Hoarding - Springing Ahead

kayester

thankyou for responses nice to know im not alone.

i will begin to read the thread tomorrow when children at school.
I began to sort a wardrobe this afternoon, it was bin collection day and managed to get a bin bin liner full to give to the men on their way past (one thing that puts me off sorting is my bins gets filled with normal day to day rubbish very quickly!!)
I am determined to get sorted as i feel much better i can see the back/bottom of my wardrobe......one down and a lot more to go!!

MummyBobble

"There's a category of electronic accessory junk which is I dunno what you are, what you fit, if you work or not but you might be Important so I better keep you forever."

Thanks GQ, that's exactly what most of them are. I think we will have a sort through to see if we can identify any of them as being usefulwhile we watch X factor tomorrow night (something to relieve the tedium ), and then I'll just stick them all on freecycle as x number of random chargers. Someone might be able to make use of them! We also seem to have a ridiculous number of headphones so they can go at the same time, and as for the 3 D glasses from the cinema, I'll just keep the best three (one pair each) and bin the rest. Go me!Ok, off to get the children up and make a start on Friday (yeay, Friday!)

GreyQueen

Sounds like a plan, Mummybobble. Time fragments in and around telly-watching are useful.

The modern era of short-lived electronic devices tends to cause a proliferation of these what-the-heck items. After much frustration over the years, I've developed a few tricks.

I have most of my PC stuff on a surge-strip (multi-plug thingy with built in protection) and have a label on each plug. Printers, Speakers etc. Saves accidentally unplugging the wrong thing.

One thing I do at work (in call-centre) in case my personal headset goes walkabout, is to have a doubled-over strip of electrical insulation tape on its cable. This is the PVC tape in bright colours plus black and white. You can get a pack of 5-6 rolls from £land and they last for donkey's years. You can write on these with fibretip pens - I have a particular pen which I bought from a stationer's after asking for something which would write on metal or plastic. A couple of quid very well spent (it's a brand called POSCA).

You can use the same technique to label anything with a cord.

Another thing which hard experience taught me, is when life gives you random-looking but important objects like the immobiliser bolts off your washing machine which you should use if you move, is to put them in a small thick clear poly bag, with a piece of paper on the inside so it can't fall off, saying what they are.

Then if they end up floating around your home at random, you can identify what they are and know if they're keepers or not. If you've had more than one washer (I haven't yet) you could do something like put the brand and the model number on it, so you can know if they belong to a defunct appliance.

A slight aside from electronic accessory decluttering, but one which engenders a lot of the same emotions, are keys.

Most households have keys which they don't use. Keys which belong to homes, garages, sheds, bike locks etc long since departed. If bored on a rainy afternoon, you can gather together keyrings, and little caches of keys from various hidey-holes and try to reconcile them with your current life.

You may need to phone a friend and/ or collar passing family members.:rotfl:

As well as alleviating present-day clutter and confusion in your life, you can ease problems long term. The dresser in a hoarded relative's home (he'd died suddenly of a heart attack in his seventies) was a nightmare of keys. We ended up wandering the house and the many outbuildings and sheds and still had a fistful of the bliddy things which didn't fit anything. It was an unwanted extra frustration to a stressful and worrying time.

I have 4 sets of the two doorkeys to my flat; two live with me, one set with a friend in the block and one with my parents. Each have the same coloured rubber covers over the end of the keys so can be identified as mine. I use these covers a lot (you can buy for pence in hardware stores) as I have several keys which look similar but aren't and this means a glance tells me green= flat door, pink= shed door, pale blue = bike padlock, dark blue = chain holding tools together in lottie shed.

Sooo, treat yourself to a key-cull and you'll save time and aggravation for yourself on a daily basis and possibly for others, too.

PS if you have you car keys on your ordinary keyring, know that this is a bad idea as the weight hanging off the ignition can damage it. You should really only have the car keys themselves in the ignition.

short_bird

If you label anything that gets warm in use - such as a charger - using a Dym0 labeller, you'll find that the tape goes brown after a while. I suppose the colour change could be a useful guide to what's in use or how frequently it's being used.

mcculloch29

ModestyB wrote: »

.
Could do with another shed to house DH's weightlifting gear and 12+ guitars. And he moans about my books!
Thanks to all who post on here, you're all an inspiration.

Replace DH with DS and you have replicated my house. I think he has 12 guitars too... I have a bass guitar in my lounge as a 'feature'.

"Leaning Tower of Potsa" will be adopted here also!

Welcome to newbies!

DS (known as DrC on other threads due to his resemblance to Dr Christian Jessen) has however hit the ground running with the latest batch of de-cluttering.

He took one lot of stuff gathering dust to Cash Converters and an iPhone sold for a three figure sum.

His SNES video games that have been in the bottom of my wardrobe and elsewhere for 10 years turned out to have value.
One sold for £13 on the Bay of e, another, rare and boxed with instructions, has a current bid of £56.

I read about a website offering £3 for any book after decluttering c.50 to the CS. Oh well!
The paper, plastic, tin and card recycling wheelie bin was chock-full when emptied this morning. More to follow...

Bennifred

mcculloch29 wrote: »

....................
I read about a website offering £3 for any book after decluttering c.50 to the CS. Oh well! .......................

Give us a clue!

Florenceem

Cleared out the glass cabinet today.
Sent 3 boxes and a carrier bag of glasses to CS. :j
The glasses were never used - why keep them?
In fact - I kept more than I would have left to my own devices.
Mr F was about. :rotfl:

kayester

Happy took another step forward today, and sorted out 4 big drawers and 4 little draws (only had clothes in these though) but were all full to burst. all emptied 3 big bin liners full and all put back neatly

does anyone ever take before and after photos? be nice to do that on here i think....

GreyQueen

kayester wrote: »

Happy took another step forward today, and sorted out 4 big drawers and 4 little draws (only had clothes in these though) but were all full to burst. all emptied 3 big bin liners full and all put back neatly

does anyone ever take before and after photos? be nice to do that on here i think....

Forgot to say hello to you yesterday, kayester; apologies - was v.tired and not tracking because of the ME and went to bed for a chunk of the evening.

I think some people have done photos on this thread. Not me (don't have a digi camera). No reason why not but be sure to do it in such a way as protects your RL identity. We're OK but you never know who else might be lurking in the background.

Today I cluttered the first of 4 pkts of lasagne I bought some time ago on a whim and never got around to making my first ever lasagne until tonight.

:eek: It actually worked. I made 3 smaller lasagnes because I haven't got a suitable dish to cook one big one, so one down the hatch and two to go. Wasn't too traumatic and will keep doing it until the Lasagne Molehill is conquered.

I also retrieved my rolling holdall from the shed where it lurks wrapped in plastic between holibobs. I bought its replacement last Saturday, and said replacement has been reclining on the living room floor for the past 6 days and nights.

I will put it in the shed tomorrow (can't get at the shelf with the bike in the way) and have rolled the other holdall down the the charity shop and donated it. It's all good.

Keep on decluttering, lovely people.

mcculloch29

Bennifred wrote: »

Give us a clue!

I saw the '£3 for any book' in a newsletter email I got... can I find it now? Can I heck!