KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

procrastinator

Hello
I've been following you all from the first post and have tried to following the method myself but it is taking so long. Not sure I'm in the right head space but as I have spent the last year procrastinating instead of doing I need a firm kick in the proverbial.
I post a couple of times a year, changed puter some time last year and haven't posted since. With this the first post for 2017 I will endeavour to keep on track.
I was made redundant last year so have the time, however I am looking after mum who lives 70 miles away and has dementia. I'm currently spend 1 or 2 days a week with her. Every time I come home I promise I will start but each visit saps my strength and I seem to switch off for days. Next visit is tomorrow so I have made a big push today. So far I have done a pile of washing. I have covered the bed with clothes to be sorted and I need to vacuum. Yesterday I took 2 bags to charity and today managed to fill a black bin bag which has been collected with the rubbish. Will have lunch then on to the bedroom.

silvasava

Afternoon all - had a blitz of the upstairs yesterday. Managed to Kondo a toilet brush that I didn't like the look of ( why do the roots of the bristles go off colour?) Managed to replace it with a black one! Trying to reorganise my roasting dishes & decided a large one had not been used for so long it could go. Happened to mention it to DS1 & he wants it.
Wort - I've had 2 ops on my thyroid, it's virtually non existent now - been on Thyroxine for over 25 years now and all been fine!

luxor4t

wort wrote: »

.......Thanks to the kind person that mentioned the magnet for your knicks ..........

After I stopped giggling at the comic possibilities of what this might cause - security alarms being triggered, being dragged towards large metal items, small metal items attaching themselves to ladies' middles..... I looked it up. But, thank you, it cheered me up no end :D

I stick small magnets on the most painful joints on the really bad RA days. I think it helps, and if nothing else it gives me something to do to distract myself.

Sweetpea69

The knicker magnet was my suggestion - I did stick to the filing cabinet at work more than once! I bought one for a friend in Spain who worked in a kitchen and she occasionally had bits of cutlery stick to the front of her trousers 😂. The cost does seem a lot but I was spending nearly £20 a month on various herbal remedies. It took a couple of weeks to kick in but I got my energy back and was sleeping better instead of the constant hot flushes.

Must get my rear in gear and kondo the hoovering!

Sweetpea xx

GreyQueen

Just spoken to Mum and the thick, tweedy wool has made a hat which is a fraction too small for her so that will be Dad's and the rest of the wool will be a slightly bigger hat for her. Have been teasing her how cute they'll look in their matching chapeaux. Well, she might put a bobble on hers so won't be quite matching, but even so.:p

This wool was actually a gift from someone she used to work with, probably about 20 years ago, and it was a leftover from a project of theirs. Funny old world........

I am slowly assembling a project blanket, a very suitable thng to be doing on a chilly winter's evening. Hope everyone is having a good day.

procrastinator

Well...progress of a sort has been made, have pulled loads of bags off the floor and am trying to sort into type. One thing I noticed is that there are many bags from the xmas tidy, my way of dealing with paper in the main was to collect it all up and put into bags. These now need to be gone through. Will have to be next week as I still have to clear the bed for night and put the clean covers on. Have boxes containing make up, jewelry, scarves, tights, gloves, hats, crafts, etc. Cannot make decisions. Have a new charity bag started and a rag bag plus a bin bag. Have vacuumed (badly) and started dinner Have ironed and put board away. Picked clothes and begun packing for tomorrow and weekend. Clean clothes are in a heap that needs to be sorted. Only have 3 shallow drawers and these are all full. Have kondo folded items but it still doesnt make enough room. Oh well. At least its a start. I'm good at starting, not so good at finishing.

Floss

Procrastinator I guess you've read the "bible"? If so, it may be that you would benefit from re-reading it, to refresh yourself on the steps.

procrastinator

Floss wrote: »

Procrastinator I guess you've read the "bible"? If so, it may be that you would benefit from re-reading it, to refresh yourself on the steps.

Read it last year, trouble is I don't feel I can properly follow the steps until I have at least made some room. I'm not quite as bad as the tv hoarders (no trash or food debris) but getting close. I've been through clothes several times but have the weight loss problem (several sizes) and what I have sparks joy. Just no where to put it.

GreyQueen

That sounds like a horrible amount of wheel-spinning, procrastinator, and I mean that kindly not judgementally.

You're also under a lot of strain by spending part of every week away from home caring for your mum. Don't underestimate how physically and emotionally exhausting that it, and it's only naturally to just want to slump once you're back in your own home for a short while before heading back again. That routine would be tiring if what you were doing at the other end was utterly joyous, rather than caring for someone with dementia, which must be hard and worrying.

When life seems overwhelming, all you can do is set your feet somewhere and say to yourself; the big picture is too big, if I look at it I'll freeze. What I'm going to do is deal with the little picture.

You say that you bag up paperwork (been there, done that). I don't know if you've got carrier bagfuls or binbagfuls but if it's the former, I wonder if it would be possible to take one of them with you per trip to your mother's? Might it be possible to squeeze a ten minute session with the contents of a bag, once or twice over the course of the days with her?

The reason I ask is that my experience of paperwork is that if it has been left alone for long enough, much of it has ceased to have all relevence and can be dealt with quite ruthlessly.

Yup, there'll be a few things there of importance, but more than 50% of any pile of paperwork is carp. One example from my family's home (mother suffers from acute paperwork avoidance) was teetering piles of opened envelopes of Important Papers.

I sat in front of her on the floor and went through it. Once I'd filleted out the envelopes and the promotional leaflets in with the statements, the pile was reduced by more than 50%. Of the remainder, several things had gone by-the-by, such as invitations to building society AGMs which were now several years in the past.

Some things were kept, such as pension statements but many other things were long irrelevent, such as statements to accounts no longer in existance, and withdrawl slips from years previously. These I shredded.

Once done, we had reduced the pile by about 80%. This has proved true of all the paperwork piles I've ever investigated, including workplace piles and files.

And, when you do enough little pictures, you suddenly look up and can see the light of day through the clutter. We're here to root for you and encourage you on the journey.

astrocat

Fen1 wrote: »

For anyone discarding odds-and-sodds from their dressmaking/crafting piles, please have a look at fidget/activity blankets for dementia patients. I know that there is a volunteers group that make them in Stevenage, and that there was an article about them in the Mother's Union magazine last year. The blankets have been mentioned on here before, but deserves a bump. I can't find a link for charity groups that make them, only shops that sell.

Please excuse a post from a long time admirer and lurker on this thread. A charity I am involved in has a tutorial for Activity Quilts and a knitting pattern for Twiddle Muffs on their website (Activity Quilts here) (Twiddle Muffs here)

....retreats back into lurkdom:D

ac