Hoarding - Springing Ahead

Softstuff

My immediate reaction Silvasava was eh?? They have hospices and neurological care centres in a fair few places, certainly not just in London. And apart from that, they do so much more at home in the community.

Check their site https://www.sueryder.org Though many hospices are a bit more southern, the neurological centres if anything are more northern.

thriftwizard

Hmm- there are several Sue Ryder shops around here; I had no idea they weren't still helping the local disabled ex-servicemen. Will enquire further...

To be honest, we now make most of our donations to two local animal charities, Waggy Tails Rescue and Feral Cat Care, because they don't waste anything they're given, and their shops are by far the best value & most interesting around. I do also donate clothing to the Salvation Army, as they give clothing & blankets directly to the homeless rather than straight to the ragman if they already have enough on the shop floor; real rags I'll give to the Red Cross, properly labelled - and they give some back to me, when I'm in need of fabric to make bags! The manager is a friend, and I donate more than the ragman would give them. And sometimes I'll give excess bedding to Monkey World; apparently orphan chimps & other primates love soft cotton sheets and sometimes take to "special" ones like some babies do.

Which reminds me - bedding. Still not decluttered! But in theory, I'll have some spare time after the weekend...

Happygreen

I've decided to change my loyalties for CS. Our local cat rescue lady complained in her column in the weekly that she gets given too much junk she has to take to the skip. Now that kind of irritated me, would it irritate you if you supported a charity for decades and read that? I don't think my stuff is junk anyway and well worth selling but other places might need it more if she can be choosy....

GreyQueen

Happygreen wrote: »

I've decided to change my loyalties for CS. Our local cat rescue lady complained in her column in the weekly that she gets given too much junk she has to take to the skip. Now that kind of irritated me, would it irritate you if you supported a charity for decades and read that? I don't think my stuff is junk anyway and well worth selling but other places might need it more if she can be choosy....

I'd feel the same way, in your shoes, and do the same thing.

There's one particular charity here which is run on very thrifty lines; they waste nothing. If it's not saleable, they'll disamantle it into its constituent parts. They support children abroad in terrible need.

Have been out this afternoon and donated the item I was swithering about Freegling. Also took a stack of washed fruit punnets back to my greengrocer for re-use. And bought some sewing thread. I'm good for threads of all colours except black and white, which never turn up secondhand in my experience, so had to restock on those, especially as I'm about to sides-to-middle a bedsheet from Mum's house.

Have also decluttered some sprouty bits off my homegrown spuds. I'm doing this every second Saturday atm, to stop them putting all their stored energy into the shoots and going all rubbery and wizened. Takes a few minutes but keeps things in good order.

A fly-tipped sofa appeared on Friday and disappeared overnight. Since it was in horrible nick and the Council don't collect fly-tipping in the witching hours, I have no idea where that went, except to be grateful for small murphies (a potato-related joke, I do apologise ).

Is anyone else looking at cluttered environments and catching themselves wondering what the heck people want all this Stuff for? I know I do it all the time these days.

ttoli

Just found this thread , a year ago I lived in an over furnished 3 Bedroom Villa and 6 months ago sold up and moved to a one bedroom apartment.
Really forced me to go thru everything and decide want or need , many clothes I'd not worn in years (and couldn't see myself doing so)and even now whilst out shopping , the question of storage springs into mind , even now I wonder how I lived like that

silvasava

Hi All - thanks for the feedback on SR. I did check their website & the nearest to us seem to be Hertfordshire & Essex! They are asking for donations for a new place being opened - in Lincolnshire so seems to be nothing in the southern area (Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon or Cornwall) I'll still support in buying items from there as they do do such good work but my donations of stuff to sell will go solely to my local hospice.
Bitter cold here today - Poplars arrived so planted up tubs with them, some left over crocus & cyclamen. Just waiting for DH to move them to the front door for me. Thats all my planting done now until spring! What's the 'lottie' like GQ - the ground in my raised beds was frozen today & the forecast doesn't seem like changing much for the next week or so!
Have a good weekend everyone

GreyQueen

Well, I haven't seen the lottie since 13.30 hrs yesterday, but we had a perishing night last night so I expect there was a frost up there, probably didn't linger as the site gets full sun. We didn't have frost bang in the city centre, but it has to be pretty ferocious to settle among the thermal mass of all these buildings. Tonight also will be very cold, have my kitchen window ajar atm as am boiling two pans of beetroot, and it's baltic out there already.

Lottie was fine yesterday, soil workable, and I forked through two sections, took up all the remaining beetroots and brought them home and pruned branches off my blackcurrant bush and stuck them in the ground. I have 6 proto-bushes in a row and we'll see how they do. If they strike, and currants are notoriously easy, they'll be a welcome addition to the diet and will also obscure the two strawberry beds behind them.

My lottie site is in a housing estate and my actual plot is visible from the street, so I don't like to have things which are too yummy too visible; we've had strawberry, potato and even turkey-rustling before now.

No one ever wants to steal my Feral Chard, though, even fellow gardeners give commiserations for the 'bolted lettuce' which is what they think it is.

Not planning to garden again before next weekend, as need to process the beetroots into preserves etc and also attend to the domestic arts, plus there are crime thrillers to read and the interwebs to play with and lots of stuff to do before Monday and w*rk again.

thriftwizard

You never see black & white thread secondhand, GQ, because I've snaffled the lot... and I do use it, it's not hoarding!

Just thinking, Happygreen; it may just be that your cat lady really does have to take stuff to the tip. I used to volunteer at one of our local CSs and a surprising amount of "donations" really should have been taken straight to the nearest skip; unwashed underwear & socks, mouldy bedding, curtains so light-damaged they shredded when you picked them up. Our hearts sank when people drew up with carloads of bags; they'd be clearing Great-Aunt Aagatha's flat, and they'd just chuck everything at us, thinking that we'd wash it/clean it/mend it. But quite often it was way beyond the point where any of that would have been worthwhile, even if we had the wherewithal.

Not implying that anyone here would do that! But maybe a fifth of our donations every Monday should have been (and were) thrown straight out.

ginnyknit

Not been on here for long while and despertely need to de-clutter again. Have sold lot of bits on fleabay the last few months and given on freecycle. Last week another 2 bags of wool went out but I won a bag and a kind friend sent me another bag - whoops:o. Took a big bag to the cs yesterday and another ready to go. Still full to the gills with 'Stuff'

I am frustrated and fed up. I think tomorrow morning when Dgs has gone home I will set to. However I have made a lot of gifts and sold good few bits of crafty goodness on FB without buying any new fabric or yarn - swings and roundbouts I guess.

thriftwizard

Still full to the gills with 'Stuff'

You & me both!

Yesterday's Vintage Market was a complete & utter damp squib. It's our original location, in a fantastic Victorian arcade, and used to be filled with a lovely creative buzz. But that's totally gone, and instead, there were bunches of rude twenty-somethings in trackies, carrying Primarni bags, nudging, pointing & laughing out loud at our old treasures and beautiful handcrafted goods. Some of our sellers have done Kirsty's Handmade fairs, the Red Fox markets etc., some of us have written for major craft mags & books & we all sell on Etsy; we featured in a cutting-edge style magazine just this month and have won national accolades, so this is high-end stuff, but not expensive as it's not a rich area. However, they clearly just thought it was pathetic & certainly weren't going to part with any cash for that old & home-made stuff. So we're talking about moving on... the magic has deserted that location, for sure.

But I've started to wonder whether we've had our chips altogether, and I should find some other way of pulling in some cash whilst still being available to do the things that really matter. Which would also allow me to dispose of a fairly vast amount of stock, that's somehow become dispersed all over the house as one offspring after another has moved out, moved back in, etc....

The lure of a wide-open space - or a visible floor here & there, at least - is slowly growing. I love what I do and don't want to stop, but if it stops earning us any cash and just becomes a drain on my energy & resources, I'll have to. There are clear signs that the ground under our feet may be shifting & it may be time to think about walking away from it...