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.
