Hoarding - Springing Ahead

sweetpea26

Morning all

Greyqueen well done on not entering a charity shop. I haven't been in one for a few weeks now and the craving seems to be passing. Though I did have a vivid dream about finding tonnes of 'treasure' a few nights ago !!!! What does that say about me

I have been away for few days with my husband on a city break and now have the great pleasure of sorting out the 2 small cabin cases sitting in our bedroom. My husband has left only my bits and bobs in his case so its me has the problem around here in getting things done.

Jobs today
grocery shop arriving this morning...wipe down fridge and put all away
make meal plan for the next week.
wash all outstanding clothing and put them away as soon as they are dried.
Iron a few bits and pieces
Sort freezer
Utility room still a mess so hopefully make a start in there too. I know there are some items that could be popped into a bag and dropped of en route to pick son up this afternoon.

Wishing everyone a peaceful day

Saver-upper

Hi,Ladies.
I hope you don't mind me butting in,but I have been lurking around this thread for a couple of months,and lots of you are doing absolutely brilliantly. Now am looking for advice.
How do you actually let go of your "stuff"?Let me explain....
Since I have had children (nearly 12 years),I have filled the loft with clothes,toys,baby stuff,pieces of artwork,projects from school.....Clothes and toys have always been kept "for the next one(baby)".Well,4 children later,I have had all my babies(my youngest baby has just started school :eek:),and I am trying to declutter the loft.
But I am finding it really,really,really hard.
On and off for the last 14 months I have been doing tabletop sales,facebook selling pages,etc.To be honest,I don't make many sales,so I keep hold of the stuff.Then 2 weekends ago I filled my car (a 7-seater) with stuff for a tabletop sale,promising myself that what didn't sell would go to a charity shop.Until yesterday I was still driving around with enough stuff that there was no room for any of our 4 carseats,so we were getting lots of walking done :eek:.Now I have put it all back in the loft Advertising items on facebook,but making very few sales.And yet,I can't bear the idea of donating absolutely eveything charity shops.I don't know why.When I do donate,I never seem to see my stuff out for selling,so I can only assume it has been discarded.
Some mornings this week I have woken up and thought "I am going to bundle everything up and take it to a charity shop".But then I pick up,say each piece of baby clothing,and end up saying to myself "Awwwww.I remember when xxxx wore that when s/he was little:can't let go of that.......Awwwww,that was xxxxx's favourite toy:can't let go of that........"
I have managed to let go of some stuff(have emptied 12 plastic boxes of I-dont-know-what,and even did a run to the tip yesterday with things like carseats(2),old broken toys(only afew).When I do donate,it is to a charity for sick children,and I know they do appreciate it(though,again,I have never seen my stuff on the shelves).
Tomorrow is my last day off for about a week,so I really need to get organised.This loft declutter has taken over my life at the moment,it has filled just about every room of my house with junk "still to sort",no other housework is getting done,and it is starting to get me down,because I can't stand mess and clutter(we have enough clutter just by being 6 people in a tiny house)!!
I would really appreciate any advice as to how you just "let things go",how to remove attachment to every little item.....
Thank you ladies,and I continue to follow your wonderful achievements :T

lobbyludd

Hi super - I started off with the emotionally-easier stuff. perhaps you have already done that?

re the charity shops, "your" stuff may have been whisked off to another in the chain or bought quickly.

Making donations to charity is a triple win - you have space for you and your families lives now, the charity gets to make some money for their cause and someone else gets the pleasure of those things, to use whilst they are useful and pass on again after. quadruple if you think of the environmental win. you don't need to police what happens to them after you donate, they will make good use of it

conversely - if it's not good enough for resale then what value is there to it essentially acting as landfill in your life.

Removing no-longer-useful things from your environment is not the same as losing the memories or discarding those old precious times - they live in your children and family now - the stuff is just "stuff" and if it's getting in the way it is stopping you living new precious times with your family now, making new memories.

I stopped the sales, the return wasn't worth my precious time: I imagine you have a really busy life too

welcome!!

lobbyludd

oh, triple bins out yesterday, and resisted buying pretty things on ebay for hall renovation - not allowed until all the stripping back/ sanding/ repainting/ filling/ varnishing is finished. I'm aiming for the summer all bar about 4 square ft of very difficult to reach wallpaper is now off walls/ceiling and in recycling. and I've booked the fire service to come and check the house for safety

softpad

Just take a photograph of those things and create an album of memories so you haven't lost them altogether. If you can't sell them otherwise but want a bit of money, then just put them in boxes and sell then in the paper as 'boxes of car boot items' £5 or whatever per box it works well.

Cheers and good luck

GreyQueen

Hello and welcome saver-upper.

Re items of clothing, or outgrown toys which you have great sentimental attachment to, do you have photos of your child looking adorable in that garment? Could you keep that and let the physical garment go, perhaps imagining how pleased some other Mum or Dad will be to see their little one dressed in it? Could you even look at photographing the garment now, against a plain background, assuming it's too small for your child?

It's tough to part with sentimental items but unless we find a way of letting go, we'll each be dragging around a museum's worth of stuff behind us and eventually leaving a heckuva muddle for our beloved families to cope with. And would you want you growing children to be crowded out of their living quarters by the leftovers from their early years?

Yesterday after work I was very tired, due to being out on two consecutive nights, almost unheard-of by my modest standards. So I didn't do a lot but I did a little work on a crafty project, which will hopefully be completed on the next session and then outta here. Plus I ironed before work, including a garment which I'd bought from the c.s. and decided wasn't really me.

I'd uncovered this item in the turnout of the drawers a few weeks ago, so have washed and ironed it for the c.s. donation bag. I am also starting to put together a bag of clean but worn out textiles. I will check that my regular c.s. takes these as well. A lot of c.s do but it is apparently enormously helpful to the busy volunteer sorters if you separate them from the wearable stuff and label them clearly.

I'm about halfway thru a large non-fiction hardcover from the To Read shelf and that will be in the c.s. bag as soon as I've finished with it, then on to the next one.

I'm surprised at how little I am missing my charity shop shopping. Bearing in mind that I have been a haunter of such places for over 20 years.

I guess that I've reached a point where I have a lot of stuff and not in need of any more, plus a disinfranchisement with so many chazzers which seem to want to charge you more-than-new prices for secondhand goods. I am slightly-anxious that every chazzer I bypass may just contain some books which I have been looking for, but am allowing that to pass.

My home is looking more orderly now. The sofa is clear, the tabletop currently hosts the sewing machine and a fabric pile, but that is because I'm about to do some sewing with that stuff, so it's not really clutter, more a statement of intent.

Ohh, and I was in a friend's shop earlier this week when the offered me the pick of a bag of items for free and I refused. They were nice but they were reflective of a lifestyle I don't have and would have required regular metal polishing.

At one time I would have taken several of them gleefully and ended up charity-shopping them months or years later. This time I was able to smile and decline (the shopkeeping friend was donating them to a chazzer if I didn't want them anyway). So, that's a personal milestone on my road to a clutter-free life.

Keep on trucking, one and all. GQ xx

Catriona_P

Hi Saver-upper. You've had a lot of great advice from the ladies already but I wanted to post as until recently I was you. I was very attached to sentimental items (particularly baby clothes) and found donating to charity difficult yet when I tried to sell items they rarely sold at all!

One step at a time I think. It's taken me nearly 2 years of wrestling with my thoughts until I've reached a place where I'm happier (although I still struggle at times) to let things go.

I started by offering myself a choice (like you do with toddlers). So instead of keeping 2 items of baby clothing, you keep one. The other can either be sold or go to charity. Make peace with the fact that you can't keep everything but holding onto the occasional item (if looking at it genuinely makes you happy) is ok. Creating a space for family life is important too. A lightbulb moment for me was last year when I gave my daughter's bedroom a massive clear-out and she spent the better part of an afternoon just running around and dancing in the space in her bedroom.

It might also help to have a think about what 'type' of hoarder you are. I've established that I hoard when I'm stressed, I buy when I'm sad. I need to be feeling happy and secure in order to let things go (old childhood issues). So replicating those happy feelings - by playing some music, putting a good film on when I'm decluttering etc really helps me. And on bad days I give myself a good talking to when I feel drawn to online shopping websites. That way you can almost pre-empt your own behaviour.

Stick around and post when you can, and be gentle on yourself as you go. Hope that helps.

VJsmum

Saver upper - could you not decide to keep a certain number - say 10 to start with. Get two, compare them and keep the favourite. Keep going like that?

I only have my DDs christening dress (which is a rather beautiful but normal dress, rather than a gown); I don't have DS's christening outfit at all because he wore it a lot afterwards and it was rather the worse for wear. I may have her first bridesmaid dress though she used it for dressing up so it, too, is the worse for wear.

I went through nursery pictures and kept half a dozen "aww" ones. Each child has a "memory box" - a "bigger than a shoe box smaller than a crate" - box, with various odds and sods - first shoes, scan picture etc, nursery pictures. And each has a file with various certificates - swimming, etc in.

I have gotten behind with my lent challenge, but I will have a good go this weekend.

GreyQueen

Evening all.

I've just been attending to some paperwork. I had to make a claim on my home contents insurance policy due to a break in at my bike shed here at the flats. I'd corralled all the paperwork into one of those plastic snap-closure folders until the claim was dealt with, as I didn't want it to slump into the general files (one of those metal hanging-file cases) and disappear.

Cheque came on Saturday, banked on Monday and cleared today. I got a bank statement after work to check. I have gone through the claim folder and turned all the stuff into scratch paper, barring the sheet which had the cheque attached to the bottom. I will keep this 2/3rd of a sheet of paper in case I need to reference the claim.

Time was I've kept the whole lot, but I'm trying to learn new behaviours. The claim had a covering letter with it and I only printed a copy to send, not a hardcopy for the file. The original receipts for the items to replace the stuff which was stolen went with the claim but I kept a scanned sheet with them on. I was swithering over this - what if the padlocks break? Surely I should keep these to the hardware store to get recompense?

Then I told myself of all the padlocks I have ever owned or even heard of, I have had precisely two failures; a very old one on a bike chain which suddenly wouldn't open and I had to get bolt-cropped off at the shopping centre. And a £1 cheapy from the land of the poond which I hacksawed off when it wouldn't unlock and took back for a refund.

So, I decided the probability of the padlocks (2) failing within a reclaimable time-frame was pretty remote and that I should just get over the anxiety that this might happen and bin them. And I shall also now dispose of the severed staple, the keys to the two stolen padlocks and the packaging from the new padlocks, which I'd put to one side in case the loss adjustor should need to see them.

Phew, that's a good bit of stuff off the premises in one fell swoop.

Been whacked-out today at work so am having a pottering about evening at home. I found 3 pieces of junk leaflets waiting for me, and as I'd parked the recycling bag just inside the door to take to the communal bins once I came in, they went straight there without really touching the mat. Way to go, me.;)

I have also taken the 35mm film which has been hanging around since Xmas to be developed and didn't ask to have the cannister back. I have a fair few 35mm film cans, shouldn't need any more. Will get those back from Boots in a couple of days, sort them into keepers, binners and give-aways and then file them, file the negs and bin the envelope into recycling.

I'm trundling on through my non-fiction book, which is science-heavy, so the one I read after it will have to be pure entertainment. And (:o) I can see a gap or two on my bookshelf. Never before in the field of human endeavour etc etc. :rotfl:

Keep pecking away at it, folks. GQ xx

Saver-upper

Oh,thank you everyone for your wonderful support and advice last night-I have had a BRILLIANT day :j,and today I am feeling soooo positive(and just a little bit virtuous......).
Last week I mentioned on another forum I am on,that I had children's videotapes that I wanted to give away.It is about 7 years since we got a DVD player and stopped buying videotapes,yet I have kept all our videos because I didn't want them going to landfill (naughty,naughty).Well today a lovely lady came over and relieved me of 50 children's videos :eek::eek:,and about 15 other films.While we were chatting I explained I was having a loft declutter,asking what her 2 children were interested in,and handed her over several other toys,saying thay will simply be driven to charity in the next 2 hours if she doesn't take them.Some of the toys were still sealed in the boxes,never played.She was very pleased,I felt good giving stuff away (and,I admit,knowing exactly who it was going to,and they would appreciate it).
We said goodbye and in the time it took her to get in her car,buckle up,turn around and drive back out our road,I was already loading up bag after bag of "stuff" into my car to donate.A woman on a mission,me.:T.
At the charity shop (one for sick and terminally ill children),the young girl thanked me.I said "Oh,there's more....".She sent another shop volunteer to help me unload the car.It took two of us SEVEN more trips to deliver everything I had for them .
Came away feeling very pleased with myself:have been eating lots of chocolate this afternoon to celebrate :rotfl:.

Thank you,ladies for all your support last night.Some of the things I donated today I have turned a blind eye to for years,and fussed and faffed over for the last 15 months,unable to let go "just incase","cos it might get some money","cos one of the kids will ask for it","insert excuse here".And some of those things had been in my loft for 10 years!!

When I got back home,I was able to reclaim a couple of rooms in the house that have been over-run with contents of the loft since the tabletop sale:my front room has been tidied,dusted and vacuumed,a couple of bedrooms,stairs and hallway tidied and vacuumed.

I still have alot to do:since being back home,I have already started bagging up more clothes to donate.The loft is still overflowing,but I am feeling very enthusiastic(told the shop I am hoping to be back on Saturday!)

Thank you,again,ladies x