What can I do to help reorganize the house to help my mom?

Over the years I’ve become really neurotic about cleaning and reorganizing. This is because my parents are essentially hoarders. nothing to the extent of those you see on TV – but hoarders nonetheless.

I’ve single-handedly reorganized entire rooms over the past several years, clearing out all this junk and gunk and forgotten stuff.

However, with all the work I’ve done, there’s still areas of concern and it’s still showing some ill effects.

Every now and then mom forgets to pay bills – like electric bills or sewage bills. A couple years ago the township sent a guy to just shut off our water. I remember watching him out my window like “Huh, I wonder what that guy’s doing.” Mom has never done this before and, well, it must be age. She’s been more scatterbrained lately. She often takes the mail but then throws it in a pile to look at later, forgetting to check them and thus totally not realizing it’s time to pay bills.

My dad wants nothing to do with any of this. He’s always been stingy so he never wants to spend money on any reorganization efforts. I’ve always been the one to pay for stuff to reorganize the house, like new drawers and boxes, etc. He also never pays the bills. He has an aversion to opening bills and leaves all the “number stuff” to mom, which is the other factor in her slipping recently – just overload on one person.

I’ve been making sure to be the first one to get the mail so I can say “Mom, here’s something really important to take care of right now.” But things still slip through, because a letter today notified us of yet another overdue sewage payment.

Her office is where the biggest mess currently is. There are so many papers and envelopes lying around. Unlike other rooms, every time I clean this one, another wave of junk piles up over time.

There HAS to be an effective system to manage this automatically. I don’t want to do this any longer and I’m at the age when I’ll be moving out soon.

For starters, I’m thinking of saving up money to give her a brand new desktop computer. She hasn’t had a new one in decades (again, because my dad hates spending money). She’s been hitching on my old laptops from college, so she’s been going back and forth between two old laptops. A new desktop computer would greatly improve her efficiency.

As for the mail – she’s fanatic about wicker baskets and I tried before telling her to use one basket for incoming mail and sort it out that way. But it just didn’t stick.

I’m starting to get at a loss here. I’m thinking of what other creative ideas, material or methodical, to utilize.

The closet in her office is filled to the brim with plastic boxes, mostly consisting of old photos. There has to be a better way of storing these instead of in this cramped closet. The last time I tried cleaning out her closet, I found one plastic box at the very bottom totally crushed, since they’re all stacked one on top of the other. She also has a habit of saving boxes – just all kinds of boxes. She keeps saying they’re useful but she never actually uses them for anything. I can understand that boxes for some electronics are good to keep, in case you need to return them, but others are totally pointless. I throw them out when I can when she’s not around or looking.

Any and all ideas greatly appreciated.