Hints of a Future Problem

Mother loves this story. She tells it with absolute delight, practically giddy. Meanwhile, I cringe every time.

Long before I was born (in a galaxy far away) a company moved my family 480 miles to another state. Her second husband’s employer paid for the entire relocation, back when companies still did that for employees they valued.

Mom wasn’t new to big moves. She’d already crossed state lines with three kids in tow. What she was new to, I suspect, was having help. And maybe the novelty of taking all her things with her.

Her new husband, a brilliant engineer working on cutting‑edge projects, had been transferred. The national moving company promised the full treatment: they’d assess the house, schedule the move, pack everything, load the truck, drive it to the new home, and unpack it. She wouldn’t have to lift a finger.

The scheduler came, strolled through the house, made a few notes, and booked the date.

Moving day arrived. The truck pulled up. The movers unloaded their supplies and got to work.

They packed. And packed. And packed.

Every time they opened a door, they found more. Stuff inside stuff. Layers of belongings tucked into every possible niche. They got halfway through loading the truck before realizing they had wildly underestimated the contents of the house.

Mom has always been gifted at filling every inch of space. I remember a brief window after I was born when the house looked beautifully decorated. It might have been full, but you couldn’t tell. That was before the tipping point—before critical mass—but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The movers had to call for backup: more people, more supplies, and another truck. They had allotted half a truck for a family of five in the early 1960s. That sounds absurd now, but mid‑century minimalism was in style. People owned less. At least, most people did.

I don’t know how many movers there were or how long it took. Mom has told me, I’m sure. But in my mind, it looks like an ant colony relocating the entire nest. Excessive, overwhelming—and she revels in it, like Scarlett O’Hara sweeping through the house in her drapes.

Does the moving company still tell this story as a warning to their assessors? 

Eventually, the move was completed. The new house was larger, in a beautiful community. I saw the home a few years ago—it’s still lovely.

But that move was a warning sign of what was coming. Without a 1960s version of Kondo or Döstädning (Swedish Death Cleaning) to rein things in, the accumulation grew. It took over Mom’s life, her kids’ lives, and now her grandkids’ lives. Some families pass down businesses or wealth. My mother passed down dreaded boxes filled with newspaper clippings, screws, and rocks.

Recently, my brother and I talked about when Mom shifted into full‑blown consumerism. He remembers her buying and buying and buying. He remembers the avalanche of books. When he was little, they didn’t own books—they went to the library. By the time I came along (four moves and a new husband later), Mom was building walls of bookshelves into a tiny two‑bedroom house.

She read so many Reader’s Digest books that I remember her hiding the packages from Dad. I never understood why—he read them right after she finished.

By then, the semi‑trailer was already sitting in the yard, filled with twenty years of belongings and the remnants of her first family.

Now I look at my own home and worry. I’m divorced and downsized. I used to love living out of my car in a weekend‑warrior way—bouncing between college and the outdoors. Now I’m raising a kid in an environment that looks uncomfortably similar to my own childhood.

I keep telling myself this stuff isn’t staying here. I’m just a layover between Mom and its final destination. But the truth is, some of these items have traveled through four states and who knows how many moves.

My emergency‑preparedness instincts don’t help. I save things most people my age wouldn’t dream of keeping. Who needs a 50‑year‑old juicer, a canning kettle, and jars when they live in a tiny apartment and never can anything? Who needs three months of food? Why are there two bows and a quiver of arrows? Why do I have both a large and a small safe?

It’s gotten so ridiculous that I’m using my grandparents’ fishing tackle boxes as sewing kits. I know—you’re jealous.

Just last month, the sacred family bread box bounced from Mom’s storage to my brother, to me, and now it’s headed back to him again.

I fantasize about setting all of it on fire. Mom gave it to me with full permission to do whatever I want with it. And yet I can’t bring myself to dump it in a landfill.

Honestly, I think I need those movers... to move it to a dumpster.

Photo courtesy of my brother. 

The Dreaded Envelope

When I was two, we moved two hours away from the rest of the family. It was a business decision—my parents opened a construction company to take advantage of the oil boom. But the move left Mom isolated, cut off from her grown children just as they were starting families of their own. We lived fifteen minutes outside the nearest town, and Mom had nothing to do. She was determined not to like anyone in town, and she still proudly calls herself a loner, even though she misses her friends terribly.

As an avid gardener, she was frustrated that nothing would grow in the alkaline soil. When she wasn’t running the business office or doing housework, she was reading—books, magazines, anything she could get her hands on.

That’s when the clipping started.

Mom began cutting out articles and cartoons for my siblings—little “thinking of you” notes. One or two clippings tucked into her purse for every visit. This was before personal computers were common, and long‑distance calls were expensive. The clippings became her way of staying connected to her adult children and the outside world.

Eventually, the clippings multiplied. She sorted them into labeled envelopes—one for every cherished family member. Then the envelopes grew into manila envelopes. During one delivery (also known as a visit), my sister E jokingly called it “The Dreaded Envelope.” And just like that, a family saga was born.

By then, my brother had moved out of state—first to California, then to New York. Distance didn’t save him. Mom mailed him his envelopes and expected confirmation upon arrival.

And you couldn’t just throw them away. There were quizzes. Did you read the article on watering houseplants? Did you see the Family Circus cartoon? The Hagar the Horrible one? What about the chain‑mail cartoon about deadly carrots—wasn’t that hilarious?

Meanwhile, the move had left us in our own kind of limbo. Dad had promised to build Mom a house, but he was a welder, not a carpenter. Instead of a house, she got a trailer. Hang a picture in one room and the nails holding the wallboard in the rest of the house would pop out. Mom’s twenty years of accumulated belongings ended up in a tractor‑trailer parked between the shop and the house. The moving van became storage.

Storage was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes and random items, arranged haphazardly by well‑meaning in‑laws who ignored Mom’s lace‑level precision. By the time I was old enough to follow directions and lift things, Mom would boost me into the trailer—sorry, “storage”—and I’d crawl across the boxes, reading off numbers or searching for whatever treasure she needed. All while avoiding the hot metal roof. She kept stenopads filled with lists, each page numbered to match a box. I don’t know if we ever found the exact thing she was looking for, but she was always thrilled to discover something else within reach.

Eventually Dad built steps into the trailer, and Mom started sending me in alone. A daunting task for a kid.

Boxes slowly migrated into the trailer house, filling drawers and sliding under beds. Mom made that trailer a home—a home she hated, but a home for me. When something didn’t have a place, she built one. My room filled with milk‑crate bookshelves holding my siblings’ old books and the ones she ordered by mail. She built shelves in the living room. She built a cellar/storage shed off one end of the trailer. By the time we moved “back to civilization,” the trailer was full and the tractor‑trailer had barely been emptied.

The next town was closer to family. The storage trailer stayed on a piece of property outside town. Mom still planned to build a house someday. The house we lived in had more space—closets, cubbies, corners. And I was old enough to carry boxes. So we made regular trips to storage, hauling more boxes into the house.

Not all of them got unpacked. Mom had a craft room, but it quickly filled with boxes—some craft supplies, most not. Boxes lined the walls from floor to ceiling, with a narrow walkway and more boxes stacked in the center.

This is where the Dreaded Envelope evolved into the Dreaded Box.

I wish I could say the Dreaded Box was inspired by some Swedish Death Cleaning philosophy. It wasn’t. Very few items were treasured family pieces rescued from storage. Most were thrift‑store finds. Boxes began piling up in my sisters’ homes.

Was this hoarding? How can you hoard when you’re sharing?

Easily, it turns out.

In our family, everything is a “family item.” Even if you bought it yourself. You can’t donate anything without first asking every single person in the family if they want it. Imagine finding a dresser at a yard sale, restoring it, and then discovering you can’t donate it because Mother believes everyone has a claim to it. I have literally hauled items across the country because I felt guilty donating them.

It’s absurd.

The Dreaded Box became a virus. And the whole family was infected.

An Idea

The idea for this blog came to me while I was sitting in my car, trying to grab a quick nap before work. The night before, I’d spent hours in the ER after Mother fell—hard enough that every nurse at the care center heard it. She needed a CT scan to make sure nothing was broken or bleeding. Thankfully, she was okay. They sent her back to the care center, and I went home.

Home, where piles of her boxes have taken over my living room, kitchen, and bedroom. Boxes of things to sort. Boxes of photos and mementos waiting to be scanned and shared with the family. Possessions that need to find the right person—someone who will actually want them, cherish them, remember the stories behind them. Heirlooms that deserve shadow boxes, careful framing, and a little historical context so they survive long enough to matter to future generations. And then, of course, there are the storage units.

Mother has been in the care center for a year. So why am I still drowning in all of this?

The truth is, the family is large and scattered. Trying to navigate the needs, expectations, and emotional baggage of five generations is overwhelming. Some days I fantasize about lighting everything on fire and walking away. My brother jokes about doing the same, yet he panics every time I open a box without him.

Mother had four children. The first three—my brother and two sisters (J, E, and L)—came early in her life. Then there was me. I’m not exaggerating when I say there’s a twenty‑year gap between me and my brother. When I was born, Mother was 40. My siblings were 20, 19, and 17. One sister had her first child before I even arrived and was pregnant with her second. My nieces feel more like cousins than nieces.

The sisters’ families live out of state, back in my home state. I could ship everything to our living sister, L. She’d happily take it all. But would she actually go through it? Preserve it? Make sure our deceased sister’s kids, grand kids, and great‑grand kids received what belonged to them? Probably not. I have nightmares of her passing away and leaving everything to her only child, who has significant challenges. I can see myself becoming conservator by default, stuck sorting through the same mountain of belongings all over again.

Our sister E passed in 2013, and her kids are still trying to divide her things. One niece has so much stuff—and so many medical and mobility issues—that her mother’s belongings are still trapped in the basement. Will her children or grandchildren ever know the stories behind any of it? Or will they eventually strike a match and free themselves from the weight of generational accumulation? Will a flood or mold infestation force a hazmat crew to haul away decades of family history? What happens to Grandma’s rings? Grandma’s piano?

I’m getting ahead of myself.