Hoarding...not just on TV

D&DD

Managed to whittle down 3 black sacks of DS3's clothes to just one hurrah! and have dutifully cut up the last bag into useful bits and not..I need to keep umpteen zips,buttons,velcro bits etc as they may be useful :think:

Just attacking my recipe folders now :eek:

Byatt

lostinrates wrote: »

Whoch makes me wonder...how many hoarders feel their environment is pleasing aesthtically to them? Without the clutter i mean?

I think part of de richarding is beautifying, the penulitmate stage, decoration the end stage....maintaining.

Living in a wreck has beenfits and drawbacks. The wreck has made me relax about carpets......they are not here 'forever' but i relise to late i am training my dh and myself and parent to walk through the house with boots on...no good long term.

It wasn't pleasing to me but I realise now I can make it pleasant to live in...the decluttering involves me getting rid of things that I thought I wanted, a lot of aspirational stuff which doesn't mean it's valuable or anything, just things I thought would make my home better, but of course as soon as they entered they got lost amongst the other stuff as I had no room to put them anywhere.

I must admit the last 2 years or so, almost 3 I think have been about me resenting the situation I'm in and feeling defeated by it, a combination of anger and bitterness. In reality I am worse off than I was 3 years ago but my mindset is changing.

Anyway, in the process of decluttering, what is emerging is a kind of beauty as I choose what stays and what goes, and can at last accept my surroundings and see a reflection of me in it. I have only myself to answer to of course so it's much easier in some ways as I don't have to accommodate someone else's likes or dislikes.

alec_eiffel

lostinrates wrote: »

Whoch makes me wonder...how many hoarders feel their environment is pleasing aesthtically to them? Without the clutter i mean?

I think part of de richarding is beautifying, the penulitmate stage, decoration the end stage....maintaining.

Living in a wreck has beenfits and drawbacks. The wreck has made me relax about carpets......they are not here 'forever' but i relise to late i am training my dh and myself and parent to walk through the house with boots on...no good long term.

Because I started my mess afresh when we moved house and had only been in there for a few years when I started sorting it everything was beautifully preserved underneath :rotfl: Because of the disgust I felt about the state I'd let the place get into I resented the horrible old bathroom so we had a lot of work done in there and it was the most beautiful room I'd ever had anything to do with. Not long after that though we decided we wanted to move so getting sorted had the double benefit that it was easier to sell the house, then I could bring all the lessons to this new house that has never been sullied with the hoard.

thriftwizard

I've been missing for a bit, tied up with other things. Got perilously close to hoarding blackberries - we picked so many at the weekend that I ran out of jamjars and nearly out of freezer space too! Basically I just grabbed whatever I could before the weather went downhill & they rotted on the vines, but thanks to other commitments I didn't have enough time to deal with them all straight away. Which is exactly how my "stock" for my shop/stall built up to silly levels, too...

I must admit the last 2 years or so, almost 3 I think have been about me resenting the situation I'm in and feeling defeated by it, a combination of anger and bitterness.

Byatt, once again you have hit the nail on the head. When I try to analyse why on earth I've allowed things to get so stupidly out-of-control, I can feel an enormous bubble of resentment simmering away inside me. I'm in a situation that for one reason or another I can't seem to break free of & it's as if all the ugly, useless clutter is a physical symptom of that. But it's more than that, because it actually makes the situation worse & more intractable; it's as if I feel I don't deserve to live in anything better than an ugly hovel. And yet it's a kind of defence, too; a wall against the "slings & arrows of outrageous fortune," a rampart of stuff that might possibly be needed one day, if the sky falls... I wonder why I constantly feel as if it might?

But as my elder daughter keeps reminding me, we've come a long way in the last few months. Most of the "public" areas of the house look quite acceptable now, or can do after a 5-minute scurry-round. So I need to keep going; I still haven't sorted out the cookery books! I do cook a lot, but not the aspirational stuff in 90% of the books that people have given me over the years - more the Yorkshire TV "Farmhouse Cookery" series, Marguerite Patten & Mrs Beeton kind of down-to-earth stuff than anything more challenging - or expensive! So that's what I will tackle today, before and after a trip down West.

whitewing

Unexpected declutter. 2 broken electrical items have gone to my brother to see if they can be fixed. If not, it'll be easier to discard now they're out of the house.

1 folder gone to a good home.

Recycling gone to work with DH. He got stuck in traffic so will go to the recycling centre on his way home.

Jo_anne_2

Everyone is doing really well.

I have painted the study with a leftover tin of emulsion and it's looking much better. I'm plodding on steadily, sorting through all the stuff that came out of there - I still can't believe how much fitted in that tiny room! Most recent achievement was going through old knitting patterns and trying to be rational about which ones I might actually use again and which were just aspirational. OH is taking some bags to the CS tomorrow. I'll feel better when the bags have actually left the house, I think. :j

lostinrates

No dericharding and i don't expect any this week. However, clearing our room a bit has made me feel SO MUCH BETTER. It has a first coat of paint on it, which we will second coat over winter (we tend to work outside when weather is good, and then i got worse health this summer). I look forward to getting a 'finished' result.

lostinrates

Quick questions....

How often do people who do not hoard do the following:

Need to edit their bedside table contents.

Derichard clothing from wardrobes or drawers

Derichard first aid things

i onow i have more i want to ask.

Patchwork_Quilt

Well, lostinrates, I didn't think I was a hoarder, but I can answer your questions very simply

- our room is too small for a bedside table, so no decluttering needed there.
- I cleared out my first aid cupboard once a year
- I cleared out my wardrobe every year and after holidays, when I suddenly realised that I could live with what was in my suitcase and the rest was just excess stuff.

However, I have come to realise that this was never done very efficiently. For example, I have a vile red T-shirt upstairs. It was given to me when I helped in Holiday Club at Church many years ago. So long ago I'm not sure when it was. At the end of Holiday Club, I tried to give it back but was told to keep it just in case I helped again. Ever since then, it has been in a drawer. Holiday Club happens somewhere else now, so no-one needs a T-shirt with 'St X, Helper' all over it and yet I can't take it to the cs in case it falls into the Wrong Hands.

But I haven't thrown it away. Why? It was new when I got it. It might come in useful. However, it's vast and extremely red. I shall never wear it.

So, I thought I could clear out, but I think I was just playing at it. And the T-shirt is going in the bin when I next get off the sofa.

Thank you, chaps. We can do it.

The_Dragon

lostinrates wrote: »

Quick questions....

How often do people who do not hoard do the following:

Need to edit their bedside table contents.

Derichard clothing from wardrobes or drawers

Derichard first aid things

i onow i have more i want to ask.

Table - about once a month

Clothes - when I can pin down Dr Dragon! (should be happening either one night this week or next weekend though)

First aid - probably quarterly