Hoarding - Springing Ahead

GreyQueen

You'd be surprised at what allotmenteers can move when they are sufficiently motivated. Ask me how I know this..........:rotfl:Been dragging stuff from over and underground on my 300 m sq of heaven for years. Sometimes felt I could have started my own metal foundry with some of the carp I have dragged out of the soil. To re-smelt the many glass fragments i've also found, no doubt.

Have been away from home for 48 hours and just came in and unpacked my bags all the way to the bottom and put stuff where it belonged. And not just the stuff which couldn't be left outside the fridge either.

Have brought in a replacement for the cracked strainer spoon utensil and binned the old one. Have opened the two items of post which awaited me. One is the council tax bill (boo! hiss!) and the other is something which has already been superceded by a phone call. One to file and one to shred and the envelopes are already dismembered and into the scratch pad. Clothes are in the washer and it's all surprisingly tidy.

I took 6 books away (4 gifts, 2 for kid bruv to read and sell) and returned with 2 different books, one of his to read and return and one to read and send to chazzer. The curtain I ran up is now up in Mum's bathroom and looking rather lovely, if I do say so myself.

Keep looking around at my sitting-room and thinking that it looks wonderfully sparse in places, and will look even better in 2-3 weeks when the trays of seed spuds are planted up at the allotment.

Now all I have to do is stop myself from backsliding into old habits and it'll all be good. Keep on at it, lovely peeps. GQ xx

sweetpea26

I say it again...thank you to all that post here. Every single comment is a help to someone. I always feel that I am not on my own when I read this thread...there are others like me who feel its all falling in around them at times. Others who hate the thought of someone calling and the place a tip.

We all can help each other immensely. I have made very good progress this week. My thinking is one thing chucked/sorted at a time...it all adds up.

Today I cleaned my en-suite and got rid of empty containers etc...its so lovely and fresh.

I sorted some papers and disposed of them.
Outside I cleaned back windows, door step, area around bins coal bunkers etc, patio washed down too. All plant pots tidied up and some plants moved from one container to other.

Dumped some bits that were littering the garden and it looks so very tidy and organised. So pleased Boy am I sore tonight..who needs a gym when you can clean instead.

Utility room and larder are a mess but I am not going to let it overwhelm me...one bit at a time.

Keep on chucking out folks

softpad

I'm hungry. I need to eat. I should eat properly (i.e. cook a meal). I can't cook until I wash up and clear that little bit of counter which is the only place to prep. It's cluttered and grungry. I'm too tired, I need to eat now. I'll snack. And my energy will be worse tomorrow, the pans are still there. Rinse and repeat with morale going down the toilet.

Gosh, how true is all that! That describes how I eat a lot of the time! I didn't even have tea last night as I couldn't face it!

Thank you so much everyone for your comments. Hubby isn't really helpful at all and just complains but doesn't want to do anything to help. Happy to waste MY money on pizzas etc, then complains that all he is eating is pizza and fast food and not getting proper meals. Go figure.

I was proud of myself last night, I went shopping and did not buy a single whoopsie or anything I didn't need. I stuck to my list and felt really happy about it.

Thank you thank you all for your comments here. It really is inspirational and therapy for me to read this every day and see that others feel as I do. I treasure each and every one of your comments. Its particularly hard as I really am a hermit and don't have friends. I don't really know why, I am very private and not terribly sociable, I don't know if anyone else here is like that? I can start to feel very isolated but then the idea of socialising or having strangers into my home fills me with horror. Bizarre I know!

GreyQueen

Thankyou for that lovely vote of confidence, sweetpea26.

From my observations of life inside other people's homes, both as a visitor and in my days as a lodger, I would say that disorder and muddle are a lot more common than orderliness and calm. And that there a lot of folk stressing about it, and feeling social shame, restricting access to their homes to avoid potential shame etc.

About 20 years ago, I used to get up and drive for an hour across the county to someone else's home, where we'd get together in their vehicle and go off and do some freelance work. Sometimes we'd be out for a whole 18 hour long day, sometimes we'd be taking the tents and staying out 1-3 nights.

Every time I arrived at this couple's home they'd be running late and flailing around looking for something essential like the car keys. Absolutely without fail. And arguing violently about who'd last had the keys, whose pocket they'd been left in, thundering up and down stairs looking for them, ripping the living room and kitchen apart. Their kid would be getting stressed, their dog was getting stressed, I was getting stressed. By the time the keys were found, we were all running late and would be in their vehicle with an atmosphere of seething resentment.

After witnessing about the second or third episode of this behaviour, I tentatively suggested having a designated place to return the keys to, whenever they came indoors. Like a hook or something. Oh we tried that! the woman cried. But neither of us could get in the habit of putting the keys away. So we stopped trying.

They were nice people, and clever people, but very ill-organised in a life which needed good organisational skills, and suffered daily stresses and aggravations because of their inability to form helpful habits. Their relationship also failed, sadly.

I think a lot of my issues involve training myself in different habits than the ones which were modelled for me in my parental home, of dealing with stuff as it comes in rather than putting it down somewhere to deal with later. Because then you have clutter and double or triple or multiple handling of the same item. Plus the aggravation of having it around between times.

Think of post. A typical week will have a variety of stuff come through your letterbox. You might have bank statements, other financial papers, a greetings card, utility bill, clubcard stuff. Unsolicited offers of additonal services and goods from businesses you do business with, and unsolicited offers from ones you don't. There might be takeaway leaflets, cataglogues, flyers, political newsletters and stuff stuff stuff.

The model I was raised with as an example was thus; leaflets are left in a pile on the windowsill nearest the door, sometimes on the kitchen table and or counter. They will eventually be slung in the recycling bin, but not before they have become a nuisance and fallen down several times and will have to be paged through another 2-3 times to make sure that they haven't acquired relevence or had Something Important tangled up between them.

Important stuff like statements and hospital letters and renewals of insurance get opened, glanced at, re-inserted in their envelopes and put on the table/ counter in the kitchen. Occasionally on a piece of furniture in the hall or two or three places in the living room.

They are ususally re-inserted into their envelopes back to front so you cannot see which person they are addressed to, and thus will have to be taken out again to check. They will get in the way, acquire crumbs and stains and will cause stuff to miss deadlines and panicky flailings to find the letter with the crucial info.

Eventually these will be gathered up, withdrawn from their opened envelopes, sorted into which person they belong to, and taken upstairs and put on that person's side of the bed. Whereupon they will be moved to a piece of furniture on that spouse's side of the bedroom. Where they will stay nearly indefinately or be sorted through every few months and filed/ binned, depending on whether the owner is my mother or my father.

The clubcard vouchers will typically be expired by the time they are looked at for the second or third time. A lot of the other stuff didn't need to be in the house in the first place because no one buys takeaways, sells scrap gold or wants to hire window cleaners/ gardeners/ or is in the market for selling the house or buying double glazing/ sofas/ conservatories/ whatever.

The greetings cards will be displayed and the envelope parked on the nearest piece of furniture. Their domestic recycling pickup has envelopes as verboten. So you can either but them in domestic trash or cut them up for shopping lists. Eventually, the card will join a pile of cards on or in a piece of cabinet furniture. Xmas, birthday, valentine, anniversary, all wadged together and apparently never to be disposed of because of some unspecified reason that it would harm the emotional attachment to the giver..............?

Here's how I have learned to do differently:

1. I don't buy or use certain services so any bumph for those is picked up once and places straight in the recycling bag (to save me going to the communal bins with each item, I go 1-2 times weekly).

2. Bank statements are opened and checked and filed. I have reduced my 'financial promiscuity' to a single bank account. The latest statement is clipped onto the top of the last one. I have 1-2 years at hand and then archive them (taped up in a sealed envelope).

3. Utility bills are checked and filed. If it's an estimate, I will check the meters and contact the utility company if necessary.

4. If it requires actioning, I will aim to do that immediately or if that isn't possible, by putting it somewhere irritating, like right on the computer keyboard. And park anything which needs to be posted on my way to work on the doormat so I can't miss it on my way out the door.

5. If it's a hospital appt letter I will write it in my diary and slide the letter into my 'hospital appt letter file'. I need to take the letter as the clinic has automated check-in with the barcoded letter.

6. Council tax bill got filed under 'council tax bills'.

7. Xmas cards come down a few days after Xmas and are recycled/ turned into gift tags (depending on how thin the gift tag stash is). Birthday cards are displayed for one week then the bit with the writing on is shredded and the rest recycled. Other cards are dealt with similarly but might have a half-life as bookmarks. I read a lot and typically have several books on the go at once. Cute postcards are displayed for a while then shredded.

8. Generally try to head off anything at the pass by not having cataglogues, registering with the Mailing Preference Service and being very cagey about who gets the old terrestrial address.

A little organisation goes an awful long way.

Mumof2_2

Thanks for your post GreyQueen; made real sense to me. Unfortunately I think my DH is on the side of the environment you grew up in; he will stock pile post to look at later, or open it and not action it and leave it in the pile with all the gibble. I sometimes go through his pile of stuff and some of it can easily be over 3 months old. He's always losing his keys as refuses to hang them up on the key rack and can't ever seem to find anything easily.

I tend to open post and either put it straight in for me to file (which I do almost every week) or action or the majority goes straight into the recycling bin. If I happen to spot anything household related addressed to DH I open and deal with it otherwise it just gets mixed into the black hole on DH's desk/our kitchen table .... which I long to be clear one day . I don't deal with the 'action' stuff straight away, which I'm going to be trying to do, but I know where it is and mark important dates in the diary .... fine until the computer does a spectacular crash as it did the other month and I lost all the dates I'd so carefully put on :eek:!

We can all learn a lot from other people and I'm really glad I've tagged on here as the support is immense. I'm not a hoarder but am married to one who I love very much, just have to count to ten sometimes when I am helping him find his keys!

Willowpop

Lots of junk in the post today, so I mailed it off to a credit card company that had sent me junk mail as well. They had conveniently included a prepaid envelope for me to send them the junk in.
Got rid of 4 unwanted leaflets and it will make a change for the company to receive some unwanted carp in the post, like the stuff they send me.

noelphobic

GreyQueen wrote: »

Thankyou for that lovely vote of confidence, sweetpea26.

7. Xmas cards come down a few days after Xmas and are recycled/ turned into gift tags (depending on how thin the gift tag stash is). Birthday cards are displayed for one week then the bit with the writing on is shredded and the rest recycled. Other cards are dealt with similarly but might have a half-life as bookmarks. I read a lot and typically have several books on the go at once. Cute postcards are displayed for a while then shredded.

A little organisation goes an awful long way.

This is a brilliant post (how long have you been living in my house? :eek:) I am intrigued by the fact that you shred the bit of the card with the writing on. Why is this?

noelphobic

Willowpop wrote: »

Lots of junk in the post today, so I mailed it off to a credit card company that had sent me junk mail as well. They had conveniently included a prepaid envelope for me to send them the junk in.
Got rid of 4 unwanted leaflets and it will make a change for the company to receive some unwanted carp in the post, like the stuff they send me.

my son does this sometimes - great idea!

Catriona_P

Interesting thoughts r.e. mail - unfortunately I'm one of those people who 'loses' post. Many, many times have I lost bits of important post, including vouchers that inevitably expire before I see them again.

So recently I invested in a letter holder, which sits in the hall, and I've been making a concerted effort to open all post when I get it and either file it in the relevant place or chuck it. Vouchers stay in the letter holder so I can find them.

This is working for me. Unfortunately its not working for my husband (the man who claims to be oh-so tidy compared to me). The letter holder is now full of his post as he can't be bothered to open any of it. And I'm supposed to be the hoarder.

Sigh. You can only try.

Big hugs to you in particular sweetpea. This is a lovely thread and such a comfort to so many of us.

VJsmum

GQ -- just seen your "reason for editing" - surely you should be taking things away?

I am ploughing on against the tide. The idea - whilst not 40 bags for lent - was something every day but the last few, stupidly busy days have slipped. I will catch up with extra at the weekend.