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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To have forgotten areas/rooms in your home

94 replies

FlyingMonkeys · 04/03/2018 16:24

Off work today cue the tidying up. I've a spare room/dumping ground I've just popped my head in to.. and then promptly shut the door! Possibly in total denial about how to tidy up properly but to be fair mostly can't be arsed! I seem to be one of those folk who create piles that move around the house and never find a proper home. Or mostlyrics I'm just a lazy bitch! Blush

OP posts:
FaFoutis · 04/03/2018 18:08

Mine is usually a huge empty room, a ruin really, sometimes with ghosts in it. Possibly better than a neglected vagina.

Niceandwarmandhot · 04/03/2018 18:09

We've just moved from a 2 bed apartment in London to a house in the country. In London the cupboards all looked like Monica's secret junk cupboard in "friends". Now I do have a big house to fill with shite but I don't think DP will let me, stupid tidy man Sad

Original poster
FlyingMonkeys · 04/03/2018 18:09

Loving the dream sequences regarding forgotten rooms/wings! Grin

In fairness we're in a 3 bed semi so it's not like I'm massively pushed for space but could probably far better utilise what we've got.

DP on nightshift tonight so may crack open a bottle of wine & be ruthless in the spare room. If the bags to go are positioned at the bottom of the stairs it may prove an incentive to get rid Smile

OP posts:
Wauden · 04/03/2018 18:12

@MothertotheLordsofmisrule - your secret cupboard space behind the lounge fireplace that had been plaster boarded over by previous occupants - could well have been where the old 'back boiler' was. I took my old back boiler out and plan to make my own secret cupboard there!

Love things like secret hiding places and priests' holes in much older buildings!

TooManyMiles · 04/03/2018 18:15

In the dreams I always kind of knew it was there but forgot for a while!

I have these and would also like to know what they mean. It feels exciting to re-find the forgotten room, but it always ends with not quite being able to get to it or use it in a way that works out with the other rooms. It is a very disturbing dream.

OP Try Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Dungeondragon15 · 04/03/2018 18:18

I assume that my dreams of finding more rooms are my subconscious telling me I want a bigger house..

Etaina · 04/03/2018 18:24

I've got a junk room and I can't bear to go in it anymore. I'm planning on having a good sort out over Easter. I've tried the Kondo book, but it didn't motivate me enough, although I did 'Kondo' my drawers and they look lovely!

I have a recurring dream that I find a doorway to a number of rooms along a straight, long corridor. Some are in a good state, although very dated and full of old stuff which I keep planning to sort through. But the door at the end leads to another part that is dripping with damp and full of wet rot and that leaves me feeling really distressed. One time, in the dream, I walked into one of the OK rooms and found an old lady sitting there. We chatted and I felt very calm and believed that this woman could offer me wisdom and guidance but I've never 'met' her since. The dreams are not happening as regularly now. It's amazing how common they are!

IfNot · 04/03/2018 18:25

In real life I live in a tiny house and have virtually no junk. Every space is useful. I HATE junk. Marie Whatserknickers has nothing on me.

Etaina · 04/03/2018 18:26

BTW...other people have said that the forgotten rooms is about wanting a bigger house, but my dreams only started when I moved to a bigger house. Perhaps it is just worrying about the costs of running a larger and much older house.

Funnyface1 · 04/03/2018 18:28

We moved here late last year so it's too new for me have forgotten any of it. But as far as having a dumping ground, I'm now able to keep the house pretty tidy because I can just pop stuff into the loft and integral garage. I didn't have that before.

Evelynismycatsformerspyname · 04/03/2018 18:31

I used to have the forgotten rooms dream about my old school building - that really is weird I think! It was a few years after I left, and I started having dreams about going back to the abandoned building, walking around then always at the end finding a room I hadn't known was there and stepping in, only to feel the ground slipping away from me - at which point I'd wake up. I'm sure Freud would make something of that, but I rather subscribe to dreams being more of a rubbish collection of unneeded thoughts than to reading in symbolism.

KennDodd · 04/03/2018 18:42

I had a relative who had just a bog standard three bed council house. As they go old their mobility reduced and they moved the bedroom to the downstairs front room with a shower room off the back of the house. They didn't go upstairs for just over 20 years until they died. So they had a whole upstairs crammed full of stuff they never used!

mummyhaschangedhername · 04/03/2018 18:51

My last house I had multiple "spare" rooms and places to distribute the crap 😂 not in my current house unfortunately, we downsized to get into a better catchment area and planned to extend but with moving and various life challenges we just don't have the current finance. I miss having the illusion of a tidy house 😂

Shadow666 · 04/03/2018 18:53

I saw this program about hoarders and the guy had so much stuff in his house, he lived in a hut in his garden. It was just so bonkers. I mean, I know obviously he had mental health problems, but giving priority to rooms full of junk. I mean all this junk living in his lovely home and him living in a small hut with no heating. So sad.

Anyway, don't be like that guy, OP.

Laiste · 04/03/2018 19:04

Etaina - But the door at the end leads to another part that is dripping with damp and full of wet rot and that leaves me feeling really distressed.

Yes! All wet and horrible and needing the door being shut back on it loads of work to sort out. That's my industrial kitchen feeling. More oh bloody hell look at this awfulness than oh good more space. Sometimes it's a bit creepy in there too. I've been having this room dream on and off for years and years, through living in different houses, big ones little ones. I recon it's more to do with my psyche than wanting an actual new room.

Ifnot your forgotten vagina made me laugh Grin

athingthateveryoneneeds · 04/03/2018 19:11

Everywhere is disorganised chaos. The children undo my work - so I tell myself.

Diaryofapeabody · 04/03/2018 19:27

Apparently, according to some psychosocial schools of thought, dreaming of hidden or forgotten rooms is a subconscious acknowledgement of ‘ hidden ‘ aspects of one’s personality - a bit like Jung’s concept of ‘ shadow self ‘.
I’m sure someone with greater wisdom can explain better!

tillytrotter1 · 04/03/2018 19:40

I hoovered the dining room today, picking up bits of crackers from under the table, the Christmas kind, not prawn!
I had to reach behind the TV table to pick something up, felt like the Hammer House of Horrors back there.

Etaina · 04/03/2018 19:44

Yes Laiste, it's definitely creepy in there and I certainly don't feel happy about finding all this extra space that needs work.

Oh dear Diaryofpeabody, the hidden aspects thing is slightly worrying when mine is full of wet rot!

I had a lot less junk around when I lived in my very small house. I think I was much more selective in terms of what I brought into it. I felt less stressed living in a clutter free environment. The junk room I've got in this house is at the top and sometimes I feel as though it is weighing down on me. I can shut the door on it but I can't shut it out of my mind.

Alloftheboys · 04/03/2018 19:52

House isn't big enough to have any forgotten areas. Our problem is the garage. It's got an up and over type door which OH had to cut the cable to when it wouldn't shut. Then he managed to run his new car into it instead of reversing off the drive 🙄

Garage is rammed full of stuff including a king sized mattress and multiple broken appliances. Can't get the door fixed till the garage is clear so will have to drag all the crap through the house at some point and get rid of it. 😥

Pixelpuffin · 04/03/2018 19:57

Clutter, dear god I hate the stuff.
As a self confessed hoarder for years things finally came to a head last autumn. Since then I've just been ebaying like crazy . I'm determined to be minimalist by the end of the year. How far am I taking it? Well I'm even considering removing the kitchen wall units and just relying in base units. Sick to the back teeth of shit or to be more precise an accumulation over the past 2 decades.
I dream of simplicity

Tomorrowillbeachicken · 04/03/2018 19:59

Nope, not enough space to swing a mouse.

Evelynismycatsformerspyname · 05/03/2018 11:53

Pixel I dream of simplicity too - I daydream about the perfectly proportioned tiny detached cottage/ house - airy, not twee ancient cottage mouldering with cramped tiny rooms, but just 3 rooms with hardly anything in them - that I believe I'd like to live in. I'm not sure if I'd manage it in reality, as it is I have a medium sized 3/4/5 bed semi (depending how you look at it, it's an odd layout with rooms accessed through other rooms and rooms accessed in such a way that you can't have a door...) full of clutter and people.

Diaryofapeabody · 05/03/2018 13:01

Etaina
Sorry! I’d had a series of recurring dreams about rooms I’d just discovered - think very haunted rooms, very dilapidated and uninhabitable ones which defied attempts to make habitable , rooms I just couldn’t go into - and I was moved to try to find a meaning, hence my ( probably mangled and simplified) explanation.

It didn’t make me feel much better either!!

Dungeondragon15 · 05/03/2018 17:03

When I read stuff on the meaning behind certain dreams I always think that someone is just making stuff up. It's not as if you could ever prove them wrong. I still contend that dreams of new rooms are just signs of wanting/needing a bigger house and perhaps feeling quite optimistic that it will happen.