Climbing the mountain (again) one hill at a time

Saturday January 3rd 2026

 With dad in hospital spending a LOT of time sleeping, something possessed me to attempt to clear a little part of his kitchen in an attempt to make it just slightly nicer for him if/when he returns home from hospital. Currently this is not appearing too likely as he's been hallucinating and confused and has been placed under a temporary Deprivation of Liberty order.

I wasn't going to bother doing any tidying/clearing. After all the backlash is too unpleasant. Last time I spent six weeks clearing the house so he could come home from hospital, and I got virtually no thanks (I appreciate you think you're helping but...) was as close as I got.

Yet, here we are a decade or so later and I find myself with the same questions and the same dilemmas.

This time though, dad is 95 with terminal cancer and 3 broken ribs. Last time, I managed to clear enough for the authorities to let him come home. Once he moved back in, I left him to it and he re-hoarded the whole house. 

So ten years later, we're here again. Why do I bother? I really can't give a definitive answer to that; some form of daughterly duty maybe. I don't know. I fully appreciate some people would have just walked away and that's a choice I have. It's possibly to help Ant my brother, whose autism makes it almost impossible for him to make decisions about what to throw and what to keep. He lives with our dad in the pigsty they refer to as 'home'. Ant is his carer as he does the cooking and washing and shopping and everything else for him. However, should Ant dare to throw anything out, he gets yelled at. To cut a long one short, he's terrified of the repercussions.  I have no idea if dad will be allowed home this time, see below. However if he is, then Social Services will no doubt assess the house and so anything I can do now may make the process quicker and smoother when and if it happens

In June 2025 when he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, the hospice nurse said he'd have to consider, when the time came, whether he wanted to be looked after at home or in a hospice. If he wanted home, then he'd have to clear out a room for a hospital bed to be put in, in order for him to stay home. He's managed to sort one box (out if about 350 boxes), in 6 months. Progress is not being made.  

In an effort to make some progress I went to the house. With the lack of a sensible plan or anything obvious but feeling the need to do something, an idea entered my head the night before - the single 4.5 foot high pile of stuff by the back door should be tackled. As no better plan came to me, that's what happened. The weather was freezing cold with a bit of a breeze but dry so we figured the best strategy was to get it all out onto the grass in the back garden, sort it, and replace the things to be kept.  This was the pole before we started.

 The pile (no.1) from inside.

Pile (No.1) from outside

So we (my daughter, Ant and myself), took it all out, and put it all on the grass.

And so it looked like this (above).

The floor was vacuumed and the windowsill was washed.  After four hours, we had sorted the keep from the rubbish. The keep was all the letters, bank statements, tools, and, oddly, 17 gardening gloves. In short, anything which may be missed or needed.

All bits which went out were; old carrier bags, 3 old shirts and 2 ragged vests, bits of tissue paper, a sandwich bag with 2 mince pies and some mouldy and squishy olives. bits of string, empty drink bottles, empty medicine bottles, empty used envelopes, bits of old pens, bits of a cheap plastic watch with a cigarette logo (none of the family have ever smoked). Empty, clean jars with lids and some unopened, recent TV Weekly magazines and illegibly dated small boxes of chocolates.

There were also 17 tins of paint both unopened and almost empty. The tins were on the floor next to the fridge, causing difficulty in opening the fridge. The fridge doesn't appear to have a reversable door and is hinged entirely the wrong way for the space it's in. The paint made it only possible to get in the fridge by leaning over the door. If dad's broken his ribs, this is going to be difficult if not impossible. We erred on the side of caution, if we weren't sure, we kept it. Safer that way.

7 boxes went out for recycling and the remainder went back in the same place as they had opened letters in.  The pile was now only about 2 feet high and looked like this...

There is a similar sized pile outside - a project for another day. Prioritising is the main factor here.

The job was done for the day. Now I had to load my car 'Freddie' with all the crap to go out and work out where the recycling bins were in the house and which one took what. And produced a leaflet giving all the details - the containers had quite clearly never been used before. Sadly the collection had been that morning. We filled Freddie and I drove to the tip, windows open all the way there due to the stench.

I went home and had a much needed shower.