Hoarding - Springing Ahead

GreyQueen

thegladsatsuma wrote: »

Pigpen and GreyQueen - Thank you. I still feel awful about it, I know something is going to have to change and soon. OH has finally admitted that he needs to sort out his books (the dining room has two huge bookcases which are full of books and other crap from before I moved in (nearly 7 years ago). We just never seem to get round to doing any of it.
I go to other people's houses and wonder how they keep it so tidy and minimalistic looking. We just have too many 'things', like mementos from our travels. We could maybe do with an ornament cabinet or something.

Have you ever encountered a writer called Don Aslett? His most popular book is called Freedom From Clutter, and was widely sold in the eighties as a smallish hardcover, cover is mainly white with a cartoon on the front. You see it in charity shops from time to time, or your library may have it. He has other good titles, too.

I'd highly recommend it as an excellent primer for decluttering. Mr A has something to say about issues like the one I've bolded in your post above; he calls them junk-bunkers.

Y'know, an excessive number of books causes another bookcase to be acquired, the curios and knick-knacks cause another display cabinet..........it's a purely temporary fix and then it gets bad and you get another junk-bunker and around and around you go. The excess furnishings will stifle all life out of your home.

Sometimes, containment is the solution. I'm happy that my cutlery lives in a kitchen drawer, rather than floating around the counter-tops and getting in my way. But the drawer is a finite resource. If I overload it, the contents will be too muddled to use efficiently, if I make it too heavy the drawer-front will probably detach. If there's too much in there, the drawer won't close at all.

If you felt that you couldn't part with any of your travel mementos, how about having a strategy that the traditional Japanese home used to display decorative objects?

You have a limited space dedicated solely for this purpose. They would have had an alcove, called tokonoma if I remember correctly. You could have your mantlepiece, a prominent shelf, the top of a cabinet.

Your treasured memento sits there in solitary state, able to be admired cleanly like an art object in a gallery. The rest are packed away. When you have admired the object to its limits, you pack it away and give it a rest, bringing out another treasure.

You can ring the changes as frequently as you like, all your treasures get seen properly, your dusting is minimal, the opportunities for the treasures to get damaged or broken are reduced, and you have a lot less visual clutter in your home. HTH.

thegladsatsuma

Grey Queen, that is a brilliant idea about the minimal objects on show. A lot of our mementos are actually from Japan, it's our favourite place, so it would be quite fitting to display them in this way.
I see what you mean regarding the display cabinets, it sounds like a good idea at the moment, but I can picture them getting packed to the brim with things :S

GreyQueen

thegladsatsuma wrote: »

Grey Queen, that is a brilliant idea about the minimal objects on show. A lot of our mementos are actually from Japan, it's our favourite place, so it would be quite fitting to display them in this way.
I see what you mean regarding the display cabinets, it sounds like a good idea at the moment, but I can picture them getting packed to the brim with things :S

Ohh, I do envy you, I was a major Japanophile in the 1980s, really liked the aesthetic of the traditional homes, also used to practice a Japanese martial art.

How fitting that your mementos are Japanese, they'd be just right. The Japansese find our ways of crowding decorative objects together and leaving them unchanged for years quite alien.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokonoma

I think the thing about our homes is that we become blind to what's in them and genuinely stop seeing our surroundings properly. This can become a bit of an embarrassment, the like of which caused you sorrow so recently. It can also cause us to lose appreciation of the lovely things we do own, such a pictures, ornaments, plants etc. Because they're so crowded together that they cancel each other out and become invisible.

One thing I recall from art school is that you learn to draw by looking at the spaces around things, as much as at the things themselves. A shapely vase standing against a clear shelf is enjoyable for both itself and the contrast between it and its background. If you crowd it and clutter its surroundings, you lose some of its impact.

Tonight, I have been out to a friend's place for a cuppa and a natter and the subject of decluttering and minimalism came up. We both have very small homes, almost dollhouse size, so thinking about such things isn't at all uncommon, nor is it a novel conversational subject between us.

skeeter93

Love this conversation! What a great idea... When we move I am definitely trying this!

Gingernutty

I've been awake all night preparing for another night shift.

I've

cleaned the doorstep, pavement and windowsills (flaming kids!! :mad:) - at about 5am

measured, cut, pinned and hemmed two pairs of trousers.

tried on another pair from a charity shop, found they were low cut/hipster style with no belt loops so put that back in the charity bag - they were loose and starting to fall with nothing to hold them up

reknotted a wonky necklace that looks fabby now - it's very heavy, it feels like stone or ceramic

put pop fasteners and hooks and eyes into some fashionable kimono style tops so that they stay on and don't slip down my shoulders when I'm carrying my shopping

changed all the buttons on a George raincoat I got from Cancer Research, cut off the sleeve detail, tried it on, decided to cut off the belt loops, cut off the belt loops and dyed it - it'll look great once the sleeves are shortened

Restitched the cuffs for a cardigan so that I can see my hands

did two loads of laundry and put it to dry with the Ocean Blue raincoat with big, shiny, black buttons

put dry washing away

caught up with the email conversation with a garden clearance company and the local council's Environmental Health

and caught up with some internet telly.

A large portion of that list has been stuck on the back of my dining room chair for months.

I'm feeling very pleased with myself.

I'm off to shower, pop in my earplugs and go to bed.

G'night.

pigpen

I appear to have decluttered my tolerance of KH ... I raised my voice in the school playground and told him to speak to my solicitor and to fluff off .... I contacted my solicitor today, appointment for Tuesday because tomorrow I am rammed busy.. Hive installation for CH and phone delivery and few other bitty deliveries of Christmas stuff.

I'm going to do lunch and send OH out to the park with Dot who is hysterical at the moment..

I may resort to alcohol (for me, not Dot) if things don't start picking up soon, I'm beyond the end of my tether now.

claire1a

new to this thread but I feel it is time i stood up and shouted that "my name is Claire and I am a Hoarder...."

I have had this issue all my life, my dad is a hoarder too and he has now learnt to pass things onto me (so he is getting rid if it) for it to now live in my loft =(

My parents have also given me all my childhood belongings (i suppose it's time as I am nearly 30), but I can't bear to part with anything! These are my memories!

Happygreen wrote: »

I tend to break the things I love, sadly....probably because I use them more and they are not at the back of the cupboard!:rotfl:

Happy Green- I have the opposite problem to this. I have belonging that I own but I am scared to break/ruin them so buy extra of everything to use instead, or crapper versions... I own about 3 of everything incase something breaks etc and I have a replacement!! I'm fed up of owning all these pretty lovely things and not using them! (for example I hvae three sets of dinner plates in my loft but use mismatched crockery that was either value in a supermarket, left from old lodgers or given to me by relatives when they have had a clear out...)

I also have a years supply it seems of food and toiletrees although I am trying my hardest to reduce these (it was mainly due to me worrying that I might not have enough money one day to pay for something so better if I stocked up now. But actually this has helped as I dont have the money so having to using my stockpile!!!! It also doesnt help that it is cheaper to bulk buy. The only problem there is where the hell to store it!)

Anyways Ive gotten to the point that I look at my house and think what a tip. I literally have £1000 of pounds worth of crap cluttering up my house! I'm loathed to give away to the CS as I feel like it really is admitting to wasting money that I dont have, but I am yet to be motorvated to see on ebay/ careboot.

I wish I had a spareroom that I could just dump all my crap in and work from there!!!!!!

Looking forward to lurking on this thread!

pigpen

claire1a wrote: »

These are my memories!

No they are not.. memories are the feelings in your heart and the happy in your head.. these are just clutter from a past life taking up space and gathering dust, rotting into mush unloved and ignored just the same as they would in a landfill.. set things free, they have a new path to follow and a new life to touch!!

There you go..

and welcome xx You will get rid!

GreyQueen

claire1a wrote: »

My parents have also given me all my childhood belongings (i suppose it's time as I am nearly 30), but I can't bear to part with anything! These are my memories!

Hello, Claire, welcome to the dark and somewhat dusty side, where we're prepared to venture into subjects others shrink from........

Respectfully, your childhood belongings aren't your memories. Your memories are inside your head, your childhood stuff is at best a memento, which is:
keepsake, memorial, relic, remembrance, reminder, souvenir, token, trophy




That's pasted from the Collins online dictionary. Let's break is down a bit at a time in the context of your childhood belongings:

1. It's a keepsake. Whose sake are you keeping it for? Your own? Mum and Dad's? Prospective offspring? I can remember all my favourite childhood softies, including every mend on Pink Bunny, which was discarded in the mid-1970s, along with the rest. Can see every detail and conjure the feel of the fun fur. I didn't need to keep Pink Bunny it the physical form because Pink Bunny is here (points at own head). Do I imagine anyone else would get the warm-and-fuzzies if I had Pink Bunny still?
2. Memorial, relic, remembrance:. You're alive and you can remember your childhood. Perhaps if these were the belongings of someone close to you who'd died in childhood..........but you're here, thankfully.You're alive, therefore you don't need to have relics. If you have offspring, they'll have their own stuff, will they want to be burdened with your toys, clothes, board games etc etc?
3. Souvenir - a noun derived from the French verb souvenir - meaning 'to remember'. Will you forget your childhood if these things leave?
4. Token - a random largely valueless item.
5. Trophy - proof that you were there, that you did X, Y or Z. You may have some actual trophies among your treasures. If you ever reminisce about your childhood to new pals who didn't grow up with you, are they going to call you a dirty rotten liar for claiming to have had a fairy costume at 8 or a pink scooter or a Barbie dream home, and will you be producing the item to challenge them? Gawd knows where my Cycling Proficiency Certificate circa 1976 went, but my rolled-up degree certificate is in my sock drawer, unopened since the day I received it. No one, not even employers, has ever needed to see it in a quarter of a century.

You are allowed to keep stuff inside your head and not keep the physical stuff. Your childhood will not be retroactively revoked if your stuff leaves. You could take photos of it, and keep those. You could take a tiny fragment of it as a keepsake, such a button or something. There are ways to re-think your behaviours so you don't have to be a second-generation hoarder.

There, now I hope I haven't been unkind, because I woudn't want to do that for the world. Just a bit concerned for you with inter-generational hoarding in your background; keeping all someone's childhood belongings to hand them over in adulthood, isn't normal or expected, it's a bit peculiar, frankly.

More power to your elbow, whatever you do. GQ xx

savingqueen

Some great de-hoarding/cluttering going on lately! Keep on going everyone. Have been plodding on with mine in dribs and drabs as not much spare time lately. Some of my toiletries are down to either one spare or ...... drum roll....... only one in use and no spare!!! First time in many years. Found 4 empty toiletry containers I hoarded for..... for what purpose?? In the recycling bag today.


Feel a little frustrated that I can see areas that need major dehoarding but not enough time for the next couple of weeks to do big areas so am just doing little bits as I pass by and notice something that can go. You know you get used to having unneeded stuff just lying there and then don't see them at all? I am gradually getting rid of such items and simultaneously keeping tabs on new stuff coming into the house.