Nice people thread part 7 - a thread in its prime

misskool

i am trying to buy travel insurance but the website is not working....sigh

LydiaJ

lir

The problem isn't any kind of emotional baggage attached to the stuff. I don't find any of it upsetting. The problems are
1) There's so much of it that it feels overwhelming.
2) In my current state of mental health I have difficulty motivating myself to do anything that doesn't have a deadline, and this doesn't.
3) Neither child likes me getting rid of anything, ever. It triggers their "don't deal well with loss" issues.
4) More stuff keeps finding its way into the house.

lostinrates

LydiaJ wrote: »

lir

The problem isn't any kind of emotional baggage attached to the stuff. I don't find any of it upsetting. The problems are
1) There's so much of it that it feels overwhelming.
2) In my current state of mental health I have difficulty motivating myself to do anything that doesn't have a deadline, and this doesn't.
3) Neither child likes me getting rid of anything, ever. It triggers their "don't deal well with loss" issues.
4) More stuff keeps finding its way into the house.

3 is the hardest I think, harder to deal with two when three is their looming and lamenting you with worry. But.....unless you want for them a future with stuff and hoarding I think you need to resolve it with them. Perhaps the suggestions I made for you could actually be made for them? Noone can deny their loss has been massive, but this eventually compounds it , makes it bigger. Although they were older, dh and his siblings and father's hoarding of dh's mother's and grandparents stuff was actually somewhat life limiting.

Sometimes I feel all I do is move stuff around in boxes and get rid of stuff, but I dream of a house where only the stuff we actually actively want is in it...not the stuff we keep through guilt or misplaced affection that actually is an anchor that stops us moving forward and making our own choices for us.


When you were last here we had a horrid piece of furniture I hate on the back landing...I was feeding the cats off it. But it was dh's mothers. After a lt of talk we decided to paint it and use it as a bathroom cabinet on the new bathroom, but actually, I don't think it's going to fit, so we have put it in our bedroom, and actually , it looks great. When it was for the bathroom I was painting it grey over a peppermint colour, to distress a bit, but now it's just the peppermint colour and against our misty greyish lavender walls it looks like a sugar mouse room. Not all dealing with means disposing, but it feels better to have it doing something.

It has lots of little mirrors on it, and last night I had four candles lit in front of four of the mirrors, and our room was just the right romantic light where we could see perfectly, but everything was softer and lovely.

Now we just have to deal with the rest of the room.

Dh brings stuff in relentlessly, a born hoarder, where a i buy less but hang on to stuff that is frankly junk and rubbish and I have to admit, sometimes I have cried about the stuff weighing us down. We are dealing with it ATM, but it's a long haul.

zagubov

This is me teaching my gran to suck eggs, but what we're discussing is covered really heavily in the Flylady thread(s)
which IIRC are all about avoiding /dodging/dealing with demotivation traps that stop us getting stuff done.
Happy St Patrick's day to any Irish NPs. Hmmm-struggles to think of any and changes it to
Happy St Patrick's day to any Irish NP lurkers!:beer:

Nikkster

LydiaJ wrote: »

If getting started is the problem, can you pick one little piece of it that feels marginally less scary than the rest of it, and try to forget that the rest of it exists while you just do that bit? "The whole thesis is more than I can contemplate, but I could manage the diagrams for chapter 2, so I will do those." And then you pick another bit, etc.

I was hugely struck, after I had written my previous post, by how applicable most of what I had written was to my own situation of needing to sort my house out. I have ludicrous amounts of clutter (some of my own but loads that came from LNE's house too, and a whole load of the kids' stuff) that's lying about in boxes (and a few piles that aren't in boxes) and I "want" to get it dealt with so my house can be a nice place to live and not a chaotic dumping ground. But I don't seem to "want" it enough to make myself do it. It feels overwhelming to me, so I don't begin. Sometimes I find enough energy to do, say, the pile of boxes in the corner of the living room between the two sofas, if I don't think too much about the rest of the house. The timetable strategy of "this is what I do all day on Saturdays" that worked so well for my thesis isn't working at all for me now. Maybe that's because back then I had a husband who was happy to do almost all the domestic stuff to free me up to get my thesis out of the way, whereas now I have to do it myself.

I think I have already picked most of the low-hanging fruit I think the main problem is re-analysis of a stupid number of experiments. My initial plan was to go through making all the figures, then 'just' write about them and go through the background info. Maybe I'll start working on the intro and then go back to the results. I've definitely been guilty of keeping on with the same (failing) strategy in that sense.

In terms of your situation - I guess that whilst the specifics of problems change, underlying are often common issues. Perhaps it would be easier to concentrate on a box at a time (move it to another room to separate it from the herd) and aim for one a month/ week?

lostinrates wrote: »

Lydia,

If the kids are ok to let to of stuff could you eBay some of LNE's stuff and either divide the money up for the kids (do they have a uni fund?) or agree to spend it on something they both want? (Maybe the dog you want on the future....a bed etc for that?).

If its not dealing with old stuff, but prepping for stuff for the kids or your family in the now and future the weight of the past can be lightened a little?

I can't imagine how your kids must feel about letting go of anything, nor how that must make things for you, but I do feel that it is for the best in the long term if they can confront/ overcome this. No idea how you would go about achieving that, but I guess small steps at a time, and allowing a little discomfort (but not too much). I don't envy you at all, and it puts my 'situation' in painful perspective.

Nikkster

zagubov wrote: »

This is me teaching my gran to suck eggs, but what we're discussing is covered really heavily in the Flylady thread(s)
which IIRC are all about avoiding /dodging/dealing with demotivation traps that stop us getting stuff done.
Happy St Patrick's day to any Irish NPs. Hmmm-struggles to think of any and changes it to
Happy St Patrick's day to any Irish NP lurkers!:beer:

I think Spirit has an Irish background? I might be making that up though!

Goes off to look at the flylady thread...

lostinrates

zagubov wrote: »

This is me teaching my gran to suck eggs, but what we're discussing is covered really heavily in the Flylady thread(s)
which IIRC are all about avoiding /dodging/dealing with demotivation traps that stop us getting stuff done.
Happy St Patrick's day to any Irish NPs. Hmmm-struggles to think of any and changes it to
Happy St Patrick's day to any Irish NP lurkers!:beer:

Fly lady is more about keeping up with normal routines (love fly lady).


When you have a hoard problem or a decluttering needed there are so threads for that. I am on the hoarding one. .

While I type dh is going through boxes and asking my opinion on each and every item. Unless we do it together they do not get dealt with.

It's hard also to work out what's tat and what's only tat to one of us, e.g. Dh has just shown me a Beatles belt buckle. Tat like of a tourist stand to me, but he likes it. Accepting someone else's treasure when you see it as tat is a harder part of cohabitation. Dh is also resistant to me throwing things away. Clothes I wore on the night we met for example.....He will not let me get rid of. I ain't never going to be that tiny again, and if I am, in my thirties wearing see through tops probably doesn't have the impact I want.....as what you see through to shows distinct ravages of time!

lostinrates

Nikkster wrote: »

I think Spirit has an Irish background? I might be making that up though!

Goes off to look at the flylady thread...

My paternal grandmother was Irish, Its one of the larger percentages of my make up, But stpatricks day means not to me really. Despite being a large percentage of my origin its one I feel less connected to. . One of my siblings in law is living in Ireland ATM, I imagine they will be having fun!

chewmylegoff

Just back from 3 days skiing in morzine. Beautifully sunny and wonderful scenery as its mostly below the tree line, but was a bit chilly - was nearly -30 with wind chill. Neck is a bit stiff after crashing at over 80km/h, glad I was wearing a helmet!

GDB2222

silvercar wrote: »

Maybe suggest going over Passover, then agreeing to go later will seem like a compromise.

I've already threatened to run away to Norfolk for Passover. DW knows it's an empty threat and just ignores it.