I lived with a woman who allowed the freezer to condensate to the point where the door wouldn't close and the compressor was running constantly trying to keep it cool. Of course this caused more condensation/ice and so the problem got worse. She resolutely refused to allow me to defrost the freezer and screamed at me the one time I attempted to do so: She said she couldn't afford to lose the food in it.
Let me guess, she was a hoarder also? Hoarders can't organize stuff, rarely know where things are stored and go on to get more and more of the things they hoard. Trash is regularly mixed with treasure as they have no thought about the actual value of things.
I'm living with a hoarder friend right now and if I toss even obvious trash out he complains bitterly. He says I'm "erasing" him. He wants me to wait till he dies and then I get stuck with everything. He can't understand that hoarding stuff now means he can't park his car in the garage, there's no space to do any work and or store valuable stuff. I've been bitched out for tossing broken flower pots that he claims he was going to fix. He'll plant stuff that he never waters and then when it dies he gets extremely upset if I toss a dead plant.
Or, when I do toss a dead neglected plant he won't notice it for months and then wants to know what happened to it. He'll claim he just watered a plant the day before but I check and it's wilted, has bone dry dirt, but yes, he "Just watered it".
A week ago he "gifted" me with two large bags of minerals his mom and step dad had collected over the years before they died. "I have a present for you" he proudly declared. It was late at night and I was a bit annoyed he just plopped them right in a walk way. I told him I'd go through them later and have a look. Yes, I knew about them anyways but it's nice he gave them to me. I expressed gratitude. The next day I removed each one from it's wrapping of old ripped up newspapers and the dirty plastic bags. Removed all the old wrappings and empty boxes from a shelf and then set them all back on the shelf for easy viewing and maybe I can donate them to a university as some are excellent specimens of their type.
He went into a long vitriolic rant when he discovered what I had done. How once more I was "erasing" him. How he had a specific plan where I could use them in gardening as decoration to a landscape scheme I had finished.
Uh, no. I told him, I'm not putting them out in a landscaping to attract passersby who would be tempted to trespass and steal. For landscaping a rock garden I use mostly granite boulders. This just made him angrier. Dealing with these sorts of people is extremely exhausting emotionally.
At one time he got high on meds and strew broken glass, artificial flowers, pills and other brick-a-brack all over the place. From his room out to the drive way. I cleaned up the mess and strongly advised him to never do that again and be careful with his meds or he'd end up in a care home or worse.
He started doing better but meanwhile was constantly asking about stuff he had broken. Then he went on a rampage in the trash pulling out some of the stuff I had tossed and throwing it back in the drive way. I patiently cleaned it all up again.
Why the fuck do you live with this lunatic?
My names on the deed. So, I do stay for a month at a time usually to keep up the property. This time though I'm basically waiting for this whole mask thing to end.
Let me guess, she was a hoarder also? Hoarders can't organize stuff, rarely know where things are stored and go on to get more and more of the things they hoard. Trash is regularly mixed with treasure as they have no thought about the actual value of things.
Ooof, hit me in the feelz. Nah, I'm more of a hoarder than she was tbh. She was just a spectacularly disorganised and irresponsible person. Like to the point where we split up responsibilities for utility stuff and it took her three months to call the bin company to organise collections. By the time she finally made it happen there was a pile of bags the size of a small car outside our house and we were having trouble with stray dogs.
I'm living with a hoarder friend right now and if I toss even obvious trash out he complains bitterly. He says I'm "erasing" him. He wants me to wait till he dies and then I get stuck with everything. He can't understand that hoarding stuff now means he can't park his car in the garage, there's no space to do any work and or store valuable stuff. I've been bitched out for tossing broken flower pots that he claims he was going to fix. He'll plant stuff that he never waters and then when it dies he gets extremely upset if I toss a dead plant.
Wow, that's real bad. I take it you can't move because of wuflu?
Uh, no. I told him, I'm not putting them out in a landscaping to attract passersby who would be tempted to trespass and steal. For landscaping a rock garden I use mostly granite boulders. This just made him angrier. Dealing with these sorts of people is extremely exhausting emotionally.
Geez. Sounds like the floors in that house are made of eggshells.
He started doing better but meanwhile was constantly asking about stuff he had broken. Then he went on a rampage in the trash pulling out some of the stuff I had tossed and throwing it back in the drive way. I patiently cleaned it all up again.
Reminds me of the video of the african BLM types in Johannesburg. A white kid was patiently cleaning up trash and they were tossing it back on the ground to spite him. Dunno why he bothered.
Right, I'm not going anywhere at the moment. Soon as travel and work options open up, I'm taking a long work vacation from here but I'll have things set up so it's safer for him. I vowed to look after the guy after his mom died as she was a spectacularly good friend and like a mother to me. He's crippled so I try to be patient. I generally come by every few months when I take a break from construction jobs and clean up his yard and stuff.
At one point he was getting his house broken into while he was home and I started investigating and found out it's not just him, it was a neighborhood problem. Some vacant houses were being renovated and left unguarded while inspections were being slow walked. We had loads of crack addicts breaking into homes and then peeking out the windows only to raid homes when the owners were out so I went on a door to door campaign advising homeowners to be more bold and call cops on vagrants. Never let them even step on their property for any reason and make them feel very unwelcome.
I got homeowners to call absent property owners and DEMAND they board up their vacant houses until such time as they could either sell or rent. Preferably sell to responsible new owners.
At this time, vagrants have almost completely ceased walking through this area due to the pushback they get from homeowners and cops.
Being responsible is sort of my mantra or ideology if you will. Whether at home or work we should all strive to keep things organized and tidy for good morale. Living in squalor is depressing, even for those who create the squalor.
Hoarding vs collecting a certain item are two different things. True hoarders just get to be getting and never put on the brakes even when they run out of room for stuff. It's never organized in any way.
For instance, my friend saves plastic bags. His mom saved plastic bags. He has plastic bags from 20 years ago of which some are so old they crumble when you try to use them. There were bags of plastic bags hanging about in the kitchen so much so I discarded most of them at which he protested loudly.
I finally lost patience and commented, "Look, you have more bags than you could ever use in a life time and yet you still save more bags" Him: "No I don't. I might need them". Me: "For what? You always get more bags from the grocery store. It's not like you will ever run out and I bet you if I went around and put all your bags in one box it would completely fill up the box".
He totally denied this and challenged me to prove it. So, at this point I now have a full box of plastic bags. All sorts of bags or all sizes and colors.
So, a couple weeks ago he discovered I had thrown away a box of old sandwich bags from out of a drawer that was stuffed with all sorts of plastic bags so much so you could barely close the drawer. So why did I toss them? Because the sandwich bags were the smallest ones sold and so old they stuck together. I had tossed them out last year and he just noticed it. I only vaguely remembered tossing them out and had to think things over to even remember. You couldn't even open up the bags to use them they were so bad.
So he went on a rant claiming I had no right. His words: "Yes, they were crappy, too small and hard to open but they were mine". Me: "Ok, I'll go get you some nice bags from the store to replace them. Some nice ziplock bags, ok?".
He just got more angry. More shouting, blah blah. I'm erasing him.
Me: "Then what do you want from me?". Him: "Nothing" Several hours later he brings me some broken jewelry to repair and I respond that first off, it's just fake gold. Not even worth bothering with and furthermore, he broke it in such a way it's not really repairable unless you get a real jeweler involved and no jeweler will touch something like that. It's more like a craft item posing as jewelry.
Another long angry tantrum. Oh well. Hoarders don't know trash from treasure.
"A white kid was patiently cleaning up trash and they were tossing it back on the ground to spite him."
I thought that was Baltimore?
She said she couldn't afford to lose the food in it.
Unlike a normal person, she wouldn't let you put the food into a cooler temporarily while you defrosted it?
Or cook it. I even offered to pay for it and she said no. The thing was a few inches open by the time she moved out.
She turned down monetary aid? Seems like she might've had some screws loose then
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