Calling all hoarders out there......why?

[muriel76]

My DH is a bit of a hoarder. Some of his family are the same but particularly his mum, she seems to keep everything. They both like to also display pointless things ie books that will never be/never have been read etc.

Don't get me wrong, it is not a big deal or anything but I do want to understand why. It's hard to understand as my mum is the complete opposite and I am the same. DH and I have agreed to give the house (another!) big clear out and it would help me to hear a hoarder's view!

(Obviously I have talked with him about it many times BTW, I am just looking for other people's more neutral insights)

Thanks for any replies.

a digital camera and computer are great if you want to chuck something useless but sentimental. of course if you are a real hoarder, you'll need to get extra hard drive to keep all the pictures on it.

GUESS WHAT?!!!! guess what I've just gone and done!!!!!

Ok, I'll put you out of your misery

In the loft is loads of old stuff. In the corner out of reach and in a coffin sized cardboard box (I may have mentioned this before) was my original silk bouquet from my wedding in June of 1984; still beautiful.

I just pulled every bloom and leaf from it, shoved them in a plastic bag to use another time and screwed up the 'skeleton' off it...all the time I was pulling off the flowers, I was telling 'him' what I think of the way he treated me, about every punch, every bit of abuse. Had a cry too...(he's dead btw ~ not why I cried).
I'm not sure it's been theraputic, but I can now use the box for things I want to keep.

Yeah, sounds like a very refreshing clearing. Well done, that sounds like a very difficult and upsetting thing to deal with but you did ! Decluttering your mind as well as your house...so proud of you :)

Think I would be tempted to burn the box in the garden and buy a nice new box with no memories attached to store things in but I use to burn ex-boyfriends photos so why listen to me ;)

Well done, Solo.

If something gives you bad memories, well, what is the point of keeping it.

I had a nasty letter from an ex in one of my boxes and when I had the session with the pro-declutterer, I got rid of it and felt so much better.

I did think about burning the whole thing, but decided against it because the roses are still gorgeous and I do do floral stuff, so can use them again.

Surely you wanna burn those roses gores? And why does branching call you solo? Are you solo with a nc?

So......we took everything off the shelves in the hoard corner so that we could put the shelves ready for removal truck next wednesday.
The 'stuff' seemed to double in size as box after box was laid out in the middle of the at first cleared floor. I was so overwhelmed and embarrassed, i really felt like the lady off the hoarding programme.
My lovely helper/ employee has become my declutter buddy and peppered the whole day with 'its not that bad' and 'at least most of it is in boxes' and 'its fascinating reading stories you wrote aged 9 from 1978' and 'this is like a giant car boot sale, you just dont know what treasures you're going to find' and 'its ok, we'll deal with some of it now and some of it after we've moved to the new place'
Gotta love that girl! She must think i'm unhinged!

Tomorrow, on my own, gonna start trying to sort, or at least get rid of some. My God its hard.

Solo, If you can make use of the roses, you are doing the right thing keeping them. We can not throw EVERYTHING.

Weevils, Sounds like your assistant is a saint.

What about making the sort a two part job. One going through every box and chucking real rubbish and anything you can bear to part with for charity but not pressurising yourself and then have a look at what is left ?

Do you have a goal ? To get your stuff down to a certain number of boxes etc ?

Yes, I'm Solo :) Another, newer mumsnetter has adopted the name Solo2 and I'm rather about it, so just had a change to WhoresHairKnickers which is a play on words of HorseHairKnickers which I kinda feel I've worn for my whole life...Gores is just a seasonal nc for Halloween, but I'll probably go back to Solo sometime soon...just call me Solo now though as it's nicer and easier than Whores/WhoresHairKnickers/WHK etc

Oooh! meant to say well done weevils and no, I really think it's a waste to burn or throw away those roses. I'll make use of them sometime

Yeah, i re-read and realise they were silk, not desicated real ones! I think i remember cremating my dried up bouquet at one point, wouldnt be too surprised if i came across it though! Divorced, so not special, except that bouquet was lovingly made by my late Nana.
Babies, i think my target is to get the stuff sorted a bit and initial crap got rid of. At least get the pile into a state that can be moved by the removal men on wednesday. As i might advise someone else- 'start with one box and keep at it' Isnt it easy advising someone else? Much harder facing your own!
Its all such a waste of time though, no wonder i put it off. I could be earning money or doing something more important with my time, energy and brain. But i guess once its done i will have more energy. It was funny explaining to my assistant 'ah yes, this box represents when i had a business doing soap.....'

'Oh, yeah, this was a business i started designing and making so and so, which didnt work out, but lead to business called x which supplied John Lewis and Harrods, but geez, i was only 21. What happened? Well, that was when i met ExDH and got pregnant and had shotgun wedding. It all went to shit after that and i got anorexia and.......Well 18 years later i'm dealing with it.
OMG!! Am i ever dealing with it!! Its all coming out how I allowed ExDH to strip me of all my youthful enthusiasm and ideas and vitality. He did give me DDs though, which are my purpose of life. Such alot of the hoard is children related, clothes, shoes, toys, artwork, ARTWORK! Theres plenty of that!

Oh no! A whole day and very little progress.
At least i'm getting towards it all being boxed up. Thats the aim for tomorrow; All boxed so i can at least move. Then one box at a time after i've moved. I've also created a things i can sell pile of about 6 boxes.

No panic ww you are doing far better than me. I just spent the morning crying my eyes out :( nothing at all productive done here.

Aww Solo, dont cry! Actually a bit of crying does let it out doesnt it?
I read some old school stuff where 'friends' had said they didnt like me. Why did i keep these things? Its really been playing on my mind. A bit of paranoia going on here. Do people like me? Am i not nice? Whats real? How i think or how others see me? Arggggghhhhhhhhh.

I don't know. I have so many worries, problems and stresses going on atm that getting my pig sty house sorted is the least of them.

I have loads if not all my old school stuff ww too...amazing how my handwriting changed over the years and is nothing like it is now.

I found a Diary from 1982, but it was locked! I could swear i'd seen the key in another box, i was also reading my diary from the day DD2 was born. Ah!
I am actually quite shocked at how much there is. My DP hasnt seen it, such is the skill of a hoarder to hide. I told him about the 4 prams! One pushchair/pram combo circa 1993 and 3 wheel buggy circa 2000 plus a dolls pram from 1974 and dolls pram 2004. He cant undetstand where they were! But its the boxes and boxes of other stuff, i thought i had about 50, the final count could be 80! Ffs, 80!

Its just the moving thats forced me to face it all. No wonder i was refusing to deal with it. Its just gonna take time but i'm determined to weed out the crap and end up with the good bits.
Can anyone tell me what to do with shoes? And whats the most ecologically sound way to dispose of bits of plastic? Theres crappy toys, half used crappy make up, alsorts of bits that i feel uncomfortable just going to landfill. I just hate the throw away world we live in and i have to be part of it or drown under mcdonalds freebies.

Ooh! ww you aren't getting rid of the 1974 dolls pram are you? I'll bet it's metal and a bit like a Silver Cross...I don't know what happened to mine :(
You can take shoes to a shoe bank or some dry cleaners have collection bags outside their premises. No idea about the plastic; I feel the same, but never know how to deal with it.

Gave my neighbour a fairly large bag of boys clothes today, but nothing done other than that. yet.

Glad to see this thread still going - I swear I checked in last week and it looked like no-one had posted at all in October!

Went to ILs few weeks ago and was happily surprised to see they're managing to keep their new house in a decent state even after nearly 2 years - OK there's more 'useful' bits of card and empty pots piled in the kitchen than most people would want, special offer food that no-one will ever eat piled up, and FIL's study is starting to disappear behind newspapers, but he pointed out with great dignity that he was only keeping one box of newspaper articles over a year old and all the others were getting recycled if they got that old. Which on inspection appears to be true. :)
Basically it's a bit cluttered but certainly not a risk to health or anything, which is a huge relief for all the family - though it is taking all our efforts to keep it that way, lots of phone calls from BIL asking if we want any of XYZ from MrNC's childhood as he's planning to take it all from the garage and chuck/charity shop it!

So there is hope even for the worst out-of-control hoarders.

Meanwhile I've been signed off sick for a while and can't really get out of the house - on the plus side I've just about caught up with the papers that mounted up while I was sick earlier this summer, stuck loads of stuff on Ebay including furniture that needed going (will have made £170 if no-one reneges on us), and we've emptied the large bedrooom, dumped horrible fitted wardrobes in neighbour's skip, and a whole shopping trolley and backpack full of old clothes etc went to the charity shop - our Cancer UK one collects ones for recycling too.
So almost ready to do that room up - hoping to do that by Christmas and then just declutter a bit more before baby comes in February. I'm trying to get everything ds has outgrown/doesn't need now together to give to a friend who in turn will give me baby stuff back. At least after this baby I can get rid of baby clutter forever!

weevil - if you're in a city, offering carrier bags full of toys/makeup/bathroom stuff on Freecycle seems to work, at least it does for me in a poorish area and I can just leave the stuff outside. Shoe shops like Clarks and shoe repair places usually take shoes for recycling.

I have a strange relationship with clutter and I have been reading this thread with much interest.
I have gone through periods of holding on to too much stuff but a house move and the invention of ebay has helped me a lot in recent years!

To be truely clutter free one needs to be quite ruthless I think and this is what I find really hard.
For example, if a realtive gives me a gift thats not what I want, need or like, I act quickly and get rid of it in a productive way, this is a new development in my life and it feels so good to be bad!

If my DP gets receives a gift he dosent want, need or like then its not for me to get rid of it and there it sits until I can bear it no longer and out it goes!

Recently I have had to develop my evil streak again and get rid of some gifts to DS aged 3. Here is a big emotional problem though as to me it feels so rotten editing his gifts as "not good enough" or , "too cheap and crappy to keep" I feel all shifty and guilty putting things into a charity bag because relative X has committed the innocent crime of giving a cheap tesco teddy. Then I start to imagine the Teddy is all sad somehow like in Toy Story!

It is of course a matter of space. We live in a 2 bed and we just cant keep it all.
Today I had the annoying task of emptying out the main bedroom ready for a plasterer to come and mend the ceiling. THE STUFF was endless.

There were 2, 7ft wardrobes in there packed to the brim of not just clothes but makeup, baby stuff, wedding stuff, memory boxes, you guys know the sort of thing.
As I did this task I got rid of some things into the bin and some to charity bags. Time was short though so this was not a proper declutter.

The big sort out and chuck out will be over this week. I'll be working hard as the plasterer works, then as it dries, and then again as we DIY the painting.

Wish me luck, this could be the biggest one yet! :)

Hello notcitrus! Oh yeah, we're still here, holding on tight, but trying to let go!
Hope you're not too poorly, and with baby coming too! Get that heating on and your feet up! Sounds like ILs are doing well and of their own choice which is of course better than being made to.

Welcome easygoing! Yes, it's a fascinating thread, some very interesting stories. Sounds like you have a busy week ahead, hope you make good progress! Whats your worst hoarding tendency?

Easygoing, i think its better to edit crap before you get attached to it, so i think you're onto a winner! I personally loath Christmas because i know it will involve getting a couple of boxes of more stuff. i like to get edible stuff in recyclable packaging, thats my ideal!

Lord yes! Christmas! with the tat my sil will undoutedly give everyone! Last Christmas, I said to Sil, 'Sil, please, no soft toys for Dd, I don't have the room'
So, Sil turns up with a bloody great big 'limited edition' collectors doll on its own stand! it must be 30" tall and it's been at my Mums ever since. I don't know what to do with it. The Dc's share a room and there just isn't the space plus 13yo Ds doesn't want a huge dolly in his room!
Previous years, she's bought Dd a great big lying down horse, a big dog, a big polar bear...I mean... HELP!!!!