Hoarding - Springing Ahead

Softstuff

GreyQueen wrote: »

Have you got a moving date to work towards yet, Softstuff? And yes, moving really does concentrate the mind. The thought of having to handle it all and set it down in a new place and then thing !!!!!!?!?

it's fortunately for us, a little more fluid than a set date. All being well, we have settlement on 9th February, which means we should get a set of keys. Then we need the locks rekeying, the place cleaning and a few other things fixing. Subsequent to this, over a few days, we'll get the utilities connected and move things we don't need everyday, slowly unpacking them. Then we'll move the things we do use along with the TV, mattress and freezer. Finally, when we have an internet connection, we can shift hubbys computer, desk and chair over (given that he'll still be working from home.... wherever that may be). The new house is 5 minutes by car from our flat, thankfully.

Most of our furniture will be sold with our unit and in between all of that I'm arranging a new bathroom in the unit, half a new kitchen, a ceiling replaster and a complete repaint. Then it can go on the market.

By March, I may be sitting making mewling noises and rocking slowly... Because that's when the real fun begins... sorting out the new house!

ginnyknit

I can see light at the end of the tunnel and its not someone with a torch bringing me more clutter :rotfl:I got rid of some much stuff that I found my fluffy slipper boots :j Its still all a work in progress but there is progress. Keep up the good work guys xx

Gingernutty

GreyQueen wrote: »

Gingernutty, your neighbour must be the spiritual kin of my own neighbours. I keep a special pair of extra-strong black rubber gloves in an outside cupboard for wrangling with other people's stuff.

In the past, I've ignored the overlarge cardboard boxes left outside the recycling bin and they sit there, week after week, getting soggy and disintegrating. It's easier for me to spent 3 mins dealing with it than suffer the annoyance of seeing it several times a day for weeks.

Couple of weeks ago, one of them dumped their Xmas tree, complete with pretty nice decorations. I de-dec'd it and bagged them for the c.s. - gone in the second to last donation bag. Wasteful and idle beggars.

I live in a street filled with terraced houses. Without fail, there's someone who's just dumped something out their own front door in the hope someone will take it.

They haven't made arrangements for it to be picked up and they haven't broken it down for the bin (small brown wheelie for rubbish, large black wheelie for recyclables, small green bucket with trick handle for food and a big green wheelie for garden waste), they've just dumped it hoping someone else will have it.

Furniture is a good one. Along my road today, there's a sofa upended on the pavement, bits of an old cupboard, a single laminated pine effect plank, bowls and cooking utensils - all just left outside different houses.

I report it where I can, but to have the stuff just dumped by my own house is just too much. I will act if that happens.

Another trip to the Charity Shop beckons with the latest haul.

GreyQueen

We've got communal bins, several sets of them, around the block. So the fly-tipping tends to congretate mostly around the bins. But not exclusively.

I report it via email and there are some other neighbours who will ring it in or email it in. Mostly it gets picked up the same day. Some stuff I reported 12 days ago didn't get picked up for some reason, so when I saw the housing officer in passing earlier in the week, I mentioned it. As they were coming into the block in the next couple of days, they said they'd check it out and re-report it if necessary and lo and behold the truck came for it today.:T

Mind you, I did glove up onehanded to remove a beer can from outside my flat. Tosspots own brand cheap lager. Now in the recycling bin. Don't like litter around my flat, feels like it reflects badly one me.

I am about to discard several plastic containers, the kind which came with foodstuffs pre-installed and were just about good enough to keep for storing other foodstuffs. But then I buy special storage jars when I see them secondhand, like my extensive collection of Le P@rfait glass jars, so why am I keeping the flimsy stand-ins?

Doh. They will hit the recyling bin shortly when I pop out on an errand.

silvasava

Offloaded the tops & 'bits' that I'd sorted out to the CS. Just looking at my bookshelf now as I've got a number of books bought in various CS that I've not got round to reading. They're next on the list! I regulalrly look for the 'freebies' for my Kindle so don't really need to add to the clutter.
I'll see what the weather's doing next week & maybe persuade DH to get up in the loft and do some more decluttering up there. I must admit there's a lot of my stuff and DM's that I've kept. It needs to be sorted and I'd like to get the loft tidied and organised. Its a huge space and I DO NOT HAVE TO FILL IT :rotfl:

Happygreen

Good morning, all,

I'm still working my way through the bag from under my bed...I'm more than half-way through washing items and sorting them into CS, cash4Clothes and my own wardrobe. I also found myself picking up long-ignored random items and dealing with them, like a small bag of "stuff" DD1 has put it in the hallways when she moved out in September! I can't believe that in May she will be coming back with her stuff in boxes until she has found new residence in the summer! Where will it all go?

GreyQueen

Nice one, Happygreen.

The thing which gets me about Stuff is that, even when you've decided not to keep it, dealing with it still takes time. I can quite see why some people with humungous amounts of Stuff reach a level of paralysis with it.

On an earlier allotment, one which I shared in the 18 months I was on the waiting list for my own plot, there was a bramble patch. It had been some years in the making and was about 9 m square. It was also over 2 m tall. It had been kept in check on one side by the plot-holder over there, and on another side by the trackway which the Council maintained. But the other two sides were spreading and had already wrapped a greenhouse up like Briar Rose's castle.

And it was solid, had been growing over and over itself for upwards of 10 years. I stood on the edge of it on a bleak winter's day and thought Where the HELL do I start?!

Well, the answere was obviously at the edge, so I gauntleted up with leather, cut the first bramble cane a few inches above ground level, took hold of it in both hands and pulled. These bramble canes were aboout 20 ft long. I walked the darned thing up the plot until there was room for a bonfire, then walked it in a circle to make the start of a bonfire pile. Rinse and repeat until I had a stubble-field of bramble stalks. Removed copious amounts of litter which had accrued underneath. Let the brambles and later the piled up rootstocks dry for several weeks before burning them.

Got the mattock out and dig up the rootstocks, going far enough after them to get into the subsoil. Fork through the patch many times after fragments of root and non-degradable trash. Plant spuds on it, removed about 50-odd bramble seedlings each week. By the time the spuds were lifted (superb crop btw) it was Brambles 0 GQ 1.

In the couple of months which it took me to deal with this on my weekends, I learned powerful lessons about how persistant effort, properly targetted, can bring even horrendous problems under control. And, gratifyingly, the old boys went from mickey-taking the new girl to giving me Respect.:rotfl:

So, the former Bramble Patch From Hell could be a lesson on a Room of Doom, of a Loft of Horror or the Shed of Despair. Take the nearest item to hand and have at it, and keep on until you get there in the end.

savingqueen

wow some fantastic efforts of late.
I feel inspired to get going again as haven't done much myself. However yesterday I did put 3 pairs of ancient (80s probably) swimming trunks of DH's in the textiles bag for recycling. DH will never miss them and never fit into them in a month of Sundays.


I have lots of cleaning and tidying to do today so hoping can gather some stuff to rehome or bin.

Softstuff

Very well put GQ. It's like the old saying, how do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time.

GreyQueen

Softstuff wrote: »

Very well put GQ. It's like the old saying, how do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time.

And with ketchup and possibly mango chutney. Elephant can be a bit plain, otherwise.

I have decluttered the last of the grass tussocks on the tumulus on the allotment (threw them up there in November, on top of a pile of woodash from a bonfire, intended as a temp measure, but the beggars took root). All sorted now and the ash pile spread out and forked into the soil.

I was so chuffed that I had to spend a few seconds admiring it before I walked away. Before I went, I took out the mattock and gave an area of rough ground I'm working on a few swipes. Mattocking is hard work for someone of my health, so I don't do too much at once, but the twenty or so blows I struck today will be blows which don't need to be struck tomorrow.

I also got a load of manure from the pile on the common (the ponies hopefully investigated the barrow in case there was food in it, bless) and disturbed a cluster of the darlingest little baby toads, about 1.5 inches long, all nestling together in the manure pile.

Well, it throws off heat, does manure, so I reckon its as good a place for an amphibian to overwinter as anywhere else. So cute.