Kim never mentioned roaches at her house- and I don't know how she didn't have them. My experiences were very much like hers- not being able to eat because the kitchen was full of rotting food, covered in maggots and sludge. Children of hoarders suffer their own brand of post traumatic stress disorder and this book triggered it for me. This book brought back my experiences vividly- gut wrenchingly. I could relate viscerally to her descriptions of her life in her filthy house. In the eighties, it was just the way we were. In the eighties, we didn't have a name for it as Kimberly writes.

I have never really told anyone- except my husband and his family (and they will never know how bad it really was), but I grew up in the house of a hoarder. I snatched this book up at the library yesterday, hoping to finally read a book that I could relate to. Coming Clean is a story about recognizing where we come from and the relationships that define us-and about finding peace in the homes we make for ourselves. And in beautiful prose, Miller sheds light on her complicated yet loving relationship with her parents that has thrived in spite of the odds. In this coming-of-age story, Kim brings to life her experience of growing up in a rat-infested home, concealing her father’s shameful secret from friends for years, and of the emotional burden that ultimately led to an attempt to take her own life. You would never guess that she spent her childhood hiding behind the closed doors of her family’s idyllic Long Island house, navigating between teetering stacks of aging newspaper, broken computers, and boxes upon boxes of unused junk festering in every room-the product of her father’s painful and unending struggle with hoarding. Kim Miller is an immaculately put-together woman with a great career, a loving boyfriend, and a beautifully tidy apartment in Brooklyn.

A stunning memoir about a childhood spent growing up in a family of extreme hoarders and hiding squalor behind the veneer of a perfect family.

Coming Clean by Kimberly Rae Miller