Hoarding...not just on TV

cherie1122

Our vet recommends Advocate and we use it on our dog. It acts against worms as well as fleas.

He sold us a repeat prescription for £10 and I order the stuff online every three months.

Expensive but worth it.

blossomhill_2

Well done everyone who has - chins up and large hugs to those who haven't been able to and a jolly good welcome to those who are new

I was frogmarched to the plastic container cupboard on Sunday, to clear it out - we set up a table on the patio and found more and more and more in other cupboards. Same old story, things I thought I had one of turned out I had triplets! Nothing thrown out until lid was put with it. Best of any duplicates kept. Meds in plastic storage sorted out and de-junked. Pet items in plastic storage sorted out and
de-junked. Duplicate scales, chopping boards & place mats ditched. Cupboard door fixed, handle replaced, cupboard wiped out and no longer spewing out containers onto my head when I go to it!

Wheelie bin was due to leave half empty today so I dashed out and put the Tupperware in just before the bin men came. More than half a wheelie.

I took a lidded casserole off a top shelf and found the missing complex pieces of a craft project in it! Had resisted recutting them as I knew I hadn't thrown them out (as if!)

Today set of steps and broken lounger thrown out. Collected one v large item off freecycle. Arranged to pick up another tomorrow. Car boot dejunked to make room for them

Garden waste shredded - enough to fill 5+ large trugs, now being composted. Spiky roses cut right back and stems disposed of at the time, creating two new routes round garden.

Somehow I feel like I have done nothing, but it just shows how having a friend involved can help! Perhaps I feel a little numb!

I swear that Tupperware will survive a nuclear event along with the cockroaches

valk - 13 empties !!!

PS don't you just wish Unis would have communal stashes of household stuff for newbies to dip into and leavers to contribute to - think of the money it would save and petrol it would save parents transporting it

blossomhill_2

GreyQueen wrote: »

Time's a-wasting. My Grandma (Mum's foster-Mum and 50 years her senior) put this on her 21st birthday card It's Later than you Think! That's either profound or ridiculous, you choose. Mum's still scratching her head over it all these years on and Grandma went to her Maker back in 1970

GQ - popular Victorian theme that, similar to "the night cometh" used on sundials, was she a real Old-Tymer?

Ellidee

GreyQueen wrote: »

Time's a-wasting. My Grandma (Mum's foster-Mum and 50 years her senior) put this on her 21st birthday card It's Later than you Think! That's either profound or ridiculous, you choose. Mum's still scratching her head over it all these years on and Grandma went to her Maker back in 1970

Had to delurk to post this ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHKCPorcBvk

GreyQueen

blossomhill wrote: »

GQ - popular Victorian theme that, similar to "the night cometh" used on sundials, was she a real Old-Tymer?

Yeah 1893-1970, so born in the Victorian era. Real country salt-of-the-earth, floral pinny hen raising OS woman. I was still quite young when she passed, so have fewer memories than I would have like.

Don't know why she thought Mum was letting moss grow; she'd been engaged to Dad for a while by then, she married him a few months after her 21st and had me the month after her 22nd birthday.

Ellidee, thank you! I didn't play it earlier as it was the middle of the night but I'm enjoying it now. I'll tell Mum, too.

valk_scot

I'm thinking about what my target area should be today.I'm getting quite keen on the thought of emptying the airing cupboard but a load of laundry went up on the drying lines in there last night and it's difficult to get in at the shelves. All this talk of plastic boxes makes me think of the collection in there though. I've got a shelf in a kitchen cupboard full of two sorts of boxes, firstly a pile of takeaway boxes, all with lids. There's about twenty of them and I do use takeaway boxes for freezing so they're fine. There's also five sets of plastic lidded boxes I bought in Tesco about five years ago, five sizes to the set and they're great, they get used for fridge and freezer and all sorts of things, only broken one in five years and they're in use too so they're fine.

So what's this other shelf of boxes in the airing cupboard for then? They're far more random in shape and size and they're there because I might need a box of this particular size one day. I can't remember the last time I took one off that shelf, actually, so one day probably doesn't come round that often. This is potentialy hoarding stuff, isn't it? Even though some of it is the Tupperware that I felt I had to order when a good pal did her first Tupperware party seventeen years back and I've never used because it's the wrong size for anything but I've dragged round and found room for ever since because it's Tupperware, you know. Oh dear.....

And there is a shelf beneath it filled with things like old biscuit tins and Celebration tubs, for all the cakes I bake for school fetes and such. Oh, wait a minute, I hardly ever bake, do I? And when I do reluctantly do so and send stuff in I make carry boxes for it out of cereal boxes so I don't have to remember to get them back. THere's three spare baking bowls on the shelf too, for all the batch baking I've never actually done. Oh dear again....

It's interesting when you start thinking about things, isn't it? If you asked me normally why I've got this huge walk in cupboard lined with shelves filled with neat, tidy lines of really useful looking items I'd say it was because they were really useful to own. But it's dawning on me that I don't actually use most of them so how useful are they really? They are useful things, but not to me. I'd be just as well filling up the shelves with empty milk containers or bundles of old newspapers..

...ahhh...yes, there is a little lightbulb dimly starting to flicker somewhere in my brain here, yup. Ahem. My name is Val and I am a hoarder....

GreyQueen

Oooh, the fatal allure of the container. Particularly the plastic container. Not only are there a gadzillion of them especially made for the purpose, there are also all the really useful ones which come with food.

Celebrations tins. Roses tins. Jacobs Cream Cracker orange plastic boxes. Margarine tubs. It never stops.

Know what you mean about the Tupperware. Mum has some of the original 1970s stuff. It lasts because it isn't used. It can't be got rid off because it's, y'know, Tupperware. Tubbyware, as I call it, is clearly a Sacred Domestic Object. thought we were getting ahead on the 'Ware a few months ago when Mum decided 3 of the good unused containers could go. She offered her SIL first refusal, was refused and they were then intended to go to the c.s. but she had second-thoughts and they're back in the cupboard. Arrggggggggghhhhhh!

I had a purge a few months ago. All the plastics live in one small single wall cabinet, apart from the ones in the freezer ( I batch-cook). They're a motley selection of those oblong takeaway boxes (I got them 10 for £1 at Poundland as don't buy takeaways), ice cream tubs and a few other bits and bobs. Vitalite! Sweedish Glace! The hard stuff.

These days, to avoid temptation, I find that I'm avoiding things in covetable containers at point of sale. You can't even give this stuff away on Frecycle, I find; guess we all have too much of it.

D'you think the female love of containers is hardwired into the species, back to the dawn of time when we were wandering about foraging? Could it explain the allure of bags as well?

valk_scot

GreyQueen wrote: »

,

These days, to avoid temptation, I find that I'm avoiding things in covetable containers at point of sale.

In a word, hatboxes! I love toiletries in hatboxes! And baskets. And fancy bags. I am a sucker for all these things, I haunt Boots for its 75% sale so I can buy all these great containers filled with ho-hum toiletries. I even went and sat outside the Body Shop one December so I could get a big sparkly gold hatbox in the sale, lol. So now they're all over the house, these hatboxes and bags and baskets and boxes, all no doubt holding useful things I've forgotten I own. :embarasse

whitewing

Shame you don't live near me. DH needs a hatbox for his hats.

I loved your post Val about the tupperware boxes. It describes to a tee how it all creeps up on us. As DS is getting older, will one day leave home, and is not too domesticated, we are trying to get into the habit of regular reviews so maybe a spring clear out of the kitchen cupboards etc. Surprising in the 5 years we have been in this house, how much our daily habits gradually change.

Have to say that I am taking a lot of pleasure out of passing things on and imagining someone else reading them or using them. I couldn't let yesterday pass without getting something out of the house so I binned the rest of the bottle of peppermint foot spray, which has been hanging around for so many summers that I have no idea when I bought it. It relocated itself to the kitchen, and seeing it out of its normal environment gave me a moment of clarity. I also gave 4 books to a friend. An author I don't think she'd heard of, so I think she'll enjoy them.

Got to do some work before I can do anything else today.

short_bird

Ah... plastic containers. They were culled quite severely after the collapse of the kitchen cabinets After The Flood. (The night that we had hot water running from one kitchen light socket and cold from the other and the vinyl had to be taken up and the smell remained . :eek:)
Although, initially, I kept a set of nesting bowls with lids, they were a) round so weren't a good use of space and b) the lids didn't fit very well. Basically, I'm down to one size and shape of takeaway container, one large one to store them in and some small cute ones for transporting bits of lunch to work.

But the Really U$eful B0xes... how I wish I had decluttered before buying one. Then another. But I didn't:rotfl:

GQ: any 70's tupperware? Opaque and various shades of yellow, avocado and brown?