The Great Declutter Part 3 - 2011

ragnbone

Hi Everyone,

I hope you don't mind if I join in but I've been lurking around for years and have been so inspired by so many of you that I thought it was time I joined in.

I've was a hoarder for many years and come from a long long line of gatherers. I've been involved in helping to clear out the home of relatives when they've moved or passed away and I so I resolved to clear out before either of those two things happened!

I've been trying but even though I seem to be taking regular trips to charity shops and dumps and giving stuff to friends and relatives, I still have sorted things out!

So to keep me going I thought I'd list things here. This week:-

20 videos to charity
3 to relative

2 glasses
2 small cremaic bowls
stereo system

all to charity

now onto the pile of shredding:j

Have fun decluttering

EllieA_3

Hi guys,

I thought this was the best place to post as im sure you have some great suggestions. I've been trying to clear out my house /tidy and clean my house over the past few days and i've reached the point where the easy rooms are done. All i have left now are one very cluttered dining room (so bad we can't eat in it), a cluttered bedroom which you have to go climbing to find the bed and a cluttered tiny kitchen with far more stuff than space.

Problem is my husband is home all the time and he refuses to throw things away because they might one day be useful.

On friday night he went out (he only go's out about once per month) and i was able to shift some stuff without him noticing. But yesterday everytime i suggested we bin something i got a "oh no we might use it"

example : we have a broken tv that broke 15 years ago when we lived in his mothers sitting in the corner of the bedroom. the tube blew and we planned at the time to get it replace. when we moved the tv came with us .. 2 houses later it's STILL with us .. it doens't work, it's not digital and chances are we won't even be able to get the right sort of tube but would be let me bin it?? nope! :eek::eek: we have a perfectly good TV i don't get why we have to keep it.

how do you de-clutter when you have a horder in the house??!

P.S im not perfect i can horde almost as badly, though my hording tends to be sentimental. Yesterday i cleared some very ugly ornaments out of the lounge that used to be my great gran's but im not sure what to do with them either?? they are horrid dust collectors but they remind me of my great gran so can't quite bare to get rid of them?

TaupeTortoise

Data counts too. I have been sorting photos on my laptop. Delete delete.

clairehi

Hi Ellie,

could you take photos of the ornaments, and maybe keep just one favourite as a reminder of your great gran?

if not, personally I would box and store them for now.

its important not to get "stuck" agonising over one object - if you cant bear to part with them now, fine, leave it and find something else to chuck instead.

your OH sounds a bit like mine...
if you want to settle the argument I suggest you give him the phone number of a local tv repair shop to ring to ask about getting it fixed. hopefully they will politely tell him no (and not laugh at him!) and this will carry more weight than you telling him.

I do pick my battles with my OH re getting rid of stuff. he held onto several boxes full of Star Trek VHS tapes which he was clearly never going to watch again, for the best part of 10 years. the last 5 years they were not even unpacked after 2 house moves. I had to bite my lip over that so many times. in the end even he realised that they had to go but he had to realise that for himself.

tattycath

0/100
Jigsaw puzzle-given to a friend
Torch-given to a friend

2/100

mcculloch29

My sympathies to you Ellie.

I have a very useful storage unit that is chock full of magazines that my son (27 and no signs of moving, having too much fun) won't recycle. The mags are Men's Health. The info in them seems to repeat on a yearly cycle so he's probably got the same thing ten times anyway...

Ellie, could you 'accidentally' break the TV whilst moving it around the bedroom? Drop something on it? Or pretend you fell over it and go off on one?:D

A eureka moment yesterday. I took some things in to the Sally Army shop in Durham. They have a scheme whereby you buy a bag, take it home, fill it up with items to donate to them and they give you a £2 voucher on return.

Good idea I thought ... and then I thought, what would I buy with the voucher? Clothes I don't need which I can probably get cheaper from Durham's X Catalogue Shop?
Books that won't really be what I like to read?
Someone else's ornaments or glassware?
So, I didn't buy the bag!
I will still donate though. It's right opposite the bus station and they are one of the most valuable charities this nation has for their work with homeless people. I'd say more but that would be way off topic.

FelinePrincess

EllieA wrote: »

Hi guys,

I thought this was the best place to post as im sure you have some great suggestions. I've been trying to clear out my house /tidy and clean my house over the past few days and i've reached the point where the easy rooms are done. All i have left now are one very cluttered dining room (so bad we can't eat in it), a cluttered bedroom which you have to go climbing to find the bed and a cluttered tiny kitchen with far more stuff than space.

Problem is my husband is home all the time and he refuses to throw things away because they might one day be useful.

On friday night he went out (he only go's out about once per month) and i was able to shift some stuff without him noticing. But yesterday everytime i suggested we bin something i got a "oh no we might use it"

example : we have a broken tv that broke 15 years ago when we lived in his mothers sitting in the corner of the bedroom. the tube blew and we planned at the time to get it replace. when we moved the tv came with us .. 2 houses later it's STILL with us .. it doens't work, it's not digital and chances are we won't even be able to get the right sort of tube but would be let me bin it?? nope! :eek::eek: we have a perfectly good TV i don't get why we have to keep it.

how do you de-clutter when you have a horder in the house??!

P.S im not perfect i can horde almost as badly, though my hording tends to be sentimental. Yesterday i cleared some very ugly ornaments out of the lounge that used to be my great gran's but im not sure what to do with them either?? they are horrid dust collectors but they remind me of my great gran so can't quite bare to get rid of them?

Oh dear, he sounds like a nightmare! Fortunately my hoarder is no where near that bad. I would tell him firmly "it doesn't work, wont be easy to fix, it's not digital, not flatscreen and if we ever need a tv in the future we still wont use it so it's going!". With my oh, I always present him with a good reason why we should get rid of something, sometimes he still says no the 1st time but the 2nd time I bring it up I usually win. Also, it never hurts to moan about how much you hate living in a house full of clutter. Also when he reluctantly agrees to get rid of something - get it out the house quick before he can change his mind!

GreyQueen

I think there are probably more defunct TVs in people's homes than anyone would believe. My guess is that somethings were expensive, so when they break, we still attribute "value" to them and can't/ won't dejunk, even when we've replaced them long ago, and have no intention of paying for repairs.

I know someone who is, as we speak, on the job of clearing out a family home lived in for many decades by a chronic hoarder, now sadly deceased in her 84th year. There were 8 defunct TVs, drawers of unused clothes which had been nested in by mice and a stash of pre-decimal banknotes (I kid you not). And other horrors too numerous to mention. The relatives had what they wanted, the rest were jumble-saled and charity shopped but the bulk of it was unmitigated tat which was only fit for the skip.

I always find it helpful to think of the bus crash test, as in how embarrassing would it be if some stranger had to wade thru my carp? Well, obviously, I'd be dead, but you get the picture......;)

bonsibabe

so far so good

1-6 bags of carp for the bin

7 - bag of newspapers and mags for recycling

8 - hubby going thru his papers as we speak and getting a pile of shredding (which i will take to work and do lol)

9 - box of cardboard for recycling

only another 91 to go lol

FelinePrincess

GreyQueen wrote: »

I always find it helpful to think of the bus crash test, as in how embarrassing would it be if some stranger had to wade thru my carp? Well, obviously, I'd be dead, but you get the picture......;)

So it's not only me who morbidly worries about how embarrassing it would be if I died and someone had to sort through my stuff. Another thought that worries me is what if there was a fire and the firemen had to come in to try and out it out and saw clutter everywhere, or if they has to sort through the wreckage to find the cause of the fire and were just disgusted by all the clutter! I don't find these thoughts as bad anymore now I'm down to a more respectable level of clutter but they have been one of the things that have helped motivate me to get my house sorted!