She recalls how loving and playful her father was when she was a child, and how her mother scrounged together money so that she could spend a semester abroad when financial aid fell through. She describes them as “doting, fallible people that gave me everything they had, and a whole lot more.” Miller isn’t unscathed by her parents’ problems: at one point as a child she stops speaking, later she attempts suicide and still later she compulsively cleans her spotless Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment with harsh chemicals and becomes pathologically afraid of getting bed bugs.īut Miller, who became an actress and writer, doesn’t write vindictively about her parents. Miller finally escapes to go to college, and her parents move to other homes to escape the mess, but their hoarding always quickly resumes. The mess causes constant fighting within the family and a constant fear of being discovered. Unable to call a repairman because of the state of the house, the family showers at a local gym. The boiler breaks and there is no heat or hot water. Rats skitter between piles of junk and fleas infest the house. After Miller’s mother has a botched surgery that leaves her disabled and depressed, the squalor grows: at its worst, pipes break, causing floors to turn into a soggy swampland and bathrooms to stop functioning. Couches, floors, tables and most other surfaces - eventually whole rooms - were lost to junk. Their house was covered with paper and broken or disused objects.

Her father spent most of his time listening to NPR and inspecting whatever piece of paper out of his vast collection happened to be at hand, while her mother constantly ordered unnecessary items online and then let the boxes sit, unopened, to collect dust. 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.Growing up, only child Miller knew her family was different. 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