Originally Posted by
saguaro
Hello everyone, coming back to update and vent. A week ago, I went down to check on Dad and see if he needed anything as sister and family were on vacation. Expected to do some cleaning, maybe grab some items that my sister and I already sorted out, but mostly to visit. Not what happened. I came into the house to find it a disgusting mess. Counters and floors in dire need of cleaning, stuff piling up on the floor including the various household cleaners that Dad had pulled out from under the kitchen sink thinking to "sort it out and clean". Except it had been sitting there for days not to mention the tripping hazard. The bathroom was in a similar state with old shampoo, personal care items on the floor. He likes to buy things at Costco but it's too much plus he has no room so it all gets stored on the floor. Door to his bedroom was shut because he didn't want me to see the state it was in. Noticed things piling up in another bedroom.
Convinced him to let go of the household items / personal care stuff as most of it was old or he already had another bottle somewhere. Told me to pour it all down the drain (always been his solution wonder how the pipes in a 100 year old house can stand it) but I insisted I would take it to my county's household chemical waste dropoff. After gathering and boxing that stuff, I cleaned up the floors, countertops where I could, stovetop, bathroom, did some laundry, took out garbage / recycling, tried to deal with the Costco stuff, then quickly left as Dad was starting to question all that I was taking and was picking through it. So in spite of the promise not to take things home, I took two boxes of cleaning stuff and kept it until yesterday when I could get to the county dropoff facility.
Barely 3 days later, I called to check up on him and he thanked me for my work but rather sheepishly admitted he undid it already. In another attempt to "organize and clean" he took out more stuff, plus he decided to "reorganize his desk" by building new drawers by taking some old drawers a neighbor put in in the alley. He's doing this building work on the kitchen floor. Gah!! Good thing I took pictures after it was cleaned up as proof before it went away, I just didn't realize how quickly it would go away.
At this point, I suggested to the one sister who lives out of state that other sister and I should scale back on the cleaning / sorting as our work is getting undone and then some. Do bare minimum until he's no longer in the home. She disagreed, we have to keep on going, it's just a part of dealing with Dad. I should mention that this sister did a lot of the housework before she left home, and she takes vacation time to come back, visit and.....clean. She has done this for years and while she complains that she has no time to do anything else, she feels she "has no choice" (yes, her words). Other sister will just keep on because she's so focused on the fact that "we have to do it". So I stand alone in deciding to scale back the effort. Should be interesting over the next few months, but I have been making a point of going down once a month to do this work since September and frankly, this is just turning out to be a crazy treadmill. I am so done.