Hoarding...not just on TV

short_bird

Possession wrote: »

I wonder what the difference is between hoarding and serious collecting? Yesterday we visited Snowshill Manor, a National Trust property which was owned by the collector Charles Paget Wade, and bought for the purpose of housing his collection. He lived in a tiny cottage next to it. He collected everything - more than 22,000 items - as long as it was made with good workmanship, and made a (rather gorgeous) model village and did many paintings as well. When the national trust took over they had to put lots of the stuff into storage as there was just too much to display. It's a lovely place, in an idyllic setting (near Broadway in the Cotswolds) but I couldn't help thinking he had rather too much time and money on his hands!
So was he a hoarder? He certainly didn't collect rubbish, but he must have shared an obsession for acquiring stuff. In the end he gave it all away to the National Trust though (5 years before his death) as he was spending most of his time in the West Indies.

Now, if you like Snowshill, you'll like Calke Abbey.

Hoarding versus collecting is an interesting topic: I think collectors and hoarders are 2 sides of the same coin. If you don't know what you have, or your collection is dangerously stacked and restricting your movements so you live in one tiny space then it can be said you've turned into a hoarder.

Anyway, I need to get offline and deal with some of the paper hoard. And then go foraging for provisions as we don't have any non starchy vegetables in the house.:rotfl:

Possession

The children loved Snowshill, as DS (10) is already rather a collector. Obviously he now aspires to collect samurai armour!
Some of the posts on here make me wonder if I am a hoarder or a collector, eg cookbooks. I have about 170 and they are all confined in a bookcase bought especially for them by the kitchen. If I add to them, which is rare, i make myself get rid of one. I have no intention of getting rid of them otherwise! Does that make me a hoarder or a collector? I'm not sure it matters as long as they don't get in the way. I guess the key is to keep it under control.

short_bird wrote: »

Now, if you like Snowshill, you'll like Calke Abbey.

Hoarding versus collecting is an interesting topic: I think collectors and hoarders are 2 sides of the same coin. If you don't know what you have, or your collection is dangerously stacked and restricting your movements so you live in one tiny space then it can be said you've turned into a hoarder.

Anyway, I need to get offline and deal with some of the paper hoard. And then go foraging for provisions as we don't have any non starchy vegetables in the house.:rotfl:

blossomhill_2

The thing with collecting, to my mind, is not to lose sight of the original purpose

The first "Hoarder Next Door" I saw had a guy who had wrapped himself up in things following the death of his partner, yet underneath it all was an almost museum quality collection - original purpose was to have a happy home with nicely displayed blue and white china

I feel very sad for people who collect 1920s items and lose sight of the minimalist vision (or necesity) that made the 20s so distinctive - none had scores of ornaments crammed on mantelpieces back then - it is like seeing a size 20 woman squeezing into a size 8 flapper dress

Triker - good luck with Dad - start with the debris not the things - plastic bag, yoghurt pots, newspapers go out, the 10 lawnmowers can stay for now LOL

Added

Possession wrote: »

Some of the posts on here make me wonder if I am a hoarder or a collector, eg cookbooks. I have about 170

Depends on your original purpose in starting to acquire them

blossomhill_2

Cat501 wrote: »

I am NOT looking forward to the dietary restrictions (I love me strong cheese!!) but if these are what's best for atypical depression - and they apparently are - it will be worth it

Don't risk the cheese - my mum got a paralysed neck from mixing ant-D with strong cheese before the risk was known

some of them were part of a gift from DDs about 5 years ago

They were a token of their love, NOT their love. They intended them to be a token not something to bring you down

Cat501

blossomhill wrote: »

Don't risk the cheese - my mum got a paralysed neck from mixing ant-D with strong cheese before the risk was known

They were a token of their love, NOT their love. They intended them to be a token not something to bring you down

omg blossom that's awful:eek::eek: I WILL be extra-careful, thanks.

Re the books - I know....:o

eta 2/3 boxes done, plus a bag. Mostly CDs again, though I have found a lot of perfectly good knickers The trick with the CDs is not to look at the track listing - especially with the compilation ones. Anyway that's them all done now and instead of 200 I'm left with approx 50, that's reasonable I think, especially as I'm unlikely to ever buy any more - I hope.

kiss_me_now9

Meant to be starting the little bedroom (worst room) today. Eek.

Cat501

kiss_me_now9 wrote: »

Meant to be starting the little bedroom (worst room) today. Eek.

good luck

I've bagged up my 20 books but it was a real struggle to find 20/approx 2000 that I was happy to give away, in fact only about 5 of them were easy. This is going to be even harder than I thought

blossomhill_2

kiss_me_now9 wrote: »

Meant to be starting the little bedroom (worst room) today. Eek.

Too vague! Why not give yourself a measurable objective like;

widen goat track to 2 foot

or
remove 10 saleable items

or
reduce CDs so they will fit into a shoebox

or
reach the window

or
recognise that i am too emotionally involved with the contents and need to enlist help of friend to get it sorted (that one is ok too, better than shutting the door for another 5 years)

or
put all memorabilia into a clearly labelled box, with a date on it, mark a date on the calendar for when I am to go through it in detail

or put all clothes on hangers even if I can't yet fit them on the rail

GreyQueen

Afternoon all.

I'm hot and tired and grubby (gonna have a bath soon) but wanted to share the ups and downs of the Shed the Shed project. I was unlocking it at 10.30 am and back home at 2.30 pm. In that time, I did extensive decluttering inc 2 runs on the pushbike to the dump, loaded to the gunwales and bungee-clipped down. I also disturbed several VERY large spiders . :eek:

Last year in the drought, I sustained my allotment by the strange but effective habit of sinking pierced plastic milk bottles into the ground as watering points. At the end of the season, I retrieved these, gave them as best a wash I could under the lottie tap and stored them tied in bundles from the inside of the shed roof.

This year, as you may possibly have noticed, the monsoon has come early to the UK and I haven't needed to use the bottles. I have all that I used last year, plus unused ones saved since. I decided the bottles, which were taking up a huge amount of space (my shed is a bog standard apex-roofed 6 x 8 footer).

I stood on the used bottles to flatten them as I thought their dirtiness would contaminate the recycling efforts. I ended up with a bin bag full. I also rounded up huge quantities of plastic punnets and those blue or green trays that mushrooms come in. I'm sure they breed in there. There was quite a lot of stuff which can and will be recycled but I ended up with 2 black sacks for the tip. I also found some metal thingummies.

The origin of the shed clutter;

The black tubular metal bits. I found an ornamental archway, the kind you grow plants up, brand new in its box for £2 at the boot sale. Found out that the winds on the lottie are too strong. Reduced it to its component sections after it had been blown over, twisted and damaged for the 9th time. Bits of tubular black-painted metal, which might be useful as row markers and were kept. Not ideal as some had sharpish ends and I got scratched. Wooden sticks better- out to recyc.

Moral - be careful at bootfairs and don't faddle on the lottie as if it was a sheltered back garden- its on top of a hill and blasted windy up there.

The clear plastic flimsy fruit punnets and mushroom trays. Saved by me from the groceries over the course of the year. Mushroom trays a bit to shallow to be seed-tray substitutes (and why was I ignoring my dozen seed trays? Could be because they were buried and I couldn't remember I had them?) and the punnets are very flimsy and better to wash them up and return them to the Magic Greengrocer (he's indicated this would be welcome.)

Moral - some makeshift things aren't as good as the proper things. If you already own the proper things, use 'em.

The three Branston pickle jars I had artfully fashioned into candle holders with a wire and bamboo handle, intending to have candlelit soirees up on the lottie on warm summer nights. Totally unused. De-wired and into the recyc (I kept the wire).

Moral - I shouldn't confuse myself with someone who lives in a warm dry country. And a lottie 1.5 miles from home is in no way a convenient substitute for a back garden when it comes to entertaining.

4 cardboard cartons of blood and bonemeal Bought from £land because they were a) only a pound and b) supposed to enhance the soil, even though I've never used it in my life. Still haven't - they were on the shelf on the back wall of the shed somehow corroding their way out of their cardbaord cartons. Have decanted into a lidded plastic container and will scatter on the soil at some point in the near future. Cartons too manky and weird to recycle - binned.

Moral - stay outta £land and remember that just because it's useful, it doesn't necessarily follow that I need to use it.

I could go on but I'm sure you've read enough. The graveyard of broken (well, slightly-dented) dreams and postponed decisions. Amazing what you can cram into a small space if you're really determined. I also found the 4th giant roll of blisterwrap. I wombled a large quantity of this in town a few years ago and thought it would be great for insulating my greenhouse. When I got a greenhouse. Which I still don't have and have decided against anyway. So I donated the stuff to my brother to use for packaging sales but somehow misplaced the 4th roll in the clutter. It'll go to him next time a car goes that way.

So, my weekend has involved a total of about 8 hours decluttering and 3 dump-runs and it's not over yet. Was this, as the self help industry has it, the life I was born to lead?

I hope not. I wanna be a minimalist when I grow up.

Keep on keeping on, people.

Brighton_belle

More great contribution from people. I haven't the brain energy to respond individually at the mo, but hopefuly will do laters.

I am neck deep in a major re-organise of the 'dining room'. Bit of a GreyQueen shed moment going on. Hadn't planned to do it. But we are having lodgers room carpet cleaned tomorrow and I have decide to put our dining table in their room after as a much better desk size wise than the one already there. So I thought I'd see what space it created moving the table out of there now...

Thing is, I call it the dining room, but we never ever dine there, it's more of a 'dry clothes and store stuff' room (because we don't need a dining room, rather than it is too cluttered to use it as so. We never entertain, not really 'us' and are happy living in our upstair living room full of light.) So guess what, the table just beomes a mega dumping ground.

Anyway, you know how it is, one idea leads to another and I am having a big clear out and re shuffle of furniture and actually making more space for DH's book hording hobby:D. yes, he's got it bad.
But I am at the stage where is is all a mess and I am climbing over stuff and have come away to have a tea break and regroup the energies. I am also trying to be ruthless with the books of my own I have in there. I am not a book horder myself but I still have plenty I don't look at from one year to the next so I am gradually getting rid of more and more.

I also am coming across some serious baaaad 8 legged things that shall not be named:eek: