Major dilemma... (names have been changed to protect the uh, innocent? Guilty?)
For Thanksgiving we're suppose to go to a relative's house and then attend my cousin's wedding that Saturday. Both are in the same town about a 5 hour drive from here. The problem... The relative is a serious obsessive/compulsive buyer and packrat. The guest room is completely filled about 4 feet high with stuff bought and never used. The rest of the house usually has tons of stacks of newspapers and magazines that can't be thrown away because they might be needed some day. So not the ideal (or even safe!) place to stay a few nights with 5 young children.
Now we've sucked it up and dealt with the mess before. But for one night. This would be for 2 or 3. The relative's adult children have often helped partially clear out the guest room and other living areas beforehand so that we could be sort of comfortable. Unfortunately circumstances prevent the children from doing that at all this year.
A hotel, you say! The nearest hotel is a good 15 miles drive in the country through two towns and $100 a night. Remember my beloved 8pm bedtime for the kids? We'd be sitting in the hotel room every night by 9. The hotel room idea also hurts the relative's feelings. Yet the relative refuses to do anything to make the house reasonable for overnight guests.
So... I'm not sure if I should confront the relative and be blunt ("clean up or we can't stay there") which would probably only hurt the relative's feelings but not accomplish any cleaning (relative refuses to admit the problem). Or maybe I should stay quiet about the mess and spurge on the hotel room and deal with the boring-ness at night. We'd still have to deal with the clutter while visiting the relative's house for Thanksgiving day and I'm sure we're expected there on Friday. Or go a bit extreme, cancel our Thanksgiving plans and not go to the wedding and just stay home (requires a good excuse because relative really wants to see us).
I have no idea what to do. I don't want to start a family feud or hurt this relative's feelings. But there's no possible way we can stay there in the cluttered state it is in. The story of the two packrat brothers who died because their stuff crushed them? Getting close to being a possibility for this relative. A stack of newspapers once fell over on Zach (he was 3 years old) and hurt him. But like I said before, the relative refuses to see this packrat and obsessive/compulsive buying as a problem. The relative is also probably a borderline depressive.
I feel I'm stuck in between a rock and a hard spot.
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