Hoarding.

I hadn't intended to take such a long break from this place but lately found myself insanely busy with work (mainly), wedding plans, honeymoon plans, house hunting (yes, back to that).  Over the past month I also decided to undertake what I thought would be a mammoth task - and it was, except I had the help and support of my sisters who made this task a lot easier.

I decided to clear out my parents house.

That sentence probably doesn't live up to the drama surrounding it unless you know that MY MUM IS AN OBSCENE HOARDER.

No I don't watch that show The Hoarders because frankly, I feel it would be too real for me and that scares me.

Here are a few of the many things that confirm my Mum's hoarder status:

1. She still has some plastic bags that she brought with her when we moved to Sydney from Papua New Guinea SEVENTEEN years ago.
2. My whole family is on the short side and always have to take our jeans/pants up.  Mum has kept seventeen years worth of jeans/pants cut-offs
3. She has spools of brand new cotton thread that just snap in half because they are so old
4. Her kettle broke so I bought her a new kettle.  She put the new kettle out and put the old (broken) kettle in the garage in case the new kettle breaks and she needs a replacement.... even though the old kettle is broken!
5. She saves sweet and sour sauce packets from Maccas
6. She keeps those moist towelettes from fast food chains even though they have completely dried up
7. I found 20 sports uniforms from when I was in primary school.  They were hand-me-downs from my cousin and were already out of date by the time I was in primary school
8. While cleaning up the study my sister found a leaf.  A single leaf, flattened and dried and placed into a ziplock bag.  A leaf.
9. When I told her I had managed to condense all 3 drawers of the filing cabinet in the garage down to one drawer her response was, "What filing cabinet?"  If you don't know you have it, sure I can chuck it out???

We must've thrown out about 20 garbage bags of rubbish (thankyou to the council for taking it all instead of taking the 1.5 cubic metre you are obliged to take).  Additionally we have electronic rubbish which we are disposing of this weekend (my parents house has 7 computer monitors!).

I have no photos to show the cleaning out a 7 bedroom house of 17 years worth of accumulated crap so you'll just have to take my word for it that it's impressive!!

Do you know a hoarder?