[jyl]

I had to make an emergency trip to the Bay Area yesterday. My dad's hoarding behaviour has reached crisis levels.

When his mom, my grandmother, died eight months ago, he initially insisted her house not be sold. His siblings prevailed. Then he insisted he needed to go back and gather everything of sentimental or other value. He spent months in the empty house, packing and sorting. Had two containers shipped cross country. I and everyone begged him not to, but he brought back everything that wasn't bolted down. Furniture, clothes, books, small appliances, knick knacks, and an alarming amount of pure junk, like the contents of her medicine cabinet, a half used box of Depends adult diapers, old bath towels, and God knows what else.

He has a three car garage. It was already very very cluttered. After he installed a bunch of metal shelves and unloaded one container, the garage was stuffed and furniture was stacked in the hallways of the house.

His wife is recovering from a 12 hour cancer resection and reconstructive surgery. She was so upset about what her house had become that she refused to return after her discharge, which was Monday.

I'm the only one he sometimes listens to. I negotiated with him for days, then skipped out on the busiest period at work, flew down, rented the biggest self storage unit I could find, hired a moving service, and today a three man crew with a 25 foot truck spent ten hours and two trips to move most - not all - of the stuff into the storage unit.

This is a stopgap solution. There is another container still at the shipping company's yard. Someone has to go through the now-full storage unit, and have a trash service haul away as much of it as possible, so that the rest of the stuff can get moved in there.

He says he'll do it, but he won't. It took ten minutes tonight to get him to acknowledge that a beat up, 30 year old pair of snow skis should be thrown out. He kept finding reasons why they might be useful someday. The f-king half box of Depends, he argued over that too. Maybe someone we know might need them someday?

I'm going to make another trip down here in a few weeks to trash some of the stuff. I'll have to do it without telling him. If he notices, which he might, he might not trust me again. Which might cost my ability to influence him over the next crisis.

So maybe I rent another 10 x 30 unit for the second container. And he or I just pays $800/mo in storage fees, indefinitely.

Neither seem like satisfactory solutions. But at least his wife can go back to her own home to recuperate.