How can you break a pack-rat? It's killing me please..
My parents live in filth. They have a bloodhound that sheds everywhere and two ferrets that they never clean the cage of (If you've ever smelled a ferret you know how powerful it can get.) On top of that they have boxes and boxes EVERYWHERE from moving a few years ago.
My dads huge garage is filled with crap, he's an ebay addict so when he wants one of something, he buys ten. The front yard has tons of vehicles and lawnmowers and who knows what else. The house is just as bad, there's tons of furniture, old, new and broken.. a million half full bottles of different shampoos, and perfumes they never use.. books, old papers, receipts, vases that never see flowers, pans, bowls, Christmas decor that stays up all year.. Anything and everything you can imagine.
They've had a really really hard last 3 years so I wanted to make them happy and less stressed with a clean house. Me and my boyfriend have been taking time off to come down once every couple weeks and clean but everytime we leave, we come back and whatever we cleaned is messy, whatever space we cleared is cluttered.. Also the shitty broken furniture and chairs etc that I put in the truck to go to the dump were removed! Everything I try throwing away is taken back out!
Ive bought them books about managing clutter and they've became clutter themselves, Ive organized rooms, threw away bags and bags of shit at a time but when I do that they go and buy things from yard sales to replace it. If you try to talk to them about it they revert to anger, my dad will say "well all my kids took a hike, I have to do shit myself, you can all go to hell!" and my mom will always makes excuse i.e. "I havent had a day off! Ive been sick! Ive been stressed out!" Yet they SAY they want it clean and my dad seems to try but what he really does is just scatter the stuff around. Im not asking for miracles, just go through one box a day or something!
My boyfriend will still help me but he says there's no point, that you cant help people who won't help themselves. I understand that but I dont want to just give up, I want them to live in a nice clean house for once. I thought of gathering stuff that's never used and seeing if they notice its gone at all then just donating it but Id feel guilty doing that. Maybe I could sell it behind their backs and give them the money? I dont know! :'(
Please tell me if I can do if anything to get them to clean or change their mindset or stop them from buying shit or something! Is there any way to motivate them or should I give up? They're immune to ultimatums.
