Hoarding - Springing Ahead

Ive sorted out a couple more bags for life of things that can go. A friend unexpectedly turned up at 8.30 this morning, I knew she was going to visit this month but didn't know what day. She's here till Sunday...

Until this latest round of dehoarding and kondoing and sorting, this would have sent me into a flapping panic. Instead, the only urgent thing I had to do was clean the loo - everything else was messy but alright. Not tidy, not immaculate, but good enough.

Hope everyone is doing well in this path, tiny baby steps all add up

Does anyone else find that rooms look terrible just before bed, yet they aren't too bad the next morning, even though nothing has changed?

dragonette wrote: »

Ive sorted out a couple more bags for life of things that can go. A friend unexpectedly turned up at 8.30 this morning, I knew she was going to visit this month but didn't know what day. She's here till Sunday...

Until this latest round of dehoarding and kondoing and sorting, this would have sent me into a flapping panic. Instead, the only urgent thing I had to do was clean the loo - everything else was messy but alright. Not tidy, not immaculate, but good enough.

Hope everyone is doing well in this path, tiny baby steps all add up

Does anyone else find that rooms look terrible just before bed, yet they aren't too bad the next morning, even though nothing has changed?

Re rooms looking bad. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me to kick start the declutter again. I had a dream where I was a new volunteer at a place providing items for 'families in need'. It was a largish property over several floors and most of the 'donations' were neither use nor ornament. The property was in bad condition and the top floor had damp patches on the walls and floor due to holes in the ceiling. Nothing was sorted, just random piles here and there - I can remember some dark green crepe paper, a heap of 1970s foam backed material (think it was a forerunner to draylon for making mock velvet 'insulated' curtains but I remember my mother making me a pinafore from the factory remnants shop) and some broken bed heads with lots of spare bits of wood. Think there were some drawers in need of mending but that was in the early part of the dream which was fading by the time I woke up.

Luckily none of this is present in my current home (although I bought DS3 a new headboard which I haven't managed to attach to his bed yet) but the things I remember have featured in homes I have lived in (mum splashing out on a couple of rolls of crepe paper for Christmas decorations was a regular feature of my childhood) and if I don't tackle things NOW in ten or twenty years my clutter could be as relevant and useful as the dream items.

Unfortunately there seem to be lots of issues I need to tackle at once, but am determined to do something, however small, each day. I also want to use what I have - I know I have some good material stored away that I have been saving until I was a reasonable size - but I am getting very short on clothes (discarded larger sizes as I have lost weight)
and need to make use of my store (also thinking of craft items to sell using the store - a good way of converting 'junk' to cash).

My mother phones this morning to tell me about a bungalow she has seen (money for this is dependent on me selling the 'up for sale' house). I have looked at it on line and it is truly tiny so I can see much radical decluttering on the cards - she had stopped my previous efforts and I have not been able to continue since my operation (the stairs at her partner's house are very narrow and steep). I have bought a weekly but ticket so I can 'bus-hop' back and forth to tackle the maintenance of the 'for sale' house. Even managed to show two men round the other night - they had been standing looking at the front. Really want to be rid of that house now, even with a loss on what I paid for it.

It's been so quiet here -is everyone busy decluttering ?

I managed to get 2 bags to the CS this week and the Cash4Clothes bag is also slowly filling up. The DIY project that is going to be DD2's room is also moving forward after we managed to put a lovely "new" Ikea shelving sytem up (thanks, Gumtree, lol) and did my wrist in unscrewing literally 100s of fixings of her hand- made high sleeper! I must say that OH did build this 15 years ago for eternity...now at least we'll have plenty of kindling for the fire and he will use the better planks of wood for finishing the window frames and the living room shelving. At least that's the plan as for now he has managed to clutter up my shed!

I thought this thread could do with a BUMP

Pleased to see this thread back up near the top; I have to admit total failure lately & am in need of encouragement/a boot up the derriere. One more offspring has moved back in (DS3, working in a church near us for the next year) so we are now down to just one small spare room for DS1's sporadic visits home & any other random guests, which also has to house my work/sewing bench & fabric collection. There's stock up to ceiling levels in the porch & conservatory again...

So I've chosen this moment to downsize my stall at the Emporium... the lighting over my old one has died & can't be replaced in a hurry, but a smaller but better-shaped & lit space has come free opposite. To try to reduce the stock I need to house in the new space, I marched down there today & put an "everything half-price" notice up, which made me panic mightily; I kept thinking, no, no, not that, that's worth every penny I'm asking for it, every time I looked at anything. BUT that way madness lies... I'd never be able to get it all on the new pitch! And I won't be losing out, just moving stuff on at the price I paid for it rather than for a profit.

Sorted out yet more fabric to go for sale today; next job is to go through the hats and only keep the ones that worth giving up storage space for. I'm fining down the scope of what I do & trying to reduce the impact on family life, as well as the amount of stuff I have to keep track of & attempt to care for. Pleased to report, though, that our bedroom is now as tidy as any room with 15,000-odd football programmes in it can be, & the wardrobe & drawers are sorted & don't contain anything (of mine) that isn't in current use.

Was dismayed to find something under the bed that got left over from last Christmas - shows how often I clean under there! But as it's a large tin of choccies, still perfectly edible, it's not all bad news...