My mom's compulsive hoarding results in something really beautiful.

So my mom is was sort of a compulsive hoarder. She didn't collect anything organic; like there wasn't any dirty food wrappers or food products lying around. But she was incredibly sentimental and had a hard time letting anything go: meaning every matchstick box from a restaurant she once ate at, every complimentary bottle of shampoo or bar of soap from a hotel she stayed at, every complimentary comb or toothbrush from a flight she took, she saved. My parents live in a 4-bedroom home, and 2 of the rooms are filled to the ceiling with boxes.

When she passed and we started to open these sealed boxes, we'd find things like fifty wallets-- some she purchased because she thought they looked nice, others she purchased with the intention of gifting them to someone she had in mind, some she'd received free from various functions my dad had attended, others were my old wallets that I had discarded, and some were free ones you'd receive from signing up for a credit card or opening a bank account. We'd find a box filled with THREE HUNDRED pens-- almost all of them no longer working-- but I'm sure they held some sort of sentimental value. There were bags and bags of clothes with holes in them but she couldn't part with, and she even saved magazines! The house is filled with Readers Digest that my uncle subscribed to back in the 1970s but when he moved out and left them behind, she grabbed 200 or so issues and brought them home. There are newspaper clippings and don't even get me started on books in this house. By a rough estimate, I think there are close to ONE THOUSAND books in this 2,500 square foot home. There are eight floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and six or seven large moving boxes filled with them, and I'm probably going to uncover even more as I continue to unpack.

She'd also obsess about something and then buy a lifetime supply of it. For example, she once found a vendor who sold these cupcake liners with cute designs on them, and she bought three hundred cupcake liners (which while she was alive, were sent to my home, and Brian swears we will never finish using them in our lifetimes). We also have five rolls of baking sheet liners that were purchaed in Germany in the 1980s which means she must've purchased thirty rolls or so, for as a family, we STILL have not used them up in 30 years! There are boxes and boxes of unused cloth, presumably she had some sort of plan for custom clothes or something? There are reams of unlined paper from the 1990s that have since yellowed. There are scarves, winter jackets and gloves, presumably for the next Ice Age that hits tropical Malaysia.

But aside from that, she appears to have saved every item that has ever belonged to me and my sister. As I'm opening these sealed moving boxes, I've found so many wonderful things, such as:

1. My hospital ankle bracelet from my birth. She somehow managed to remove it from my foot without cutting it, so you can see exactly how small my ankle was.
2. My early medical records, all in German, showing my 1-mo, 3-mo, etc. vaccinations and check-ups. I have no idea what it says, though, all in German.
3. My early writing compositions, as I learned to write in cursive, and as I started to compose short stories and poems.
4. My diaries: I intermittently kept one from the time I was 10 years old until 18 years old. She saved all of them.
5. Seemingly every progress report and report cards from elementary through high school. I was generally described as a "bright but quiet student" and frequently encouraged to "participate more".
6. As I moved a lot as a child, I had a lot of friends that became pen pals (in the 80s and 90s, there was no internet...), and she appears to have saved every letter (sometimes in original envelope with stamp!) from every friend!
7. Every toy I've ever played with: from expensive stuffed toys from posh Swiss stores to cheap (and since broken) McDonald's freebies. There are boxes of toy cars, Barbie dolls, Duplo blocks, old worn out Uno cards, faded Monopoly board and money, and chess sets with missing pieces.
8. My extensive stamp collection. So far, I think I've found 10,000+ stamps; some neatly organized in books but many are loose and waiting to be sorted.

Now to really appreciate the scale of this task of lovingly preserving my entire life, keep in mind my parents have moved 10 or more times, and not like "down the street", or "the town over", or even "across the continental USA". My parents have moved across continents, across vast oceans, and this entire time, my mom managed to hold on to all of this.
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