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Hoarding...not just on TV

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  • VJsmum
    VJsmum Posts: 6,946
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    GreyQueen wrote: »
    When we moved to that house, we kids were 6 and 4 but Mum was pregnant and lost the baby, largely due to the stress of the move, we think.

    How sad.

    I don't know if this makes you feel better or worse - the intention is better, and, of course, I don't know medical details and am not medical but.. few, if any, babies are lost due to stress. They are resilient little things - even when unborn. I miscarried my first pregnancy, and there just are no answers. Sometimes pregnancies are lost, but babies are born in the most awful of circumstances and are strong and survive. People in concentration camps had, maybe not healthy, but live babies. My OH's friend lost her baby at 37 weeks - no reason, it just died. Tragic for anyone to lose that hope. What a shame your parents didn't try again. My aunt lost her one and only baby during childbirth - we think now due to the negligence of the midwife, but my uncle said "never again" as he'd been so afraid that he might lose her too.

    no de-Richarding for me today - though my spare room could do with something going. I might just go and find 3 things, just cos..
    I wanna be in the room where it happens
  • suzitiger
    suzitiger Posts: 947 Forumite
    oldtractor wrote: »
    I really dont understand hoarders. I think it must be [sadly] a mental illness and they need help. Why else would anyone hang on to cheap tat, packaging,newspapers and so on? Its utter trash cluttering up their lives.
    My late MIL hoarded. Utter rubbish, old clothes of her deceased husband were kept old kids toys you name it she filled the house with it. Was miserable and selfish all the time. What a way to live a life.

    Perhaps the people on this thread are here because we want to change the way we are? It is a mental condition and it is very hard to recognise it. Not all hoarders are like the famous Mr Treebus. I don't really know what you hoped to achieve by posting this, and as this is a supportive thread may I suggest that you don't post anything negative again
    Don't turn a slip up into a give up:D
    *NSD Challenge Nov 0/10* *£10 a day challenge Nov £0/£300*
    No buying unnecessary toiletries challenge-in it for the long haul
    :D

  • lostinrates
    lostinrates Posts: 55,283
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    RAS wrote: »

    And lir, I learned to ride on a 33 year old; fat as butter and as sleek as anything, in much better condition than her slightly younger companion. They were respected and loved by their owner but neither would have "earned their keep".

    Some just go on and on. Very old girl has had a stay of execution twice this year. I know one day soon it will be the last day, but she bucks, she gallops....it's not today.


    I don't have the photos of competing, I don't think I have any rosettes or sashes or any paraphernalia ...but I do have two of my old friends......others keep the rosettes, but I would rather these retirement years.


    My point is though, that tat is in the eye of the beholder. I 'know' why others would make other decisions than I and have walls full of their winnings and only fit horses in their fields. It's just to me the old and ugly horses aren't rubbish or tat.

    What I have to do is disassociate memory with the objects I am prepared to feel differently about.

    E.g, Yesterday I found a child's bag that used to have a doll in it. It was mine, I don't remember the doll, but I do remember the bag. I often used to take it on short haul flights i did weekly with my snack, my books and something to ay with. I don't have pictures of anything from that period of my life, but I have the bag. But the bag......it's......worthless 'tat' and I can see that now is time to put it in a rag recyling bag. But it's not an easy decision. I have carted that thing around my neck (well, it's been in storage but it's been part of. 'my chattels' since I was knee high to a grass hopper, It's hard to accept it has no worth to me.

    If I had had a little girl maybe I would have found another little doll to sit in the pocket and it could have been hers (I LOVED stuff that had been my mother's or sisters before it was mine). But I haven't and the cats prefer flashier things.....and the dogs don't carry bags.
  • suzitiger
    suzitiger Posts: 947 Forumite
    GreyQueen wrote: »
    :hello: Hello and welcome, suzitiger. Good to have you aboard. I'm impressed that you have taken ownership of your stuff from your parents' home and are working through it, and recognising that maybe you have generational tendancies to hoard.

    I consider myself someone with tendancies rather than a full-blown hoarder but it could easily get out of hand, I suspect lack of space is a limiting factor. I should add that I am extremely ingenious with space, so if I say I haven't room for X, you can be sure that I've really tried to squash it or something like it, into my home in the past.
    Thanks again for the lovely welcomes, I did join this thread a little while ago but I only posted when I joined and I hadn't since.
    Yes Greyqueen I thought I would just forget all about everything if I left it at home, so easily done! Not fair on my parents to keep it at theirs, they have enough of their own hoard to deal with :) With my mum it is mainly clothes and magazines, with my dad it is mainly paraphenalia he has collected and keeps, I seem to hoard both these things but not much else so I guess it is probably to do with the environment I grew up in, it makes me feel comfortable to have things but not as good as it feels to have a clean tidy house so things are slowly going. Its a long hard slog isn't it?
    Today I managed to clear alot of the living room, every surface gets cluttered so quickly with paperwork and other junk. Over the weekend me and the OH made good headway on the bedroom. We had to clear everything out to put some underlay down and it made it so much easier to sort things out by bringing them back in slowly. the bedroom works really well now with the rearrange.
    Next room to be done is the hallway but that will have to wait until January methinks, at least the living room is almost done and the bedroom is sorted :T
    Don't turn a slip up into a give up:D
    *NSD Challenge Nov 0/10* *£10 a day challenge Nov £0/£300*
    No buying unnecessary toiletries challenge-in it for the long haul
    :D

  • suzitiger
    suzitiger Posts: 947 Forumite
    If I had had a little girl maybe I would have found another little doll to sit in the pocket and it could have been hers (I LOVED stuff that had been my mother's or sisters before it was mine). But I haven't and the cats prefer flashier things.....and the dogs don't carry bags.

    Me too, its great to give hand me downs that have a nice story, I'm keping some things for my kids when I have them. Do your cats carry bags then? :rotfl:
    Don't turn a slip up into a give up:D
    *NSD Challenge Nov 0/10* *£10 a day challenge Nov £0/£300*
    No buying unnecessary toiletries challenge-in it for the long haul
    :D

  • lostinrates
    lostinrates Posts: 55,283
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    edited 5 December 2012 at 8:55AM
    suzitiger wrote: »
    Me too, its great to give hand me downs that have a nice story, I'm keping some things for my kids when I have them. Do your cats carry bags then? :rotfl:

    Yes, one of them does. Pink Whistley has a penchant for sparkly evening bags with long chains or straps. She drags them around the house, sometimes even takes them outside. She has been known to carry her toy mouse in them.:o. She is a particular creature. She also answers Skype or the old Amstrad phone we used to have if she could see it was my mother. Which was especially annoying if I had also seen it was my mother and was not answering!
  • Having spent most of yesterday hunting for DD2's file which contains her birth certificate, passport and the like (eventually located on the desk in our bedroom which is covered with OH's clothes!!!) I can safely say we are in urgent need of some de-Richarding.....

    I have decided that I really want a big sort out before the Christmas decs go up next week..... so here I go!
    :jFlylady and proud of it:j
  • 8 items put on ebay, bathroom cleaned, sitting room being cleaned, oven on for xmas cake, fruit been soaking overnight for cake, dog walked, list written for the rest of todays chores. House in chaos due to furniture shifting BUT I feel very in control. One item I puton ebay that has been in a carrier bag in the back room for OVER A YEAR has 17 watchers within 12 hours of listing it!!! I need to go to Ikea and buy some storage boxes so at least all the piles of stuff I turfed out of the drawers will be hidden in neat boxes, and not where they currently are which is in hideous piles all over my bedroom that are making me hyperventilate everytime I look at them! Also on list CS run this afternoon........
    IM ON A MISSION :)
    Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

    £117/ £3951.67
  • lostinrates
    lostinrates Posts: 55,283
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    edited 5 December 2012 at 3:14PM
    Grrr....I wish sorting out etc didn't make such a mess. :(.

    Edit to add...

    I am finding I am picking up threads of organisation which dropped earlier this year and which have been a challenge for some time. I am trying to balance the 'getting back to a normal happy organised life' with not becoming trapped my perfectionism.

    Last weekend I noticed I was trying to time and motion manage our brief shopping outing by suggesting different order in which to make our shop visits and I turned to dh and said. ' you know what....they way you suggested is the least practical and time efficient, but gives us the most time walking along holding hands. Let's do it'. He laughed for about half an hour on that one. :).
  • Goldiegirl
    Goldiegirl Posts: 8,805
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    GreyQueen wrote: »
    :) Welcome aboard, hun.

    I'm sorry to hear of your bereavements and I think you were so right to take your time about handling their belongings. It's generally recognised that for a year or so after a loss, people should try to avoid making big decisions as their grieving will impair their judgement, and maybe cause regretable decisions.

    I think things need to be worked through at their own pace.

    I had a LBM moment about something I found in my parents' attic; the cot, dismantled in pieces tucked under the far side of the eaves.

    When we moved to that house, we kids were 6 and 4 but Mum was pregnant and lost the baby, largely due to the stress of the move, we think. Parents decided not to try again. It was ages afterwards that the penny dropped and I realise that when she'd packed the cot at the old house, she expected to be using it again in a few months, for my younger sibling who never was. No wonder she was in no hurry to drag that particular item into the harsh light of day and process those emotions.

    I had a bit of a guilty moment when I was looking through old photos of my Grandma, who died when I was still quite a young girl. I saw a shelf behind her chair in this one picture and on it was a little patterned jug, which we'd kept and I'd decluttered to a charity shop. I hadn't realised that it was hers as I was too young to have remembered seeing it at her house.

    Anyway, I felt like a barbarian for getting rid of one of my lovely Grandma's things then I paused and got some perspective. Imagining if I died tomorrow and my family cleared my flat; would I expect them to have a deep emotional bond to anything and everything I owned at the moment I died, for them to demonstrate to themselves and each other how much they loved me?

    It seems silly when it's put like that, doesn't it? My love for Grandma is in my heart and mind, not in a small pottery jug or any other knick-knack. I wouldn't want anyone to hoard any of my stuff as a shrine.

    .

    Thank you for your kind thoughts.

    I have kept some things that belonged to my parents, as they have memories for me or simply because I like them and/or use them or have them displayed as ornaments. Those are things I'll never get rid of

    But it is so true that you don't need objects to remember your loved ones - you can remember them any time you want to.

    The process is ongoing, I'll be looking at their belongings again in the new year, as there are some more objects that I feel I can now let go.

    Letting go of objects seems easier than letting go of paper. I think to myself that my mum and dad kept papers for years ... who am I to get rid of them?

    There's lots of photos. I will keep all the family ones, but there's photos of friends that I have no knowledge of. But I can't just throw them out, they are images of people who had a life! I've noticed on eBay there is a market for old photos, so I may put them for up for auction, so at least someone will appreciate them.

    Also, my mum had a boyfriend before she met my dad who emmigrated to Canada. My mum felt she couldn't leave her family so they split up. It was amicable and they parted on good terms. They both went on to marry and have families, and for many years they exchanged Christmas cards. My mum kept them, so theres a small pile of Christmas cards from the 50's and early 60's. I never knew this man, but they've been kept all these years. Again, I think eBay may be the answer.

    Not so easy are lists and thigs like that. I have my mums Christmas present shopping lists from 1955.... I don't think ebay will be interested in those. Maybe that's a keeper.

    I'm not even a hoarder, but it's very difficult. For someone who is a hoarder it must be impossible to make these decisions.
    Early retired - 18th December 2014
    If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough
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