Hoarding - A New Start

yellowdots

lostinrates, well done with sorting out the clothes. I am doing something similar today due to me facing the garage of doom yesterday. And what a fab hubby you have

GreyQueen brilliant on the jars, I now have more than you lol.

byatt, I forgot to say in my other post how much I enjoyed seeing your photo of your living room and the gorgeous xmas tree, your room looks great.

In the summer I successfully whittled down a triple wardrobe and a double wardrobe of clothes into a large double wardrobe and a chest of drawers, so now have a lovely bedroom with much more space. I even remember thinking how well I had done with keeping my clothes to a minimum over the years. Well ......

This really does prove you become blind to things which have been there a long time So I ventured into the garage yesterday and grabbed a box and 3 carrier bags, oohh wonder whats in these? CLOTHES!! What?! lol! Not from the summer, as I really had dealt with that stuff but these were from probably around 5 years ago! hahaha

Which also proves another point, as I hadn't made decisions with them at the time all that happened was they were left and neglected in bags in the garage. It is really hard to make decisions with them though but I will

Leadng onto something amazing happening yesterday too! Be impulsive.

In the weeks before xmas I was rearranging my living room which resulted in me getting rid of 2 pieces of furniture. The bookcase ended up in the garage over xmas. While sorting through the clothes late afternoon I suddenly thought ohh that bookcase is still in the garage, why don't I put it at the end of the drive with a note to 'please take it'.

The other part of my brain was saying no finish this and stop faffing around diverting from one job to another and achieving nothing. So (as son wouldn't help me - the youth today eh) I determined to drag it out myself. Nipped back in the house to get piece of paper and some tape. A woman and little girl walked past and said are you getting rid of that, and were so pleased to take it away. She kept saying thank you, thank you. This was great!!

Did I have a 6th sense I wonder :cool::rotfl:

Picklepot

Hi

Thank you to Brighton belle whitewing and Byatt for your encouragement about posting and to the 17 people who clicked thank you as i'm still not very confident delurking although you're all very lovely people
Brighton belle thank you also for breaking up my paragraph in fact i'm glad you did..i had done the post three times and if i write too much my computer logs out and i loose it so i had to get it down quick, i find it easier to read your way too!!

I haven't caught up with the latest posts yet so apologies if i missed anyone!

After my wardrobe clear out yesterday which actually just started with..

If i do nothing else today i just need to put the clothes on the hangers that have slid off.. i awoke and was thrilled with my new space.(after ending up clearing out 3 bin bags of clothes to CS, 1 bag of rubbish and 1 bag of recycling yipee!!) In fact it has released a space to put the work bags in.3 work bags for three different jobs I have one job and two locum/casual jobs the latter often need me at short notice so i have a bag ready to go for when i get the text we are short staffed!! They now have their space each bag and freed up my study chair which is always the dumping ground!!

yellowdots

Oh forgot to mention one of the reasons I HAVE to get my garage tidy is due to something which happened while I was shifting things around in there before xmas to make space for that bookcase.

I suddenly realised something was looking at me from a shelf at eye level ..... yep you've guessed it ..... a small mouse!! There was a bit of a Tom and Jerry moment while my brain click clicked "noooo surely not, your eyes are getting worse"

Then it was an EEEKKKK moment with me jumping and clapping hands loudly to scare it off.

I'm not massively scared of mice but I certainly do not want it feeling comfortable enough in there to keep returning

Picklepot

newley retired..i think you asked how you encourage a partner to declutter. Well my husband is a very born organised person and has lived with messy me for many years. The things i have found the biggest way he helps are that:

• Start with stuff that you know he/she can acknowledge as rubbish/useless . I know that i ican get rid of my gardening mags (am an aspirational gardener!! ) If i really have a desire to have them back my mum does a subscription to the same mag and will pass them on.. most things are seasonally repeated and even more is on their website for free!!
• DH promises he will never clear stuff behing my back (my fear is that i will be forever looking for something ..i need to know what has gone)He does have a tendancy to just pick up a pile of paperwork and chuck without checking. He once did this and we had to route through the wheelie bin to find a tax disc, a prescription and a mortgage statement.:(
• DH encourages me to see the potential..For example he says if you cleared your side of the garage we could have that shelf sysyem to have surplus tins toilet rolls etc like a pantry so we dont run out of staples.We did it and it helps no end when i dont meal plan too well. He does the same with 'if you cleared your side of the bedroom i could fit you this' and that it helps me enormously see past the clutter to the potential.
• He has made it clear when i am ready he will hire a skip tomorrow and be there to help and starts suggesting items i might want to consider.I now make a mental note of the stuff that will go in the skip sometimes i actually put it outside so it will rot so i cant cchange my mind!!
• He will be brutally honest where he feels he needs to be..like when i suggested ebaying stuff he said what all you lovely people did. He knows me so well he knows the stuff would just churn round the house like it has for many years.
• He's fab at when i become stuck and say ..'ok our ds is 19 why can i not throw away a litle pair of dungarees he wore age 6m?' i will say 'am i safe to let these go' and now he understands its just irrational fear.. tells me it is safe and takes the bag to the CS when it is full!!!

It has taken us many years to get to this position!! BTW Brighton Belle had some excellent suggestions too. x

yellowdots

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

Make sure she doesn't see them, then.

Get rubbish out. Properly out, so it can't be dragged back into the lair when your back is turned and emptied all over the back garden or kitchen floor in search of something valuable like a 25p dented can of beans from 1989.

This is brilliant, and really made me chuckle thanks :rotfl:

GreyQueen

Some really good posts whilst I was out decluttering my allotment of couch grass (the horticultural version of the worst kind of domestic clutter you can possibly imagine - x 10).

(((((This Year)))) I read your post whilst mentally walking through a home I know very well (my parents' place) and feel that I can see those looming boxes. See them and feel opressed by them. You poor thing.

I've been spending several years thinking about clutter. Not obsessively - I do have a life - but fairly consistantly and deeply.

I think that clutter is one of the great problems of very many people's lives, one which is seldom discussed due to shame. Jo Jo has done us all a great service by having the courage to post first the old thread and now the new one.

Perhaps I'm clutter-sensitised after all this time, but I keep seeing and hearing from all sides about clutter and how it is affecting lives, and it's always a negative affect.

My parents had us when just into their twenties and are still hale and hearty, although tiring more easily than a decade ago. But many of my late forties/early fifties peers are losing their parents and suddenly having to face a landslide of Stuff as well as their grief. Most of them live in very small homes, and have everything they need, and there is no way, with the best will in the world, that they can "absorb" an extra household's Stuff into their own home, nor should they have to, of course.

If you add in family commitments and work, the possibility that your relatives may live in another part of the country, or even they/ you living overseas, and you have a horror of an event to manage.

Most people I know, if you can get them talking off-piste, will confess to feeling a degree of rage towards their relative, and to feeling lonely and ashamed in this emotion.

If we were to direct a movie of a 50-something woman clearing out her late mother's home, we might frame her sitting at Mum's dressing-table, gently touching her things, reminiscing of her own young girlhood playing with these feminine things. We might imagine her finding a bundle of faded love-letters tied with ribbon, and tentatively reading them, as she reprises the early days of her parents' lifelong love affair. They'd be something soothing in the background, classical violins, perhaps.

We don't see what is often the wretched truth of clearing up; grubbing around, dusty, filthy, hot and sweaty, inside cupboards and attics and sheds. Thinking !!!!!!?!? as we drag out things which were useless decades ago yet were somehow still left on the premises. If you soundtracked this, you'd probably choose something along the lines of Death Metal.

We'd perhaps had an unworthy little thought that It's All Mine when we learned that we were the beneficiary, but the reality isn't cabochon-cut diamond necklaces in Tiffany boxes, just an endless stream of tat. We fill box after box and binbag after binbag as we try to contain the detritus of someone else's life when we can barely-organise our own homes.

+++++++++++++++

Trying to change someone else's behaviour is ususally a good way to end up going quietly spare, or going to the courts for a divorce.

What to do? Perhaps define an area or areas as Off Limits to the hoard. Draw a line and say that it doesn't come here. Could be your main bedroom, or a spare room or the bathroom or whatever but it's a clutter-free zone.

whitewing

After the Christmas Hoarder special, you may remember that I said I had an idea to get rid of two pieces of furniture and repurpose an existing cupboard?

That is a BIG job.

Then over the new year my brother was talking about some organising he was doing. (A good first step of dehoarding was to make sure similar stuff was in the same physical space, remember?)

It suddenly occurred to me that the furniture going from me would be useful as interim storage for him. So that has spurred me on a bit (although I never breathed a word to him). Earlier today, while talking to - or should I say 'telling', as I am bossy too, byatt - DH, I realised that we had enough free space to do part of it. That I what I have been doing in between posts. I just phoned my brother to ask him to bring the van down as I had a present for him. He was sufficiently intrigued and was here within 5 minutes! Out has gone a big ikea chest of deep drawers. It was great (bought for a different house and different lifestyle) but the space is better! It had a lovely wide surface, which meant it got used as a dumping ground by DH for clean clothes, used clothes, anything that arrived in the house without a home, and anything that was on its way out of the house. It seemed that if things weren't on the floor then the house wasn't untidy!

I am so pleased that it is out of the house on the same day. A big pang of 'actually that cost me a lot of money, I shouldn't have given it away', but actually I think it was ex-display as it had a crack on it. It cost £150 if I recall correctly, maybe less, it was a huge amount to me at the time. I have had it 10 years so I am sure that I have had my money's worth. It was an aspirational purchase, along with the bed on stilts.

Yes, Jojo, hoarding is emotional abuse (albeit, not necessarily intentional), particularly with how upset hoarders get if anything is 'interfered with'.

decogecko

Evening all.

Big welcome to the new posters taking their first steps in the war on richard.

((((((((Jojo))))))))) yes I personally say that when hoarding is used as part of controlling someone else then that is abuse.

After my self pitying posts earlier (sorry about that), I decided to sort the chest in the lounge and the 2 drawers in the console. In the chest I sorted the DVD's I no longer wanted and have sold them to musicmagp!e, I even retrieved the DVD drawer unit from the room of despair and emptied that. I found a birthday card from my great-aunty who passed away on Friday, she'd written some lovely things about me and after some tears I decided to keep it.

I then moved onto the console, where I found my old mobile. It was the one I used when I was with late OH and there were many messages from when he was in hospital and from his family (who turned against me when he was told the worst, it was all my fault apparently, although I've yet to cause anyone else to get cancer). Most of the messages from them were thinly veiled digs at me. I deleted them all and the pictures I had on there. The mobile is now in the cs bag and will be dropped off this week.

After this stage of dericharding I now have several storage boxes brought from ik!athat are empty. Thank you to whoever posted about getting rid of the storage boxes, not just the contents. It's made me get rid of more carp as I no longer have the boxes to store it in.

Have a nice Sunday evening

Deco x

whitewing

decogecko, check your mobile on music magpie, or the recyclingfactory or others as you may get cash for it.

My chest of drawers was 5 ft 2 by 2 ft 9, plus the stuff on the top, plus everything that fell down the back plus anything underneath. DD's toyboxes are now there instead, all at her level. She was so excited that she has run back and forth!

yellowdots

Patchwork_Quilt wrote: »

Am just sitting and wondering why I keep my teddy. He's been in a wardrobe or box for 40 years. Likewise my Mum's porcelain doll. I'm not necessarily ready to get rid of them but it does make me wonder what they are for. After two children of my own, I think I've grown out of them by now.

I still have my old Tressy doll and her younger sister (can't remember the name) also a little tiny Pippa doll and some raggedy clothes for them. I will keep them and I have no guilt whatsoever about keeping them I used to have some lovely clothes for them, goodness knows where they went. Oh and their hair still grows with the button on the tummy too and the key still works to wind it back in :rotfl::j