KonMari 2018 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

GreyQueen

An acquaintance of mine buys embrioidered tablecloths, runners, doilies etc from chazzers who find they don't sell, dyes them and turns them into funky clothing and accessories to sell at festivals. Once sold, she gives an extra little donation to the charity. It's a win-win for them as there isn't typically much of a market for a stained old tablecloths, and she pays well above rag price, plus the extra donation, and the new-from-old clothes, bags, hats etc serve a purpose.


Being a bit of a needle demon, I have an arrangement with my friendly neighbourhood chazzer where I'll do invisible mending on high value clothing with a problem which would prevent its sale. I like doing it, the charity benefits and good clothes get bought and kept out of the ragging.

greent

Sometimes, though, someone's hoard can actually be worth something - my late uncle was a magpie for buying random things from second hand jewellers, dealers, juntique shops - when he died his collection (what was remaining - someone had thrown out various items they deemed to be worthless - including one piece with an expected value of over £2k) sold at auction for just under £200k...… We'd all thought maybe 10-20k at best!!!

I'd rather leave my children easier items to deal with (money, the odd item of decent jewellery (I have about 2 pieces worth a few £)) than clearing my house of random most-likely-worthless items I'd spent money on. Not that there's much of it (£) to leave!

carrielovesfanta

GreyQueen wrote: »

It can often take multiple people multiple years to fully process the leavings of one overstuffed household, the process is exhausting and demoralising and shouldn't be necessary.:(

My nan is my last surviving grandparent and she is a hoarder in the truest sense of the work. Most rooms are waist deep in things with only small walkways around the house.


I have never been into her house (not invited in!) but my mum has seen it and is already very scared about how we will empty it. Nan is 85 now so chances are we'll be emptying sooner rather than later (although my nan's dad did live to 100).


I'm fairly pragmatic - I think it will be a case of skip+rigger gloves+elbow grease. I don't think it will be practical to sort through it as much as I would like to.

Karmacat

Oh my word! Lots of viewpoints and differing experiences here, it's fascinating. My mum wasn't too bad at all as a hoarder, though she had a huge materials and craft stash - she also left a lot of finished and unfinished projects, some of which are really beautiful. The three of us had quilts and wallhangings, and there were enough lying around the house to give each of her five grandchildren a quilt each.

Selling things, there's a portrait, a first edition book, and some silver (which I've talked about on here, and *still* not done anything about it :o:o) and when we sold the house we discovered some prints none of us had ever seen, of old Liverpool. One included a shed made from whalebone, I kid you not

Anyway, I scanned the images over the weekend, finally, and I'm really proud of myself for saying that I didn't want the actual prints. I'm interested in the images, but not the prints. They're not family - I think she bought them in the 1990s, there's a "£45" on the back of one of them, which seems about right. They're very old, and even though they don't smell musty, there's age and mould spots on them. I've given them all to my sister, and she can do with them as she likes.

Otherwise, my kondoing is of garden weeds and 6/ 7 year old tax paperwork that can be thrown out now

DigForVictory

GreyQueen wrote: »

The declutering writer and professional cleaner, D0n Aslett, wrote about this very problem and suggested starting this process aged about 50, before the energy and eyesight diminished.

So I should crack on then, ulp & just resign myself to my parents eventually leaving us a monster problem.
They're both over 80, they've been in the same house over 50 years, mum has mentioned downsizing & sheltered accom, dad thinks it makes more sense to have live in care (it really isn't as if they've a serious shortage of space) - result - books keep coming in,but things are growing labels indicating who has expressed an interest in X when they finally need rehoming.
Presently I am digitizing photo albums. Should mean Everyone can have the full illustrated history & curate their own versions to taste, and the original albums can be donated to a museum of social history, with the digitized version & sundry spreadsheets of annotations. In centuries time, we may be some desperate students research project.

It keeps me lively to the currents of opinion in the parental home as to how much longer they can cope, but a downstairs bathroom is making it all look distinctly possible, Dad's enthusiasm for extending the place to get extra bathrooms was easily understood when he had teenage daughters, but decades later is just shrewd.

Karmacat wrote: »

The three of us had quilts and wallhangings, and there were enough lying around the house to give each of her five grandchildren a quilt each.

What a lovely way to distribute finished works swiftly and with fewer uncalled for tears!

Siebrie

My parents started decluttering in all earnest about ten years ago, when Dad was 66 and Mum was 72. There is still hope. It helps them to see the joy of people receiving stuff my parents no longer use; maybe your parents would like to see the same?

Maybe a healthcare worker/advisor can already pay them a visit and advise about getting their home ready for live-in care?

Karmacat

DigForVictory wrote: »

So I should crack on then, ulp & just resign myself to my parents eventually leaving us a monster problem.

I tried to get my mother to tidy up the kitchen a bit, so we could fit a dishwasher in, and she actually said, "there's a lot could be thrown out immediately, but I'm not going to do it now". She was very aware, in some ways

They're both over 80, they've been in the same house over 50 years, mum has mentioned downsizing & sheltered accom, dad thinks it makes more sense to have live in care (it really isn't as if they've a serious shortage of space) - result - books keep coming in,but things are growing labels indicating who has expressed an interest in X when they finally need rehoming.

Oof, thats a long time. The labels are a good idea, if they aren't too intrusive day to day. Live in care - a well off relative (senior civil servant) had that. For my dad, we had carers coming in, 3 times a day at one stage (we lived hundreds of miles away, could only get there at the weekends).

Presently I am digitizing photo albums. Should mean Everyone can have the full illustrated history & curate their own versions to taste, and the original albums can be donated to a museum of social history, with the digitized version & sundry spreadsheets of annotations. In centuries time, we may be some desperate students research project.

Thats what I did, took forever! I've distributed an initial CD, as someone expressed an interest in my parents, but the full monty of photos and documents will need a flash drive!

It keeps me lively to the currents of opinion in the parental home as to how much longer they can cope, but a downstairs bathroom is making it all look distinctly possible, Dad's enthusiasm for extending the place to get extra bathrooms was easily understood when he had teenage daughters, but decades later is just shrewd.

If they've just got the one, I'd say a second is absolutely essential. Even with a stairlift, eventually there comes a time when they need to live on one floor. We were loaned a hospital bed, and that had to be on the ground floor, no way we could get that up domestic stairs. And if you have a live in helper, even "only" overnight, you want a second toilet, it may be a condition by now, actually.

What a lovely way to distribute finished works swiftly and with fewer uncalled for tears!

Thank you! I have a personalised wall hanging (we'd both been to Zimbabwe, so it has a baobab tree on, plus there are outlines of my cats, if you know where to look), as well as a quilt just after she died, and four sort of A4-sized christmas-themed wall hangings, one of them based on a Christmas card I'd sent her. Another is a historical piece, showing a tug taking a Christmas tree out to the sailors on the Bar Lightship in Liverpool Bay.

DigForVictory

I mentioned he loved extensions? 3 bathrooms, each with bath & 2 with shower over, all with loos. He suffered terribly from teenaged daughters and remedied matters with bricks & sanitaryware.

They are currently living on the ground floor, just dad can still do stairs easily & slopes off to his 'office' one floor up.

An excellent point about asking a professional - I'll see if I can float that without triggering upset.

They have more mod cons eg a dishwasher than I do, but then I have the lads (not quite staff!) and dad's enthusiasm for labour saving technology is formidable. To see him trim a hedge with the proper device gaffered onto a broomhandle for extra reach is an eyeopener. To be entirely fair he did have the auto-cut-out switch in the circuit, but he didn't think moving the stepladder more was reasonable.

A baobab tree with cat outlines - that sounds like a very cherished family thing with how many cat can you see/find games for years & generations to come. Makes my gran's hexagon patchwork seem very mundane, but I recall her stitching away at them & helping cut out the paper hexagons... I chewed rather more than I helped with, I suspect, but I remember the kindness & the diligence.

Karmacat

DigForVictory wrote: »

I mentioned he loved extensions? 3 bathrooms, each with bath & 2 with shower over, all with loos. He suffered terribly from teenaged daughters and remedied matters with bricks & sanitaryware.

Oh I see :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: I didn't realise the scale of it :rotfl:

They are currently living on the ground floor, just dad can still do stairs easily & slopes off to his 'office' one floor up.

With three bathrooms in various places, you've got the setup for it, thats for sure.

They have more mod cons eg a dishwasher than I do, but then I have the lads (not quite staff!) and dad's enthusiasm for labour saving technology is formidable. To see him trim a hedge with the proper device gaffered onto a broomhandle for extra reach is an eyeopener. To be entirely fair he did have the auto-cut-out switch in the circuit, but he didn't think moving the stepladder more was reasonable.

Oh wow ... Kondoing and preparedness kind of go together, don't they ... my mum bought an electric hedge cutter when she was 82, and that was scary enough, she came *so* close to the wire.

A baobab tree with cat outlines - that sounds like a very cherished family thing with how many cat can you see/find games for years & generations to come. Makes my gran's hexagon patchwork seem very mundane, but I recall her stitching away at them & helping cut out the paper hexagons... I chewed rather more than I helped with, I suspect, but I remember the kindness & the diligence.

No patchwork is ever mundane, especially when associated with memories! Some of my other ones are hexagon-based too. In fact, do an image search for "hexagon patchwork", and prepare to be amazed :kisses3: Just seen a Fibonacci one ... of course, I really want a heptagonal one, seeing as I live in Westeros some of the time And oh my, people have been making quilts based on Game of Thrones. Bliss.

DigForVictory

Argh. I now have more things I want to make & do! Still, if it all helps runs down the stash, that is Good, yes?

And to achieve the Fibonacci designs, I will need to be out of my tree on cold meds. Isn't it nice to have a plan for when your skeleton doesn't fit?