Boy did I ever need that first link. A year and a half ago, my parents asked me to move from where I was living (with my grandfather) into my dad's townhouse, as my dad's job was moving him out of state and someone needed to watch my old dog (since deceased) and one of my mother's dogs that she'd more or less abandoned with my dad.

It sounds nice, having a whole townhouse to yourself with someone else paying for utilities and all, but it's been really painful for me since then. My dad is, to really understate the case, not a cleaner, and he's also not someone who can say no. Through the decade that he lived in the house, he acquired a lot of stuff from my mom that she "offered" him when she wanted to get rid of it, plus his own stuff, plus had anywhere from one to five dogs living with him depending on how irresponsible my mother was being at the moment. All this in a house that is essentially four rooms big. It was a disaster.

It is still, frankly, a disaster, but I'm trying very hard to make inroads in the junk and the dirt. That article really fired me to do a big push of cleaning this morning, and hopefully will give me the strength to keep going until I can create a place that I don't feel put-upon just being in.