Hoarding - Springing Ahead

anirtak191

ww i thought about that, but i was worried i might make a mess of it, i was thinking of opening it up and sewing pockets in and trying to distribute the filling into each pocket as i went, but i have a fairly good idea on how much nan paid for it, close to if not more than £100. and to do it wrong id feel guilty about it. cos looking at it and trying to shake it out it looks like if i did it would be easier to actually get inside. put the filling into x amount of piles then do that many pockets filling the pockets as i go.
curtains is one thing to make lol, but to try and get this right i would probably need either more experience myself or someone with experience showing/helping, and i dont think i know any one that would have experience with this.
hope i just made sense, feeling a little tired at the moment and changing the bedding has kicked my back off so sitting here in pain waiting for pain killers to kick in, dont think they going to as they normally have by now. knew it was a bad idea for me to move the furniture lol

GreyQueen

Morning all.

I've been using down and feather duvets for about 25 years now. They used to be made in channels (strips of stitching) which could allow all the feathers in one strip to slide to the end of the channel, leaving thin, cold spots. The last one I bought was stitched in a grid, so each batch of feathers was in its own pocket, which is better. Whenever I have looked at quilts in recent years, this pocketed stitching seems to be universal now.

If your quilt is channel-stitched, you might find it worthwhile trying to turn it into pocket-stictched. I don't think this is do-able on a home sewing machine, the least-worst way of doing it at home would, IMO, be to have the quilt flat on a bed, shake the filling into the desired position, and then use a running stitch with needle and thread to go between the channels, making a grid. It'd take hours and be a PITA, I reckon.

Today, I have to go to work and then may, subject to energy levels, flit to my allotment to plant some runner beans. Between getting up and coming online, I read another chapter of one of my books-to-read-and-donate (skinny one, lol) so that will be added to the next donation bag. It's good to read, but with the example of a hoarded family home with a lot of books before me, I just don't want to go there.

I was thinking about what has motivated Mum to suddenly start with the decluttering of clothes, something she has been talking about for years. She can express the desire to declutter, then never do it. I'll say something like if you want to help you go through some clothes when I'm next over, that'd be fine with me. And then I offer on the visit and it's never the right time. I've learned not to press because it can make my very lovely Mum stressed and snappy, so you can need to back off in a hurry.

What I think may be an impetus is that we have my very frail 91 y.o. Nan (Dad's Mum) in hospital these past 10 days having suffered a stroke. As strokes go, it's classified as 'slight' and her unipaired faulties are still unimpaired, but her movement is limited. The family visit daily, there's always someone there, and my parents and Auntie also look after her bungalow and garden, but we don't know if she will be well enough to return to it, once she is as well as she can be, and then time is limited as she is a very old person, and no matter how well-beloved, we won't have her much longer.

Nan's bungalow is rented and will have to be emptied pretty promptly and returned to the council. She's not a hoarder but it has been her home for over 50 years, and there will be a lot of stuff to go through. I think that contemplating dealing with this has given Mum an inclination of what she'd be bequeathing to me and my brother at the end of her life. She even quipped to me that the only reason I was helping her sort out stuff was to avoid having to do it 'later'. I quipped back that she was right, but that I'd like to help her to have a decluttered and organised life 'now' rather than just fret about what I'd have to sort out later on (my parents are in their early seventies, btw).

Hmm, pretty deep for this early in the day. I better have soe more tea before work and lighten up a bit. Laters, GQ xx

anirtak191

morning gq, sorry to hear about your nan,
sounds like that could be what your mum is thinking, im wondering if my nan is thinking the same with her sorting out, she not got rid of a lot of stuff but at the time she has got rid of a lot for what she has got. we lost gramps last november. and between them they got 9/10 double wardrobes full of clothes, 1/2 single wardrobes and 6 sets of chester draws. and the bottom of the wardrobes are all full to almost over flowing of just stuff.
my dad and his wife are in the dilemma as well at the moment of sorting out her dads house. just before gramps died, her dad had a stroke and we not sure how long it was before he was found, it was only due to aneighbour that normally put a newspaper in his mail box for him and it wass till there later than what it should have been, so she called police.
he is in a care home now, and will never be well enough to go home. and his care is at a lavel where he can not be cared for at home. and they are having to treat the property as if he has died they need to sort it out, in hoped of trying to rent it to pay for his care, as apparently due to savings or something like that witch cannot be accessed by my father has to be paid for by them with barely any help. only help i have been told they are entitled to is the nursing side of the care witch barely covers a quarter of the costs.
can honestly say, i have no understanding of whats going on, i would have thought they or he would be entitled to some kind of help.

going back to the quilt, there is no stitching at all, no columns like you have said about. its literally just one big square. the feather ones is in pockets, with was what i was thinking of doing but dont think i could do it without actually getting into it as since we have had it we have never been able to get the filling evenly spread. there is always a bunched up area somewhere, during the winter i dont mind it being bunched up near my feet as my feet are usually like blocks of ice, but that slight bit of bunching makes it heavy and pulls it over and more falls there (probably due to that thing they call gravity ) then it feels really heavy and my legs feel trapped. and my husband doesnt like too much on hos side as he feels like he overheats under it. so the bunching usually ends up being heavy on my side where i end up feeling trapped with the heavyness of it part way through the night when it has slipped over the side.

whitewing

In my opinion, a good night's sleep is vital to life and health and motivation.Use the current duvet under the bottom sheet in winter and get one that works to cover you.

If something isn 't fit for purpose, I have learned to get rid of it, no matter how guilty I feel.

MyHappinessProject

whitewing wrote: »

If something isn 't fit for purpose, I have learned to get rid of it, no matter how guilty I feel.

I feel the same Whitewing -Life is too short!:rotfl: I am gradually chucking stuff that is 'hand me downs/ not what I love/ not suitable / not fit for purpose or was just supposed to be a temporary fix etc' even though I have very little money (ie NO money!!!) to replace things...having irritants all around me just make me SO DISSATISFIED with my life, I would rather just survive on the basics and buy something cheap from asd* that is fit for purpose or just do without, certainly I can do without all the CLUTTER!
I was brought up with the values of don't waste things/don't throw ANYTHING out if it still has some life in it etc.. And certainly NOT to give away anything which has been given as a gift. I am now 57 years old and have found that I need to give myself permission to go against all my upbringing and trust my own judgement about what I want/ need to have in my life. Go Me!!! Cos it is still not easy to always do!!!
Goo luck to all fellow forums followers who are in the same boat and need to let go of time :idea::idea:wasting, not fit for purpose STUFF - go you!! for the things you want in your life xx

pigpen

Productive morning..

1 carrier of Tiddles clothes to my niece.. binbag filled with the rest to CS
1 dvd and a stuffed Spot (dog) for my nephew.

4 binbags full in the bin

1 large item, 3 binbags and a box, plus the 2 other things from the hallway ready to go to CS.

1 binbag ready for DS1 to collect
1 binbag and a box ready for DD1 to collect.

1 huge box full of Happyland in the car to dump on OH's mum next time we visit.

Steamer and Le Creuset casserole dish... sold from my kitchen. Silicone quiche dish given to DIL. Changing table being collected tonight

6 ebay items in the post.

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Anirtak, going to have to be quite brief as have to have brekkie, dress and go to w*rk, but just wanted to say something about your family's situation.

Re funding care home costs, the value of a home - if there is no surviving spouse living in it - is factored into a person's entitlement to help with care home costs. There will be people employed by the local authority to do financial assessments, to see how much people can pay themselves and how much the state has to fund.

It can seem hard as a family, but if you look at it from the outside looking in, anything otherwise is to preserve one family's inheritance (of property or savings) at the expense of all of us.

I'd encourage your family members dealing with this to seek neutral advice from somewhere like the Citizens' Advice Bureau and Age UK (formerly Age Concern). HTH.

Finished a book late last night, so that's another start on the next donation bag. Plus offered something which Mum had turfed out for charity to a friend whom Mum knows and likes anyway and they were pleased with it.

Have also office-tested the first of her cast-off tops and it's great and picked up a couple of compliments so that's a keeper. Will try another today.

Have a good day, everyone, GQ xx

Catriona_P

A quick post from me, everything is really busy at the moment but I wanted to document this as its a real victory for me.

My head has been all over the place lately with marriage issues and looking at the future, and yesterday I got out my boxes of photos. I decided that photos I wouldn't either hang on the walls or put in the photo albums (another job that needs doing) would be chucked away. Managed to get a big bag of photos for the shredder - halved the amount of photos I have.

I usually really struggle to part with photos so this is huge (even if it doesn't seem like much).

whitewing

Well done Catriona.

I have to say that we have very few recent photos in print form. And I'm getting quite good at deleting the rubbish ones soon after we take them!

Managed to do 2 quick loads of washing before we left today and get them out on the line. Let's hope they don't get rain-soaked before we get home later.

Haven't managed to get the DIY stuff done because of DH's shifts and the poor quality of stuff that the previous owner used in the house. The screws on the door have lost their cross so don't come out very easily. Thank goodness for google that we can look up how to do things but still takes extra time.

whitewing

pigpen, are you finding that you are pleasantly surprised at the difference when you walk into the house now, or are you not quite at that stage yet?

Glad that everyone is helping take stuff to the CS - that will help cure them of bringing unnecessary stuff home - well it has in our house anyway.