My mom had too much junk

[m4a2000]

My apartment has been commandeered by my own mother which junk! So much junk! This morning I lost half of my living room's floor space and my whole apartment is under 700 square feet!

The Backstory
Early last year she and her partner who was in bad health were informed they would need to move. They were given a year to do so. Sadly the area they live in currently is so expensive that anything reasonable would be over an hour or two away from any city with a population over 5000.

Late last year her partner fell into worse health resulting in being admitted to a home. Though not a great time for my own mom she had yet to start clearing things out of their place. He passed in late February and now there was a ticking clock.

Through March things were finally moved out of the trailer they lived in. I have no idea how much was sent to storage, sold, or put in the dump. The last time I was there they barely had a walkway with stacks of junk piled five feet high in spots.

She asked to stay at my place for April thinking she'd be done in a month. So the end of May rolls around and after extensions from the landlord she finally has to be be out. She got rid of what she could, how she had STACKS of VCRs I will never know, and comes to my place the last day of May.

"Living together"
I had her take the next two days 'off' to recover from everything. Apparently that caused an issues for her back. Really it was most likely from the stress and her using my hide-a-way bed. This made most of June a wash to finish up her three storage units. A 10 by 10, a 5 by 15, and another one. Here goal is to get everything into the 10 by 10 so it can be shipped to my sister's when possible.

As for my sister's my mom went down to her place near the end of June. I forget the reason why, but for three weeks she was gone. The contrast of living alone for 19 years to having a roommate for a month to not having them again is mind numbing. In that month she brought some things up from her storage units, but not much. Still trying to understand why she brought in foods I have no means to cook when she know I have no means to cook them.

After coming back from my sister's she did start getting more done with her help being so-so. I've been working and sad to say the only amount of peace I have been getting is at work for the last five plus weeks. Throughout the month she has bringing more and more things in and told me she wanted to leave the 29th of August... And it is now September.

When will it end?!?
For some reason my my doesn't have a debit or credit card, but does have a bank account. This means in some cases she uses gift cards to buy things since some places only take card. I bring this up as she gave me the money needed for her flight to my sister's. I held off on getting the ticket since I had no idea if she hit her deadline and screw the extra $40+ cost to get a refundable ticket. I am now waiting for her to get done to buy the ticket and transit to the airport.

As I wait she only, as of this morning September 1st, cleared out two of her three storage units. Well mostly. There is enough stuff in my living room right now to fill the back of a 80's pickup truck and still need more storage. The things I can just see right now:

• Japanese NES games
  Mirrors
  Coffee tints full of screws
  A WinXP desktop
  1890'S phonograph with cylinder records
  N64
  Safes
  Old batteries (that she is giving away)
  Old markers (she wants to keep)
  25+ pocket knives
  Coins, collectable coins, random envelopes with money (one has $100 in twenties)
  An underwater rated camera from 2007
  USB cables and devices that are branded as the brand new 2.0 standard (2000-2004)
  Power adapters with the cables cut
  And more

The game stuff shocks me since we never had an N64 or a PC. Meaning she got them after 2006. But here they are in my living room with a 10 by 10 storage unit filled to what I can only guess the brim. I don't think she'll be out of here until the 10th at this rate, but what am I to do? She has made progress, if slow, and is almost done. I just have to suffer longer through all of this.

I JUST WANT MY PERSONAL SPACE BACK!


TLDR: Make your relatives go through their storage units yearly so it doesn't have to be all at once. Also if they have more than a single storage unit it they have too many. Thank you for reading and or skimming my rant.

[McAvoy]

The older my parents got the more cluttered their house got. My Dad buys and sells musical instruments, and collects them if he finds value in them somehow. My Mom just collected stuff as she aged but never threw anything out.

They bought the house they lived in back in 1986 and it was a nice house. But by the time my Mom died this year (Leap Day), my Mom had a whole room dedicated to Halloween stuff, my Dad overfilled the largest bedroom with guitars, and half filled the garage plus using the smallest bedroom as his office which is also filled too.

The basement is a disaster. The garage is a disaster. Now don't get me wrong, my Mom did donate to me and my brother kit mchen stuff that she didn't want that did help.

Also my Dad's musical instrument collection in the house would be technically my heritance, but would take my the rest of my lifetime to collect/get rid of.

The difference between a collector and a hoarder is that collectors display, hoarders stack. My Dad stacks.

I have been making some progress in my off time to rid the house of the junk..

So while I never had my parents decide to put shit in house I can still emphasize.

[Nealithi]

One of my thoughts was the phonograph sounds cool. Japanese NES games? and an N64. Are these things her partner had collected after you moved out?
I do not understand living in an apartment and not able to cook food.

But I can also empathize. My mother thinks filling a room so you need to literally crawl under things to reach your chair buried in the middle of the room is awesome. And we have stacks of VCR's. Because they have an extensive VHS collection and they want spare players. My father hates waste so the new one will go on the broken one. So he will 'eventually' repair the old one. (This has never happened) And removing a broken one from the stack will bring bad blood for a minimum of a week.

[m4a2000]

One thing I noticed is the smell of all of the junk. I think it is old cigarette smoke and tar. Handling it I wore gloves and the gunk that was on them... Yuck. Today is my day off, but I want to go into work if only to get away from all of her stuff.

[m4a2000]

Update: She now has more things in my place than I do.