Hoarding - Springing Ahead

silvasava

Hi Everyone
Well, I've been in the loft - on my own!!!! What a load of cr... Stuff up there.
I have quite a few boxes, none of them labelled so didn't know which was mine & which was Mum's so it all needs sorting anyway. You have given me the impetus and courage to deal with it so first day three sets of curtains (mum's - I think I was keeping them 'in case') some cushion covers (mine) to DS1. 35mm Camera & film to go on ebay and a couple of things to the tip. It hasn't hardly made a dent but it has made me realise I can do it - I already have some lovely things of my Mum's in a display cabinet so that should be more than enough.
Thank you so much everyone xxxx
SOFTPADHad a chuckle - when I was an apprentice hairdresser (in the early 60's!) Our manageress used to line us up & dose us with Metatone in the run up to Christmas as it was so busy & stopped the girls throwing a wobbler! Back then Strychnine was one of the ingredients :eek::eek: Those were the days - haha

pavlovs_dog

GreyQueen wrote: »

Have almost run out of scratch paper, so must have another turf out of the files to see if I can generate any more of the stuff.

without wishing to become an enabler a fab idea I saw on athriftymrs' blog was was to use the reverse of food can labels for scrap paper.

I save envelopes for this purpose too.

ginnyknit

Have reclaimed a big space in the bedroom - 5 boxes of junk now gone and floor in front of bookcase in living room now clear :j

Fleabay has been a great success, lots of knitted stuff gone and just waiting for rest of auctions to finish, many of which have been bid on. Think there may well be a bidding war later on a couple of random items. 3 carrier bags of stuff sold. OH has been inspired to sell a couple more collectibles which are just sat there and one of which will raise at least £100. Am sat here amazed at it all.

whitewing

We have completely emptied DS' drawers, desk and floor. Desk and drawers have been thoroughly cleaned.

3 boxes have been taken off the top of his wardrobe. A quarter of 1 box has been kept (toys for DD), the rest has been sorted through to go to CS or recycling etc.

Half a bin load of paperwork is in for recycling.

It is brilliant progress, but I feel like I'm chucking away my son. DD hasn't helped by bursting into tears regularly - the last time was at a plastic spider that went into the bin so of course that was pulled out again.

Going to have a cup of tea and then will get the vacuum out to give it an interim clean. Perhaps then it won't look so glaringly bare. (We are going to paint the walls, hence the clearout).

IrishRose12

Afternoon everyone

First day off work today and have done a lot already! Lovely weather here so have just put 2 coats in the wash and are now out to dry then into the CS bag.

Went through the remaining coats/jackets/track jackets etc and there's 2 black bags full of stuff to go. My only saving grace is that my next door neighbour will be taking all of it for me to the CS as her sister owns it for her own cancer charity. If it weren't for her, I don't think I'd be doing all of this lol.
NDN and her sister are delighted as donations to charity shops here are rare ATM as people rather bin things than donate, or they are doing car boot sales themselves, so I'm only too happy to help lol.
Have now spurred my neighbour on to do some clearing out herself, both our fences ATM can't be seen due to washing drying. A few others in the street are also obviously having the same idea today :rotfl:

Am having some lunch now, then need to nip into town to pick up some toys I reserved in Argos to put away for Christmas, Argos have a great sale on ATM so myself and NDN are going in and picking up our orders. Between the 2 of us we have spent £381.00. Have just sat over lunch and worked it out. We have SAVED £590:eek:
So well worth it. Her sister has said we can store the toys in a room she doesn't use in her shop so we're delighted lol.

Ames

Hi all. Sorry I've not been around for a while - I was ill for a few days and got out of the habit of reading and posting. I have still been plugging on with the decluttering though.

So, having caught up with the last few pages:

Saver upper, what you said about the emotional lightness after getting rid of the cot really resonated. There's so much carp preying on my mind, that I'm dreading finding and having to make a decision about. Everything I've already come across has been good to get rid of, but getting over that hump is really, really difficult. I think it's probably one of the things that makes us hoarders rather than just messy.

I love Cherry blossom too, it reminds me of where I lived for a couple of years when I was a kid, it marked the furthest I was allowed to go on my bike down the road. I love that feeling when I drive down a road and suddenly in a place I've never even noticed trees before there's all the blossom bursting out.

GQ - I think it's amazing how much you achieve despite having ME. I was misdiagnosed with it for many years and so have a lot of ME symptoms, you're really inspiring.

GN - What you said about other boards not understanding us really resonated too. A few weeks ago I had a look at the 'have a look at this' thread on the housing board. One of the houses linked I looked and and thought 'hoarder'. Everyone else was coming up with all kinds of scenarios - relatives looking through for valuables was my favourite. It just didn't seem to occur to them at all that someone could have been living in a house like that (ie, like mine).

Catriona P - Good luck with getting the room cleared for the plasterer. I always find I get more done on Sundays and bank holidays because I don't have to worry about dealing with admin - there's no post and companies are closed, so that gives me extra time and mental space to plunge into other stuff.

Oh the washing up! I completely get what people are saying. In fact it's quite timely, as I've decided this weekend is 'get the kitchen sorted' weekend. I dread to think how long some of the washing up has been lurking. Confession time - I use disposable cutlery/plates/cups. I don't have to worry about washing it up, once it's been used it's straght in the bin and away. One of my aims is to get to the point where I can use proper stuff, because when I'm not wasting time and energy on decluttering or just living in a cluttered home then I'll be able to do things like washing up.

I'm loving the CHAOS syndrome!!

Well, I have two loads of washing out and one just finished. I've got a short washing line, which I can put clothes on (today's load was woollens, so not a lot of items), and I've done some bedding which can go over the fence and rail. Hopefully with it being a nice day it'll all dry. There's only two items that are definitely for the CS but hopefully I'll find more as the weekend goes on. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that my neighbour's fondness for feeding pigeons doesn't mean I have to wash too much stuff again...

Just to carry on the conversation from the other week, I've been pondering all my clothes. One of the reasons I have so many is down to hoarding - that midnight 'oh carp I don't have anything clean and I have a meeting tomorrow' dash to the supermarket. Otherwise, it's down to good old aspiration woman. Whoever came up with the phrase 'new wardrobe, new you' needs to be shot. Or buried under a hoarder's clothes pile...

I took six bags to the CS the other day, and I've sorted some other stuff out since.

I had a visit from the tenancy support officer the other day. She's reffering me to a housing support service, who'll be able to offer me practical support - ie physically getting rid of stuff for me. Which is great! I just wish that I'd known that 'hoarding' is a recognised problem years ago, there seems to be so much help out there. Although that would have needed me to recognise that my problem is hoarding, not just lazyness/messyness/whatever.

So, the plan for today is to alternate my favourite activity (reading whilst listening to music) with my least favourite - housework.

GreyQueen

Afternoon all.

I'm delighted to see that people are winning against the tide of Stuff. I have been fighting the good fight for about 3 hours in my parents' place and am pooped. Have cleared off an area of a wall unit of shelves and surfaces and a glass-shelved area.

Am visiting them for Easter and asked what I could do to help, as MIL is incoming on Sunday, so Mum and I worked on this area. It was only about 4 x 4 feet but very densely packed and we didn't even get into the cupboard below the area on the stuff stacked above it. The area represents about 2/3rds of the wall unit.

Anyway, I expect that it's no news to anyone reading here how densely packed stuff can be or how time consuming and tiring it can be to go through it.

Results; 8 kg of magazines into the recycling and about another 3 kg to be offered to the GP surgery, ideally tomoz. The most recent ones. The bottom of the pile of monthly mags was from 2010. Also got into a huge pile of opened post ; you may recall the earlier mention of the family habit of opening post, glancing at it, and then restuffing it into the envelope and parking it on the side.

Anyway, went thru and separated into Mum's and Dad's and removed all the excess; the envelopes, the leaflets, the kipple. Took a great stack down to two modest piles.

I also removed a teetering stack of cards from the glasses cabinet, about 5 inches thick, and their envelopes. Previous attempts to offer to deal with these had met with quite aggressive rebuttals but today it was OK to cut up a few for tags and recycle the rest, with no sentiment attached.

I have also inverted a big bottle of shampoo with a dreg of product in it to be used shortly then recycled. Bottle has been kicking around in there so long that it's wearing a cloak of dust.

Have visited the recycling banks with my plastic ready-meal trays from home as nowhere I vist recycles them in my city. Have also culled out of date Thomson's directory and an old phone book.

I have created three bulging envelopes of scratch paper to take home, plus a pile of colourful birthday card envelopes. This isn't hoarding as I use a lot of scratch paper every day at work, then it goes into the condential shredding at the office. And I keep and re-use envelopes. Stamps were removed from some non-keeping envelopes and a few confidentials went into the home shredder.

All this was time consuming but necessary to restore order and make sure that Important Stuff wasn't lost in the paper shuffle.

Of three gifted-to-Mum china mugs which were lurking in the glasses cabinet, two have been brought into use and one has been added to the donation bag.

There is still a lot more stuff in there than I would like but it is huge process for Hoarder Mum, and I don't want to push my luck. Getting that stack of cards outta there is monumental. Plus she finished reading a novel and straight into the donation bag.

Mum said to me, mid-delcutter, I'm glad you're here helping me with this, I just can't seem to do it on my own.

:oAww. I love doing it, even though it's tiring, it drives me nuts looking at it. I think we'll call it a day for today as you can easily go past yuour ability to make decisions and I don't want the good emotions to turn bad.

Anyroad, soon to eat a roast chicken dinner, lucky me. Keep up the sterling work, one and all. GQ xx

Ames

GQ - It's great that you're helping your mum, I hope she rewards you with a big chocolate egg on Sunday!

I managed to get a fourth load of washing out - using airers and moving further along my fence. I'm not sure the neighbours were too impressed at the untidyness of all the washing out on display though.

I was a bit achey afterwards so didn't get much tidying done, just one little burst. But I did find the part to a coffee machine that I thought was lost forever, yay!

Now, I have three coffee machines (four if you count the cafetiere, five if you count the good old kettle). Finding this part means that I can get rid of the duplicate (espresso machine - I also have a dolce gusto pod one). I'm not sure how/where though - I don't think many CS's accept electrical items, and I don't want to tip it as it works fine. So maybe ebay? Or is there somewhere else I'm missing?

I've also just decided, whilst in the shower, to get rid of my towel rail. I live alone and only ever have two towels out (hand and bath), so why do I need a three rail towel rail taking up space? It's wide and low so really doesn't maximise space, and tends to be used to dump dirty clothes on until wash time. I have a garden chair that I use when I'm at the sink, so I can hang the bath towel over the back of that, and I'll get one of those cheap suction or stick on hooks for the hand towel. Then I can get a laundry hamper to hold the laundry.

So task for next week - get rid of those items.

Task for the weekend - concentrate on washing, as the forecast says we're due rain maybe on Sunday, and definitely on Monday and Tuesday - so I can do the tidying and binning stuff then.

And on the subject of binning, my bin's just about full and not emptied until Tuesday. I'm thinking of asking for a recycling bin to spread the load, and because I hate throwing all the recyclable stuff in the normal bin.

Speaking of recyclables, the other day I found a bottle of prosecco in a bookcase, surrounded by books. I've no idea how it got there, but I think it needs decluttering asap.

ginnyknit

Ames you are doing amazingly well and seem to have changed how you look at things. It a good idea to do things bit by bit and sitting reading or whatever your relaxation thing is can only help focus your mind. I think very soon you will have the home you long for.

GQ keep your feet up for a while and dont wear yourself out but well done for getting your Mum on the right track.

I am just going to vaccuum the floor before settling down for the night with the tv and my crochet. Have a big bag of things to post out and am waiting for a reply from local freecycle as to when someone is coming to pick up a box of crafty stuff. If it doesnt sell on fleabay after 2 attempts its freecycled or dopnated to charity. Am beginning to see the wisdom of de-cluttering and have some way to go but on the whole things are improving.

whitewing

Went out for the day. Broke one of DD's toys and she even put it in the bin before we went home - that was a big step as we'd spent all afternoon playing with it.

Am baking some Easter goodies to distribute tomorrow. Will get quite a lot of presents out of the house, including some extras from our decluttering which will be CS'd if family don't want them.

Have put a load of washing in and will hang it out tomorrow before we go out.

There are a few piles of half-sorted stuff but they will be done by Monday evening.