Blah

I'm kind of going through a down time, or maybe just a stagnant time, for the last...well, for a long time. I have no life, no stories to tell about each day that goes by. My blog is pretty much a sad joke since there really isn't ever anything new in my life to blog about. Even this is just a blog about blah.

Hoarders

Thanks to NetFlix, Keith and I have started watching episodes of a show called "Hoarders." This show brings back memories of my grandma on my moms side and also makes me think about Keith's parents. One of the organizers on the show became an organizer because his mom was a hoarder and committed suicide from her depression. Anyhow, he made a statement that impacted me, "I really don't think my mom realized what a burden she left behind for us to have to go through and clean up," or something to that effect. When my grandparents died most of the mess was already gone because they moved across the street to a prefab house only a few years before my grandpa passed away so most of the junk was trashed before and after he died my uncle took over my grandmas house, forcing her to move out and live at my mom and another uncles house alternating weeks and eventually into a retirement home. In any event, as a child I remember visiting my grandparents house. They had I-15 in their back yard which brought a lot of added dust. They also had a few acres of land with a pasture to the side, a few random buildings filled with junk like a garage, an old building that was once my grandpa's potato chip factory, several large green houses since that was their business when I was a kid and across the street they had a bunch of apartment buildings, a storage building, and another garage, along with the remains of a glass greenhouse that had shattered. Inside the house they lived in my grandma had stacks of newspapers of various heights, some as high as me and some a little shorter. Their floors were old vinyl tiles that absorbed the dirt into them. If my grandma spilled her coffee ( bishop approved because she got a Dr to say she needed it because she was anemic) she would put a newspaper on it and leave it there. That was her way of cleaning. I recall mopping her floor only to discover that her floors weren't really made of dirt and wanting to mop her entire house. She had boxes of junk all over her house and all of it was covered in layers of dirt. Dishes were always out of control at her house and that was the one job I hated getting assigned while visiting. As for the rest, I loved sweeping or mopping until you could see the floor. This always exhausted my grandma. My grandma didn't have a garbage disposal, instead she had a 5 gallon bucket that she would throw old food into and keep by her washer and dryer. This was absolutely disgusting and I believe is the reason that she had snakes in her house. I'm sure it also encouraged the mice. She had vines growing into her house from outside. When I was a teenager I spent a summer with my grandparents and lived off of spaghetti because I didn't dare eat any of their food.

The show also makes me think of Keith's parents. They actually outshine my grandparents and it quite possibly might be due to the cats. They are the cat people you read about where 100+ cats are found in one house. There are baby cats all year round and the ferrel neighborhood cats live and have babies in their house and yard. I've sat in their house and watched the cats pee on things in front of everyone. Their kitchen sink is broken and they won't let Keith fix it. Their dishes are of course piled up in there. The stove is broken so instead they have a dirty old hot plate to cook on. They leave rotting food out. You can find cat poo pretty much anywhere in their house. Their bathroom is scary at best and getting to it is just as bad. Everything they own smells like cat urine and you can smell their house from the sidewalk. There are piles of clutter everywhere much like my grandparents. I guess my grandparents had the advantage of having more property and out of use buildings to store things in because it wasn't as cramped and their bathroom wasn't as bad. This also helped them not have trash all over their yard.

Back to the show, everyone on the shows so far seem to have a citation or eviction notice hanging over their head. The amazing thing is that even if you know that the courts may possibly not let you live in your house if you can't get it cleaned up, and even with the help of a clean up crew (which they only clean what the hoarder allows them to clean), at least half of the people we've seen are not able to part with their hoarding habits. One of the ladies had her daughter tell her that since she chooses to live that way, her daughter isn't going to sacrifice anymore of her time trying to help her mom and that she and her kids will no longer be a part of her moms life. The mom didn't care at all, just as long as she could keep her disgusting mess. It's simply amazing to watch people who live like this and ponder what makes a person get to the point in their lives where this becomes acceptable. Some of the people had parents in the depression. This was what did it for my grandparents. Others felt the loss of one of their parents deaths so overwhelmingly that shopping and collecting filled a void. One lady grew up hungry so she hoarded rotten food and ate it. Honestly I don't know Keith's parents well enough to guess but I have been to one of his aunts houses and it was clean. I'm told his grandma's house is also clean so it can't be a learned trait. My grandma had a handful of messy sisters and I believe I remember hearing that her mom was also messy. It really doesn't matter as much how they got that way now I suppose, but speculating is interesting. The show makes Keith and I wonder if we're headed on the same road as his parents and my grandparents and makes us want to spend more time cleaning/getting rid of junk. It also brings the question to mind, how do you know what the line is on having a cluttery house verses the home of a hoarder??? It's possible that we're already there, or at least well on our way......