03
Aug
Do I Still Live Here?
I bought 25 book size boxes at the box store yesterday just before they closed … last nite I started the packing in the living room … books … video games … movies … music CD’s … family photo albums … also the portable convection oven from the kitchen – I kept it’s box instead of throwing it away last Christmas – it stored quite well in the closet.
I still have one end table full of my grandson’s board games [Trouble, Chess, etc.] and a couple photo storage boxes of my photographs in the living room to pack but it is already looking like a zone of chaos. I started on my office this morning …. the 4 shelf book shelf is empty now except for the odds & ends of things put over there for sorting – I like my boxes organized into orderly sense … books together … watercolor paper …. stenciling / craft projects and the corner is now full of boxes.
Packing and having mountains of boxes all over ALWAYS make me wonder if I still live here … my biological mother was a compulsive pack rat who lived with tiny little paths [resembling snake crawl lines to me] amongst the floor to ceiling fully packed to nearly bursting cardboard boxes of …. things.
To sit on her furniture … for example, the couch … it was always full of clothing …. open cardboard boxes … you had to move stacks or layers of “something” at the very least to sit on even a teeny tiny corner of it …. sometimes you would just give up and find a kitchen chair and clear it off to sit down – those items had the least “permanently grown / attached there” feeling to them … usually they were just covered with newspapers or junk mail waiting to be put into cardboard boxes in the near future … though sometimes those stacks of newspapers on the kitchen chairs would grow to near the ceiling … and I remember at least once a couple ended up buried in surrounding stacks of newspapers not in cardboard boxes – she did not find those chairs until she moved to a bigger house – one 2 to 3 times the size of the one she moved from … and it only took her a year to fill it to bursting with cardboard boxes just like the smaller house. She never parked her car in the garage …. there were not even little paths … just solid wall to wall ceiling to floor cardboard boxes in her garage.
What kind of things did she have in all those cardboard boxes? A sampling only of just a few things known to be found in those boxes if opened.
1. She was a collector of … fabrics … she sewed and had several sewing machines too … but she probably had as much if not more fabric in a variety of fibers than the local fabric store. Even when she quit sewing much, if at all … she still purchased shopping carts full of remnant fabrics found on sale … and packed it into more cardboard boxes that stacked up … and up … and around … and around … with all the other cardboard boxes.
2. She would buy something … perhaps notebook school paper for her three kids living with her …. put it down somewhere … forget she had it …. buy another … some boxes were layers of her shopping excursions …. if you opened 10 boxes … there might be a package of handkerchiefs or children’s socks in each …. she tended to put things down on the table … then picking things up and stuffing them into cardboard boxes …. closing up full ones to make room for more open boxes on top of the closed boxes … until the stack was from the floor to the ceiling … then start on the floor next to that column of boxes.
3. She also had boxes full of craft projects … ones never started …. partially finished and completed. They were all mixed in with the masses of “stuff” … nothing was orderly, organized or easy to find … for example, she would be just as likely to put a half painted table cloth, finished embroidered set of pillowcases or partially crocheted rag rug in a box with recipe cards, junk mail advertisements that should have been thrown away, socks, underwear and old shoes needing thrown in the garbage.
4. Newspapers …. junk mail advertisements …. grocery lists …. gum wrappers … candy wrappers … bread wrappers …. package wrappers … xmas wrapping paper … towels … wash cloths … dish cloths … pillow cases … sheets …. clothes … cameras … silverware …. spools of sewing threads …. embroidery threads …. scissors …. fabric paint … embroidery hoops …. quilt blocks …. partial crocheted rag rugs …. partially crocheted doilies … family photographs … sewing patterns … sewing sketches to make her own patterns ….
Yes, she was a fire hazard … AND she was cited / fined at an apartment complex for actually being a fire hazard at least once to my knowledge [she had moved to a federally funded income sliding scale complex for disabled people - my younger sister & I cleaned out her house before she moved there and allowed her to keep too much stuff but not anything nearly as much as she wanted to keep]. She was definitely like those people you see on TV!
Incredibly horrible hideous way to live … trapped like a rat in her maze of cardboard boxes – between the age of 18 to about 22 – I lived in her house with her and her kids off and on a bit here and there … at the time … I did not realize that this was just another manifestation of her mental illnesses. Her kids slept with their toys and their clothes surrounding them in their beds … I slept on a fold down camping cot … and sometimes it took time to find it from the “stuff” surrounding it just from her daily living and burrowing around in her boxes.
She never worked outside the house once her younger kids came along … if she didn’t have a man to keep her … she was on ADC in Iowa …. then later on disability … supposedly for rheumatoid arthritis … though who knows the real truth? Her mental illnesses and behaviors drove me and my daughter away years ago … I don’t know if she is even still alive now or if she is dead.
Her mother that raised me was just the opposite … she had all kinds of stuff {VERY organized and orderly and easy to find anything quite easily once ya knew where to look} … she just packed it away [in the basement on shelves, under the beds, in the spare bedroom closets and her closet] where no one saw or realized there was so much stuff and kept the living areas scrupulously empty of anything except furniture, knick-knacks and any wall hangings like family photographs.
When I move, I unpack and throw away the cardboard boxes except for the ones of stuff that I need to keep [my son in Iowa left some of his stuff here that I am not going to throw away - his Dungeons & Dragons books and miniatures that I gave him years ago, etc.], papers that one day I will buy a shredder and actually have a shred party and old sketchbooks …. I like to look back and see what kind of sketching and notes to myself I made … art journaling … those might be worth money some day to my kids or my grandson …. LOL … my holiday decorations are in plastic boxes.
