Dispatches from the front.

[lyssachan]

I am cleaning the upstairs so I can move myself up there. This is something I've been talking about for, no exaggeration, 6 years. Maybe more. I think it's depression more than anything that's been stopping me but whatever: the point is that I'm doing it now.

And it's going to take me a month and a half.

Comments

[moiread]

My mom is the same way, between having grown up with nothing and the fact that her parents both had depression-era values that they passed on to their kids, so I grew up in a house that sounds just like yours. I remember that my parents' basement used to be so full of my mom's random crap that, out of the whole entire basement, the only available space was a small path leading from the stairs to the laundry room. The path was about ten feet long and three feet wide. The entire rest of the full-size finished basement was filled up to my height with boxes of jun and rough totes of junk and just plan ol' free-standing junk. There were like old broken toys from when my brother and I were kids, and we hadn't been that age of "kids" in over ten years.

Once when we had relatives come to stay, my mom told me to "tidy the basement". I could really only stare at her. Eventually I went downstairs, cleared the little path of dirty laundry, and then taped up a hand-written note that said: Please keep your arms and legs inside the safe zone at all

[skycornerless]

I am a terrible, terrible packrat. I keep things because I want to be reminded of that event whenever I get ambitious and want to clean and go through my junk. My father called me last summer to inform me that he threw away a box of my stuff - papers, mostly, probably a lot of sheet music - that was in my brother's room (previously mine). I was upset! Because I didn't know what exactly it was! Obviously, I do not need those things, but they hold keys to memories that I'll otherwise let languish behind locked doors. (And I'm not saying they're particularly special memories, either, I just take a certain delight in remembering things I haven't thought about in eons, and having mementos from those times are really the only way to do that.)

(Also what if I take up music again?? I WOULD TOTALLY WANT THE SHEET MUSIC TO THOSE TERRIBLE CHORUS SONGS WE SANG.)

Anyway, he totally denies having done that now, but I know it's true.

[dypole]

It's a good thing I never went inside your house, as I would have had a massive anxiety attack and probably blacked out from lack of air due to hyperventilation.

[tinfoilheart]

i've said it before and i'll say it again - i will help you clean if you need me to! i know you don't want anyone to see the inside of your house in this state, but honestly, i think since i've been one of the people hearing about your planned move for the past six years or so, it'll be okay if i see it. i won't laugh or freak out or cry or tell anyone what i see. :)

[saditymaus]

you might want to give some of the older stuff to local museums