On Playing the Dutiful Daughter
I hate this "new year, new start" bullshit, but I have to put on my biggest "POSITIVE, WE CAN DO IT"-face for my mum for a little while to get her through this move. She was on the phone crying on New Year's Eve, telling me how she just isn't ready for moving again.
I went over to her place today, unfortunately I slept in longer than expected and didn't get my ass over there until 2pm - but I feel we made a little bit of progress. We are still terrible at this whole communication thing, talking is just hard, OK, but I get the feeling that the actual move itself isn't so bad. She's just lonely. And still dealing with her grief in a very big way. So I made sure to make the day more or less equal parts doing moving stuff and equal parts hanging out and relaxing. We packed up a couple of boxes and I sorted through about 5 bags of her accumulated crap. My mum is very much a hoarder. She is unable to throw things away. She remembers clearly where every little item came from, what it's used for, and she has very specific reasons for why she absolutely needs to keep every little thing. Yes, even that one loose screw that you just found at the bottom of a random plastic bag.
So it's a constant struggle. But I can see that she is getting better. She let me throw out a lot of stuff today! Which I'm very pleased about. I just hope she'll be able to keep herself from going through the trash afterwards (this has happened before, and I've previously refused to help her clean out the old house because of this).
The actual move is happening on Wednesday, but she gets access to her new flat on Monday! It's all very exciting. It'll be tiring and stressful as hell, but I'll be there for her all next week! There'll be lots of cleaning and sorting things in my near future, omg. WISH ME LUCK, YOU GUYS. If any of you have actual experience with dealing with hoarders and helping them get rid of things, let me know. I feel like I need a couple of more tricks up my sleeve to get myself through this.
I went over to her place today, unfortunately I slept in longer than expected and didn't get my ass over there until 2pm - but I feel we made a little bit of progress. We are still terrible at this whole communication thing, talking is just hard, OK, but I get the feeling that the actual move itself isn't so bad. She's just lonely. And still dealing with her grief in a very big way. So I made sure to make the day more or less equal parts doing moving stuff and equal parts hanging out and relaxing. We packed up a couple of boxes and I sorted through about 5 bags of her accumulated crap. My mum is very much a hoarder. She is unable to throw things away. She remembers clearly where every little item came from, what it's used for, and she has very specific reasons for why she absolutely needs to keep every little thing. Yes, even that one loose screw that you just found at the bottom of a random plastic bag.
So it's a constant struggle. But I can see that she is getting better. She let me throw out a lot of stuff today! Which I'm very pleased about. I just hope she'll be able to keep herself from going through the trash afterwards (this has happened before, and I've previously refused to help her clean out the old house because of this).
The actual move is happening on Wednesday, but she gets access to her new flat on Monday! It's all very exciting. It'll be tiring and stressful as hell, but I'll be there for her all next week! There'll be lots of cleaning and sorting things in my near future, omg. WISH ME LUCK, YOU GUYS. If any of you have actual experience with dealing with hoarders and helping them get rid of things, let me know. I feel like I need a couple of more tricks up my sleeve to get myself through this.