Hoarding - Springing Ahead

pigpen

mothers glasses returned.. cleared off fireplace
Loads of laundry cleared.
2 pairs of wrecked trousers and a holey sock binned
Credit card paid off!!!!!!!!


Bank loan should be paid off next week!!! 20 months early!!!!!!!! that will free up £400 a month which will be bounced off another debt and hopefully in a few weeks a percentage of it will be going towards a replacement car in 2 years time.


outgrown pants donated to nursery.

cabinet is still meant to be going to live at my sister in a couple of months.


I am still aiming to knit up my stash.. I am trying to finish ongoing projects with very little success at the moment.

Ames

I really like the M&S bags for life - they're 89p and they're the big solid square type, they hold loads and they're prettier than from other supermarkets - they've got vintage food on them. If only I could remember to actually take them out with me....

GQ: I 'don't see' stuff too. Last night I went to bed sure that I'd cleared the rubbish from the kitchen. This morning I got up and found two cardboard covers from ready meals, and a bag I'd used as a bin just hours before sorting the rubbish...

I don't know if it's not seeing things that contribute to the hoarding, or hoarding that's made me blind to things. Or just that mum was messy too and I never really learned to do housework.

Great news about the debt, and the tidying, Pigpen.

Patchwork_Quilt

Just caught up with posts and wishing everyone clear work tops in the morning.

lobbyludd

AMES only my own clutter is invisible to me my very tidy mother comes to my house and dumps her things on a chair and I can't stop it irritating me lol. I think partly because I put my bag down for a second in her house and it's whisked away to the coat cupboard whilst I'm still unloading suitcases - I guess she has the same idea about other people's clutter!

MM - hello!

pigpen:beer: great news on the debt and the continuing decluttering

I had a brief week after gliding round pinterest and repurposed furniture etc when I had the canny idea of making a chair for DS out of small pr*ngle tubes. SO i fished some out of the recycling and started collecting them (DS loves them, I limit them, but a fair few creep in). I mean come on how likely is it that I'll make a CHAIR? and even with his habit it would take me years to get enough. I am happy to say they are back in the recycling and sitting in the rain waiting for collection tomorrow.

bins out, surfaces in kitchen cleaned, bathroom rushed round and some bits identified to go tomorrow (mainly ds's old wardrobe)

GreyQueen

Morning all.

I woke up to clear worktops. Not 100% clear because there is some stuff which lives on them, but 90% clear. I was able to wipe ahem SCRUB them down before bedtime.

I remember something from Kim and Aggie, I think in one of their books, is that you can't clean around clutter. It absolutely gets in the way. One particular counter (I have a small square one and a 4 ft long skinny one only) had been chocka with stuff and the bits which weren't covered were, shall we say, getting embarrassingly grubby. Once cleared, this counter could be cleaned in seconds, but until it was - nah, too difficult.

Yesterday between my dashing in and out, I was looking for a shopping bag. I normally use a small rucksack for work with some carrier bags tucked in the side pockets for any shopping done on the way back, but for some reason I didn't want to drag that out again.

Now, at Crimble, Mum gave me a lovely cream-coloured canvas shopping bag from Sainsbury. Not as a Christmas gift, it just happened to be lying around the back bedroom at the parental home, unused with tags. I admired the elegant and tasteful design (I did say I was a fabric snob, didn't I?) and she offered it to me. She'd picked it up at random in the shop thinking her MIL would like it but Nan had declined it on grounds of no need. Nan is 90 years old and never was a hoarder and definately is in a shedding not accumulating stage of life.

So it sat minding it's own business and then it came to me. I put it on my wall unit. It's very nice and attractive and I thought how it was too nice to use. It's pale cream and pale grey with pale green stylised trees on it.

I felt I couldn't use this bag as a bag because - wait for it- it'll get dirty. And it probably can't be washed. So it sat for the best part of a month before I faced facts; it ain't attractive enough to hang on the wall as an art object, it's a BAG. A shopping bag. I go shopping, it should go shopping, too, it's what it's for.

If it gets worn out and manky to the point where it's a disgrace, it can be demoted to hold potatoes or something like that. It's not the end of the world. I could even throw it away one day.............

Then I had a flash of a cartoon from Don Aslett's Freedom from Clutter book, of a woman with a feather duster, standing guard over a picture with its face turned to the wall saying It's far too good to look at!

Ouch. And double-ouch because that book, and another one of his, disappeared into the bookcase in the parental living-room, a bookcase which is double-stacked and itself obsucured by many boxes of other books piled chest-high. I haven't been able to get it back (loaned it to Mum hoping it might inspire decluttering, oh the irony).

Money maker, I had to declutter my bookmarks of minimalism websites because I was getting too many - that's so wrong, isn't it? Hoarding bookmarks and losing books on decluttering among the clutter.........:rotfl:

short_bird

GreyQueen wrote: »

Money maker, I had to declutter my bookmarks of minimalism websites because I was getting too many - that's so wrong, isn't it? Hoarding bookmarks and losing books on decluttering among the clutter.........:rotfl:

No, it happens. Especially in this house:rotfl:
If your computer is stable, leave digital clutter till last. However, I have had a recent purge of bookmarks and Facebook likes, why, yes, some were on minimalism;).
Can I just mention that I freed up 3 shelves for Him Indoors and he's filled 2.75 of them? Ta.

kayester

DD birthday yesterday so did barely nothing around the house. did however manage to go via post office on the school run and de hoard 5 items that were sold.

today: Bathroom cleaned, floor mopped in both bathroom and kitchen.
need to de clutter table from birthday clothes and hang up. and when kitchen floor dry need to wipes sides/do pots
on second lot of washing too, and aim to put it all away today before the school run

whitewing

1 shirt and 1 pair of trousers out this morning.

DS took half a bin bag out on Monday.

I was too idle to do anything last night. Then I get to work in the morning and wish I had. Although I did play skittles with dd. I don't really like playing but did force myself to build towers too. Indoor skittles - you need space to do that! Maybe I am not recognising the achievements so much; perhaps I am beginning to take it for granted - that means that it is well on its way to becoming a habit of keeping on top of declutteredness.

DH tidied the house this morning before we left.


If I go home tonight and sit down at the table straight away, then I have a couple of jobs that I will enjoy doing and will be very pleased when they're done.

We got given a bottle of bubbly the other day from someone we haven't seen for ages. It's all beautifully wrapped. We're keeping it for Valentine's day. (We can keep things and use them on the correct day, as we can see them and be reminded. Ames, I agree that my mess never looked like mess to me. I was remembering after I had DD and was in the drips of pnd, that our living room floor was covered with everything - not dirty nappies though. DH used to get so stressed, especially when the HV came. He'd get up at 5am to clear it for a 10am visit. It all got stuffed in cupboards out of sight as he wasn't allowed to get rid of anything. Gosh, what I put the poor fellow through. He was having nightmares because he was so stressed, and I used to put it down to me having mh issues. He is so much happier since we have been decluttering. He is a darling. I guess now I can begin to distinguish between having the impulse to behaviour that arose out of the mh conditions and poor coping strategies, and actual laziness. There was more of the latter than I had realised.)

roundtuit

Hiya x
I am pootling on with the decluttering. I didn't like doing it without access to the lappy at the weekend - I like to see my progress in writing however I am sufficiently motivated that I did continue. I thought of it as decluttering 'off piste' for a while.
I'm carrying on with the idea of maintaining momentum through the week too - a bag of cardboard and plastic went to a friend's for recycling on Monday. Tuesday: my burgundy bin was emptied - yay-now I can fill it again :T. I also washed the towel set that I received for Christmas (2013) so it can be put into use, and the tatty towel in the bathroom can be washed and torn up for cleaning cloths.
Before I went to work this morning I put 6 glass bottles into hot soapy water to soak - so tonight the labels will have floated off and I can just rinse the bottles and recycle them.
We are half past week again and I haven't burnt out, even though work is manic, so I'm hoping that means I've got the pace right for me.
It's great to read about - and see- other people's progress. Go us :T


Rxx

GreyQueen

Evening all.

Good to hear of the practical progress and also of the mental leaps forward. If it was as simple as shovelling it out the door, we'd all be living House Beautiful lives. It's the whys and the wherefores of how it came to be there in the first place which are relevent and need to be tackled, too. Otherwise it's just churning.

Which is why this is such a great place to be able to chat with friendly strangers who won't judge you for your eccentricities and who have many a helpful tip and can send a virtual hug if necessary.

This afternoon I fell through the door of a chartiy shop on my way home from work. It happens. We've all done it. And there was a big sign up Everything 50p. The 'everything' in this context was books, which is fine by me. Several bookcases to browse through.

I bought two history books of excellent quality and these will be given to my pet history buff. For myself, I bought nothing. It wasn't that I'm too cheap to give 50p for a book, it was more a case that I would be looking for an excuse to take something home because it was so cheap.

I had a bit of a LBM moment there in front of the bookcases; would I take any these books home if they were offered free? Apart from the two I bought, the answer was no, so I walked away.

I have also had a thought about a set of handweights which I have. There are 3 pairs but only the heaviest (1kg) weights are ever used. They have their own plastic case, which is partially broken. It was partially broken when I bought them from a bootsale a couple of years back but they were only £2 so mustn't grumble. I do use the 1 kg weights to do various exercises against the old bingo wings, but cannot see me using the tiny weights, they're just too wee. And the case is in the way in my bedroom.

I will sling the broken carry case and hand the two smaller pairs of weights to the c.s. Better get a nice strong bag for that - oh there's a Tesco bag-for-life which could be pressed into service for this purpose.

I'm also thinking about a few other bits and bobs on the premises which may head themselves c.s. wards before we're very much older. Keep on keeping on, lovely peeps.

GQ xx