<p>atomom-- sounds a lot like my sister. She has five kids, and that is always her story, “well, you know what it’s like with kids, you can’t keep up with them!” She sees the rotting food sitting out the same as another family’s legos left in the middle of the floor, she doesn’t see a difference and thinks she’s perfectly normal. And if you try to tell her she’s not, one of her friends will jump in with, “so your house is a little messy, what parents isn’t!?” and feeds her delusions. </p>
<p>She puts her youngest on the kitchen table to take pictures because otherwise people would see how filthy her floors are, but she thinks it’s normal. And she bathes, and she’s always doing laundry, but there’s never any hand soap or toothpaste in her bathroom, ever, and always with the old food. When you leave her house the bottoms of your socks are black and sticky. But she will never, ever believe you that this isn’t normal.</p>
<p>Her bedroom was like that as a kid growing up, my parents did everything they could short of burning all her belongings to control it but they couldn’t. They went into her room when she left wearing garbage bags as makeshift hazmat suits and rubber boots and gas masks and it took weeks to clean it out. We always figured if she married her husband wouldn’t tolerate this and she’d outgrow it, but his mother was a hoarder and it doesn’t faze him.</p>
<p>If you do find a way to get through to these people, I’d love to know how. I’ve grown up believing it’s impossible.</p>