What does your clutter mean to you?

[wavingfuriously]

hoarder here...was making progress with decluttering lately..at least I thought I was...now looking at stuff was intending to keep and seeing it's rubbish too...feeling v mixed up 🤷‍♀️ don't know why clutter is so emotive..

this has probably been suggested to you before but I found Marie Kondo really helped psychologically with clutter. Understanding for eg that gifts are about the giver and not the receiver (so you don’t need to keep them for years if you don’t actually like/use them) and recognizing that space is more valuable than stuff. But having done a big Kondo a few years ago I also now recognize it’s a muscle as stuff creeps back in all the time and you have to accept that it’s a constant battle. It did also make me a much more mindful shopper though and I try to buy less but buy better now.

I'm not a hoarder but found Marie Kondo extremely helpful generally when I followed her advice with a general declutter 10 or so years back. She advises that you hold each item and thank it before you get rid. It really works for me when I part with things I'm fond of/sentimental about, but are broken or worn out or otherwise unusable and impractical to keep.

It impacts my mental health hugely.
Its not mine, it’s my dh.

I spend day in day out moving, binning, clearing and cleaning away his utter utter total shite.

I am hugely resentful and angry about it.
How this one individual who lives in a home with a family can make their lives so miserable without missing a beat.
To me, it is totally selfish and shows he doesn’t care about any of us, his tendencies come above our comfort and wish to live in a clean & clutter free home.

His father is the same.
If I could leave tomorrow I would.

I recognise hoarder tendencies in myself, inherited from my DF. It took me nearly 2 years worth of weekends (work ft) to clear it all when he went into a care home. I found cheque books older than me - and I'm no spring chicken! All sorts of random shit like drawers full of labels cut off clothing, broken furniture and old light fittings, duplicate or triplicates of unworn clothing still in the wrapping etc. Out of date food in the cupboard - corned beef from 1997!
He had a poor and turbulent upbringing and I think holding onto this stuff gave him a feeling of security in a changing world and some broken items had given him much happiness so he wouldn't throw them out. He put a high value on "things" as people came and went.

Dana K White on youtube is good about the process of clearing out.
There's a number of short videos where she'll talk though an item in her home and how it came to become clutter.

There's a lot of optmism and fear involved in clutter.
The hope that X will solve problems
The fear (acceptance) that you lost money on it
The fear of losing memories
The fear of going without
The hope of using it again

It's ok to feel emotional about clutter and what those items represent.
Then there's the emotional layer about things being clutter, that it makes life harder if its in the way, that society values neat, minimal spaces (which might not match the practical reality of a living space)

I've got much better about parting with superflous things emotionally, but I still stick on the practica getting them out of the house.

Every day it stresses me. We've lived in this house for 11 years and had 2 children. We're overflowing and there's more brought into the house all the time. It's rarely my clutter so it's harder to get rid.

DM is a hoarder, and I suspect that being bombed out as a child had a lot to do with it. Rationing from being a toddler until well into her teens. Waste not want not.

She has not been emotionally equipped for abundance in later life.
There's a big house and a lot of it...

I'm probably a naturally cluttery person anyway. In sight = in mind. Clean desk policies mindboggle me, why would you want your employees to be mentally vacant and forget everything by banning visual prompts. But as a child I wasn't equipped with the skills of tidying and organising (you want me to tidy my room, I'll shove it under the bed then) and have learned much more in my 30s & 40s through social media. While DM didn't have many of those skills in the first place, what was annoying was that as the youngest, I was expected to be guardian of all childhood clutter from the rest of the family and blocked from clearing out things that belonged to X or Y even though they'd moved out and moved on many years earlier.

I follow a woman called Sarah on Insta. Her account Simpleintentional https://www.instagram.com/simpleintentional is very helpful in breaking down the mental load of clutter.

My late husband was a hoarder. It made me ill mentally, because I just couldn't live with the stuff. Who needs 8 stereos for goodness sake? I could not keep the house tidy, I could not get rid of stuff, I couldn't tidy his stuff in case I got rid of something. I couldn't stop him acquiring more stuff. It's so hard to explain to people who aren't in that situation.
After he died I got rid of so much stuff. It took me over a year.
I can't give you any advice about how to deal with clutter, but please don't let the clutter run your life. Your home should be your sanctuary, it should be the place you feel comfortable, if it's not, then you need to get help to make it that way.

was making progress with decluttering lately..at least I thought I was...now looking at stuff was intending to keep and seeing it's rubbish too

That's OK, sometimes it takes more than one go. This time around you'll get rid of XYZ. Next time you'll get rid of UVW. Eventually you'll just have ABC.

As long as you're getting rid of more than you're adding, you're making progress.

There's a hoarders anonymous thread in Housekeeping if you want support:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/housekeeping/5106903-hoarders-anonymous-thread-8-we-are-keeping-on-keeping-on-fighting-the-cluttered-fight

Having possessions makes me feel secure. I rely on my possessions to trigger memories as I'm very in the moment and will forget things.

I panic when my husband helps me declutter but he's kind and good at helping.

Our solution now is to clear a different area every few months and put the sorted things into open boxes in the spare room for a few weeks.

In this time I can go through the boxes and am free to remove anything I feel really need. Then I have the responsibility to take them to the recycling facility. This way I don't feel bereft and I'm in control.

It's worked. Yes I remove some items, but on the whole most gets recycled.

It's easy to forget that for every item that enters the house, another has to leave. Otherwise it's getting fuller.

I am most definitely a horder whilst my husband is quite minimalist and doesn't have attachments to possessions.

My sewing room is down to 46 packing boxes of fabric!

I define clutter as things that don’t have a ‘home’.

We have lots of painting/hobby paraphernalia but as it’s contained in one room and arranged neatly on shelves it doesn’t bother me.

We also have thousands of books, DVDs and CDs, but tidied away on bookcases in alphabetical order. So it’s fine.

I have ADHD and need things around me to be neat and organised.

It look me a long time to stop having ‘doom piles’ and lots of mess.

Now I repeat ‘don’t put it down, put it away’ to myself a lot.

I grew up with parents who didn’t throw anything away and would actively prevent me from decluttering.

The Avon thread was an eye-opener for me. Having a ratty catologue chucked on my front step would drive me nuts.