Hoarding...not just on TV

idristhedragon

Hiya
Jo Jo Im really sorry to hear you are having a carp time and I hope with all my heart it gets better for you soon. x

Also the milk cartons and margarine tubs must go!! And I echo Jo with the dericharding of the clothes that make you unhappy. I wanted to find my black knee length skirt that gits for work last night and I went through 3 washing baskets, and 3 drawers before I finally found it on top of the tumble drier. I will be re reading the clothes advise and taking it on board myself as like I mentioned before clothing is my hoarding Achilles heel and I am psyching myself up to sort it startig today as the window men are coming Tuesday and the bedroom needs to be fit for them to work in. I am heading up there now until 2pm to gather a charity sack and sort out the dressing table (also into CS sack) and then at 2 I am going to the PO, going to do a duty visit to Irritating Hard Work Friend (and giving back an item of clothing that she left here so I can work on De Richarding her and her energy stealing ways- but thats another story for another day) and dropping stuff in CS before I change mind and fish it all out again.............

blossomhill_2

Hi newcomers and very welcome you are too

Re the marg tubs ... I agree with reasons already given to ditch them ... but there is another aspect I have mentioned further back in the thread, that may be worth having in your head; these brands are the result of months, maybe years of designers' and advertisers' hard work - they are designed to appeal to you, to jump off the shelf at you, to make you covet them, so it is no wonder that you want to keep them - but you are not totally at the mercy of these marketting people, you can rise above their tactics. The tub was deisgned to hold marg - once it is empty, its work is done, so bin it. Don't wash it out - that's fatal - why would you wash rubbish? Try to feel superior and rise above the marketting brainwash. Or if like me you can't resist, buy another brand (I adore Lurpack but can't be trusted with Lurpack tubs, so buy butter instead!)

Re the milk containers - if JoJo's strategy doesn't work, decide on a reasonable number to keep (say 6?) and each time you wash one out make yourself throw the oldest one out - landfill is fine, recycling maybe, whichever is likely to stop you getting it back

sandra - I am sorry you are being denied the chance to show what a lovely mum you have - I would guess that most hoarders are lovely people (saviours, kind people wanting to save derelict items, to create, repurpose, buy from lost causes etc etc) but the hoards change them and they become as a minimum defensive - and you are defending her by proxy. As said recently, don't try to identify the good things among the carp (its all good to her) just find a way to get some of it out of the way, whether it is good or bad. I had to reduce the volume before I was able to eBay, so I have already given away lots of eBayable goods but that's how it had to be to create breathing space

Re craft-shopping instead of crafting - keep a spreadsheet, quantify how much the small purchases of a reel of ribbon here, a small bag of beads there is actually costing you and once it reaches a silly amount use the sheer cost as a set of brakes

JKJ

Jojo From the bottom of my heart THANK YOU. What you said about the milk bottles and the margerine tubs is so helpful. I think they scare me most because holding onto clothing and craft stuff doesn't seem so bad in a way, although I wish I didn't get so addicted to 'stuff', but this new compulsion to hold on to plastic rubbish is really frightening me. I will spend this afternoon rounding them up and putting them in bin liners, then ask my DH if he will take them straight to the dump so I don't go back outside and fetch them in again. Then I think I will put a box outside the backdoor so that empties can be got out of the house the second they are finished with. At the moment the recycling bin is at the bottom of the garden so in bad weather harder to get at.

I hope your day is improving. It is so kind of you to take the trouble to help me when you are in the midst of a crisis of your own.

sandrahiggins

Dear BlossomHill, thanks for the reply.

I have tried this a few times (a month or so ago, I filled my whole estate car full of boxes of semi-junk that was on/under/around her kitchen table and donated to charity. She was actually ok with it mostly and I cleaned the whole kitchen floor (although had to replace most of the stuff moved in order to find it!) and she seemed really pleased that there was actually 3 square feet of clear, clean house......"perhaps I've been a catalyst" I told myself "maybe I'll go round in a week or two and see another small clear chunk".........:( alas - the area is filled again - it's like the rest of the house just absorbs any free space and spills over. I know this sounds really morbid and selfish, but it isn't lost on me sometimes that when she sadly leaves us, I will just inherit a tip! It'd take me literally weeks to empty! (It's not a big house at all - just 6 modest rooms in total - kitchen/living room/3 beds/utility room)

Does anyone have any magic quotation or incentives or mantras or anything that I can perhaps print out and stick all over the house i.e. "space is peace" or "less is more"...?! lol

yellowdots

*waves*

Sorry to hear you are having a bad time at the moment Jojo and byatt I hope you are ok too x

Quickly posting so I can get back to book decuttering as I totally failed to cull the CD's and books the other night I just faffed about and couldn't make decisions on them. The fiction books are easy to deal with, its the gardening books and reference type books I find hard.

What I wanted to post today is if anyone is struggling with perceived value of an item you no longer use or want to de-clutter but the perceived value is holding you up - if you have an ebay account do a search on completed listings. That will soon bring home to you that very often your item doesn't even sell for 99p.

I've just done that with my problem camera and I am now happy to take it to the charity shop as there was only 1 sale for £1.20 over 4 pages of results lol and that was complete with box and instructions (which I also have).

Happy to report I managed to get rid of the problem comics and took them to the charity shop. If they end up putting them into recycling then thats fine because I wont know about it

alec_eiffel

yellowdots wrote: »

*waves*

Sorry to hear you are having a bad time at the moment Jojo and byatt I hope you are ok too x

Quickly posting so I can get back to book decuttering as I totally failed to cull the CD's and books the other night I just faffed about and couldn't make decisions on them. The fiction books are easy to deal with, its the gardening books and reference type books I find hard.

What I wanted to post today is if anyone is struggling with perceived value of an item you no longer use or want to de-clutter but the perceived value is holding you up - if you have an ebay account do a search on completed listings. That will soon bring home to you that very often your item doesn't even sell for 99p.

I've just done that with my problem camera and I am now happy to take it to the charity shop as there was only 1 sale for £1.20 over 4 pages of results lol and that was complete with box and instructions (which I also have).

Happy to report I managed to get rid of the problem comics and took them to the charity shop. If they end up putting them into recycling then thats fine because I wont know about it

Great work, well done! :j

yellowdots

Oh meant to say good luck lostinrates!

Well regaring that camera and I hope what I am about to say will make some of you laugh. Its down to that 'perceived' word again hehe. I thought I would check to see if a film had been left inside and found to my amusement that the back of the camera was in fact sellotaped on haha! So I gingerly and hands under a towel got the film out (yes yes I know its probably ruined anyway) and forced myself to pull the back of the camera off completely so it can now go into the bin as itgs of no use to anyone yay!

I almost started to think well what about spare parts etc, and quickly told myself off.

yellowdots

Hi JKJ - its a good idea to put your reycyling box outside the back door. As you say it will be much easier to put containers in there.

I used to keep mine in the garage because I didn't want it outside but then it became a chore to carry outside for dustbin day. But now I have it in the front garden :eek: tucked behind the hedge and make sure to take something out with me whenever I go out the front door.

Byatt

Hiya JKJ and Sandra,

Great post by Jo-Jo, so I won't add much more about empty cartons, except I still get a thrill now when I throw and empty, unwashed one away instantly it's finished instead of it festering for ages until I decided what I could use it for!

Sandra, I'm afraid any change has to start with your mother, even if it's small and you have to work with that. I can't imagine how hard it must be for you and frustrating as it does seem simple, the solution, hire a skip for instance, but the inner stress this causes for the hoarder or potential hoarder is immense. On the surface, my home being small I should be able to clear it out in a couple of days if that, but imagine a small child clinging to their mother afraid of letting go and being out in the big wide world, and that is me. Funnily enough I wasn't protected by my mother, but that's how I feel. It's like someone is dragging me away as I try to hold on. That's how I feel about my things. Our logic is flawed, wanting to keep things in case they are needed or we can't afford to buy another one. In this day and age of throwaway stuff there's always a possibility of getting something free or very cheap, but most of the time, the stuff will never be needed or even be useful.

eta I have a 2 seater sofa, there is always space for me to sit, but the other space is always full of carp. I do empty and tidy it, but then before I know it, it's full again. There are little piles nearby, because it's still really hard for me to have empty space. The need to fill it is immense, and I am having counselling.

sandrahiggins

Can I just say a massive thank you to everyone on this board? I really had no idea it was even here until I came across it totally by accident. I genuinely thought that very few people indeed had any idea what I/my mother is going through and it has been really helpful just knowing that my mum/I am not alone in having a bit of an awkward problem.

I am actually quite pernickety about having no/very little clutter anywhere in my house - not because I'm particularly house proud or snooty, more that I think I've always rebelled against how I was brought up (like any kid I guess) only in my case, I wasn't in to drugs, booze, or fags, just tidying up and throwing things away!!

Some people may laugh at the conversations that have occurred on these boards, but I think you are all very brave to open up about these kind of issues - that's usually the hardest part, after all. I've just realised that I've only ever talking to my sister about my mum - literally no-one else and it's made me feel less alone today on here