I finally made it back to the hoard again! However, I only worked about five hours yesterday and two hours today. I spent the majority of that seven hours sorting through papers. I emptied out a plastic storage bin to use for the keep pile. There were two 40 gallon bags of garbage, and five small bags of papers and magazines for recycling. There are still stacks and stacks of paper. Someday there won’t be all these stacks of papers everywhere. Oh, the dream. I also got the three plastic bins of Christmas decorations to the basement. Dad helped me, and he was frustrated that I wasn’t throwing out more ornaments. He said, “Listen, I don’t want to keep things we don’t need.” I laughed out loud, and he amended, “Christmas decorations that we don’t need.” Today we argued about this decaying thirty-year-old lamp. It’s not a nice lamp, but he wants to put it in my sister’s old bedroom. I’m going to have to get rid of it after he goes to bed sometime.
Mom had washed two bags worth of children’s clothes that I carried to a thrift store. She also allowed me to take out about thirty paperbacks. It wasn’t a wasted trip, but I definitely didn’t get even close to my goal this time. I also stayed with my in-laws because my parents have a spider infestation. Not brown recluses but big black spiders. As though there weren’t enough challenges already, with me being long distance and the volume of the hoard. I am going to go back in a couple of weeks. I think we may need to begin on my mom’s clothes. They are definitely overwhelming the space. It will be a challenge to get her to cut down on the volume, but if she doesn’t, there is no hope of clearing the hoard.
House of Hoarders 