Hoarding...not just on TV

KAT44_2

SpikyHedgehog wrote: »

I think we all do that completely overwhelmed feeling - at least, I know I do! I try to push myself to focus on sorting out a category ie childrens clothes, & look at the progress I've made rather than the stuff still to deal with.

Passed DS2's old school fleece onto a friend for her son, put 3 odd socks in the clothes recycling & an itchy scratchy jumper in the CS bag. Getting fleece sewn onto the curtains for the sitting room instead of having curtains & fleece piled up in my bedroom... Perfectionism strikes as I bodged up DS2's curtains & want to do the sitting room ones better, even though DS2's look ok now they're up. & so I put them off & do nothing, because then I haven't got it wrong...

Glad to know it's not just me, not meaning that I want others to feel overwhelmed, it's just that sometimes if I'm having a bad day I just seem to focus on people who seem to have "it" all together and therefore see myself as a complete failure. It helps to know that others have the same problems too, and it makes me smile when one of you has a good day or solves some problem. I learn something from every post on here, did I mention that I love this thread :cheesy:
By the way I'm a fraudster because most of my family and friends think that I'm super organised and have "it" (not sure what "it" is, but will figure it one day ) all together. However my dh, ds, dd, and best friend know that I'm a major stress head, and only you lot on here know about the attic of doom (so shhhhhhhh) as the kids are not allowed up there and dh has osteoarthritis so can't get up there and believe me he would also have heart problems if he could If I'm brave enough and can figure out how to do it I'll post some pics.
Somewhere up there is the fabric and other diy stuff required to create my "perfect life" just waiting for me to have the time and mindset to do it "perfectly". Dreadful disease this perfectionism seems like a lot of us are inflicted, maybe together we can find the cure

valk_scot

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

Sounds like it - it's sort of like cotton wool/wadding in texture, just nicer. How would I do that?

(BTW, this isn't hoarding or keeping on the offchance. Honest. )

Sounds like it's been at least washed and possibly processed in some way. I didn't think it would be completely raw from the sheep's back, not near foodstuff.

Anyway, try a tiny bit to see if these fibres will make felt. Not all do though I doubt this is superwash fibre. Pull off a piece about the size of a pack of cards, fluff it out a bit and roll into a loose ball. Run a sink of hot water and have a jug of cold water beside you as well. Put the ball of fluff in the water, soap your hands (bar soap is best) and start rolling the ball gently like you'd roll a ball of dough. Once the ends have started catching into the surface, dump it in the cold water and squeeze it through gently. Repeat two or three times, you can roll a bit harder as the ball firms up. The idea is to get a smooth ball with no cracks or folds on the outside. The hot water and soap opens the scales on the wool fibres, the cold water shock makes them close up on each other to give the felt. Once the ball is fairly firm give it a final cold rinse to get the water out, squeeze the excess water gently out, give one last roll to reshape and leave it to dry on a radiator.

If it works then you can make a bigger ball, if you start off with a melon sized ball of loose fluff it should felt down to golf ball size. My DD makes these with her friends using my scrap fibre, a lot of my fibre is dyed of course and it makes great felt "beads". You can thread them on a string for cat toys or DD makes pretty ones and puts them in a dish with HM soaps for teacher presents, they pick up the scent of the soap. Being a natural fibre it won't hurt a cat to eat a few small strands of it unlike synthetic cat toy material. But make the toy big enough so the cat can't swallow it whole, cats get enough furballs as it is.

valk_scot

KAT44 wrote: »

Glad to know it's not just me, not meaning that I want others to feel overwhelmed, it's just that sometimes if I'm having a bad day I just seem to focus on people who seem to have "it" all together and therefore see myself as a complete failure. It helps to know that others have the same problems too, and it makes me smile when one of you has a good day or solves some problem. I learn something from every post on here, did I mention that I love this thread :cheesy:
By the way I'm a fraudster because most of my family and friends think that I'm super organised and have "it" (not sure what "it" is, but will figure it one day ) all together. However my dh, ds, dd, and best friend know that I'm a major stress head, and only you lot on here know about the attic of doom (so shhhhhhhh) as the kids are not allowed up there and dh has osteoarthritis so can't get up there and believe me he would also have heart problems if he could If I'm brave enough and can figure out how to do it I'll post some pics.
Somewhere up there is the fabric and other diy stuff required to create my "perfect life" just waiting for me to have the time and mindset to do it "perfectly". Dreadful disease this perfectionism seems like a lot of us are inflicted, maybe together we can find the cure

Hah, you sound just like me. I won't let my OH up in the attic either, I've got enough craft stuff and vintage whatevers to dress this house like Country Living magazine if I could ever get my act together to do so...and clear out the house enough to make it worthwhile. I sometimes think I'll get it just the way I want it and then get run over by a bus the next day before I get to enjoy it.:rotfl:

Tell you something though, now that I've got going I'm already feeling better about the mess. It's loosened up a bit, became more fluid as were. Just getting rid of 6-8 boxes of stuff out the attic has given me elbow room to start reorganising the next bit, it's not like one of these nine square puzzles that you have to move seven squares to get to the eigth one, the one you actually need. Except I didn't have that nineth empty square to move around in. Now I do.

skipsmum

valk_scot wrote: »

The technical (somewhat jokey term) for this is snorgling the fleece. Lovely word!

That is such a lovely word! My cats all snorgle fleece blankets

VJsmum

I have been in the cupboard of doom (under the stairs)

So far I have put for recycling the box the iron came in, and tipped 2 bottles of snowball and three of cherry B down the sink. We've all tried them and no-one likes them (funny, I used to love a snowball..)

It is a start.

valk_scot

OH paused at the tottering pile of zip up blanket bags in the hall and asked why we had so many fleeces? Duvets, dear, duvets. Winter duvets, summer duvets, inbetween duvets.... Anyway that's my task for today, to triage the duvets. Hoping to reduce them by 50%.

DD was helpful yesterday, she brught back a textiles recycling bag from school as part of their eco fundraising event. We filled it up quite easily from the scruffy pile in her wardrobe and she dragged it off into school today with instructions to bring back another couple of bags, she'll have time to take them in for Tuesday. Saves me a bit of CS time and it's good for her to feel she's helping out.

lostinrates

Jojo, re fleece from sheep. Our cats have one (ikea sadly) which se call'mama rug' they love it. They knead it, and its the only thing theyu really do that to.

Its come round europe with us and they know where mama rug is is 'bed' and home for the night. Mama rug has once got to stinky to clean, at which point mama rug was sneakily replaced with a second one, and girst mama rug disposed of. They really make great comforting beds for our cats.

lostinrates

I was not planning on any dericharding today, the weather is so nice. But. All this talk of mama rug...well, mama rug sits in the top of a box of richard atm.

I yhink fate had jojo receive nice fleece to tell us so i feel inspired to de richard a box.

Jettycat

KAT44 wrote: »

By the way I'm a fraudster because most of my family and friends think that I'm super organised and have "it" (not sure what "it" is, but will figure it one day ) all together. However my dh, ds, dd, and best friend know that I'm a major stress head, and only you lot on here know about the attic of doom (so shhhhhhhh) as the kids are not allowed up there and dh has osteoarthritis so can't get up there and believe me he would also have heart problems if he could If I'm brave enough and can figure out how to do it I'll post some pics.
Somewhere up there is the fabric and other diy stuff required to create my "perfect life" just waiting for me to have the time and mindset to do it "perfectly". Dreadful disease this perfectionism seems like a lot of us are inflicted, maybe together we can find the cure

You ARE my soulmate!!

I'm a fraud as well - everyone always says how organised I am and DH calls me "Monica" (from Friends) as I'm a bit anal about some things and he always tells people I have a thing about filing, so even he doesn't realise what I'm actually like! I have an attic of doom (although our attic has actually been proper living space since the house was built, the previous owners were part way through doing it up when we bought it, ie, no bathroom in the bathroom, just pipes! and we haven't done any work on it yet) which is open plan ish and I theoretically use one end/room as my office, basically the whole space is just one big storage area for my carp! The children and DH aren't allowed up there and for some reason they adhere to this despite it being easy for them if they wanted to go up.

Since starting this thread I have admitted a bit more to a very good friend and that has actually really helped, but reading everyone's posts is what's keeping me going with getting rid of stuff.

I think it is going to take me quite a while to get over the perfectionism thing though. At the moment, I can't imagine letting anyone else do or finish the jobs that need doing round the house as I KNOW I can do them better if I just have the time ... I do hope there is a cure

xx

alec_eiffel

There is a cure for perfectionism but it's not very nice! It's all about just doing things or letting other people doing them and working through the feelings when things aren't done "properly". It's uncomfortable and can bring about huge feelings of anxiety but it is worth it because after quite a bit of practice you'll find out that on almost every occasion nothing happens if things are done well enough, not perfectly.

Perfection is all about things working only when things go according to plan A, but life isn't about that. Sometimes there's a big jump to be made to accept that even though we'd like life to be a certain way they're not, probably crossing over with the dream self thing again. We don't live in isolation so other people and things are going to impact on how we want the world to be. Accepting that is really freeing, or it was for me anyway.