The Hoarders Anonymous Thread Part Two...Still Sorting It Out ~ Together!

[Solo]

Sorting out the home when you're a hoarder (big or small) is never going to be easy and we should know! but having someone else to support you, talk about it with you and make you feel much less of a freak of mother nature makes a huge difference!

If you are any of the following:
A hoarder. In a mess. Untidy. Disorganised. Lazy with housework that has lead to something that you now feel unable to deal with. If you are ill and not coping with the housework. If you are emotionally attached to items for whatever reason. If you have a combination of any or all of these things or something completely different, please join us. No one here will judge you. We have something in common and we have a common goal. We share our ideas and we share our disappointments no matter how big and our celebrations no matter how small.

Welcome to thread number 2! :)

Hello, just signing in as a half-reformed hoarder and having a final push at my hoard.

I have a long and emotional relationship with 'stuff: one very loving parent who valued art, creativity, play and loved a good rummage in a fair or second-hand shop; one cool, critical and controlling parent who still lives a life of (albeit very un-stylish) minimalism. For me the problem started when my parents suddenly moved house when I was just turned 20. They moved 250 miles away from where I was at university and there was to be no room for me in the new house. So all the creative, messy, much-loved 'stuff' of my childhood came with me in boxes to my university room. I was busy with my course, so just threw a cloth over a great stack of them and carried on...

These boxes stayed and stayed with me for the next decade, from hall of residence to shared flat. However, by this time my loving parent had a terminal illness so opening these boxes was to open up pain. Just before my wedding I decided that I had to change, somehow and employed a professional declutterer to help. My flatmates thought I was bonkers, but she really did help - the boxes were opened, reduced, re-sorted and came with me to my married home in a reduced state. In the meantime my loving parent died and the response of my other parent was to off-load anything else of mine that could be found, so that it was off their own plate. So the problem increased, if anything.

However, engaging the de-clutterer did make a major change to my habits - I began to see the habit of hanging on to things as potentially destructive, I stopped acquiring trinkets and souvenirs, I began to read and then recycle interesting leaflets, brochures and articles that I would have previously squirrelled away for a rainy day. So my better habits have meant that my problem, although still there, at least has not grown.

If you came into my home you would probably not say that it was cluttered. But the boxes are still there, albeit reduced in number. However, I can see the end of the road ahead of me - where I know that everything I own is meaningful, properly stored and the amount I have is in proportion.

We are about to start building work and I am having a final push! I am opening boxes and considering items that I have not considered for years. Last week I sorted through approx. 300 childhood Christmas and birthday cards (a box that I had never been able to go through before), reducing them to a small pretty patterned tin. My filing (22 lever arch files worth - just my personal filing not even household stuff - who needs that much?) is currently spread out across our sitting room so that I can sort it out.

It is hard, but I want to do it and the end is tantalisingly close.

That is a wonderful post Maybe and I am so sorry you lost the loving parent. I think it is very important not to feel ashamed of the things we accumulate, and I wonder if sorting them out over a long period is in fact a very healing process, rather than the unnecessary chore some minimalists would have us think. There is a time for everything we accumulate, especially at the beginning of our lives, it is only towards the end that we have the resilience and learned wisdom (partly learning through things and experiences that those things represent) that gives us the strength to do without our "friends", those warm loving items that represent so much to us.

I've also had a professional declutterer for a very short while, but I think I didn't really let her "in" so to speak, but called her bluff by throwing things away before she even asked me to, thus throwing her off the scent on other items I wanted to protect. I am hoping she will come again and deal with really tricky decisions with me. She is a lovely person and knows what is like to have a bustling family so the minimalism isn't cold ifysim, although possibly like most declutterers she is more hardline that the rest of us.

Today the downstairs is covered with mess, bags and trash and such like and it is making me ill! A reminder of how I cannot actually bear living in a muddle, yet I do it all the time in a more generalised way. I seem to make mess subconsciously, as if I am trying to create disorder everywhere by some natural instinct. Quite remarkable My Dad always used to say my mum would leave drawers delibarately open, I am a bit like that. I hate it but I still continue.

Maybe you are inspiring! :) Thank you for posting. Do stay and post more if you will...

Knitting I left a pumpkin in the boot of my previous car until it kind of exploded. I then had one last November in the boot of my current car that almost went the same way, but thankfully I got rid of it before it was a total mess. My porch is also a dumping ground and shamefully it is on show to the outside world of the postman and leaflet distributors...I also empty the car into it and it gets left.

Thank you, both of you. I have lurked on this thread on and off - I think I might have posted a little on the very first one.

I like this:

There is a time for everything we accumulate, especially at the beginning of our lives, it is only towards the end that we have the resilience and learned wisdom (partly learning through things and experiences that those things represent) that gives us the strength to do without our "friends", those warm loving items that represent so much to us.

If stuff wasn't meaningful, at a point in time, then we would never had had it...

I have recently been thinking about the word 'curate', in relation to special objects and memorabilia.

That is rather nice isn't it...it is sage :)

love the exploding pumpkin Solo. Mine sort of disintegrated or imploded on the doorstep as it never made it to the food compost...oh I hate my porch.

Sifting through it at the moment. Once again I've rescued a summer top from the recycling, I put it there a long time ago, and it was still in the car. Now that I'm on a diet it might fit me..sixth months on. triple aargh!

next time I report back the porch will be CLEANSED

I've done it, bar the basket with firewood and window cleaner and random bits of rag which is still sitting there, and a lot of dead leaves.

But it looks much better, and I got rid of two bags of rubbish/recycling from porch.

Knitting I thought I had a dead mouse in the car somewhere as it absoutely stank! And it made a huge mess in the boot too!

I need 6 months off to focus on sorting out!!!

I managed to give my hoard of classical literature (latin and greek translations in penguin) someone going to uni to read Classical Civilisation. Only when I had passed on the dusty paperbacks tonight (and they have been sitting in the declutter waiting bay for a while now) did I think....gosh, well, she could probably had bought the whole lot on ebay for £5...was it worth me stressing so much on the idea that I had to give them to the right person - who was worthy of them and needed them...She would have managed fine without my "generous" gift, and I could have given them to a charity shop weeks ago, and someone else who wanted them would have enjoyed reading them.

Such is life. I am learning all the time how obsessive and pointless my attempts at matching items with new owners are, it gives a brief rush, but it is not worth the procrastination.

Otherwise, not much done this week. House a tip, laundry everywhere, a lot of camping stuff seems to have resurfaced and coats and mittens as kids went on wet and muddy activity day today. I searched for waterproof trousers, but of course when I needed them I could not find the WRETCHED things. However, I did find the knapsacks for once, in exactly the right place, due to tidying the cupboard under the stairs, and the thermal leggings!! YAY

I have the shower screen going tomorrow! I have folded Ds's remaning clothes up amd put into a large Ikea bag along with a quilt and pillow and all his trainers into a boot bag. I need him to take all of those and his mattress and all his other rubbish and I can maybe see straight and plan the next move!

I don't think that's a fail at all - she was the right person to have them and will probably get more use out of them in a set than giving them to a charity shop where one person will buy The Aeneid and the rest would hang around for years.

Making some progress here, but oh the tedious, tedious work....and the rows!

I agree Maybe, it is not a fail for knitting as they are now gone! And will I am sure be useful . I am also terrible for trying to give to the perfect recipient! I also feel that I'd rather pass on to someone else than to a faceless new owner via the charity shop.

I am full of cough and cold today :(

today is comparatively free so I am attempting to make the house look tidier and cleaner.

For some reason, despite all the decluttering it looks worse than ever, much much worse. Maybe I had to make more effort hiding things before.

Or maybe more things need to go. Not sure. I am getting less and less tolerant of the "possessions". When you have tripped over something for the umpteenth time you begin to lose attachment to things... Part of valuing what I do have, is possibly to put them away and look after them, fold them, order them.

Onwards and upwards then, will report back.

I think that it looks worse before it looks better. I have loads of things lying around in a 'transitional' state.

I hung up some shirts for ds, and washed some clothes...washed up in a perfunctory manner

dh took the recycling out..and well.that was about it..

researched holidays, researched [thermal - it is freezing here] blinds/curtains for kitchen without much success. The curtain track I have been hoarding is waiting in the loft reproachfully...

the landing looks slightly better, but still has last christmas decs on it.

My downstairs is ok abd the kids room passive. But I am finding the more I work on the pile in our room...it seems to get worse too ! I keep telling myself it ell look bad until it is down to the last 10% then it just looks untidy and then it will be clear.

My back has recovered from last pile attack, so I start again Friday..wish me luck.

I have so many plans for the rest of the house but nothing can be done until I sort our room out first.

I've booked our summer holiday! Yay, now no more procrastination on the tidying up. unfortunately a cat sprayed our utility last night, so....well at least that is an incentive to deal with the room and the playroom beyond.

Ooh! How lovely :) Where are you going?

Ugh! To cat spray (adds another thing to the list about why I'll never have a cat).

We are going with three kids to the Alps, to walk. Dh speaks German so it is an advantage to choose Austria, also v nice food!!! I hope kids do walk. Last year we went to Cornwall so kids could go in the sea and both boys refused to leave the house and developed beach allergy, let alone walk anywhere.

Oh how lovely! I love Austria although the last time I went was in 1988. I hope they all walk too :) It's so very beautiful!

Dh and I went in 1995, off season, to a simple isolated no frills hotel in about June to walk in a very beautiful district called the Stubaital (sp?) - and I really missed the people, and restaurant culture (whilst enjoying nature), so this time we are going when it is very very bustling, in a more urban setting, so we can throw in a bit of kultcha! Dd needs teenagers too, to talk to, so we hope we might bump into a few.

Today husband and I, with a lot of bickering along the way are attempting to sort out the living room. We have moved two bookcases and a piano, put one in the hall, cleared horrid things from behind them all, and I am just thankful that dh even admitted the place was a muddle - you cannot clean clutter! But he seems to think you can, and that is what enrages me...

So two bin liners of random crap outside, but not really any books or other hoard disposed of. I got as far as texting BIL to ask him if he wanted his Bob Dylan Roxy Music vinyl from 1980's but he said he didn't, which means I have to keep it, rats..(he gave it to me in 2000 and I haven't listened to any of it so far, till NOW, ridiculous).Have enjoyed listening to records last night, and got rid of about 3... Maybe will just take it to Vinyl Shop and close my eyes and hand it over.

Dh is finding "decluttering" (not that he actually throws anything) extremely exhausting, and his temper is very frayed.

But the first fruits is that the bookcase he moved, to middle of the wall truly looks beautiful, and he is feeling a bit more rewarded for his efforts. I think you have to break through sound barrier with decluttering organising, and for many of us it is really a horrific experience, dh certainly feels that way, like he doesn't even want to go there or start shifting things, he finds it hideous and intrusive and draining.

We have argued a lot about a certain item of furniture leaving the room, finally he has admitted we can do without it. I think this is the chink in his armour, he is beginning to see that changing just one thing is not the end of the world or indeed throwing it away (when it is a "useful" item)