Andrea Mills of YouTube infamy Had Cancer and Died

[louannems]

Yes, each kid is scheduled for one bath or shower per week.  I've often wondered how smelly that house got!  Andrea always looked like she needed a good shampooing, and she even said shampoo was harmful and she only washed her hair once a week.

Even though baths are only scheduled weekly, Andrea had said that anyone could bathe/shower anytime the bath was free.

[FecundFundieFundus]

9 minutes ago, louannems said:

Yes, each kid is scheduled for one bath or shower per week. 

what the fuck 

[AverageJane]

No wonder Andrea was always stocking up on candles at WalMart.

[Koala]

1 hour ago, FecundFundieFundus said:

what the fuck 

I'm sorry- that is just so wrong.  

The smell in that house has to be absolutely atrocious.  I especially wonder how it works for the older son who has a job.  

My kids (through school) knew a couple of teenagers from a family who taught them that regular showers and toothbrushing was unnecessary.  They also didn't wear deodorant.  There are no words for how bad the smell was.  The son's hair would literally be caked to his head in grease.   They were not mean people, and I don't believe their intention was neglect- they just really didn't seem to know how bad they all smelled.  The fact that they lived in absolute filth only made matters worse.

Anyway, I noticed in the park video, that the kids were burying Asher in the playground mulch.  I couldn't help but think how nasty it was, and now knowing that they were all put to bed covered in that nasty stuff that people walked all over just makes me sad.  Their clothes seemed stained a lot too, so I am thinking it's likely that laundry isn't done as often as needed, either...

Very sad situation...

[Dandruff]

OK, I'll ask:  Why (TF) wouldn't they be bathing more often?

Yuck.

[FecundFundieFundus]

I wouldn't even judge if they bathed the kids Little House on the Prairie style- dunk, scrub, rinse with a few in the tub/a succession of kids. Family who grew up in poverty would do that sometimes with us kids when we stayed over IIRC and it didn't hurt us any. But my god you can't tell a child that baths are optional! They'll never be clean!!! 

[Pecansforeveryone]

I am assuming rationing baths was due to cost of water though as @FecundFundieFundus said there are economical ways to make bathing a lot of children work. 

[moreorlessnu]

21 hours ago, Koala said:

In the shopping video, he couldn't find a few of the fall shirts/dresses he was looking for.  Solution? 

He thinks that there's a lot of "Youtube people" who are "just dying to make stuff", so he's going to "throw some requests out there".  

Well, to be fair, they all wear the same colors each day and they wear certain colors on certain days of the week. Tom couldn't find brown dresses for Eden, Sophia, Claudia, and Hannah. In another video he mentioned that some women had offered to sew dresses for the girls (as Andrea used to do), and even offered to use the same patterns brands and styles that Andrea used. In an even earlier video, he had choked up when he talked about Andrea no longer being around to sew dresses for her girls. So, someone offering to sew the same types of dresses that Andrea used to sew for the girls would at least give them back something they used to have.

21 hours ago, louannems said:

Andrea did a video on budgeting and I think their mortgage is $600 per month.  I hope I'm remembering correctly.  They bought the house super cheap but it was a total fixer upper.  They took enough mortgage to include fixing it up.

I believe they paid $12k for the house and took a mortgage of $25k for needed improvements. At a later date, they had to shore up the foundation and they had to take another mortgage out. Tom mentioned the mortgage is down to $20k.

[louannems]

1 hour ago, Pecansforeveryone said:

I am assuming rationing baths was due to cost of water though as @FecundFundieFundus said there are economical ways to make bathing a lot of children work. 

I'm guessing it was more that there were 11 people in a ONE bathroom house. Now 10 people.

[under siege]

14 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

I'm quoting you two, but several others have mentioned this.  Can someone pinpoint exactly where and on which video he starts wife fishing?  Thanks in advance.

 

 

I muted this live and watched the comments to have a look first - that way I didn't need to listen to too much of him.
At the 33 - 34 minutes mark of "1 Month Later Livestream | I Am Not Strong" he mentions that a conversation with Andrea a month or so before her passing she told him that she would never marry again if something happened to him but that she knew that he would re-marry.
(cue to permission to remarry)

I then went to this one but I was done listening to Tom so I've just cut and pasted a couple of comments...
"Live Chat: Thoughts on the First Day of School | I Was Not Prepared"
Sarai Smith To early but my gits tells me there will be someone special for you and your kids
Cynthia Abreu @saraismith there will be and she would definitely be a lucky woman, he's great all-around honestly.

Then I gathered from plenty of posts here that Tom has started to discuss that he needs someone.

I certainly am not against re-marrying.  I just think it's too soon for Tom to be discussing it so openly and to so many strangers.  I think that he will need to find someone and I hope that it's love, not necessity that drives any new relationship he gets into.
There's another thing he'll need to be careful of. Any new woman will, of course, be introduced to the children. I hope that he has the sense to ease that person into their lives gently and carefully. There's always the risk of attachment and if not dealt with well it can lead to issues if the relationship doesn't work out. I've witnessed how badly things can go, daughter hasn't spoken to her father for 12 years now.  I  would never wish that on anyone but it came to mind because this person has a similar personality to Tom.

[louannems]

12 hours ago, Pecansforeveryone said:

@FecundFundieFundus

Tom bought the $4.50 polo shirts from Walmart.  Those are really poor quality shirts; the collar and placket twist unsightly after a couple of washings. You can see this on the kids on the older videos. 

  Andrea quit buying them a long while back and upgraded to the Walmart George brand, or she ordered the French Toast brand.

Tom should have watched Andrea's videos and he would have known that.

[Petronella]

I don't think bathing every single day is necessary. I wash my hair just twice a week. Our kids often bathed once a week when they were little (obviously more often if they did something muddy or dusty or went swimming). But once puberty hit? Oh yeah--shower time, deodorant, mouthwash, etc.

So I'm not as freaked by once-a-week bathing as some of you. For some little kids, that can be reasonable. But as a blanket rule across the whole family? Nope, nope, nope!

Time clocks for chores and hyper-scheduled bathroom usage make me so sad. A family should not be an assembly line.

I don't understand why Tom is so fixed on continuing to homeschool, especially when he's not even the one doing it! I hate when people get dogmatic about stuff like that. I think homeschooling can be great, but when circumstances change you have to reevaluate.

I also don't understand why Tom isn't spending some of his windfall on a housecleaning service so the whole family can have a break from the relentless chores. And it would give them some room to figure out a new normal, which they desperately need.

 

[under siege]

40 minutes ago, louannems said:

Tom bought the $4.50 polo shirts from Walmart.  Those are really poor quality shirts; the collar and placket twist unsightly after a couple of washings. You can see this on the kids on the older videos. 

  Andrea quit buying them a long while back and upgraded to the Walmart George brand, or she ordered the French Toast brand.

Tom should have watched Andrea's videos and he would have known that.

He's currently using the excuse that he can't watch Andrea's videos.  That is understandable.
HOWEVER, he's shopped with Andrea multiple times. He has clothing in the house to refer to as a guide.
He mentioned in one video that he was unsure of sizes - um, again, he has clothing in the house as a guide. Don't fit? Go up a size or two.
There are plenty of people offering to send clothes too. There's been mention of Walmart gift cards too.  There are a lot of generous fans.
He really has no excuse for buying the cheapest crap when the options available to him don't even require a lot of thought. He has the fans telling him what Andrea purchased in the past and if need be some of them would eve do that for him.

All this plus he has his Mom, sisters-in-law and other people around him who would be more than capable to help him out.

[Giraffe]

One bathroom. Time clock. Bathing once a week. Too much candy. Kids raising kids. Kids leaving their jobs to raise their sibs. This sounds like a perfect storm for the older kids to leave at 18 and never look back. Sadly I’m guessing they’ll stay because they know they’re the better parents - and they’ll be right! 

Tom’s lack of ability to see his kids’s needs is astounding. 

[under siege]

18 minutes ago, Petronella said:

 

I also don't understand why Tom isn't spending some of his windfall on a housecleaning service so the whole family can have a break from the relentless chores. And it would give them some room to figure out a new normal, which they desperately need.

 

 

A cleaning service would be a great idea. Even if it were for just a few months, to get them through the holidays.
That way the kids would be able to be kids and still allow enough chores for them to do to continue with that aspect of their earning pocket money.

[FecundFundieFundus]

Is there a reason shopping is such a high priority item right now? Babies grow quickly but did they really all grow out of their entire wardrobes in a month? The requests for clothes and whip-rounds for clothing donations are bizarre when their home and possessions are fine. 

[Petronella]

6 minutes ago, under siege said:

He's currently using the excuse that he can't watch Andrea's videos.  That is understandable.
HOWEVER, he's shopped with Andrea multiple times. He has clothing in the house to refer to as a guide.
He mentioned in one video that he was unsure of sizes - um, again, he has clothing in the house as a guide. Don't fit? Go up a size or two.
There are plenty of people offering to send clothes too. There's been mention of Walmart gift cards too.  There are a lot of generous fans.
He really Page 23 of 23  has no excuse for buying the cheapest crap when the options available to him don't even require a lot of thought. He has the fans telling him what Andrea purchased in the past and if need be some of them would eve do that for him.

All this plus he has his Mom, sisters-in-law and other people around him who would be more than capable to help him out.

Why is clothes shopping such a pressing need at the moment? Seems odd that they suddenly need clothes. Did Andrea maybe shop once a year at this time? Or had they been growing out of clothes while she was ill? Even so, don't the younger kids have plenty of hand-me-downs?

We just don't clothes-shop a lot and I can't imagine it being a pressing need so immediately after a significant death.

Edit: @FecundFundieFundus, jinx!

Edited October 1, 2019 by Petronella

[sdjp123]

51 minutes ago, Petronella said:

I don't think bathing every single day is necessary. I wash my hair just twice a week. Our kids often bathed once a week when they were little (obviously more often if they did something muddy or dusty or went swimming). But once puberty hit? Oh yeah--shower time, deodorant, mouthwash, etc.

So I'm not as freaked by once-a-week bathing as some of you. For some little kids, that can be reasonable. But as a blanket rule across the whole family? Nope, nope, nope!

Time clocks for chores and hyper-scheduled bathroom usage make me so sad. A family should not be an assembly line.

I don't understand why Tom is so fixed on continuing to homeschool, especially when he's not even the one doing it! I hate when people get dogmatic about stuff like that. I think homeschooling can be great, but when circumstances change you have to reevaluate.

I also don't understand why Tom isn't spending some of his windfall on a housecleaning service so the whole family can have a break from the relentless chores. And it would give them some room to figure out a new normal, which they desperately need.

 

If the kids went to public school it would limit the time they have to maintain the house and Tom would have to find someone to watch Claudia and Hannah during school hours. As it stands, Tom gets to basically live the same way he did before Andrea's death because he has dumped all of the work she did on the kids.

[Petronella]

5 minutes ago, sdjp123 said:

If the kids went to public school it would limit the time they have to maintain the house and Tom would have to find someone to watch Claudia and Hannah during school hours. As it stands, Tom gets to basically live the same way he did before Andrea's death because he has dumped all of the work she did on the kids.

Wow. Thinking of it that way is heartbreaking.

He needs to snap out of the idea of everything going on as it was. It can't. It just can't. He needs to change, their routine needs to change, and he needs to allow the children to change.

[sdjp123]

11 minutes ago, Petronella said:

Why is clothes shopping such a pressing need at the moment? Seems odd that they suddenly need clothes. Did Andrea maybe shop once a year at this time? Or had they been growing out of clothes while she was ill? Even so, don't the younger kids have plenty of hand-me-downs?

We just don't clothes-shop a lot and I can't imagine it being a pressing need so immediately after a significant death.

Edit: @FecundFundieFundus, jinx!

It was Andrea's tradition to go clothes shopping twice a year. They would get new clothes in Fall and Spring so this is just another tradition that Tom is following.

I do think they may have some limited hand-me-downs, but they also buy a lot of cheap, low quality clothing and shoes so I suspect a lot of it doesn't last past 1 kid.

[AverageJane]

I don't see Thomas moving out any time soon.  I always feel sad for him.  He looks so doughy and out of shape.  He looks like a person that sits in a basement and plays video games all day and eats Cheetos.  Sadly that isn't too far off.

Someone asked if Thomas had a girlfriend and Tom said he has a pen pal.

I hope he gets to go back to work soon since his work goal for the future is to be manager at that tiny store. 

I noticed in the old photo of Tom and Andrea when they first met Tom wore a large cross necklace over his shirt just like Thomas does now.  Two peas in a pod. 

[kesmom]

1 hour ago, Giraffe said:

One bathroom. Time clock. Bathing once a week. Too much candy. Kids raising kids. Kids leaving their jobs to raise their sibs. This sounds like a perfect storm for the older kids to leave at 18 and never look back. Sadly I’m guessing they’ll stay because they know they’re the better parents - and they’ll be right! 

Tom’s lack of ability to see his kids’s needs is astounding. 

They are all going to need so much therapy. They need it now of course, but we know that won’t happen. 

 

[texasdreamer]

Does Tom think he is the only man to ever be in this situation? My charitable contributions will be used to help people in my own community who are in need but maybe too proud to be on you tube. Good luck finding a new wife. A desperate woman for sure. Who could live like that? I hope the kids have a chance to see how others live. I just started going down this rabbit hole. Havent quite got to the religious reasons etc. But finding the whole thing particularly swarmy.

 

[LilMissMetaphor]

I feel like Tom is going to marry someone and it's going to end up like RC and Lisa.  As the kids grow up they will want to cling to the memory of their mother (the older ones anyway) and maybe the younger ones will stick around.  There aren't going to be a lot of happy family gatherings with grandkids though.  

[under siege]

1 hour ago, sdjp123 said:

It was Andrea's tradition to go clothes shopping twice a year. They would get new clothes in Fall and Spring so this is just another tradition that Tom is following.

I do think they may have some limited hand-me-downs, but they also buy a lot of cheap, low quality clothing and shoes so I suspect a lot of it doesn't last past 1 kid.

Yes, a tradition that's been going on for years.
One of the first videos I watched was of Andrea discussing clothing and why she doesn't thrift. Also in that video she addressed hand-me-downs.
As a lot of the clothing is from Walmart she conceded that they were mainly had a short life span and so no suitable to pass down. Things that were kept for other kids include snow wear, dress clothes and other items that like that. These were all kept up in the attic space.

The cheap Walmart shoes I don't understand. Maybe if they had 3-5 pairs etc, maybe but to only have cheap shoes. Yes, Andrea replaced them sooner than 6 months if they were too far gone but she'd make kind of a big deal about it and kind of shamed the child.

Not that it was a question raised on here but IKYWW, thrifting was generally out of the question because (a) Walmart was often cheaper (b) it would require more time than it was worth because of their color system (that would encourage too much freedom or individuality ?) (c) lots of kids made it hard to thrift for (even though loads of other large families do it, do it well, even those how travel to thrift)  and (d) she was fine about donating still okay clothes but she never showed going into a thrift store to see if there was anything suitable even if she was at a thrift store donating stuff.