Hoarding...not just on TV

Patchwork_Quilt

Our news today is that we've finally sorted the study out. The house has two small bedrooms and two decent doubles so years ago, we allocated one of the doubles as a study/playroom. Well, DS and DD are rather old for a playroom now and DD is away at Uni so we swapped DS's room with the study. Since DS has been decluttering in anticipation, his stuff has gone in quite smoothly. However, the study stuff is taking more time. We have a pile of boxes to loft, cs bags, things to fix and things to hang up. However, it has given me a chance to sort my work stuff out. I have an awful lot of it at home and it bugs me no end. It's partly because I work for a tiny charity and every year we move someone and half of their stuff gets lost or put in the wrong cupboard ... Anyway, I'm fed up of it cluttering up my house so gradually, I'm taking it to work to clutter up the cupboard there. If it gets lost, well, it gets lost. My shelves look a lot better for it.

So, I'm half way through a job, which is niggling, but it's better than waiting for it to happen.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Old Girl Cat has a marble sized lump in her tummy


Vet's next week, I think.



********

Yes, a cluttered, dirty, oppressive place can make you very ill.

It's fine to just get rid. Why waste your energy on it anymore than absolutely necessary?


(Oh, and just to let you know - not to have a dig - an upset and vulnerable 17 year old is going to feel a whole lot more secure and relaxed in a cleaner, tidier, less messy home than what looks like a dumping ground.

If she's already in mental chaos, maybe the last thing she needs is physical chaos round her as well - so dealing with it all NOW could be good for her as well - showing that huge changes can be difficult, can be scary but the final outcome is a good thing. And it might give her something to occupy herself with if she were to offer to help/were asked 'do you think this is something worth keeping or only fit for the skip?')

whitewing

Oh yes, ridiculous amounts of clutter can actually have a worse effect on others who are forced to live with you with it. At least there is some warped comfort from it for you. For others, they get scared to touch or move it but have to lock their own feelings about it away.

Florenceem

I have a lot of stuff to get rid of. I do use Eb.. - makes me feel better about getting rid of bits when I get some money in return. I suppose - reward effect works for me.

GreyQueen

(((((Picklepot)))))))

I'm firmly of the belief that a cluttered home can make you ill. Physically-ill from dust and mould spores and mentally ill from all the mental static caused by the stuff.

I'm working but on a modest p/t wage and have a history of selling stuff at bootfairs for years, back in the day when I had a car or could borrow one from people I lived with.

So, selling stuff sits easily with me, is what I'm trying to convey. I'm pretty good at it. I arguably "need" the money.

Then I had a good hard look at the returns on booting stuff vs the pitch fee/ petrol and something for my time and I was "earning" about £2/ hour and often out in freezing weather and up at sparrowf.art o'clock to do it all.

Thinking about it, if someone had tried to hire me to work at that price, they'd've got very short shrift.

If you've not come across him before, I recommend the anti-cluttering writer Don Aslett to you. He's light-hearted but very acute and what he said about holding onto stuff on the grounds of maybe needing it in some future crisis version of your life was this (I paraphrase but not by much)

The only people who will have enough money to buy your clutter will be the rich and they will have enough clutter of their own. If you intend to survive hard times, store up money, friends, food and talent, not things. Their chief use will be to fuel your fire to keep you warm.

Another concept which might help you release your excess is to understand the processes by which things decay. Everything which was ever made is on a journey through a physical process of decline. For some things, like that biodegradable plastic bag which is quietly turning itself into confetti in your plastic-bags cache, that may be a year or two.

For an unbroken glass, it may be millennia. For most other things, they are changing, rotting, perishing, yellowing, crumbling, shredding, flattening, leaking etc as a result of the chemical processes within themselves. And let's not forget the potential attentions of insects and vermin and damp.

Our stored stuff, whether treasured in cabinets or just rammed into garages and shed and attics, isn't in stasis like a science fiction movie. It's doing it's stuff in real time and it isn't benefitting from storage.

Sooooo, on a selfish persepective, it might not be usable by you when you eventually decide to use it, or it might be so far gone that it's useless to anyone when you need to sell it. So. whatever value it has now, it's busily-losing it while we speak.

If you don't want to use it yourself but have delayed passing it on, you may leave it too long and it'll be useless to anybody and you'll have helped waste the resources it was made from and contributed to landfill.

Also, you pay for storing stuff. Some of the bills are paid in lost time, stress, rows and stubbed toes. Others are paid in bigger mortgages and higher rents for bigger homes to store your clutter. If you use one bedroom but own three and two are full of gawdknowswhat, and you'd like to downsize but can't face the process, how much is this costing you over a lifetime? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

I'm irreligious and think that we're only here once and I don't want to be a cranky old lady in a nursing home someday thinking about all the fun stuff I could've been doing back in the day but didn't get around to because I was cataloguing my DVDs or re-arranging my collection of ??? or dusting some carp...........

Byatt

Lots of fab posts Pickle, so I will just say something from my perspective.

My house was making me ill, at first I made excuses saying it's because it's damp and mouldy, it's old, there's not much room, how can I be happy here when I have nowhere to put stuff. But it got to the stage where I couldn't clean the mould, I kept the curtains closed so people wouldn't see in, I couldn't cook proper meals because there was stuff, from dirty dishes to just piles of stuff I thought I would sell one day, or use when I got things tidy, or enjoy when I could see them properly.

I was waiting for the next boot sale, or to get motivated enough to sell on fleabay, after all, my stuff must be valuable and how could I justify just giving it away, what if it turned up on the next series of D!ckinson's re@l deal and sold for hundreds if not thousands.

So, after reading on here, and giving myself permission to just get rid of stuff in order to break the backbone of it, that's what I did. I even threw some items away, literally in the bin, because if I stopped to try and sell it it would never go. I have given loads to charity shops and I feel that it is my way of giving back, as I can't actually afford to give hard cash. So things are never wasted, they are used for good causes and I'm always chuffed when I go back in and no longer see my items for sale as I know they are now being used.

It's funny, when they are actually gone, all the agonising and over thinking beforehand is as nothing, because I could barely list 10 things that have left this house now, as my attachment to them has been severed.

I have sold a couple of things on fleabay, a wii and something else, oh a D!tchfield paperweight because I could get over £100 for them, but it's a hard slog selling when you feel overwhelmed with the clutter. I didn't even have room to photograph anything! And I used to sell on there professionally.

I think you have started your journey to declutter/de hoard by having this insight and asking yourself is this making me ill.

I am getting real pleasure from my home now, although I still have a way to go. I can actually walk across my living room without stepping over/tripping over things. I am tackling the damp and the mould because I can reach things now.

I'm getting my chimney cleaned because the sweep can come in, before I was too ashamed.

Honestly, I can't believe the difference in me compared to a few months ago. I have kept pics and will post one day when I'm brave enough.

xxx

ps, if you eventually decide you do want to sell on fleabay, then PM me, and I will help you through it.
Doing a boot sale is a great leveller where value of goods are concerned. When someone is not even prepared to pay 50p for something you thought was a treasure, it really does open your eyes to "value".

Gingernutty

:hello: I've been lurking for some time since my last post on here - I have been keeping up and decluttering.

Picklepot, if you really need to see how much some of your treasure is worth now, go to somewhere like CashConverters with some of your choicest bits and get ready to weep, honestly.

You'll be offered about one tenth of what you paid for it and that's if you've kept the box and instructions and it's nearly new.

They probably won't even take a huge portion, as it won't sell at all.

Yes, you spent a fortune on it (I'm still undecided about my own cross stitch pictures), yes you went to a lot of trouble to buy it and bring it home and yes, it feels like a shocking waste to just throw/give it away.

However, it was a shocking waste of money when you bought it. It's now causing stress, guilt and misery.

You are not going to lose any more money getting rid of it now and you will feel better for it when it's gone.

You don't want to spend time in your own house. That's wrong. Your house should be a place you feel safe and comfortable. It should be a place where you want to be - not feel as if you have to be there.

I second GreyQueen, Don Aslett is an astute writer about clutter and cleaning.

:grouphug: Dodgy hugs everybody, it sounds very hard and difficult out there.......

365days

Have any of you tried using [EMAIL="f@cebook"]facebook[/EMAIL] selling pages. i am really lucky that we have some very active local pages. Works a bit like ebay just put up a pic and a price. No fees and no postage as all local people. (Sure my neighbours think I have taken up drug dealing) Have got rid of loads of 'stuff' recently. I price it all low so it goes and it has really encouraged my son to sort through his toys and stuff as he sees the piles of £ coins pile up. Just search the name of your town and 'selling'

Also did something radical yesterday. When I parked in the supermarket carpark i emptied carp out of passenger footwell and binned it. Easy Peasy.. I guess thats what 'normal' people do with old coffee cups/wrappers/parking tickets etc etc.

Byatt

365days, I've tried the FB pages but apart from selling one item, nothing else did, although of course it depends on what you are selling. I found the pages were so busy, mine dropped right down very quickly and even I couldn't find it to bump it. It seems quite competitive here.

Hi Ginger! I wondered where you were, along with Calico. :T

edit, Hi Florenceem, haven't seen you around, esp on the dinner thread, hope you're ok. I was thinking of sending you a PM, but can't recall if I did now.

365days

Yes byatt I agree, they move fast was just mentioning in case people didnt know about them.