Hoarding - Springing Ahead

thriftwizard

I also managed to take a load of garage & garden rubbish to the Tip yesterday afternoon. Interestingly the conservatory & porch are slowly coming under control without my doing anything specific about them; as the "overstock" piles dwindle, things are quite naturally flowing out of these spaces and into the places they're meant to be in before going for sale.

Next plan is to pull everything out of my stock shed and sort out the stuff that's no longer relevant, which can go off to the next car boot; there are two we could do next week, weather permitting. Then impose some kind of sensible order on the stuff that remains, so that I know where everything is and can access it easily when it's needed.

I know what I've got to do & the time-frame I need to get it done within. But part of me is just waiting for the next disaster to strike, so that it just doesn't get done! Maybe this time, there won't be one...?

Happygreen

I managed to freecycle 2 items which I had been in my way for months. DD2 has sorted out lots of SQA books which will go to younger students. This makes up for DD1's suitcase kicking around the living room as she will be staying until the end of July. It's so lovely to have both my babies around again for a while, so I'll happily put up with the case

mcculloch29

Feeling a bit relieved... Tuesday I gave an unwanted VR headset that I'd been sent to review to one of my regular night out taxi drivers. I had intended on donating a new desk/bedside light/USB charger to a friend for a tombola or charity raffle but the headset was bulky enough to carry.

Then today, dang me, my bedroom USB charger went "zzzzzzap" when plugged back in. I then noticed to my horror that the on-flex switch on the bedside lamp had broken at the back and the earth wire was badly frayed as a result. Eek!

So, decluttered, one broken USB charger and one broken bedside lamp (I remembered to take the expensive energy saving golf ball light bulb out first, as it fits another lamp I own).

Relocating from the items for rehoming box, one lovely touch control LED desk/bedside lamp with integral USB charger.

thriftwizard

Catching up after a few hectic days: two carrier bags of papercraft things offered on Freegle this evening. Three items sent off to Japan via Ebay yesterday, the last one of the set re-listed. A huge box of fabric & one of my best sewing machines are off to a friend tomorrow; she's getting a huge bargain with the machine, but I can't keep them all! And the fabric, I'm giving to her - I still have more than enough.

Several more items taken to the Tip today, but I did come back with some things, all of which will be going straight onto my stall tomorrow as soon as they're clean & priced.

Slowly, slowly, it's draining away... We're signing up for another monthly market, as our "base" market's gone so quiet that its future is now under review. This one is 40 miles away, but very popular & in an area with a big "vintage" tradition. We'll have to set off at 6 am to be there & set up in time, but hopefully it'll be worth our time & fuel. I wouldn't want to do this every weekend, and luckily don't have to, but for 6 days of the year, I can do it...

No car boot today as it was raining, but there's another, closer one on Saturday, and the forecast for that is good. At this rate we'll be able to see parts of the garage floor soon, and possibly even afford a little holiday in September!

parsniphead

I dip in and out of this thread and over time have found it inspiring.

Last week I finished work and will be redundant as of 31st August :eek:. I have been self employed part time for a while and with the redundancy pay i have a buffer to give it a push a do what I want full time.

I've not been sleeping the past few days and put it down to recent events, etc......nope, I realised today it's the stuff. Stuff everywhere. I've had enough, it has to go and have started on a huge push to clear it once and for all.

I can't focus on my business with all this stuff, it's dragging me down. This morning I had six large bags of kids toys in my bedroom ( I have been decorating his bedroom). A lot will not be returning.

I HATE CLUTTER, JUNK AND STUFF. I think I have reached my limit of suffocation.

I have until 1.10pm next Tuesday (DS breaks up for the summer then) to get this novel sorted.

This is going to be the place where I keep track for the next week or so.

Excuse the rant but it had to come out. Sorry, feel better now.

Now back to the bedroom then perhaps sleep with be forthcoming and restful tonight.

mothernerd

Parsniphead
I know how you feel. Seven weeks of work men and women with me decorating in between (wasn't supposed to happen until September but DS3 was away and I thought get it done instead of further disruption later on.


Newly put back rooms are gorgeous. Kitchen is a tip - old doors, laminate flooring, bits that didn't belong to anything (I did put together the complicated wardrobe with some substituions). I know it's not good for the environment I want a skip. Average age of these bits is 12 years, oldest is 20 - Justin has had his chance.

mollythewestie

Just a little update from me.

It’s been several years since I started on my journey to de-hoard (is that a word?!) my life and things are still getting better.

I am astounded at how much stuff I can still get rid of and I function perfectly well without all the superfluous junk!
The garage is currently full of things waiting to go to the tip (our car is VERY small, so it will take many trips to empty it out). I have another bin bag of stuff waiting to go to the charity shop despite taking 4 bin bags there in the last few weeks.

We have got to the point now that the cupboards and drawers that used to be full to the brim with “stuff” are now either half-empty and organized or redundant altogether! So some larger pieces of furniture are finding their way out of the house.

It also means that we will soon have room to accommodate our dining table in the living/dining room, rather than having it shoved into a corner of the kitchen that can only be used by 2 people at a time whilst facing the wall and the side of the fridge!

I have also disposed of the vast majority of the baby/toddler things I had kept, and I am ruthless and getting rid of rubbish as soon as it ceases to become useful. Junk is not kept “just in case” anymore.

thriftwizard

Good going, mollythewestie! I still haven't got into my stock shed, but there's less stuff to remove now, after a successful summer's trading and a few car boot sales. And we have reason to believe that life is about to turn a major corner; DS3 is going back to uni to do his MA next month, meaning there'll be space in his room for OH to sort out his football programmes. So DD2 & I can get at our fabric stash, the cutting mats & the sewing machine again; it's dwindled down quite a bit in the last couple of months as bits have been sold off, and there are two major needlework "events" upcoming to offload more of it at, leaving us with an entirely-reasonable amount.

And DS2 & TDiL have finally reached their savings target and will hopefully be moving out before too long, though it's still not certain whether they will stay local or move to a less expensive region. We may have to move ourselves, too; we'd like to have my 90 y.o. mother to live with us, but it's just not do-able in this house even if the clutter vanished tomorrow; the layout's all wrong and simply can't be altered enough.

This has been the hardest couple of years of my life, for all sorts of reasons. But the clutter has made it much, much worse; in retrospect I should probably just have given most of it away back at the beginning, when they moved back in. But we had no way of knowing how long this would go on; it was supposed to be a couple of months! Anyway - off now to sort out some more bits for car-booting next week; the forecast is good.

BUT the lady from the dog's home has promised to bring me a load of vintage fabric...

[Deleted User]

I had a lovely postcard sent to me in a roundabout way My late Dad was born in 1890 and in 1909 sent a card to his older brother who had emigrated to Canada around 1908.Its a picture of Brechin in Angus and in the message written in my Dad's unmistakeable writing(very small,but clear as he was a chemist by trade and had to write on pill boxes)
He tells his brother that my Granny had had to have the Doctor in as she had a lot of stomach problems but seemed to be a lot better now. Doctors were quite an expense for a widowed lady like my Granny and apparently the family had rallied round to pay for her treatment, definitely worked though as she didn't pass away until 1926 .

The picture on the front has changed very little from those days apart from obviously now there are cars in the square. His brothers gt,granddaughter had found it in an attic clearout, and sent it to my nephew in Lancashire who had in turn passed it on to me.
It was lovely to see how it had gone to Canada all those years ago,yet survived and ended up back with his youngest daughter over a hundred years later .Looking at the price of the postage was quite funny as it cost my late dad one penny to send it all the way to British Colombia, I don't know how long it took to get there though :):)everything went by steam ship in those days

I am so pleased to have got it and have laminated it, and will treasure it and pass it onto my eldest daughter who like me is very interested in family history.Thank goodness it wasn't thrown away

JackieO

thriftwizard

That's lovely, JackieO, and goes to show that disposing of absolutely everything not in current use may not be the best plan, for those of us who do feel a link to the past & maybe even the future.

Feeling a little glow of virtue today; it's now possible that we will be able to use the "spare" bedroom/sewing studio again with heaving piles of stuff around every time we want to make something or put someone up. I've done several car-boots over the last few weeks, some without shifting very much, but others have been good. I've also Freegle'd five job-lots of things in the last two days. Two have yet to be collected but the the vast bulk of the clutter has gone. Most of my stock is now in my "business" shed - not all, the porch remains to be cleared - but I've managed to do this without just churning things from one location to another.

A trip to the Scandinavian furnishing emporium was necessary, to buy the girls some more appropriate & adaptable (i.e. Ivar) shelving for their rooms. This has freed up some more modern bits (Kallax) that OH has consented to keep his 7 large boxes of stray football programmes in. They have now joined the 30-odd boxes already on a wall of Expedit & Kallax shelves in our bedroom! Which really looks a bit odd in a fairly traditional 1901 house... But at least they're out of the way of my fabric stash & stock, and at long last I've been able to get in there & start to sort it out.

I think I'll need to Freegle a couple more job-lots but I can see most of the carpet now! And thereby discover where all my dressmaking & quilting pins have got to...