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Trashed: Behind Closed Doors

a memoir-in-progress

Surrounded by trash while growing up with an abusive hoarder, Maurene Janiece can’t get away from her childhood home fast enough, a place that was never the family gathering place she’d wished for as a child. But twelve years later, that’s exactly where she finds herself. Unable to burn it down, she buys the house from her parents, determined to take revenge on 24 years’ worth of her father’s hoarded junk that always came first.

Now, she wonders if she can create a safe and secure home for her own children. Told with a spark of rebellious energy and introspection, Trashed follows Maurene’s journey as she tries to get rid of her childhood ghosts but almost loses everything in her present—her marriage, her sobriety, and her stability—in this memoir of coming to terms with one’s past while clearing the way for the future.

Mature woman standing in front of a white wall looking down with straight face.

Shadowy entrance to a set of stairs of a beige home interior

About the Memoir

When your childhood home is overflowing with junk, “taking out the trash” becomes a lifelong project. In Trashed, I return to the hoarded house I swore I’d never set foot in again.

I thought I’d escaped my childhood house — and the chaos that came with it. Then I went back, bought it, and tried to make it livable. Trashed is the story of how clearing out my father’s 24 years of hoarded junk nearly cost me my marriage, my sobriety, and my sanity.

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From the Page: Writing in Progress

She’d burn it all down if she could.

She will not need gasoline. Or tinder. Just a match. Enough newspapers, junk mail, magazines, and campaign flyers piled about will be more than sufficient to start the blaze. Still, she places the paper towel in front of her.

Strike. Light. Toss.

As the flames start to take hold, the light casts eerie shadows over the piles in front of her. She can make out a few items. Stacks of wood. Junk mail. Bicycle parts.

She goes outside. Walks into the street. Turns to watch the show, reveling as the flames take over, swallowing the house and all that is inside—the trash, the fear, the memories—all going up in a mighty blaze.

It is most satisfying. The quickest solution. The inferno swallows the house. It takes just a few short hours to level it all into a heap of ash.