Cleaning Out Dad's Place Part 1

Another fun adventure I had while Kelly and the girls were at camp was with my sister, cleaning out my Dad's mobile home in Idyllwild. It was pretty good timing that she could come while the family was gone because this was not a project we could undertake while worrying about getting home and taking care of kids and schedules.

This was our first trip to Dad's in many years, and we were, quite frankly, shocked. We did not expect to walk into a situation that looked like an episode of Hoarders, Buried Alive. We discovered that Dad is a packrat/hoarder.  We spent day one cleaning the spare bedroom out so we could have an empty room to move things to that were going to Dad's new place.

I may have recorded this already, but in December of 2014, Dad was at my place and had left for a doctor appointment in Anaheim Hills. He frequently visits the Kaiser facility there, so I thought nothing of it. When he returned, I learned that he had spent the past three or four hours trying to find the location. He went to the location he normally goes to, but the appointment was at a new building, and that was the one he couldn't find. He eventually had to divulge that he cannot see well enough to read street signs or find address numbers while driving. The macular degeneration he has had taken the center or pinpoint vision from his eyes, and the condition will get worse as he gets older. The incident started a discussion about the possibility of him moving closer to me before he needs help. He agreed and we started mobile home hunting in February. After a few trips to mobile home parks near my house (most of which were either too expensive or had only large homes available), we moved a little north and found him a place in Westminster, just about 7 minutes from our place.

Escrow closed in May on Dad's new property, and we thought he had been packing. Michelle and I assured Dad we would help with the move also, but we truly expected that he would do more than he did. I'm sure he was overwhelmed. We sure were. After the first day, we had the guest room cleared and several bags of donations ready. We drove some to the donation center, but it was clear that we were going to need a truck to make any headway.

The next day we rented a flatbed in Banning and drove it up to the park. We used it to truck donations to the donation center, and to dump a few loads of trash at the local waste distribution facility. We were able to clear the kitchen counters and the living room (see before and after pics above), and we hope that Dad will be encouraged enough to continue packing as well as keeping the areas we cleaned up clean.  Time will tell.  Michelle talked to Shane, and they will make plans to come back in a month or two so that both our families can go back and continue packing and moving Dad.

After three days of work, we took the following morning off and went to breakfast and then to the mall to do some shopping.  We were going to spend the morning working at Dad's, but we were exhausted, and since there was no hope of finishing, we took a break. Michelle left in the afternoon to get started with her long drive.  I was so grateful to have the time this weekend and my sister to help with this project. We'll be back at it in October.