Coming Clean: A Memoir by Kimberly Rae Miller

Coming Clean: A Memoir by Kimberly Rae Miller 272 pages

The true story of Kimberly Rae Miller's life growing up with a hoarder for a father and a compulsive shopper for a mother in a household so full of papers of all kinds (her father) and bags and boxes of new things never opened, never used, never worn, just stacking up bought online from catalogs, t.v. shopping networks, infomercials, etc.   The house was never cleaned until Kimberly grew up and began realizing other people didn't live like this and she started taking the initiative to counteract her parents and be pro-active in getting rid of the mounds of trash piling up fighting the bugs and vermin and trying to find normalcy in a chaotic environment.    All through her youth she never had people over because she didn't want them to know how dirty she lived.   Things changed the day her mother ended up in the hospital and Kimberly couldn't think of her going home to such an unclean, dangerously cluttered home.   Kimberly had had enough and made her stand for the time it lasted.   In order to get away from all the trash and piles her parents would move to a new place and leave everything behind and start completely new till they piled that house up, too.  It is a vision of what life is for children and young adults growing up under such circumstances and the thinking process that goes with such a lifestyle.    Excellent book.   Many books talk about the mental state of hoarders but this view was of those in the family who have the conditions forced upon them whether they want to deal with it or not.   I would recommend this book to anyone from middle-school on up who may be dealing with such circumstances in their own lives and dug in hoarders who may get an inside view of what they are going through, and also to anyone who finds the subject of hoarding fascinating and loves to watch the t.v. shows that show the reasons people become hoarders and how the mind of hoarders work noted as geniuses because they can come up with multiple purposes and uses for things that the mainstream populace doesn't see, the folks in the middle of all the piles just accumulate, collect and purvey much more than they realize until it takes over their space and their lives.   So interesting.