I've been getting a lot of harrassment from my boyfriend/coworkers/family lately about the number of books I'm hoarding :whip: but on the other hand its not THAT bad yet, and I think I'm still sane enough that I could/would stop before it got completely insane.

Then today on BookCrossing chit-chat someone posted this: http://plonkmedia.info/crazymum/ and I'm just so completely disturbed and sad about it. Especially if you start reading the comments following the original post... SO many people chiming in with yeah, they know someone like that, or they grew up in a house like that... these people need serious HELP

OMG :blink:

I will never bitch about my mother's stuff again! :bash:

P.S. I have two aunts (one on the paternal side, one on the maternal side, both by marriage) that are like that! I never go to their houses if I can avoid it.

Okay, I don't feel quite so bad about my apartment now... although I *am* trying to work on cleaning it up and throwing shit away. It got out of hand when I was "living with" LB because I'd just stop in my place and drop stuff off. Now that I'm staying there again full time I'm trying to get organized though. :)

Oh... I have an aunt that will not let anyone come into her house even if it's a relative in from out of town! My mom was over there with my niece once and she had to use the bathroom. My mom told her that she didn't think she'd let her in because she never lets anyone in, but she did let her. When my niece got back in the car she told my mom, she knows why she won't let people in now. :lol:

Can we put in something to both Clean Sweep and Mission: Organisation? I thought I was a pack rat...

I think that's really sad. At least it seems to be a tidy chaos........

My personal opinion, is as long as your piles aren't affecting how you live your life, i.e all the boxes cover the bed, so that woman sleeps on a little corner of couch, then you're fine.

My mother recently called my books "a reading habit" like I'm on drugs or something. Makes me laugh. I try really hard not to have too many. I'm always going through my TBR pile and re-evaluating.

I do think that poor woman has problems (and one of them is a child who would be so uncaring as to post that on the internet). When boxes come and aren't even opened that's getting scary for me. She's probably gone past the point where she can even think about fixing it.

I'm not that much of a packrat but I used to save a lot of stuff. But now that I'm older I find that I just want to get rid of it. Unless it is worthwhile everything goes in the trash. :)

Wow! That shocked me! :o I don't know anyone remotely like that! I'll stop feeling bad about my one basement room where I still have some boxes from my move to the U.S. 3 1/2 years ago....

Un F****** believable!!

If it was my mom I would have posted them too!! SHE HAS A PROBLEM!!

Well.... if that was my mother, I'd be getting her help...... :unsure:

I'm just imagining the respiratory problems from all that dust. :( The part that is strange to me is that most of it is confined to neat stacks of boxes. Just LOTS of boxes...

OMG... I'm so the opposite of that... everything gets tossed around here (except for books, but even then, really they do have to fit on the shelves). Wow.

That is truly incredible! :blink: I hope she got some help for her. Or at least disconnected the internet somehow. I think I'd be sneaking stuff out each day as I left for school and throwing it away.

I am a packrat but I am not nearly that bad :rolleyes:

She has to be a compulsive shopper! I have to open any package I get and she just has all those closed up ones! I don't feel bad about how my old room was now :)

Those pictures were posted in 2003...can you imagine what it must look like now???? :blink:

:blink:
I love my room!
mom you're the best!

That is really sad. Serious problem there but on the bright side - I don't feel so bad about my messy house.

I know packrats and they are my hubby and his mom. ;) Why do you think we moved out of the old house and still own it? :o :lol:

Wow, that makes me seem quite normal. :P

I wish her kid would contact social services about her. She needs some help. :(

At least she doesn't have cats, hoarders seem to be drawn to cats for some weird reason... :blink:

I have 2 cats Appa! :blink:

OMG!!! 1-800-GOT-JUNK!!

Duh! zzz :whip:

OMG this is so disturbing.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

As long as your cats aren't breeding and creating more cats or using your whole house as a litterbox you're probably okay. The hoarder cases we usually got at the humane society were little old ladies who rescued two unaltered cats off the street and ended up with 100 inbred kitties in a garbage house. The sad thing is that they almost always thought they were "helping" and most of the time they literally didn't see anything wrong with the fact that they had newspapers from 1970 stacked so high in their livingroom that they couldn't even walk in the room. There was one really sad case where they found two dead cats in a room that had obviously been decomposing for some time and were partially eaten by the living cats - the house smelled so bad already that the lady never noticed any smell.

:o :o :o