it makes my asthma kick in.\u00a0 I just get so mad at her because of her complete selfishness of living like this and basically not giving a crap at all about anyone else in the house. I just can\u2019t understand it.\u00a0 I know I\u2019m a neat and tidy person in my own life because of her and I get terrified of someday ending up like her.\u00a0 I get very uncomfortable when I start feeling like I have too much stuff.\u00a0 My house is very clutter free except it is small and my spare bedroom closet and deck storage closet have a lot of things in them.\u00a0 Nothing compared to how my Mom would have them jam packed, but I still feel like they\u2019re too cluttered.\u00a0 I will definitely be doing another organizing weekend soon and taking things to Goodwill that I haven\u2019t used in a while.\u00a0 I rarely regret anything I\u2019ve taken to Goodwill and always feel kindof cathartic about getting rid of things I no longer use or need.\u00a0 I guess it\u2019s because my Mom cannot do this at all and it justifies in my mind that I am normal.<\/p>\n
Sorry for such the long post but I just found out about this site after the 20\/20 story and was amazed that this group was out there.\u00a0 I\u2019ve held all this in for so long it just feels really good to get it off my chest especially to a group of people that know EXACTLY what I\u2019m talking about <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
8\/11 My mom saves newspapers because she says someday she’s going to clip things out of them she wants.\u00a0 She has huge stacks of them throughout the house and actually pays to store more in a storage unit. She also saves magazines and old catalogues.\u00a0 She’s got Christmas catalogues from more than 10 years ago … <\/p>\n