Destroy This House' Chronicles Living with Hoarders

Summary

ALL OF IT (WNYC) — “Destroy This House” Chronicles Living With Hoarders

Date: September 11, 2025
Host: David Fuerst (in for Alison Stewart)
Guest: Amanda Yulee, author of Destroy This House

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on Amanda Yulee’s memoir, Destroy This House, which intimately chronicles her upbringing in a home where hoarding—particularly her mother’s food hoarding—shaped daily life. The conversation explores the emotional complexity of living with hoarders, the toll on relationships, and the nuances between collecting, clutter, and clinical hoarding. Listeners call in to share their own experiences, and the discussion expands to include considerations about mental health, shame, and best approaches to supporting loved ones facing hoarding disorder.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Amanda’s Motivation and Process For Writing

• Delayed Readiness and Perspective
  • Yulee describes a long period of gestation before writing. Despite seeing her parents as “exceptional” since childhood, true reflection didn’t come until six or seven years after their deaths.
    • “I knew from a very young age that my parents were extraordinary and sort of exceptional... But then years and years passed... It took six or seven years after that for me to see them in a new way and really sit down and write the book.” — Amanda Yulee [01:51]
• Seeking Answers
  • The memoir was born out of questions about her parents’ improbable and often dramatic stories, especially as she tried to reconstruct truth from memory and fragmented evidence.
    • “Once people are gone... you’re left with questions about what really happened... The way my parents lived was so improbable...” — Amanda Yulee [02:26]
• Establishing Truth
  • Amanda relied on chronology, primary documentation (photos, newspaper clippings, letters, voice recordings) to validate her childhood memories.
    • “I wanted to back up everything I remembered with facts... to prove what I remembered about my parents, even the really improbable stuff... I wasn’t wrong.” — Amanda Yulee [16:04]

Defining Hoarding vs. Collecting

• Amanda draws a distinction:
  • Collecting and “stuff” are normal; the problem arises when possessions impede daily functioning and relationships.
    • “When stuff is in the way of how you live and interrupting your functional life and your relationships, which is absolutely what was happening in my house growing up, to me, that's hoarding.” — Amanda Yulee [03:40]
• The family never used the word “hoarding”—only “clutter”—which reveals generational and societal gaps in understanding.
  • “My mother died in 2015, and she never spoke the word hoarding or heard it. We didn’t talk about it that way... We called it clutter and we said it was messy.” — Amanda Yulee [04:08]

Food, Fabric, and the Psychology of Possessions

• Amanda’s mother’s hoarding began with food and expanded to clothing and fabric, often rooted in hope and aspiration (imagining future meals, projects).
  • “With the sewing, she always hoped... the pattern and the material and the buttons would become a beautiful garment... She could see it in the future. She didn't do it. She hung onto it.” — Amanda Yulee [07:12]
• Food was both the most excessive and dangerous part, with spoiled perishables often left out due to an overstuffed fridge.
  • “We had non perishables, but also perishables kind of rotting in the house… she almost never cooked it.” — Amanda Yulee [07:56]

The Family Dynamic and Emotional Impact

• Parental enabling and humor were present, not just dysfunction.
  • “I like to call my parents the Midwestern Bonnie and Clyde. They sort of enabled each other. You know, they just loved each other and, and that's a lot.” — Amanda Yulee [15:01]
• Shame was pervasive for Amanda; she avoided bringing friends home and felt responsible for an unfixable situation.
  • “We almost never had people in the house. When we did, they're all in the book. It's like four or five times in my growing up years... I felt a great deal of shame...” — Amanda Yulee [19:06]

The Ineffectiveness of ‘Quick Clean-Ups’

• Removing the stuff without addressing underlying issues rarely worked, often making things worse.
  • “All the times that I tried to clean it... it only made things worse. Because the root problem... was there. It was always there.” — Amanda Yulee [22:05]
• Amanda’s mother could not accept help, never acknowledged a problem, and insisted she could manage it alone.
  • “If it were brought up, it were like, well, it’s messy, but just, you know, give me a Saturday and I’ll tidy it up. Which was very unrealistic for how it looked…” — Amanda Yulee [21:00]
• Hoarding, Amanda notes, is rarely about the physical “stuff”—it reflects deeper pain and personal challenges.
  • “It feels like it’s the stuff, but it’s not the stuff... my mother’s compulsion to buy things and to keep them... that was the problem. And that was about her, her identity and her pain and her life.” — Amanda Yulee [21:00]

Mental Health, Compassion, and Forgiveness

• Amanda expresses compassion and forgiveness for her parents, acknowledging that understanding them alleviated anger.
  • “I’ve forgiven my mom for sure. I don’t have those sorts of feelings. I have a lot of compassion for her now.... I have to think that my parents did their best and that’s all we can... ascribe to people.” — Amanda Yulee [10:23]
• Taking care of aging hoarding parents was emotionally and practically draining. Amanda described her choices as “imperfect” but made with the best intentions.
  • “Those were very, very hard years... I made the choices I made in the best way that I could. Imperfectly, I guess, but...” — Amanda Yulee [20:12]

Community Calls & Resources

• Shared Experiences:
  • Multiple callers recount relatives’ and friends’ hoarding, echoing Amanda’s struggles with shame, frustration, and helplessness.
  • One caller (Rachel) links her own collecting tendencies to ADHD and expresses guilt about how it affected her children.
    • “My girls tried to tell me I didn’t ruin their lives, but I just don’t know if they really ever can forgive me.” — Rachel [10:04]
• Professional Insight:
  • Diane, a retired organizer, points listeners to the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (challengingdisorganization.org), noting the overlap between ADHD and hoarding behaviors.
    • “It’s a research and education organization... That’s how I got trained... and how I learned how ADHD creates a lot of challenges for people around order and managing their lives.” — Diane [12:06]
• Important Distinctions:
  • Amanda and callers discuss how hoarding is often misunderstood as simple laziness or messiness, when it is more accurately related to mental illness and emotional trauma.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I wanted to destroy my house, just the way you fantasize as a kid about running away.” — Amanda Yulee [Paraphrased at the opening]
• “It’s not about the stuff. That was the problem. And that was about [my mother’s] identity and her pain and her life.” — Amanda Yulee [21:00]
• “I felt like I was the only one that could see it. I felt like my parents couldn’t see all the multiples of things.” — Amanda Yulee [19:06]
• “Some people feel, ‘Oh my God, you threw out my stuff;’ other people think it’s a blessing—‘Thank you, you gave me my life back.’” — Wayne, caller [05:17]
• “We never had a word for hoarding. It was always ‘clutter’ or ‘messy’… but looking back, it was diabolically messy.” — Amanda Yulee [04:08]
• “We almost never had people in the house. I always had to socialize at other people’s houses. I felt a great deal of shame…” — Amanda Yulee [19:06]
• “If you just focus on the stuff… and think, ‘If I can just get this stuff away, everything will be resolved’—not true.” — Amanda Yulee [21:49]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:09 Introduction to Amanda Yulee & memoir context
• 01:51 Yulee on the process and motivation for writing the memoir
• 03:13 Defining hoarding vs. clutter/collecting
• 04:08 Amanda’s first recognition of “problem” vs. “normal mess”
• 05:05 Wayne in Queens shares experience with a friend’s mother (nine tons of belongings removed)
• 07:12 Food as the centerpiece of her mother’s hoarding, other “aspirational” hoarding (fabric, clothes)
• 09:00 Rachel in Rockland County describes guilt linked to ADHD and mothering with clutter
• 12:06 Diane shares resource: Institute for Challenging Disorganization
• 13:43 Allison, another caller, discusses difficulty supporting a friend with hoarding/ADHD
• 15:01 Yulee on her parents’ enabling, mutual love, and the humor in their relationship
• 16:04 Amanda’s research process for truth in memoir writing
• 16:55 Randy in Greenwich describes generational hoarding, family shame, and mental illness
• 19:06 Yulee recounts shame and social challenges due to home conditions
• 20:12 The emotional toll of caretaking hoarding parents
• 21:00 Her mother’s denial of a problem and the futility of cleaning up
• 22:05 Host and Yulee reflect on the limits of simply “removing the stuff”
• 22:51 Episode close & details on Amanda’s book event

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Tone & Language

The conversation is empathetic, frank, and suffused with moments of warmth and humor despite the subject’s seriousness. Amanda speaks candidly—open about the “gross-out” aspects and her family’s pain, but also highlighting the love and agency in her parents’ lives. Callers' contributions underline a communal experience of both heartbreak and resilience.

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Final Note

Destroy This House serves as an invitation to re-examine what “clutter” really means, and how compassion—both for others and for ourselves—is essential when confronting the complexities of hoarding. The episode is particularly valuable for anyone grappling with hoarding in their own family, offering insight, practical resources, and a reminder that at the heart of it all are people doing their best with what they have.

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm David Fuerst in for Alison Stewart. When author Amanda Yulee was growing up, she dreamed of destroying her home. That's because her parents quickly made each place they lived in feel unlivable. Amanda's mom struggled with hoarding, especially when it came to food. She would cram the fridge so full that leftovers sat on the counter for days. Rooms would be stuffed with canned goods, expired snacks, toiletries and garbage until they were unusable. Amanda's father often refused to fix anything in the home. The grass in the front yard grew out of control. The windows were left broken for weeks. Amanda writes about the chaos of her childhood and her attempts to save her parents from financial and physical ruin in her new memoir. It's called Destroy this House. Amanda is going to be speaking tomorrow night at Books Are Magic on Montague street in Brooklyn Heights. 7pm and she joins us now. Amanda Yulee, welcome.

[B]

Thanks for having me.

[A]

And listeners, we would like to hear from you during this discussion as well. Has someone in your life struggled with hoarding? What has that experience been like for you? How have you tried to perhaps help? And what did that mean for your relationship with this person? We are taking calls about hoarding. Give us a call. It's 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-9692. Amanda, when you, you know, sitting down to write a book like this, when did you know that you were ready to write this book about your parents and your childhood?

[B]

It took some time. So I think books take a while to gestate often. And it did for me for sure. I knew from a very young age that my parents were extraordinary and sort of exceptional. They acted that way and we felt that way. So from the time I was maybe 8. But then years and years passed. They actually passed away in 2013 and 2015, and it took six or seven years after that for me to see them in a new way and really sit down and write the book.

[A]

What was the biggest question that you wanted to answer when you sat down to write this?

[B]

Oh, it was all questions, I have to say. So my dad was kind of a schemer extraordinaire, always getting us into money trouble. This is why we were moving all the time. And he was a truth stretcher like no one else. And with that sort of a circumstance. And when you grow up that way, once people are gone, and they were gone, like I said, six, seven, eight years by the time I was really writing the book. You're left with questions about what really happened, which sounds dramatic, but, you know, endless stories I wondered about. They were so improbable. The way my parents lived was so improbable that, you know, I wondered. So I sort of set out to figure it out.

[A]

And I want to come back to that. But before we get any further, let's try to get to a definition of hoarding.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You know, what are we talking about? Because when does having a lot of stuff. When does collecting things become hoarding?

[B]

Yeah. I will say I don't feel like an expert on hoarding. I feel like an expert on my family, which experienced hoarding. But I know this. It's not collecting. So I'm a bit of a collector. I'm married to a record collector. We have stuff in our house.

[A]

Record collector here.

[B]

You're a record collector, too? Yes. And stuff is okay. I don't want to be judgmental about stuff. Stuff. But when stuff is in the way of how you live and interrupting your functional life and your relationships, which is absolutely what was happening in my house growing up, to me, that's hoarding.

[A]

When was the first time that you realized or thought that your mom might have a problem with hoarding? That it was more than just the usual amount of clutter?

[B]

I'll say the word clutter is so interesting because that's the word my family used to talk about our house, but forever. My mother died in 2015, and she never spoke the word hoarding or heard it. We didn't talk about it that way. I think it sort of predates that TV show that's called Hoarders. But, you know, we called it clutter and we said it was messy. I understood that it was problematic probably when I was 11 or 12, maybe before then, but I just thought, we have a messy house. But it was diabolically messy. You know, it was a lot more messy than my peers and my friends houses that I would visit.

[A]

Well, let's take a call. If you want to join this conversation, you can give us a call. 212-433-9692. We are speaking with Amanda Yulee discussing her new memoir, Destroy this House. And Wayne in Queens, thanks for joining us today.

[C]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

Did you have a. Hello? Yeah. Did you have a question or maybe just a story you want to share?

[C]

Like I was telling the screener, I have a friend of mine whose mother is a hoarder. She's 80 years old. She's been hoarding for at least I've known her for 20 years, so I would say a good 19. And so what happened was recently, about six months ago, she had to go into the hospital. So we got a big dumpster and threw out. All a lot. Not all, because out of. I think we threw out literally because they've been there 50 years. We threw out so far, nine tons. We still have three tons of crap to grow out. But my point was I've dealt with people who have cleaned hoarders houses and I said, what is their response? He said, some people feel, oh my God, you throw out my stuff. Other people think that, you know, it's a blessing. Oh, thank you. You gave me my life back. So when she came back, I was afraid of how she reacted. She was like, oh good, the house is neat and everything like that. Like she didn't notice.

[A]

Well, that's interesting.

[B]

That's a surprise.

[A]

Yeah, that's a surprise. Wayne, thank you for sharing that. And I wanted to ask about your reaction to that because that could go all different ways with different people.

[B]

I suppose it could, but it's, you know, mostly my experience that when someone is that attached to their stuff in the way that my mom was, that it's really, really uncomfort for them to give it up and especially for someone else to clean it up or mess with it. You know, I think that my mom, if she ever would have wanted something clean, she would have wanted to do it herself. The times that I took it upon myself as a little, you know, self righteous teenager, cleaning out the fridge or whatever I wanted to do to sort of make our environment better, those were times that were really hard in our family. She did not like that.

[A]

It seemed like your mom's problem with hoarding began with food, right? She would start to buy extra stuff, more food than your family needed. I guess it might just come down to guessing. But why do you think that this was perhaps an impulse that she had to buy this food?

[B]

You know, it was a little bit aspirational, I think. And it was food for sure was a big part of it. And that's some of the gross out parts of the book which you alluded to. We had non perishables, but also perishables kind of rotting in the house. But it was also for my mom, it was clothes and fabric. She was a great, really talented seamstress, really. She studied fashion design at Pratt, actually briefly. And so she, I think with the sewing, she always hoped the stuff that she would buy, the pattern and the material and the buttons would become a beautiful garment that she was going to make. It was like she could see it in the future. She didn't do it. She hung onto it. The food, it was like, here's this wonderful meal that we're going to have. Unfortunately, she almost never cooked it.

[A]

Well, your mother also insisted on having the family eat food. Correct me if I'm wrong, that had been, that had spoiled. We did from leaving it out on the counter because there was no more room in the fridge.

[B]

You're really speaking to all the gross out parts of my book. Thank you for.

[A]

I'm sorry.

[B]

No, it's really true. Yeah, I mean, you know, she had this difficulty letting go of things. So I remember there's one part in the book where there was a yogurt that had been in the fridge for God knows how long and I opened it and started eating it and it was like really, it was years beyond where it should have been. And my mom, well, it's supposed to be fermented. Okay. So, yeah, that was sort of her take on a lot of things.

[A]

We're speaking with Amanda Ueley. The new book is Destroy this House. And we're also taking your calls. 212-433-9692 here on all of it. Rachel in Rockland county. Thank you for joining us.

[D]

Hi. Hi, Amanda. Thank you.

[B]

Hi.

[D]

So I, I have severe ADHD and I'm a mom. I'm 65 and I have three daughters. And when their dad left and when, when I was married, we worked together on my, my ex husband had a hard time because I collect things and I had a hard time keeping things in order. I mean, I still do to this day. I'm constantly, I'm right now trying to get my house in order for my sister who's visiting. And I feel so guilty about when my husband left and my daughter's having to live with that night.

[B]

It's so hard.

[C]

And I wonder.

[D]

It'S a brain thing, you know.

[A]

Oh, not absolutely. Absolutely. I think I want you to keep talking, but. No, I want you to keep talking, but it's a very serious matter. But go ahead.

[D]

So anyway, I just wonder when you were able or maybe you never had a problem. My girls tried to tell me I didn't ruin their lives, but I just don't know if they really ever can forgive me.

[A]

Amanda, can you speak to those feelings?

[B]

I've forgiven my mom for sure. I don't have those, those sorts of feelings. I have a lot of compassion for her now. The book says, and I feel it was really hard in my house growing up. But for sure, I attribute I like to do this for everyone and everything, but I have to think that my parents did their best and that's all we can that's the only intention we can ascribe to people. And I would say the same to our caller as well. I'm sure it's clear from your your feelings about this that you are doing your best. And I'm sure your daughters have compassion for you, too.

[A]

Thank you so much for calling and sharing those thoughts with us. If you would like to join this conversation here on ALL of it on WNYC, the number is 212-433-9692. We're going to take a very short break. Our guest right now is Amanda Yulee discussing her new memoir, destroy this House. It's about her childhood growing up with parents who struggled with with hoarding. This is wnyc. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm David Fuerst in for Alison Stewart. Our guest today, Amanda Uli. We're discussing her new memoir, destroy this House, talking about growing up with parents who struggled with hoarding. And we're also taking your calls. 212 433-9692. Let's hear now from Diane in West Orange, New Jersey, who is a retired professional organizer. Do I have that right?

[D]

Hi, yes. Yes. I no longer organize, but I have transitioned to coaching people with adhd. And so I really have a lot of experience with the caller, the prior caller with her struggles of shame around everything. But I wanted to share for the public. You had asked David the question about, you know, how do you define hoarding? And I wanted to share a really fabulous organization where people can go to get information. It's lots of free resources. And the organization is called the Institute for Challenging Disorganization. And their website is challenging disorganization.org and it's a research and education organization. That's how I got trained to work with people with hoarding disorder and how I learned how ADHD creates a lot of challenges for people around order and managing their lives. So really wanted the public to know about this organization.

[B]

Wonderful to have that resource. It's not one that we had in my family. So I'm sure listeners will appreciate that.

[A]

Is that one you would have considered.

[B]

Trying to for sure? Yeah. I mean, we tried a lot of things, but we didn't really ever find help for my mom in particular, what was most helpful, I think was for me and for my brother and you know, to sort of work on coping with what was happening in the house.

[A]

Let's hear from Allison in Middletown, New York. Welcome to all of it.

[D]

Yeah, hi. I am calling about long friendship that I've had. My friend has severe ADHD and is a hoarder. And it's just as a friend, it's, it's so hard to just to understand. Like I have over the years, you know, tried to help her and I now know I can't. It's not possible.

[E]

And I've, I've gotten angry, I've gotten.

[D]

Frustrated and I, I know that, like, I want to have compassion and understand and know how to draw the line, you know, between how to be a friend to someone like this.

[B]

And I feel like, yeah.

[D]

She spent her whole life trying to. She spent her whole life trying to clean her apartment. Like every time, oh, you want to go out? Oh, I'm cleaning my apartment. But she never does.

[E]

She can't.

[B]

I found it deeply frustrating to watch people in my life who I loved really behave in this self destructive way. And it sounds like that's what you're seeing. It's really hard. I agree.

[A]

Amanda, how did your dad feel about your mom's hoarding?

[B]

I like to call my parents the Midwestern Bonnie and Clyde. They sort of enabled each other. You know, they just loved each other and, and that's a lot. And the book has a lot of our love and humor in our house. But my dad really loved my mom.

[A]

That's great to hear. I mean, we're talking about a lot.

[B]

Of something dark and deep, but. Yeah, yeah, well.

[A]

Cause you're also bringing up that deep love. And you mentioned that your mom was also incredibly talented.

[B]

She was, yeah. So, you know, my house was. It was unexpectedly fun, you know, especially in the earlier years before the choices that they were making. Kind of all the consequences came to pass. But yeah, my dad always sort of said, well, this is your mother and this is how she is, and we love her just the way she is.

[A]

I mean, it seemed like it was also hard for you kind of moving beyond the hoarding a little bit, but hard for you to sort out how much of what your parents told you was true, right? Oh, very much so, yeah.

[B]

Very much so.

[A]

If that was the case, what was your process for sorting out fact from fiction when you're working on this memoir?

[B]

Yeah, well, I told the story chronologically. It starts when my parents got married in 1975, and I looked at a newspaper clipping of their wedding. And from there I really Wanted to back up everything I remembered with facts. And so I really looked at newspapers, magazines, photos, letters. I found these great voice recordings of my dad from 1992. So I used lots of sources like that to try to prove what I remembered about my parents, even the really improbable stuff. And I wasn't wrong. That was the big surprise is that all the weird and wild stuff I remembered about my mom and dad pretty much found proof of it.

[A]

Let's take another call. We're speaking with Amanda Yulee, discussing her new memoir, Destroy this House. And Randy in Greenwich, Connecticut. Welcome.

[E]

Hi. Thank you. So when I was growing up, up until my teenage years, my house was fine, great. My mother was a perfectionist. In fact, that was a little challenging. And then as I became a teenager, sort of like a switch almost went on, and she started collecting hoarding. And I'll give you a perfect example. When I was growing up, you'd get a pie from the bakery, and it was in an aluminum foil tin. We'd finish it and, you know, she put it on the counter in a drawer, and then the next one, and then the next one, and then the next one, till There were the 10 of these aluminum foil pans.

[B]

Might be useful one day, right? Was that the argument that maybe we'll use it one day?

[E]

Or a plastic bread bag. And, you know, you want to save two, you want to save three, but, you know, there were 10. And what began to happen was this started getting more cluttered. And even what you were saying about buying things, the fabric. And my mother also, she was a sewer. And she said, oh, I'm gonna make this, I'm gonna make that. And slowly, slowly, slowly, there became less space in the house. And I got to the point I was embarrassed, so I wouldn't invite my friends over, and I'd always go to their houses. And this just proceeded and escalated. And one of the things that I wanted to say is, personally, I think hoarding is mental illness. It ran in my mother'. Her uncle was like that. She has two cousins while my mother's passed, and one of them, when he lives in Florida, I tried to help him. He could not sleep on the bed in his apartment.

[B]

That was huge.

[E]

He had a little space on the couch, and he sort of slept at an angle.

[A]

Well, Randy, thank you so much for sharing that. Any thoughts in there? I mean, the not having people coming over the house, is that something you could.

[B]

Exactly, Mike. So. So we almost never had people in the house. When we did, they're all in the Book. It's like four or five times in my growing up years that we had people over. I always had to socialize at other people's houses. I felt a great deal of shame about the way things looked. I kind of felt like I was the only one that could see it. I felt like my parents couldn't see all the multiples of things, just like the caller was saying and also just like what the caller was saying. My mother, toward the end of her life, barely had a place to sleep. Her bed was piled with clothing and fabric and other things, but she had like a little, little narrow spot on it. Sad.

[A]

Well, during the last few years of your parents lives, you were really tied up in their caretaking and their mental health struggles. How did you fare during that time? You know, how did your own mental health fare as a result of all of that time and energy that you expended caring for them? How do you care for parents in a situation like this and take care of yourself at the same time?

[B]

I'll go back to what I said a few minutes ago, which is the do your best thing. I know that I was not perfect. Neither were my parents in that situation. But those were very, very hard years. I was dealing with their decline in their health, their financial decline, and then, of course, all this stuff. Years and years and years, decades of stuff. So dealing with all of that was really challenging. And I made the choices I made in the best way that I could. Imperfectly, I guess, but.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but how did your mom feel? We're hearing some people talking about how to help people who are struggling with some of these hoarding issues. What is the best way to do that, how frustrating that can be. How did your mom feel about trying to get help for hoarding?

[B]

She was. Well, she was absolutely against it. I mean, it was very. I would say it was impossible for her to acknowledge that there was a problem. It was sort of like the thing. If it were brought up, it were like, well, it's messy, but just, you know, give me a Saturday and I'll tidy it up. Which was very unrealistic for how it looked in their houses. Yeah, you know, I think I learned about hoarding that it's. It feels like it's the stuff, but it's not the stuff. The stuff is this sort of ancillary thing. It definitely my mother's compulsion to buy things and to keep them and all that stuff is. That was the problem. And that was about her, you know, her identity and her pain and her life. But it definitely wasn't about the stuff. So you could clean up the stuff and still have a big problem on your hands.

[A]

In other words, it may be a mistake if we're thinking about helping to just look at the stuff, which is what is the most obvious thing that you can see, and be overwhelmed by and think, if I can just get this stuff away, everything will be resolved.

[B]

I was so overwhelmed by all this stuff. And I really thought, especially when I was a kid, I thought this is what's wrong in our family and with our house is all this stuff. But all the times that I tried to clean it up or tidy or organize or purge, whatever I was doing, it only made things worse. Because the root problem that I still don't really understand, to be honest with you, was there. It was always there.

[A]

Was it therapeutic in any way?

[B]

Writing about it a little bit, it was really satisfying to understand more about my parents.

[A]

Well, if you would like to read more, the new memoir is Destroy this House. Author Amanda Yulee, you're speaking tomorrow night at Books Are Magic on Montague street in Brooklyn Heights. That starts at 7pm tomorrow night. Thank you so much for joining us today.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[F]

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[C]

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