As a hoarder, AIBU to ask how much stuff you've kept / thrown away

[BrianJacquesfan]

I am starting to realise i maybe have a problem...
Friends are weirdly cagey about this so is hard to ask them and get an answer.

Have you kept, for example, your old school exercise books? Text books from uni? Story books from your childhood? Your kids' clothes? Artwork / handicrafts made by kids? Your DCs old school exercise books? Christmas and birthday cards? Sentimental stuff e.g. cinema tickets, letters from friends, handmade gifts etc.? Jewellery you don't wear anymore? Clothes that you're too fat for? Old bank statements? Letters from HMRC etc.? Things "just in case" (e.g. 5 hole punchers)? Loads of books?

I guess I just want to get an idea of what is "normal"... as I said my friends are quite cagey and I don't have that many anyway 🙃

thank you for reading x

At the moment I have most of those things in my house! But I have used lockdown as an opportunity to have a massive declutter. I have been to the tip several times, the decent stuff has been bagged up ready for the charity shop. I now need to sort through all the sentimental stuff, cards/dc drawings etc. I watched "sort your life out in a week" on BBC last week and found it really helpful. It will be on IPlayer if you didn't see it. I found it really helpful. They cut down all the sentimental stuff down to one box per person in the household, and I am planning on doing the same.

Get rid of it all OP. How often do you sit around reading school text book? Are they interesting f and do they make you happy when you read?

Baby clothes: why do you need them? Don't you have photos of your babies as memories?

Babies wear the clothes a handful of times. We kept first shoes. But not clothes

I used to keep books but they became a pain, so dusty and take up so much room and annoying when you move house

My OH is a hoarder and it's irritating. I caught him retrieving my Mother's Day card form the bin last week: it was shop bought. He hadn't written anything personal inside: my toddler had scribbled on it in black brio. why should I need that or look back on it fondly?

I have a large box for each child with sentimental items in. I keep it to one box so somethings have gone .

I keep a small filing cabinet for important documents with a section for everyone in the house. Tax stuff gets thrown out after 10 years for summary documents, pay slips only 1 year until p60. Bills only 6 months, annual statements 2 years (ish). I have very little childhood memories but they are in a small box in a bigger box of my treasured Nik naks over the years.
I do want to keep everything my children have done/ made but apart from the odd Christmas decoration in that box of things I find li.iting them in this way stops me being overwhelmed. I leave out cards from birthdays/ mother's day etc for about 3 weeks and only keep 'special' ones - pretty much handmade, though the first ones they wrote without help etc are in there. I regularly make donations of the kids clothes, I tend to wear my own more to failure. I have kept my wedding dress, but I've also worn it again. Mainly I donate dresses from special events after two years, as I barely go anywhere to wear them.

I naturally hoard but moving every two years has cured me of it.

What do you think will be achieved from having multiple newspapers from Prince Phillip's death? I'd keep one if you want to. I don't mean it in a nasty way, it's the sort of thing that I needed to ask myself a lot.

Every member of the household has a memory box. I don't keep theatre programmes unless they are signed. L

I always think: if I don’t get rid of this, my kids will have to. Very motivating.

I also like- if it comes into your house, it will have to come out.

I have kept literally none of those things.

My boyfriend keeps stuff though and it drives me insane. We don’t need to keep his old laptop as a spare in case his new one breaks down. I tell him he can borrow mine for a few days in that situation and we aren’t in a position where we could just buy a new one.

Couldn’t!!

We would just buy a new one if it broke so to me it’s just useless clutter

I am a hoarder and have kept loads of stuff that is no longer relevant, like school exercise books from both primary and secondary and work from university. I liked being able to show DS that I had written 'I hate French' on the front of my book when he was moaning about having to learn it at school. And showing him that his drawings of people when he was little were almost identical to mine at a similar age. But perhaps the time has come to just get rid.

I have lots of photos and slides that came from my parents' house after they died. I can't bring myself to throw them out yet, but have also not found the time to upload them. I like the idea of scanning things and getting them stored digitally.

I have thought about Swedish Death Cleaning and the concept makes sense - I am sure my dcs will chuck the slides above out without a second thought when the time comes.

Another point mentioned on MN before and which I am guilty of, is hanging onto things because of the spent money they represent. But it was also pointed out that the money is gone, whether you hang onto a now useless item or not! That change in mindset has been useful and I have been trying to be a bit more ruthless with possessions.

Sentimental items are a bit more tricky - I found a letter from an ex the other day and it made me smile to read it and be reminded that I was once very much loved by him. I must be a bit more ruthless there, too and condense them down. Ditto the children's schoolwork. I doubt they will want it when they move out, so who am I keeping it for?

old school exercise books? no
Text books from uni? no
Story books from your childhood? no
Your kids' clothes? I will save their first outfit
Artwork / handicrafts made by kids? I will save very little and only special stuff
Your DCs old school exercise books no
Christmas and birthday cards? no
Sentimental stuff e.g. cinema tickets, letters from friends, handmade gifts etc.? handmade gifts if they're decent, everything else, no, I save pictures of special times on my phone
Jewellery you don't wear anymore? no
Clothes that you're too fat for? no
Old bank statements? company only
Letters from HMRC etc.? yes
Things "just in case" (e.g. 5 hole punchers)? God no
Loads of books? no. Get a kindle

For sentimental things from things like having a baby and our wedding, I have a designated box, the things have to fit in the box, that's how much stuff I can keep.

I have kept neatly all my children's stuff because my parents threw away everything of mine, there are no school photos, books, holiday photos or old clothes, it's like I didn't exist until I was an adult.

It's a question of numbers. I have some of most of the things you mention but could literally hold them in one hand. I've kept about 3 baby outfits per child, half a dozen story books, maybe a couple of Mothers' Day cards. I don't keep birthday cards except occasionally from husband and kids. That is enough admin for me.

I have never seen the point of keeping tickets and festival bands etc. A friend does. She designates a shoebox per year for these things. A photo book might be another option.

Watch this, see what you think

We have a square Ikea storage box for each of the kids where important stuff they want to keep goes. Certificates, important pieces of artwork, badges they have won.

I don't keep birthday cards, or clothes they have grown out of, or bank statements (all online), or letters from HMRC past the current tax year.

Oh and I do have a box of uni files in the loft, but it is literally the only thing up there apart from empty suitcases so I am not sweating that one.

We just moved house after 6 years.
I filled 75 bin bags full of shit (obviously not actual shit) as well as various other receptacles.
It will NOT be happening in this house!

Have you kept, for example, your old school exercise books? No
Text books from uni? No
Story books from your childhood? No
Your kids' clothes? Just the outfit I brought DD home from hospital
Artwork / handicrafts made by kids? Yes
Your DCs old school exercise books? No
Christmas and birthday cards? No
Sentimental stuff e.g. cinema tickets, letters from friends, handmade gifts etc.? Only if I use them
Jewellery you don't wear anymore? No
Clothes that you're too fat for? No
Old bank statements? You only need to keep 6 years worth. Throw anway any older than that
Letters from HMRC etc.? Yes
Things "just in case" (e.g. 5 hole punchers)?Some
Loads of books? Yes

I have a couple of suitcase in the loft filled with sentimental stuff, but I wouldn't like to hoard anything more than that.

I have a box frame from IKEA. I slide tickets to significant things into that and shake it up occasionally so different tickets come to the front. All the rest get binned.

I have A3 scrapbooks for each child. I put drawings, stories they wrote, programs from school plays etc in date order. Cull to just a handful of things a year that have the strongest memories. Get rid of the rest, you have enough memories.

You don’t need your schoolwork, it’s just really inefficient compost.

People who hoard tend to have a trauma or source of distress that they use Stuff to shield them from. Think about what yours is and why boxes and boxes of papers make you feel safe. Those papers aren’t who you are. Their existence doesn’t validate or justify you. You are enough in yourself.

Looking at why you feel the need to surround yourself with reminders of your past might help you break that habit. Best of luck.

Thanks for starting this thread OP. I'm on a mission to kerb my hoarding that is similar to yours...I liked the thought a PP post said that 'if I don't get rid of this, my kids will'.

Photos... Help! I'm overwhelmed! We've moved house a few times, kids are now teens and shamefully, my iCloud account and Dropbox is full of photos and vids. I would love someone to come and sort them out for me! Everyone always says, "print them off"! But I have millions, HELP!!!

@sophiasnail

I have hoarding tendencies which I have to work exceptionally hard to stop things building up again. I have two questions I ask myself. Do I wish I didn't own this item? Which helps me to get rid of things which I feel like I ought to keep like presents and hand me downs, and What is the worst that could happen if I change my mind? Which helps me get rid of things which might at some point be useful, but in reality could be replaced if really needed.

This is helpful. Thank you!

I think I have most of the stuff on your list, OP.

To be honest, part of what’s stopping me chucking it out is that my husband and sons will ruthlessly fill any cleared spaces with yet more damn electronics, tangled cables and unidentifiable bits of plastic. I’d rather look at a shelf full of my old books.

Typed out a long message which disappeared but essentially the answer is no, we keep hardly anything!

I kept a lot of clothes for when I lost weight actually lost the weight and realised that a lot of my kept clothes were so out of fashion I didn't want to wear them again anyway.

I have my elderly mother in law staying at present. She is fairly rambling these days, but yesterday she looked round the (tidy for us) room and said, ‘[DH] doesn’t see cables, my dear. I’m so sorry. His father was just the same.’

@Charley50 I think I need that book
There are a couple it might be on amazon though, which one did you have?

I wouldn't say it's hoarding to keep things that are genuinely sentimental. "Genuinely sentimental" being an important phrase there!

I have a single drawer and one box under the bed for the kind of sentimental things you describe, but they're definitely not overflowing with stuff. I don't like too much clutter and if I think I'm not going to look at it in the future I get rid.

With books I try to be ruthless but still have quite a lot because books are particularly sentimental to me and I get pleasure from having them. I wouldn't get pleasure from keeping my old jewellery so I get rid of it if I don't wear it.

Keeping something like a 5 hole puncher that you are unlikely to ever need seems a bit odd!

Really it's about keeping what you will actually use or will actually bring you joy. Sometimes it's hard to know/ make that decision and so people end up keeping much more than they really need.