Hoarding - Springing Ahead

The_Dragon

On Saturday we got rid of :-

a curtain pole (which Dr Dragon kept saying he would freecycle)
3 deceased pillows
2 deceased chillows
a deceased computer (minus the hard drive which needs wiping)
a deceased computer mouse
a deceased camera

twiglet98

Hello all... subscribing to this super-inspirational thread now.

I watched the Hoarder programme on TV last week, for the first time - Jasmine helping Wendy struck a chord and I sat down with tears trickling.

Young'un has nearly moved out, middl'un has gone, eldest and her BF are moving out soon, their stuff is 'being sorted' from her room, their mountain now taking over downstairs was a brilliant excuse not to vacuum this week, again... they tend to do it when they're expecting friends round. I don't have friends and don't fret about the floor. This is a rural cottage with livestock and mud. The carpets prove that. I panic at the thought of people coming in, though the kids' friends don't seem to notice, or at least, they don't seem to mind. The kitchen and the bathrooms are cluttered but the important bits are clean. The windows aren't important bits.

I can ditch clothes happily enough, there are a few things I WILL wear again because when I'm catering for one I know I will lose the last few years' weight gain. I buy new underwear when the old wears out, everything else comes from charity shops but I don't dress up and don't need many changes. What I hoard is 'stuff' - books, I do list some on Amaz0n here and there, but replace them with others (nearest library has inconvenient hours). I've Mu$icMagpied plenty of CDs now most of my music is digital, but I can't let the vinyl collection go. The real problem here is paper. Every payslip for over 40 years. Every receipt for every car long sold or scrapped. Every bank statement and paper bill though they've all been online for years. Every playgroup painting, school report, for three kids all in their 20s. Thousands of photos, in date order, though the favourites are scanned and filed digitally. And cuttings, all the cuttings. Hundreds of recipes I'll never cook, beans on toast is safely in my head. Where to have tea in Barcelona, torn out of a weekend Guardian in 1994. Hotels and hostels, campsites, rail trips, mountains, beaches and jungles, reviewed up to 20 years ago. They're a security blanket, reminders of a time when the ex was here and sometimes, terrfiyingly, people came to dinner, when we did holidays, of a time when I thought I'll travel on my own, when the kids are grown, when all the old animals have passed, I'll wave the chickens goodbye and take off with a backpack. But I won't, and the dream will go with the cuttings. I'll burn them, one day this summer, when I've got the house to myself, I'll burn them all, and it will be a start.

I stockpile food, tins and packets, I like to have a few months' food here in case it's impossible to shop for any reason. The freezer is full, with bread, fruit and veg, meat and fish. Also filling cupboards are around 100 loo rolls, soap, and 25 3 litre bottles of tap water, it's not enough to feel settled but it's better than nothing. Fuel cans are refilled after grass cutting, in case the generator is needed. Some hoarding does have purpose.

The garden still has relics from the previous people, who had a bonfire patch which included a roll of barbed wire, hundreds of Corona bottles and the chassis of a Mini. I still dig up rusty implements in my veg patch.

I've started making a pile to take to the dump on Saturday. Five paint tins from over 5 years ago, a broken hairdryer and some of DD's unmendable shoes. June is when it begins, wish me luck!

whitewing

twiglet,

A burnfest in June sounds great. I can thoroughly recommend getting rid of older than 6 years financial paperwork for helping to relieve the hoarding burden.

Corona bottles - we used to take them back and get our 10p's for them in the olden days.

I had an impromptu sort of the medicine cabinet, so empty calpol boxes and instruction leaflets are gone, so are empty packets from the wintery cough and sniffles bugs.

Also gone in a kilner jar minus lid, that every year I keep to fill up with sweets for my brother's birthday. He is now on a long overdue diet so that's gone. 3 aspirational candles from the old single days are gone. Cost a fortune but DH doesn't like them and sticks them on the top shelf of the cupboard so I forget about them.

Washing is on the line - the promised bank holiday rain is now overdue. Washing is up together and the dried clothes were put away this morning.

Have done today's walk with DD in the pushchair so that was a bit of extra effort; she fell asleep halfway round. It was very windy but I really enjoy walking in the wind as long as it doesn't get cold.

pigpen

Gingernutty wrote: »

Edit : pigpen? Those two naughty cuties and a baby on the way? :eek: I don't know how you can remain so calm!!

and 8 older ones

I'm not calm, I am flinging! I fling when uber-stressed, upset or angry.. unfortunately none of those things occur often otherwise my house might be emptier and tidier!

3rd CS bag filled
1 binbag for DD1
1 for DS2
1 bursting binbag of shoes for recycling!
and 2 more in the bin.

The landing looks nicer but there is still a huge amount to get through.. I need to find a space for a chest of drawers next.. I can't think where it might fit!.. actually... I might have just come up with somewhere... I'll grab my tape measure and see if it will fit!

lobbyludd

tipping down here, although had fab sunny day near the coast yesterday. have hurt my shoulder somehow, and can't get comfortable, very much need to lose weight as I'm getting all sorts of aches and whatever from bad posture due to carrying extra weight.

today's task is therefore just to put the washing away - I am really poor at this I blinking hate it, and know that really I need to sort through all our wardrobes to make this easier, but can't be faffed with that, so think I'll take my own advice and find one thing from each, each day to put in bin/cs and then opencil it in to tackle weekend after next.

I want to put my in-use recycling bin bag in a tall thin cupboard that will soon be empty - the bags are the same size as normal rubbish bags so I was thinking a refuse bag holder inside the cupboard - but they are blinking expensive! I'm not paying 50 quid for 2 bits of metal to hang a bag over (don't want a lid) and the cheaper ones all seem to be for carrier bag size and really flimsy.

There must be an alternative solution, but for the life of me I'm not seeing it, so any great ideas?

They're a security blanket, reminders of a time when the ex was here and sometimes, terrfiyingly, people came to dinner, when we did holidays, of a time when I thought I'll travel on my own, when the kids are grown, when all the old animals have passed, I'll wave the chickens goodbye and take off with a backpack. But I won't, and the dream will go with the cuttings. I'll burn them, one day this summer, when I've got the house to myself, I'll burn them all, and it will be a start.

twig, fires (safely done) are really good for cleansing emotional attachments to crap that is holding us back that stuff isn't your dreams or security, sounds to me like they are more of a painful reminder of unfulfilled hopes and dreams,maybe other times and how you wished things could be now? By all means burn the darn things, in the full knowledge that should your dreams go in that direction again or you need a recipe, all that info is on the internet, two clicks away and fully up to date. Getting rid of it makes space for your dreams for the future and for now to form and be put into action.

I honestly haven't regretted a single thing that isn't here anymore, even if I had a hard time making the decision to let it go and loved the things or had imbued it with emotional significance, and knowing that helps me with difficult decisions now and going forward.

GreyQueen

:T Wow, sounds like some good work being done this long weekend. I'm ashamed at being such a slacker by comparison.

The Dragon, please tell me what a "chillow" is or I may implode from sheer curiousity, and that would make a terrible mess.

Today I have given the allotment a haircut, which is fighting with the long grass, nettles and triffids coming over from the dereliction on either side. Other people's weeds! Plus working in a spiral formation around the area near the top which I call The Rough. Two hours! Ye gods and little fishes, but I ache.

Actually, it gets called much worse than that but not in front of you dear people. There's Bad Things in there; random paving slabs (whole and fragmentary), coils of chicken wire, pieces of tarp, flowerpots and empty compost bags. Not so much a piece of scrap ground, more an eco-system of Amazonian complexity. There may well be a lost tribe in there.......perhaps Smurfs.

But I circled it, snipping away, and although it could still be classified as a green hell, it is a flattish green hell. If I'm feeling tough, next time I may grasp the corner of a tarp in a glov'd hand and try dragging it outta there. I shudder to think what might be underneath.............brrrr!

My new-secondhand teapot isn't to my liking. Dammit, that was 10p and some elbow-grease wasted. Will be washed up and charity shopped. Life's too short to wrestle with unsatisfactory teapots several times a day. In fact, life is too short for many a thing, so I have decided that if I start reading a book and it's not rocking my world, it can go back to the library without me feeling guilty about it.

There will not be a test at the end, I'm pretty sure.

The_Dragon

GreyQueen wrote: »

The Dragon, please tell me what a "chillow" is or I may implode from sheer curiousity, and that would make a terrible mess.

A chillow is a chilled pillow! This is them (ours got mildewed and were all ewwwwww! so we got shot)

twiglet98

lobbyludd wrote: »

twig, fires (safely done) are really good for cleansing emotional attachments to crap that is holding us back that stuff isn't your dreams or security, sounds to me like they are more of a painful reminder of unfulfilled hopes and dreams,maybe other times and how you wished things could be now? By all means burn the darn things, in the full knowledge that should your dreams go in that direction again or you need a recipe, all that info is on the internet, two clicks away and fully up to date. Getting rid of it makes space for your dreams for the future and for now to form and be put into action.

I honestly haven't regretted a single thing that isn't here anymore, even if I had a hard time making the decision to let it go and loved the things or had imbued it with emotional significance, and knowing that helps me with difficult decisions now and going forward.

Thank you... this makes absolutely perfect sense. Today, in the right mindset to digest it, I'm looking forward to beginning a different journey, one that will give me space, but insanely nervous too. There will be things to scan and save, I think, before they are reduced to ash (note to self, check available space on my external hard drive). Maybe I'll keep my very first payslip, and the few that prove I really have had the occasional pay rise in my present job. The car stuff will go. The bank stuff will go. The recipes, and finally, the could've-should've travel stuff will go.

Warm wishes to everyone struggling, however long it took to realise it IS a struggle, and however long it takes to get there, a step at a time.

VJsmum

good luck Twiglet. your previous post made me sad. It is all there u know - the travel stuff, the recipes. Just a couple of clicks away. Tripadvisor, BBC good food etc - u can still have them but not cluttering ur house.

GQ - life really is too short for many things - cheap wine or bad books or carp teapots. This thread has taught me that it is OK to get things wrong. Chalk it up to experience and move on..

Cheapskate

Hello folks, very occasional poster but avid reader re-surfacing again!

After seeing the recent Jasmine Harman series, I'm seriously worried that we're on the way to one of those brave souls who let themselves be filmed! I often joke that we are, but I really think we are now.

It's tipping down today, and I don't have to venture out again, so this afternoon is split between starting magazine stitching work, doing the washing up (none done since yesterday lunchtime! :eek:) and sorting out the clean clothes - hoping that most don't need ironing cos the sofa and my bedroom floor are COVERED! :eek::rotfl:

I can't find the papers I need to do a PPI claim, all our birth/marriage certs, and other important stuff, so I know it's got really bad, but every hopeful that I'll get there! Having serious depression isn't helping, but I feel more "me" than I've done for ages, so am going to make hay etc.

Have read some inspiring tales on here, peppered with laughter and tears, so I'll be back more often!

A xo