r/ChildofHoarder

Does anyone else have anxiety thinking about the holidays coming up? My mom is addicted to online shopping, she has a package coming to her house nearly daily whether it’s from temu or Amazon or somewhere else.
I was raised by a hoarder single dad that kept EVERYTHING. And I wasn’t allowed to get rid of clothes that didn’t fit me for “just in case” (?). My dad grew up in a group home and had nothing now he clings to everything even when it doesn’t make sense.
My mom though, wasn’t apart of my life til I was 18, I’m 30 now and ever since then she’s still been absent in my life except for holidays. Shes a hoarder as well and way worse than my dad. She buys like 3+ garbage bags of junk for me for birthdays and Christmas usually from temu where the clothes are polyester, the other items are hideous or break easily. Like she bought me a unicorn shirt that was polyester and falling apart and it it was a size 1x. I’m a size small/medium. And I’ve never in my life liked unicorns..?
I literally beg her to stop buying me things and to get me a food gift card or gift card to a grocery store if she absolutely MUST buy me something, but she thinks I’m just being difficult and gets very offended when she brings me stuff or has it sent to my house. I literally don’t keep anything she gives me. It’s so annoying donating junk that I know most people won’t want. I wish she would stop. Does anyone else have family like this??

I unlocked a memory earlier of when I was 7-8 watching my hoarder mom drag a nasty ass used shower curtain (one of those white vinyl 1990's ones) into the kitchen and start dissecting it with kitchen scissors so that she could save the magnets out of it.

And she was narrating this the whole time like "THESE ARE GOOD MAGNETS I CANT THROW THESE AWAY I JUST USED A MAGNET FOR SOMETHING THE OTHER DAY I USE THESE MAGNETS ALL THE TIME THESE ARE GOOD MAGNETS"

just cutting this thing up like she was pulling the final scraps of meat off an animal as shes stuck on an island somewhere

I looked it up, one can buy larger magnets for not even $9.50 for 100 of them delivered to your door. And she's hoarding magnet trash while we were solid upper middle class at the time.

I realize as an adult how fucking weird this was.

I wish I could say, YOUR LIFE IS BAD AND EVEN YOUR MAGNETS ARE BAD! They are too, I remember them being around when I was in high school and it took 3-4 of them just to hold a scrap of paper on the fridge door.

I recently splurged and bought a "nice" shower curtain and its magnets are no joke, they stick really well to the tub. I'm tempted to be like "YOURE NOT GETTING MY MAGNETS YOU CRAZY BITCH". FFS cant even open a shower curtain without remembering the weirdness of these people.

DAE's hoarder parent cut out magnets, or do anything similar?

Sorry if this one is a bit weird. But just wondering because mum sometimes kept some of our hair after haircuts because it almost felt like she was stressed that we were throwing it away.

But weirder, every baby tooth my sibling or I lost, she cleaned perfectly and kept stashed in a drawer and still claims she wants to get them make into mini dentures?

One time after a tooth fell out I accidentally dropped it down the sink and I swear I may as well have stabbed her with how she reacted… I ruined her full collection.

When I got a wisdom tooth taken out a few years ago, the literally fought the dentist to let me keep the tooth and was emphatically arguing “it’s her property! It came out of her head!!”, until he handed it over. I definitely didn’t care that much lol

I also had to get a titanium screw in my ankle a few years ago and after the operation to have it removed she called me and wanted to know if they gave back the screw “because it’s not theirs”.

I guess reflecting on all of this, it’s almost like she got that same stress about letting things go when it came to our bodies? It’s like she needed to hoarde all of the transitional moments and not let them go to waste?

It wasn’t sentimentality. She’d literally go rabid if she couldn’t keep a tooth. It feels more like an extension of hoarding to me.

Anyone else?