it is impossible to clean this house
my parents are lowkey hoarders. our house is full of stuff, decades of clothes sitting everywhere you can see. somehow they manage to clean up downstairs in case anyone comes by, but that’s just means 3/5 rooms upstairs get filled with all the junk.
my mom is getting surgery on Monday and my dad is set on cleaning the entire house before then (not happening) and getting all the work done on it so that once she’s fully recovered we have nothing else to worry about in regards to the house.
it’s not happening.
the biggest issue is this: they don’t get rid of things.
we have stuff around the house and filling the garage from before I was born, and they haven’t been touched since I was born. the issue is that whenever they get around to the awfully infuriating act of looking through the stuff we’ve got, now they’re searching for “the valuable things.”
I am of the opinion that if you haven’t touched something in more than two years it’s no longer valuable, but what do I know?
so now I’m roped into helping my dad with cleaning out the garage, which will only ever end badly because he doesn’t want to get rid of anything. you HAVE to get rid of things to properly tidy a house, but they won’t and I already know it.
I’m on the opposite end of this. I think their intense reluctance to get rid of anything has made me more than adept at getting rid of stuff constantly. I am always getting rid of something. I’m throwing things out, I’m donating, I’m recycling constantly. I hate having stuff.
but they are so sentimental about everything they have despite leaving it to collect dust that nothing goes. if it were up to me, I’d throw away everything but the documents we’ve got lying around in there and move on.
but then it’s, “So that’s where that’s been!”
and, “I told you we had one of these around here.”
and always, “See, we needed to find this.”
and nothing gets thrown away.
and I get it, they’re discouraged, they’re depressed, it’s a lot of work. but what am I to do about that? I go to therapy, I do the work. I handle my stuff. I can’t make them do it, but it ends up falling on me somehow. if it’s not that my room isn’t clean enough, it’s that I’m not helping them. and when I do help them, I’m not doing it right. so why try? I honestly don’t want to. when my dad told me we’ll be cleaning the garage next week, I let out the biggest sigh. it’s just not happening.
so what can be done, really? I’m giving up on this. these people are too much.
but I want to be a good daughter, and I want this house to finally be clean, but I just don’t know how to get it done when they are so resistant to getting it done. it’s such a headache. I’m over it.