Reply to Do you still have "stuff" in your parents house? How old are you?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Well, I'm the one who posted in the other thread, so I'll play.

I'm 40, and yes, I still have stuff in my mom's house.

3-4 boxes of childhood stuff -- art and schoolwork from elementary school, a couple very sentimental toys, some awards and paraphernalia from middle school and high school sports and activities. It's the kind of stuff I'd never display but I don't feel like I can get rid of.

The reason it's still at my mom's is because (1) we live in a tiny apartment and have very little storage -- I planned to get the boxes and store them a few years ago, but then we had a kid and our space disappeared. Also (2) my mom has a big house.

My mom hates that the boxes are there and it's become a point of contention. I'm going to have to figure something out soon because she has threatened to toss them. I think I'm getting a reprieve due to Covid, but as soon as it's over and people can travel again, I know she will start hounding me again. Truthfully, part of my reluctance is that my feelings are so hurt by how insistent she is that she doesn't want them. She has always been like this. She repainted my childhood bedroom and moved in office furniture the day after I moved out. Like I went back to pick up a box fan I'd left behind the next day, and the walls were already a different color and there was new furniture in there. I don't even know what happened to my bedroom furniture -- she probably took it to the dump.[/quote]

Already posted on the other thread that your mom is torturing you. Boo on her. No, I don't have anything at my own mom's house -- we are estranged.  : )[/quote]

I am PP and I just wanted to say: thank you for saying this, on this thread and the other. I wish I could be like others and say "Oh I don't care if she throws it away, I'm not sentimental." But it's not about sentiment. Her resentment over these boxes feels extremely personal to me, like she is trying to purge any evidence of me from her life. I can't believe how much it hurts me even in my 40s. Maybe especially in my 40s. I love my daughter so much. I can't imagine throwing away her things. The thought of her moving away makes me so sad. It is so hard for me to understand why my mother is like this.[/quote]

If you are 40, then your mom is at least 60 and maybe over 70.  It is completely reasonable for her to expect you to take your things and keep them at your own house.[/quote]

This makes no sense. Why would a 60 or 70 year old be more capable of letting boxes sit in her attic than someone younger? [b]If anything, I would think it makes more sense to leave items in your parents' home the older they are, because when they die, you are the one who will have to go through the house and take care of it. [u]Why move out a handful of boxes now?[/u][/b]

It would make more sense if the parents were moving or trying to renovate or do something with the house and the boxes were in the way. But that's much more likely to be the case with a younger person as well -- people in their 50s renovate their houses all the time. People in their 70s, not so much.[/quote]

Because her mother wants her to move them out now.  Maybe her mother wants the space back, maybe she is decluttering, maybe she is planning to move.  Whatever the reasons, the house where PP has these things stored belongs to her mother, not to PP.

Why can't PP store her own things at her own house?[/quote]

PP here. Because, as I said above, I live in a tiny apartment with my husband and child and barely have space to store a blender. Whereas my mother lives in a three bedroom house with a basement and an attic all by herself. She is not decluttering. If she is planning to move, she has said nothing to me about it.

I'm going to move the boxes, because as you said, she asked. But it hurts my feelings that she is making me do it and is making me feel like she wishes I never existed. [/quote]

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