Ah, Charmion! WOW!!!

Then there was the woman for whom I was a caregiver for just over a year. When she died, the "kids" hired someone to do an "estate sale" in her small 3 BR home. None of us realized quite what the situation was: 2 of the three bedrooms were so full there were not even paths, two sheds and - WHERE was all this stuff. It was like the old joke about people coming out of a VW beetle.

But much worse and NO joke at all. She had bought stuff - that junk mail? She ordered stuff. Mostly she did not even know she had. Packages would come.... Finally I started asking her, Did she want.... Finally I took one back to the post office and conferred with the post mistress. Yes, if it were unopened, we could just write "return to sender on it". So, did you order this? I don't remember. Back it went to the PO.

It was not, as we joked, "She never saw a piece of kitch she did not love!" It was, she had no idea what she was doing. She was bright, with a clear mind but she did not have any idea...

Her kids had no idea. This unopened stuff - years of it - was tucked away everywhere! Two weekends of "Estate sale" got rid of most of the "good stuff". The kids kept saying, "I never saw this before!??" Then I did a few weekends of yard sale, then "Please just take it!" Then a truck load for each of two thrift shops. Then the house was fit to be sold.

Heirs beware! The time, if you can manage it, is early on. Gee, Mom/Dad, what IS all this stuff? Would you like me to.... I found a place on line where I could cancel almost every catalog!!!! Catalog companies prey on the weak and elderly. I developed a full blown contempt for them, esp those not on the online site. If I had to phone to cancel, the poor phone answerer was blasted with my fury. How dare they not have an easier way to cancel!

That poor woman did not mean to hoard. She was too nice to say "no".