crazy, screwed up family (part 2)

You have to see our house to believe it. When I was a kid and a teenager, our house was always clean and neat, well-furnished, a place to be proud of. My parents had people over frequently. My's wedding was in our back yard. My bat mitzvah and H's bat mitzvah ere held at the house. What happened to this house is a crime. To say that F and A are pack rats would be an understatement. They can never throw anything out! Truly, the house looks like an episode of Hoarders. the hoarding started even before my girls and I moved back into the house. Things got worse when H lost her apartment and moved into the den "temporarily". When she moved out years later, the den became nothing more than an over-sized closet. To make matters worse, my mother was so ashamed of how the house looked that she didn't want repair people to come in and see the mess. So the house has slowly deteriorated, and I'm surprised it hasn't fallen apart altogether. Years ago, my then-neighbors let their house fall into a terrible state of disrepair. They sold their house "as-is" for a lot less than the other houses in the neighborhood. The new owner, a contractor, turned the house into a showplace. One day, when my mother was talking with him, she bemoaned the fact that so many of the houses in our area were being torn down and replaced by McMansions. He told her that her land was more valuable than her house. She was insulted, but it's the truth. and that was several years ago, the house is worse now than it was. I moved here with my kids in 1994. It was supposed to be temporary, while I was going through a hellish divorce. I wanted the comfort of family, I wanted people I could trust to be taking care of my kids while I was at work making a living to support them. And the fact that we live in one of the best school districts on Long Island certainly didn't hurt. I got comfortable, I got complacent, I got lazy. I thought about moving out of here when the girls were in middle school, but never got my act together. And so I find myself living in a house that should be condemned, with a family that would have Dr. Phil rolling his eyes in disbelief.