KonMari 2017 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

GreyQueen

Kondo-mania has been affecting the parental home, aka Little Hoard on the Prairie. Whodathunkit?!

At the weekend, Dad told me he'd been going through some paperwork, stuff relating to old accounts etc. Then he got Mum to go through a portable hanging file box, which was holding old cards.

Now, Mum holds onto old cards like a drowning person holds onto a life raft, but doesn't do it with any kind of ceremony, they're just stuffed in little caches all over the place. She doesn't go through them to reminisce, but they can't be got rid of 'because'. Totally non-negotiable.

So, you could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather when she told me she'd found their 25th annivesary cards and recycled them (they've had the golden wedding since) and even found and recycled her 21st birthday card from her foster parents. That has been carted around for over half a century and in four separate homes and she'd released it without me being within a 30 mile distance or even nagging at all! Gobsmacked doesn't even begin to encompass it.:p

And it gets even more remarkable. Today, there was a minor crisis when the normally overstocked household seemed to be down to its last roll of TP. So, she went into the lightless hell-hole of the understair cupboard and found - among other things - 27 loo rolls, a backpack no one recalls buying, a decent man's coat which no one can recall buying but it still has its £7.99 Hoxfam tag on it, and various other things, including a cache of placcy bags for me to do that thing you like doing with them (samosa-ing, is what she means).

Turns out that this as-new Hoxfam coat was one I bought for Kid Bruv and he put away and forgot about, to the point where he has bought new coats since. Madness. I have declared an intention to gralloch that cupboard out over the crimble holidays as I'm sure there are more treasures in there.

Yesterday, when gardening, the time I spent last week in the shed dodging showers the previous Sunday has paid dividends and it was really easy to find things.

I also swung by the juntique shop after work today and found pal negotiating the sale of a bundle of very rusty bayonets from the cellar. And, d'you recall the virtual tour of said cellar I took you on a few pages ago? When I remarked that the cellar seems much older than the victorian house on top of it?

Well, get this; it turns out that there isn't a cellar under the building next door. Or rather there is, but it belongs to the 17th century building next-but-one, and goes under next door who have no access into it and butts up to pal's cellar. And that there are other equally eccentric arrangements over the road, with people sitting on top of other people's cellars. Some addresses have cellars which run sideways under two or three adjacent buildings.

The street is reckoned to have followed its present line for the thick end of a millenium, the buildings are a jumble of the last several centuries, and the subterranean strata doesn't always sit in line with the current buildings. How interesting is that?!:rotfl:

catshark88

Just popping in to say hello as we'be been away for a fortnight. Will catch up tomorrow!

Slinky

Earlier I got a picture down off the wall I've decided can go. When we move to our new home it's a bit smaller with larger windows so we'll have fewer spaces for pictures. This one the picture had slipped behind the mount at a funny angle. I've removed the back, sorted it out and put it all back together. Frame dusted it'll go to the CS this week. It's a picture of poppies, appropriate for this week hopefully somebody else will enjoy it. I've moved a print to the wall this picture was on, and unwrapped a joyful watercolour we bought on holiday and had framed and hung that up.

MMF007

:wave: catshark88

Slinky, can you pop round to my house and sort out my pictures, please?
I have to try and persuade DH that it would be a good idea to move a picture from lounge. It doesn't suit the room but it is a very joyful picture and deserves a special location.
You have also made me remember that I did come up with a solution to the 'too big' shell hanging. I measured and realised that if I cut the shells off and turn the net-type frame 90 degrees and then re-hang the shells so they are still perpendicular, the finished article will fit on the wall I want it on. (Not sure that makes sense in writing! Good job I know what I mean!!)

daisy_1571

Kittie you are doing a great job, I know you like to keep busy but you are allowed to sit down occasionally :rotfl:

Qc, there are places in Edinburgh like that including a whole close that got boarded up during one of the epidemics which hascsince been discovered and you can now go down and see the olde worlde street and shops. Years ago it was a wee caretaker man that took you down with a couple of torches, very spooky, it's since been commercialised and has proper lighting and handrails and signs telling you to watch your head etc so much less impressive IMHO.

Loving the tales from the folks, it definitely does spread. So many tales of one person starting the clear out and somehow others around them start to release stuff too. Love them now getting rid of the old cards, maybe that funeral card from 18oatcake will be able to go soon :eek:

Daisy xx

daisy_1571

PollyWollyDoodle wrote: »

I've just gone through some papers looking for a particular item. I have a box file that I labelled 'Memory Bank' and it contains a mixture of things but mostly sentimental or personal stuff that I didn't feel able to throw away.

I was genuinely surprised at some of the contents - bear in mind it's two years or less since I created this file. Why on earth did I keep some of this stuff? When do I think I'm ever going to want to (a) re read it or (b) show it to someone else? And if neither of those apply, why keep it?

Just goes to show what an ongoing process this is. I foresee an evening with the shredder!

It's wonderful isn't it pollywollydoodle, we think we are really paring down then look at what we kept and can only scratch our heads. I have a pink box in the attic that I have allowed myself to keep sentimental stuff in, I looked at it yesterday and loved some of the stuff in it but others I couldn't even remember what it was. Felt a bit cheaty throwing that stuff out since it didn't clear a box and I would still have the same pink box size to be stored however I decided that was no reason to fill it with stuff i no longer wanted so some stuff did go.

D

catshark88

Minnie, I really hope you sort something out with your lazy and advantage taking family. Please heed GQ's warning and look after yourself.

To all of you battling ME and other debilitating problems, hugs and flowers to you all and kudos for coping so, so well in such difficult circumstances.

To all narc survivors. I raise a toast to you. I've had 1 parent and a few supposedly close friends who I believe to be narcissists and they're thoroughly awful. On the plus side, once you've Kondoed them, you have more space and light to treasure your real friends.

I'm properly Kondoing my books tomorrow. I'd only thinned them out because I thought I wanted so many books around me. However, the KM process is so good (& I need to dust them all anyway), that I'm going to try the proper process. Many do spark joy, but not the OKish novels I bought 20 years ago.....

GreyQueen

Morning all.

MMF007, the description of the shell hanging made perfect sense to me, but I'm a highly visual person and often re-structure stuff to fit my tiny living quarters, so it's the kind of thing I might have been doing. If I had a shell hanging, I mean.

Re books, I am and always have been, a voracious reader. Am currently on the 107th book of 2017. I read more blogs nowadays than I used to, but the annual tally has gone as high as 170. My home is tiny, if I kept even a fraction of what I read, I'd soon be featuring on some hoarding documentary!:rotfl:

Have you ever had to turn out a really ancient collection of books, your own or someone else's? I'm not talking some musty panelled library, where the sunlight slants sideways through the Georgian windows and dustmotes dance as you reverentially lift down deathless classics bound in half-calf and admire the gold lettering on the binding........ in your dreams, GQ!

Nope, what you'll find in most folks' bookshelves are;

1. Paperback novels by once-hot authors. Many will not have stood the test of time and have become period pieces. Often, quite literally pieces, as the adhesive holding the binding together has given way and the cheap paper has suntanned (browned) and even spotted. The cover art alone will have you chuckling, due to its extreme naffness. You won't be able to give these things away eventually, but you could start your fire with them; I've seen paperback romances bought by the kilo to be burned.

2. Map books sans many of the roads now built/ upgraded. This causes you to have terse convos with the spouse or offspring designated to be your map-reader, as you come onto junctions neither of you were expecting. Probably less frequently a problem in the sat-nav era. And old OS maps; Dad had an accident on a Scottish mountain when fording a stream because the map said there was a footbridge there and there wasn't any more........

3. Guide books to attractions you visited once and thought you 'might' visit again (in reality, the sting of shelling out for the thing was too raw to leave it behind in your holiday accomodation/ a chazzer in the holdiay area for some other undeserving bu88er, let them buy their own, grrr).

4. Cook books from the celebrity chefs of the era. Give these 40 + years and they are screamingly funny but you wouldn't want to actually eat anything from them. A pal found one of Nancy Spain's cookbooks in a chazzer and bought it for giggles and tried to feed us some of the dishes - I have memories of what seemed to be a half-orange filled with tinned peas, but that might be having drunk too much wine to blot out the horror of a whole dinner party of NS's classic dishes.

5. Books on crafts which were very much the fashion back in the day; I don't think pebble-polishing machines and pebble jewellery and macrame are coming back, and for that I give hourly thanks.

6. Books of patterns to things which will probably never go out (knitting and crochet) but which patterns are so horrible no one would ever want you to make them.

7. Bowlderised novels given the Reeders Digest treatment.

8. Actively dangerous things, like first aid manuals where the advice has been superceded by very different advice.

9. Books on crafts you quite fancied on a whim but haven't found time for in the past 20 years and probably won't in the next 20 and, anyway, your hands/ eyesight aren't getting any better, ans where the heck would you put them?.

10. Classic novels which you were going to read to Make You a Better Person (guilty as charged, m'lud). Mark Twain once described a classic book as one that everyone wanted to have read but no one actually wanted to read. If you let your copy of some classic escape, it's not like there will be a global insufficiency of copies of War and Peace and you can never borrow or buy another, should you need to. We are not in school (most of us) and no one is going to be quizzing us on whether we read The Classic or the latest Ian Rankin (I've just finished one of his and very good it was, too, and the library can have it back right away).

[Deleted User]

I got rid of the funeral cards for my husband the day after the funeral, that was pretty typical KM in that it released something. I admit that I have kept myself busy ever since but I do know the psychology of why, my brother does the same and my bil and we are all coping. going forward

I thought long and hard about my candle lanterns and have decided to remove the tall one from my home. I am keeping the smaller ones as they can be used outside and the metal at the top does provide a good amount of heat in a room, good for justin power cuts. I will also finally decide about my red coat, in a month or so. It is hanging accessible in the hall. I also feel able to tackle some tomes in my study, even if only one or two. It is that feng shui thought, would I take them with me to a smaller home?

Rain forecast today and a definite good day to be doing a KM pass in my kitchen, again. Thursday is my day, for removing stuff from the house, so I have today and tomorrow and then I will rest until the next phase

Really good post about books GQ. I am guilty as charged, particularly about the classics

edit: rather that start a new post. Only half an hour but I already have 2/3 of a bucket from the kitchen.Fizzy wine stopper, I had two. Garlic slicer, extra tea strainer, le creuset mixing spoons, I had a full set, never used most. Honey spoons!! etc . Got to change now and will start each drawer again, I need new eyes and will open the windows for a blow through. My aim now is to go to the cs today, someone will want to buy my stuff and the hospice will benefit. I am going to need to take my cs shopping trolley from under the stairs. I always look on this as giving to a charity, which it is, it blocks the potential guilty feelings

Siebrie

I always joke that I have so many books that I have to store them off-site, i.e. the local library