Huge admission...but a new start I hope!

Lizbetty

Hi everyone

Our house is up for sale and I've been having ongoing anxiety about it all. One of the big things (apart from it not selling!) is the awful thought of moving our stuff. We have too much.

I've 2 children, a husband who is like a womble and a tendency to keep everything for 'sentimental reasons'.

In theory, stuff should be stored properly, ebayed rather than stored or reused /passed on.

This weekend however me and OH have filled bin bags with the contents of the loft. Some for the hospice shop, most only fit for the tip.

I feel extremely bad, if I had been more organised we could've made a fair bit of money and had more for charity, too. As a stay at home mum that could've been my financial contribution...we're on a really tight budget and so it would've helped.

Hey ho. We still have more to do and a bit of the stress is lifting, but an underlying feeling of guilt and uselessness has remained.

Anyway. This is my new start I hope. Still lots to do but at some point I hope to be able to make stuff manageable and stop this awful clutter building up again.

I wonder if others have gotten to this stage, bagging and binning for sanity's sake? I do feel like everyone else has it all cracked apart from me!

pigpen

I filled 3 skips.. yes 3... when we left our old hovel. There was a pile the size of Everest for the council to remove (they did it free of charge back then) and I had spent the previous 3 years selling, flinging, donating and packing neatly the things we wished to keep... I have spent the last 7 years doing the same as I have unpacked.

Sometimes I am well motivated, other times I lose the will to live!

I still live in a bear pit, but it is a much larger and marginally emptier bear pit.

You need to have that wombling under control.. I ran out of sentimentality when we ran out of floor and I had 8 small children trampling everything underfoot.

Helen2k8

Pack away that guilt into those bin bags. You don't need it

I used to move frequently for study, work etc. I packed important things first, and then when I got to the end and things didn't fit, they were dumped. Unless they were so important that they were worth a return trip (or two...). No, that on a household scale I doubt would work, but it's one way of prioritising!

I have definite tendencies to hoard useful stuff, actually it was someone's post on the hoarding thread that made me stop and think - I shouldn't hang on to that "just in case". I think it was something silly like some old mesh or chicken wire. The world is full of scraps of chicken wire should I need some later.

Perhaps you could (after the move!) find some strategies to prevent clutter build up?
I know I will always be awful with paperwork and piles of books, but I CAN prevent a build up of plastic tubs etc.

How old are the kids? Perhaps as you teach them to be as tidy as you'd like to be, you'd be reinforcing that message to yourself?

Can wombling hubs have a shed or a certain area to himself, to contain the chaos?
With sentimental things, consider that the more you have, the less you "see" each item.

Lizbetty

Pigpen, it's like a battle, isn't it? Like a constant fight to keep things in order because one off day and things go into meltdown. We're moving into somewhere a bit bigger (one day....it seems like it will never happen at the moment) and my worst fear is that a bigger space will just be an excuse to put more stuff in it.

Helen2k8, the kids are 5 and just turned 7. My 5 year old is a real hoarder to the extent where she hides things in her pillowcase and sleeps on them (somehow...'things' includes plastic boxes and toilet roll middles!) and she empties bins if she notices something that catches her eye, or that she can reuse! It's very endearing but I need to nip it in the bud.

The stuff we're sending to charity is going to a children's hospice shop. I chose that specifically because I hoped it'd make her realise other kids can benefit from her stuff, and need it more than she does. She does seem to realise - it was going quite well until she decided she wanted to make them all paper drums out of bog roll middles to cheer them up!

OH has a garage which is full. I'm furious about it because he knocked half of it down to make more garden space, which has made a lovely private garden area, but has meant a smaller storage space which has left the garage a no go area because of all the stuff. I honestly daren't go in it.

Luckily, a lot of it has been wrecked before we had the garage roof done and so he's going to have to chuck it away. When we move I'll be making sure I don't let him go in skips or take things from his bl00dy mother's house that she doesn't want ever again! My car has two boxes of absolute tripe from his last visit that she couldn't bring herself to chuck, so she's given him it.

I don't want this to become my life's work but it seems it may have to be!


Hmmph.

Lizbetty

Helen2k8 - the chicken wire thing really hits home, too. I save fabric. I have a sewing machine that I can't use very well but I think one day I'll be making everything myself, and so I save every bit of fabric I see. 'Saved', I mean...I'm weaning myself off by chopping the buttons off old clothes instead, now! My button jar is more manageable than my fabric box. x

pigpen

Jigsaw with pieces missing are binned.. seriously.. you can't do them or sell them so bin them.. recycling here we come.

At 5 it is quite normal to love loo roll tubes.. I used to make telescopes and dougals (magic roundabout) and all sorts with them.

I got ruthless and flung every toy they hadn't looked at in months.. and now I keep on top by throwing out/donating at least 5 binbags of toys, clothes and rubbish every month. The toys were under control until we had Squeak who is now 2.. my next youngest is 7 so a lot of the huge baby stuff had gone... it is now all back in abundance.

I still have a loft fit to pop with stuff we haven't looked at in 6 years, I wanted to sort that this summer while the older children were at their dads but we went to visit OH's family instead.. The girls are away next weekend so I might do some of it then.. God help my binmen lol... the good news is here in studentland there are a lot of empty houses at the moment so I can fling stuff in their bins too!

I am currently ebaying my fabric stash and knitting up my wool stash.. I will get through it.. my overflowing box is now 3/4 full

Rosygirl

Lucyeff, I really sympathise with the feeling of guilt that you should make money out of your hoard. I have felt the same, but it's led me to more hoarding until I could ebay or car boot, until things got totally out of hand. It is only recently that I realised the folly of it!


All your stories ring so many bells with me, especially the keeping it just in case and the accepting old junk from relatives (mainly my mum). I used to think it was to help us when we were first married and liked older stuff to match our old cottage- I now realise that she was just trying to offload stuff (and the emotional burden of it's custody) to me! :huh:

I am trying really hard to get past sentimentality as we would like to move at some point, but, despite a trip to the charity shop, ebaying and 2 car boot sales, I couldn't even show the house at the moment.

black_cat

Rosygirl wrote: »

Lucyeff, I really sympathise with the feeling of guilt that you should make money out of your hoard. I have felt the same, but it's led me to more hoarding until I could ebay or car boot, until things got totally out of hand. It is only recently that I realised the folly of it!


All your stories ring so many bells with me, especially the keeping it just in case and the accepting old junk from relatives (mainly my mum). I used to think it was to help us when we were first married and liked older stuff to match our old cottage- I now realise that she was just trying to offload stuff (and the emotional burden of it's custody) to me! :huh:

I am trying really hard to get past sentimentality as we would like to move at some point, but, despite a trip to the charity shop, ebaying and 2 car boot sales, I couldn't even show the house at the moment.

I absolutely agree with you! I try to take as much as possible to a favourite charity shop, but I'm now at the stage where an awful lot gets taken to the tip (where most of it is recycled). I've stopped feeling guilty about not ebaying stuff to try and make some money back. Ebaying won't help me to declutter and be able to use my house properly.

Like you, we accept stuff from relatives and friends regardless of whether we really need it. I found some some lovely William Morris print curtains in the loft the other day. My parents gave them to us years ago. They were expensive when bought and I love them. I can't use them at the moment but they're worth keeping - somewhere moth free and labeled, though. But, why have I kept a large fish kettle, a broken chair and crockery sets we don't like?!

The new me is getting rid of it all. It's liberating! :j

pollys

I once read an article about "happiness" and people were generally happier years ago when they had less material goods than we are today. It was a really good article. I feel much better with less stuff around me. I sleep better in a tidy clutter-free bedroom. Coming downstairs to tidy clutter-free rooms is a much better start to the day.

It might not work for everyone but it does for me.

Pollys

ps I don't ebay, it's charity, recycle and tip.

Lizbetty

It's the thought of ebay that delays me from sorting these things out, mostly. I really hate everything about ebay, I always end up using new swear words when I'm trying to list stuff. And then (if things DO sell..) I usually end up undercharging on postage and wishing I'd never bothered.

I feel a bit better that it's not just me but sad that other people feel as trapped by it all. My grandma never had a loft full, nor did my mum. My dad on the other hand has filled broken down cars in their driveway with 'stuff'! But the hugeness of the stuff we can accumulate now seems quite a modern problem.

I could have sat and cried when I was putting the lovely (tiny) clothes I'd worn when I was dating OH in the washer ready for charity. It's ridiculous. The dresses I used to wear wouldn't stretch over one leg now!

I'm finding I'm battering myself about the head about things I want to keep too...the coffee grinder I bought OH that we only used a few times. In a bigger kitchen we might use it more often, and yet I'm thinking, I like the coffee you can get out of tin now, that'll do for me. I have kids, when am I going to find the time to grind coffee, let alone clean the blinking machine! And OH prefers tea, mostly. (I think I just talked myself into sending that for charity too...!)

Can I just ask, we have a huge mountain of stuff and some of it is really dusty and needs a good scrub. Like the coffee grinder that was sat on the top of the kitchen cupboard before it went into the loft and is covered in greasy dusty stuff. There's no way we can achieve what we want to quickly if I clean *everything* for the charity shop (clothes aren't a problem but plastic and glass with nooks and crannies are a real pain)...do you tend to clean what you donate? We have a limited time to get cracking but at the same time, I don't want to get blacklisted!

Rainy-Days

I can understand this thread totally as we are in the process of having to go through our loft - and other things - as we intend to move next year as well. Allot of stuff I inherited from my late mum along with all my things as well. She had three tea services, one of which was a wedding present for mum and dad in 1963. That I have avowed to keep for sentimental reasons but the other tea service will have to go because the truth is it will never get used, I won't have room for it and I have no intention to store it in the next loft we have!

I was going to do a car boot Saturday but as the weather decided it was going to piddle down, the boot got cancelled :mad: So now I have to wait for the next one. I probably will not get rid of it all and now you don't get near as much as you used to on car boots, the most they will pay is about 50 pence or £1.00. Unless it is top of the range stuff they seem to look at you like you have asked for £100.00.

I am slowly going through my decluttering and next month I will be doing some Ebay stuff as well.

I will be honest here, allot of my things have also been packed away in the loft as well. I moved back home when my mum was diagnosed as having terminal cancer. I sold my home, put allot of stuff into storage (which I am still paying for) and the rest went up in the loft. I am going to have many heartbreaks when I next move home because it simply will not fit all in - I know that. However, I am going to try and save the important stuff and things like my Portmeirion dinner service and my Emma Bridgewater stuff that I have on my dresser are keepers. My biggest worry is that my dresser may not fit into my new home in the kitchen.

When my nan died years ago she left me some money and mum said to me what was I going to do with it. I said I don't know and mum said well what will you remember most about your nan, and I said sitting in front of her big welsh dresser (and it was huge a solid oak real welsh dresser) playing snakes and ladders with her. So, I bought a big dresser to remind me of her and have part of her with me. My nan's original dresser went to her daughter (which is the right order of things). So I am hoping and praying that the dresser I have will go with me to it's new home.