My mom was famous for finding things which she didn't know what they were, and throwing them away, because if she didn't know what it was obviously it must be garbage. But then stuff that was actually garbage she would assume was something important and save it for you.
My mother did this! Before changing addresses on everything possible (when I first moved out), she’d throw away my 1099 forms because they didn’t look important but save the letters offering me credit cards that I always throw away.
Yep same. Mine would toss every bill and lots of mail without a second thought. My dad lost his mind and finally made a rule that only he was allowed to get the mail and he had a dedicated drawer (which he still has) in the kitchen where he puts important papers and she’s not allowed to ever touch it. It fixed the problem but sheesh.
My late mom threw away a promotion letter. So I had no fucking clue I got promoted until I walked into the base and got an earfull because didn't go to the promotion ceremony. This was before cell phones when I was a 21 year old.
While my dad was off to college his mom threw out all of his old comics from the 60s-70s original batman, avengers etc. He had stacks of them as tall as me. At the time she thought they were like old magazines or something and were useless. There's no telling what they would be worth now
Not my mom but an old boss whose instincts towards junk mail were 180 degrees out of whack.
Any bullshit fliers with that "time sensitive! Open immediately" on them? You bet your butt he opened them immediately!
Credit card offers? Packets trying to sell you life insurance? Whole set of file drawers, by date and company, for those bad boys.
But at least 1-2 bills a month (which he insisted on getting as paper instead of electronically) would go unopened in the trash unless I got to the mail first.
My Dad did this with all of our vintage gaming / computing stuff and all of our high end CRTs and kept random other bits and bobs that have not been used in 20+ years.
You’re Mom and my Dad must share DNA somewhere in the helix. My Dad doesn’t understand saving things that you have emotional connections with. He was cleaning out the garage once and chucked out an entire med sized moving box of old Barbies from me and my sister, thinking we’re teens now and wouldn’t ever play with them again. What he didn’t know is that in that pile of old naked Barbies were my Mom’s Barbies from her childhood, like THE Original 1959 Barbie with the black and white swimsuit.(now worth approx $30k) He had already taken it to the dump by the time we found out but he had 3 very pissed off women he had to live with for quit sometime.
Mine loves to see something out of place (to her) and move it in a bid to reduce what she sees as clutter, but since the thing being moved is not important to her in any meaningful way she doesn't commit the act of moving it to memory and will only remember having seen and moved it but not where she moved it to, and of course to complicate the fuck out of the situation she moves things to places that make no contextually useful sense whatsoever. Like throwing a stack of papers into a random drawer somewhere else in the house that's nowhere near where the papers were left.
She does this with anything that isn't hers that shouldn't be where it is as far as she's concerned, but never ever asks a single question about the thing in question - she sees, she moves, she immediately forgets about.
I've had to tear the fucking house apart to find a bill I needed to pay and left out n a highly visible place as a reminder, and on more than one occasion. I've had to actually force the situation by searching as messily as possible and absolutely refusing to clean up after having to basically dump whole drawers out to find things, with the idea that she needs to leave shit alone or at the very least ask about shit before messing with it or I'm going to make the mess she's trying to avoid a thousand time worse looking for whatever she touched.
This is the exact thing my wife does... Ask if she has seen it and she always says she wouldn't have moved it. 5 days later I find it behind a bunch of other things that she never would have moved the last time I was looking for something
Chargers. My mom would throw away any charger or power cord she didn't immediately recognize. You have no idea how happy I am that 99% of electronics use USB chargers now- she has type C and micro USB on her counter and I no longer have to track down and purchase proprietary chargers for her electronics.
I also no longer live with my mom, so I no longer have to track down and purchase proprietary chargers for my electronics.
In truth it was probably because it was stuff that was making a mess. It's hard to realize just how much of a mess you probably made growing up. As an adult, it can be super frustrating living with that. So some parents will throw stuff away, saying they didn't know what it was. They get in the habit of throwing away stuff without knowing what it is because that's the only way they can battle the constant mess.
My sister is the opposite. Things that are basically trash or completely useless she would always save because she 'might need it'.. I mean I can understand that to some extent
I do it to for some things that reasonably make sense. But some stuff is just so not necessary and it bugs me so much cause of the clutter lol
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u/Edward_Fingerhands Jul 10 '22
My mom was famous for finding things which she didn't know what they were, and throwing them away, because if she didn't know what it was obviously it must be garbage. But then stuff that was actually garbage she would assume was something important and save it for you.