My Children Are Being Raised By A Hoarder

How am I supposed to undo that?

With a traumatic childhood, random things are triggering. You can’t avoid triggers when they’re unknown and yet, they make you spiral.

I’ve incessantly wallowed in my writing about my childhood past. Slowly (like, crazy slow) I’m moving forward. Yesterday, something threw me off the healing path that still has me reeling.

My ex-husband is a hoarder. Being his full-time maid (among everything else that falls under Household CEO and Mental Load job requirements) was part of the reason I divorced him. I used to joke that I had two children and a grown teenager.

We’re not talking about a guy who was kind of messy. We’re talking about a guy who used the carpet as a trash can and thought it was fine to put his shoes on the kitchen counter. The only reason we stayed married as long as we did is because we reached a financial level where a maid came in every two weeks to make the house tolerable.

The house…the giant house that I renovated. Yes, I renovated. Joseph was never home. I worked full time, had two small kids (while managing the autism treatment for one of them), and played project manager for months while cooking dinner in a microwave on the living room floor.

I had my dream kitchen. I had my dream bathroom. The house wasn’t perfect but it was enough to be my “forever” home.

Forever until my divorce. We afforded it because of Joseph’s inheritance when his mom (the ultimate hoarder) died. Turns out, inheritances aren’t communal property in a divorce. Retirement funds are communal property and Joseph was eligible for half of mine because unbeknownst to me, he wasn’t contributing to his 401k like I was.

He got the giant house that I painstakingly renovated and decorated for years. The one with the loan we got after I worked to get his credit score up two hundred points. After the divorce, I moved into a house one-third the size with millions of problems. Grieving the loss of my former house took time.

This past weekend, Joseph was at a wedding in another city. I offered to take the kids to check in on the new cat. It wasn’t a goodwill gesture; I wanted to get some of my remaining stuff back and it’s always awkward when I try to do that when he’s there.

The house being a hot mess isn’t new to me. My former dining room, which houses a gorgeous chandelier that I coveted for months, is full of so many empty boxes that would put UPS to shame. It’s such a disaster that he hung up a shower curtain at the entrance to it so it’s not easily visible. The bright shower curtain in an entryway isn’t a subtle distraction.

Every time I’ve visited the house, the kitchen is progressively worse. The bathrooms leave much to be desired. The kids’ rooms look like the house was robbed. The clutter everywhere piles up.

This weekend though…it’s a whole new level.

As soon as my kids and I step inside the house, an overwhelming stench punches my nostrils. The entire house is one step from an episode of Hoarders. My brain struggles to visually see individual items, like walking the Vegas strip at night.

Joseph accumulated three giant aquariums since our divorce. I know one of them will eventually leak but he’ll never notice because of his slob mentality. Then he’ll play the victim when the inevitable disaster causes thousands of dollars in flooring damage. They’re contributing to the bad odor.

I tell the kids we need to clean the cat’s litterbox. I didn’t think it would be that bad since Joseph left yesterday.

That litterbox hasn’t been cleaned in at least a week. It’s so bad that I kick the kids out of the bathroom and do the rest of it myself as my eyeballs burn from ammonia.

I try washing my hands in the bathroom sink but the handle is stiff and barely turns. There’s a random towel in the corner that I doubt has been washed since our divorce.

After briefly considering tossing the litterbox gunk bag in the kitchen trash, I opt for the garage which meant a walk through my former laundry room. It barely had a path among the junk on the floor. The pile of clothes on the laundry machines was as high as the machines themselves. I pause when I see the carrier holding my childhood music CDs. Damn right, I took it back.

As my son played on his Xbox and my daughter played on an iPad on my old nursing rocking chair (Joseph refused to let me get rid of it because she likes sitting on that ratty, gross glider), I got to work scavenging for my old things. My childhood toys were among the disaster of a playroom (the size of my entire first floor) so those will have to wait. I took the trunk my daughter uses as a nightstand because it had vintage Disney figures I purchased as a teen.

I consider taking the hand-made picture frame with my daughter’s first birthday she keeps on it but decided against it. I grab my childhood jewelry box from her shelf. As a courtesy, I texted Joseph and told him I was going into his (giant, walk-in) closet to get a box on the top shelf that housed my old green card paperwork.

Walking through his bedroom, I’d be shocked if Joseph washed those sheets more than once a year. It dawns on me that he probably hasn’t changed the kids’ sheets since I moved out. To get to the closet, I walk through the master bathroom.

My once gorgeous master bathroom.

It looked like a murder scene.

Opting not to stop and dwell, I walk into my former glorious closet. This closet is the size of my current house’s dining room. Imagine a huge closet where there are more clothes on the floor than hanging despite two rows of clothing rods. It jarred me to see the walls and hangers empty but the floor entirely covered in clothes. And other crap…I don’t pause to look. A dead body may be there.

I grab the box from the top shelf. Then, I see the bin I stored my kids’ clothing and toy memories from their baby years. Fuck that. I take it with me as well.

After I load my car with boxes, I do a cursory scan of areas as best I could without my daughter noticing. I don’t need her to rat me out to her dad.

The expansive hall closet (oh, how I’d kill for a hall closet…my house doesn’t have one) is almost empty, except for bags of toys Joseph stores for birthdays or Christmas but probably forgot about. There’s only one towel in the towel section. The air filters I purchased are still there; given the duration of our divorce, he should have already cycled through them.

After going through my daughter’s closet, I decide it’s time to go. My anxiety from the borderline-hoarder-house situation peaked. I didn’t even bother scoping out the kitchen or my son’s room for more things. The office’s entire floor is covered in papers and boxes; not an inch of the carpet can be seen and I could barely open the door.

I drive away, seething with a rage I haven’t felt in ages.

I feel bad for my former self who kept that house relatively clean and organized despite the waves of hoarder behaviors against me. I knew it would be up to me to teach the kids organization skills but I didn’t think I’d be up against them living in a trash pit for half their childhood.

I’m stressing out about teaching them to not leave wet towels on the floor at my house but when they’re at their dad’s house, it’s the wild west of grossness.

When we get back to my place, I head straight to my kitchen and do the dishes. I clean that morning’s crumbs off the floor.

All I can hope is that my kids will grow up remembering that their mother had her shit together and emulate my behavior.

That’s one thing that was easier when I was married. I had my kids full-time and since I was the one primarily taking care of them, I could teach them responsibility and lessons every day. There was little room for them to copy Joseph’s behaviors since I nipped that in the bud as best as I could.

Getting divorced to get away from Joseph’s shitty behavior inadvertently meant my kids are exposed to it more than ever. While he’s taking them to McDonald’s every day, I compensate by making homemade food and bargaining with them to eat it (do you know how difficult it is to compete with Mcdonald’s?). When he’s letting them use the couch as napkins, I make them sit on tablecloths when they’re eating greasy snacks when watching the TV so they don’t ruin the light-colored rug. When they leave their socks downstairs, I holler at them to trek down and get them rather than pick them up myself despite knowing Joseph’s house is littered with dirty socks.

I keep imagining if Joseph dies and I have to manage that house (I’m the executor of his trust). I’ll get a giant garbage bin dropped off by the trash company to manage the household litter. Realistically, I’d hire people to help me because if I do it all myself, I’ll dig up my ex-husband from his grave and strangle him in exhaustive rage.

That’s the thing about divorce: it’s not it’s over that you realize what you were living with for years. I’m upset for my former self and now I’m upset for my kids, who are walking down the same path as their father and will inevitably ruin future relationships by their inability to maintain a semblance of responsibility.

Somehow, I’m still stuck cleaning his mess.