Hoarding - A New Start

decogecko

Hi all

My room of despair is no longer my room of despair :j Major shredding action (filled 3 bin liners with shredded paper), filed away relevant paperwork and just threw anything that couldn't be taken to cs, freecycled and that I couldn't decide what to do with so it went.

Cs benefited from my clear out. I have churned some items - mainly lots of wires, leads and electrical cabling, that have gone into a basket for me to sort at a later date.

Found it tough though, accepting things are how they are and how my life has turned out. But I remind myself that most people's lives don't turn out how they thought and that I'm lucky that I have my home, health, family & friends. I felt like crying though.

I managed to get rid of a birthday card late OH gave me - as someone else said I have the memories I don't need the 'things'.

The room is not perfect, I have a basket to go through, but I can see most of the carpet around the bed and it feels like I can see the wood for the trees in there now.

Deco x

tattycath

I have to say I'm quite obsessive with greetings cards. I keep loads of them. For me, DH, the kids... I've still got a couple my gran gave me when I was little-she died when I was 12.
I still have her scarf she used to wear. I'll never wear it, it's just there. We didn't even get on that well, i never felt she liked me. My Dad reminds me of her, we don't really get on for long either-but we are getting better as we are getting older.
I've got a bangle that belonged to my mum's Aunty-I never knew her very well, but I have something of hers to remind me of her. I never wear it. I never will, it's just there too...

Molly41

VJsmum wrote: »

Freeze it!!


The card box wouldn't be for me either as, for me, cards are about what is written inside rather than the picture. I saw an idea a while ago to re-use christmas cards by putting a sticker or label over the greeting and resending to someone else the following year. The pre-bought labels explained that you'd done this and why (and were bought from a charity) but my OH put his foot down and said no. I still think it's a shame as we often have beautiful cards, some home-made and it's a pity they only get used once.

We have been re-sending birthday cards. We have chosen our favourites and given them again - to each other and to my Dad - well he is so forgetful he never even noticed. This meant tackling my mum to raid her stash of cards which is now 50 years old and has taken over a large cupboard. Yes she has kept every card for 50 years:eek:

Catriona_P

Feeling a bit better now (a glass of wine and little one early to bed for a change has helped though ). Unfortunately when OH starts on about my clutter, he DOES mean it in the way my Dad did, it's said to hurt and shame, not help. We had couples counselling last year due to marital issues and my hoarding came up. It was not a pleasant experience. He knows what my Dad used to do to me with my possessions as a child, yet quite often reacts in the same way. So when it starts, I do dig my heels in and it ends up being an argument. I do appreciate his point of view, it can't be nice living with a hoarder - but my hoarding didn't happen overnight, I've been like this for as long as he's known me. It's a hard situation. In any case, I'd get a lot more declutter done if he helped out more with the childcare, but that's a whole other story!

Anyway, a few more items listed on eBay tonight. Struggling to find a buyer for our dining room set, if only I can flog that, I can start moving furniture and making some progress in a few of our rooms.

Pitlanepiglet

I've found dining room sets go very cheaply, so many people are not using their dining rooms now that there is a glut of furniture and very few buyers. I'd bung it on ebay for local collection, see what you get for it and be glad if someone takes it away for a few quid.

Someone said earlier in the thread that us hoarders have a habit of over valuing the things that we want to sell and that's so right for me - I don't know if it is a subconscious way of trying to justify why I've kept something, or a subconscious way of trying to keep it "I can't get what it's worth therefore I can't see it".

I don't envy anyone who lives with a hoarder - further up the thread there are posts from a lady who's husband has filled their house and it was eye opening to see how this made her feel.

I find any number of reasons to blame my DH for most things that go on in this house, I think it's part of the control freakery which is part of me. Sometimes even I can hear what an absolute cow I'm being - I blame him for not wiping down a kitchen work surface, when my hoarding causes the rest of the house to look like we've been burgled by a very untidy burglar - I really wouldn't want to live with me

mcculloch29

That's precisely it, over-valueing - I can't remember what I paid for my leather jacket, but even s/h, it was so new and stiff at the start that it stood up by itself. The leather trousers were £30, also s/h, from a posh dress agency, some 19 years ago. Which probably worked out around a quid a wear, over the four years I could wear them, but possibly as much as £4.
So both items have stayed with me ever since 1998, in wardrobes, taking up space, and unworn. As I'd paid a fair bit of cash for both, I couldn't bear with parting with them - but they probably wouldn't have sold, either, although in VGC.

blossomhill_2

Today is a good day to light a candle, for Holocaust Memorial Day
buildabridge.hmd.org.uk

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Back following the thread after having awarded myself an internet-free Saturday. Instead, I spent time with a pal, went briefly to the lottie and did some other bits and bobs.

I also nipped into the library and on the returns rack was a book which I'd read before but decided to read again; Enough, breaking free from the world of more by John Naish.

Read it between 7 and 11 pm last night and have mucho food for though. It's a light-but-deep read, IYKWIM, about consumerism and how we're trained to be happy little shoppers and what this is doing, for us, society, and this overused little planet of ours.

Today I have braved the world of freecycle again and have something up. Haven't freecycled for about 9 months after being messed around by several different people and feeling a bit jaundiced by it all.

Decided it wasn't reasonable to tar all freecyclers with the same brush and listed something first thing. Coupla different people wanting it, give it a few more hours for any late risers to see it, and then offer it to one of them.

Anyone else hate having to chose their recipient? It seems to be like a blind beauty contest and I worry about hurting the feelings of the people who miss out. Imagining that they always miss out on things they ask for on freecycle and feel down, and unworthy.

Hello and welcome, Bexim, it's very heartening to find new people stepping up and saying that this thread is helping them. I classify myself as having hoarderish tendancies, having had my early life shaped by a hoarder mum. I want to keep a close eye on my behaviour so that I don't slip into full-blown hoarding myself.

Keep pecking away at it, little by little. I see it as learning to question why we do things; keep every birthday card we were ever sent, save jamjars, whatever. Once you question what you're doing, you can step outside the emotion and try to do it differently.

It has to be about your feelings, which shape your behaviour, which is why it doesn't work when people do intervention-style declutterings of massive hoarders. If the issues are still there, the hoard will be repopulated in double-time until the hoarder feels safe again.

I recognised that I was hoarding stuff on my Favourites list, which has subfolders. One of them is Minimalism. In this folder I was hoarding links to hoarding websites!:p Beyond post-modern, or what? So, to stop things getting out of hand, as there are only so many websites I can visit, I decided to delete one for every one added, or sometimes delete 2 or 3 for every new additon. It's not hard to find blogs which aren't being kept updated and lose them from the Favourites.

Re buying huge quantities of sticky tape; tell your OH that it's only good for about 3 years max, then it goes all gooey and welds together (true). So if he bulk-buys 74 rolls and you use 4-5 a year, he'll be consigning 50-odd to the bin.

You can get 2 rolls packaging tape for £1 in £land. Kid brother runs online business and goes thru a lot of tape and this stuff is perfectly OK.

:T I have also reached a decision about an item which was my 18th birthday present from my parents. I haven't used it in about 25 years and I won't use it again. I've decided to give it away to charity. I won't maunder about it and I won't discuss it with my parents unless they bring it up because I feel guilty about wanting rid of it.

Crazy, isn't it, even after about 30 years, I feel somehow that this item isn't mine to rehome as I wish.

It'll be the hardest thing I've decluttered for years. In fact, after a long time of stewing about it, I've decided to take it to the c.s. where I'm gift-aid registered today before I bottle it again.

And once it, and the freecycle item have left, I shall have 2 of a 3-set of storage boxes liberated and some of the stuff which is floating around can be corralled.Which is going to make life in the tiny flat more agreeable.

Onwards and outwards!

whitewing

Aw GQ, you know we'll want to know what your item is (but if course it is fine not to tell us).

I am putting off tackling the drawers in the bedside cabinet. Part of this is because it houses stuff that I previously decided to keep, and also some of the important stuff.

Now, I seem to class replaced passports (those with the corner cut off by the passport office) as 'important' in that they are kept with other id. Why? They are not even that important as memories in that we rarely go abroad. So I am building up to destroying them....

And while I class a lot of paperwork as too important to get rid of, I don't even keep any of it in a fireproof, waterproof box. So I am wondering what you folks use. I am thinking I will just get 1 box, partly to encourage us to keep it all together so it is easier for us to find.

short_bird

I had a message from Him Indoors last night; he's over at his Mum's for the first visit since his Dad died at the end of 2012. Last month, we went through a 10 foot shelf of box files as well as several drawers of paperwork, cunningly hidden underneath cables of all descriptions. The shredder worked overtime and we took goodness knows how many bags and boxes of paper to the recycling.

He's found another 14 box files. :eek: