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

[Solo]

Are you are any of the following? Can you be described as a clutterbug? Are you 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 cannot just ask someone in for a cuppa at a moments notice or dread the meter reader asking for access.

Are you nodding whilst reading any of these words? 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. We cheer one another along and drag the drowners from the depths of despair.

Join us; we don't bite :) Welcome to thread number 3.

I haven't read the full thread - yet, but know this is where i need to be. Do any of you use any phone apps to help with motivation and organisation. I need to work through my whole house decluttering but also obviously need to remember to do the reoccurring tasks. So in theory i am looking to set up lists of regular jobs and set repeat schedules, then also have one off tasks for each room. I've got an android phone. Failing that i need to stop procrastinating and get on with it (just spent/wasted an hour looking at different apps). Argh i hate housework, it just needs doing again so soon!

notanother did you find the app Regularly? I've been using it for a while - I like the way it helps prioritise things in a sensible way. Also you can have categories, like rooms, etc

Fab thanks I'll check it out.

I use the Todoist app the free version.
You can set off one off tasks and repeating ones.

Plus you can set weekly tasks and x days from when I last did this task reminders..which can be very useful.

And I can add to do items and shopping items from my Amazon who's As I wander around my house.....which is ace. :)

From my Amazon Echo

Welcome notanother my phone can't cope with apps so, I don't use any.

Did I completely forget to mention that I cleaned and cleared half my bathroom? Yes! Only half but, it looks better; the bath is clean, the tiles and window sill clean and sorted out and even the window (inside) cleaned...I can't believe I forgot to say; it was a week ago or more now!

I have a couple of days off next week and want to do stuff at home.

I did a wash load yesterday (don't usually do any before Friday evening) so, one less load for tonight/tomorrow.

Well done of all the accomplishments everyone :)

Solo Way to go with the bathroom :)

Update I have had a good week house wise and I am half way through the laundry !
Most of the house is ok (ignoring our room and cupboards)

Plus I seem to slowly be getting somewhere with the little girls room. I started by clearing all their toy storage.
I have only put toys which have a collection back.
I have two big crates which I am filling with all the unique or small stuff to be sorted out later. I have been temporarily storing these boxes in the big kids room, so the little girls don't empty it !

Every day I tackle another section of their room and fill the 'odd and sods' crates. I only have half under the bed to sort and their room is looking loads better. Plus tidy up is taking minutes not hours, which is a miracle.

I am now thinking of getting rid of all the stuff in the 'odds and sods' crates. It is so much easier to tidy up the bigger and 'clearly have a collection' toys.

I might leave the crates in the big kids room for a few weeks and if it is not missed get rid. But I worry what the girls might really miss something.

What do you guys think ?

Solo You only do laundry on a Friday/Saturday...lucky you

I have to do two loads a day to stay on top of the washing. So it is so easy to fall behind !

Oh my, I am hanging out two more loads of laundry...then I only have one more load to wash in the machine ! I can't wash it yet as there is nowhere to hang it to dry. I will put it on at bedtime and hang it tomorrow morning :)

Babies I too find that laundry takes up most of my housework time. at least two or three loads a day, and when I don't do that, well the pile is enormous. Dd is away at moment which is why things have gone suspicously quiet, oh and no school uniforms help, I forced ds2 (15) to wear the same casual shirt twice, he was mortified..(not that it was that dirty, just he is used to a new shirt every day for school)

so what have I achieved? Hmm not mch decluttering, a lot of my efforts appear to have gone backwards, but the front room is still beautiful after sorting out the records and cds, and ds2's room remains quite nice and clean and tidy/dusted hoovered.

Kitchen has deterioated since dh did weekend's cooking and worktop wiping and I was away all yest.

I put the food compost out and all the milkbottles and keeping up with the recycling (ds2 does that as his chore) The veg boxes are folded and we are getting through the veg in an orderly fashion because it has been put away properly in the fridge.

My bedroom is still not very organised, clothes wise, but I'm getting laundry out of there quite promptly.

Hoping this half term will mean I am more relaxed, and can approach chores with less desperation!

Lots of going on and doing on this thread! :)

I'm not having a great time with 11yo Dd atm; she's just being so rude and disrespectful towards me unless she's getting exactly what she wants and even then, her tone is horrible! I keep telling her "it's not what you say, it's how you say it!" It's like talking to my excessive pile of things to do though .
Yesterday though, despite WW3 going on here, she did a little as she was asked and I got a lot of clothes put away into wardrobes...still much more to do though. I also sorted out the mess that was on my main (small) worktop that I use all the time. That was good. I washed all my oven stoneware too and put a dishwasher load on. I also hung up (indoors) a small wash load to dry. Going to strip the bed today and get that on to wash, clean sheets etc on and then on with more!

I found the thing I was searching for but, it's too late and I had to order a new one at £20 with no way out of it - I tried! Oh, and it was in a box in one of my wardrobes! About the only place I hadn't looked because I didn't know I had a box in the wardrobe! until yesterday when doing the wardrobe stuff!! Grrrrrrrrrr!!

Solo (((hugs))) Children are hard work and 11 is a tough age, I have one too. We also have to have the 'attitude and 'tone' issues. Hang in there, things will improve.

Very impressive list of completed and planned jobs. Sounds like you are doing well. Don't kick yourself about not finding the item in the box in time. We all do the same thing from time to time.

Nettles I love reading your lists. Not only do you get loads done but such a wide range of jobs too :)

Reminds me of loads of things I need to do :)

thank you Babies and hope you are well Cag and Solo.

I have been watching my cathartic guilty secret "Hoarders" the american one. Never fails to make me think. And often reminds me that a particular possession is being kept for the wrong reasons, emotional reasons rather than practical ones. Like Ds's Judo kit. which takes up a lot of space in the cupboard under the stairs.

Finally moved the Hifi downstairs.

Completely dusted and hoovered my bedroom and put two jackets in teh recyclng from my wardrobe. Cleaned basin and loo. dusted all the nightables and put all the loose change in a cup. Changed sheets. Put all the laundry from our bedroom downstairs. Opened windows and curtains wide all day, put some jumpers with incipient moth out to air in the sun, out of the bedroom window, then hung them on hangers on front of wardrobe. they are dh's, perhaps he will wear them now! (at the back of a cupboard)

Solo dd was terrible from 9-14. Better now. Her speciality was sitting in the middle of the corridor blocking it, or at the top of the stairs not letting people pass. Lots of demands. I think she got tired a lot too. Needed a lot of food, of the kind that she liked, hot chocolates etc. we worked hard at being quite forgiving and not picking battles. She has turned out all right, a few bad scrapes but she is on school ski-ing trip now, and I am so proud of her independent nature. When she comes back she will be rude and nasty because she is tired and hungry and emotional. And then fine on Sunday. With lots of news. And great fun. With a daughter there is so much to look forward to, really there is, teens can be great fun as well as exhausting! Lots of jumping around and telling funny stories to compensate for all that backchat.

Hi Nettle :) Thank you. Thank you so much, you've made me smile :)
I really do want us to be friends as well as Mother and Daughter... Ds is so much better now but, that could be a lot of not living with me of course! And I don't want it to get to that point with Dd.

Re your Dh's moth-eaten jumpers, can you bag them up and put them in the freezer to kill off any eggs that may be lurking?

Me? Well, the sink is full, the small worktop is cluttered and I still can't walk on the floor. Whilst there is some small improvement in some areas, it's just not enough and I'm tired!

Do you have room for one more please?
Have been lurking on this thread for a while now and have name-changed to join!
I’m mid de-clutter. We’re drowning in stuff here and hoping to put our house on the market soon. Some of my main issues are:

Laundry - it’s everywhere! I’m into my second week of trying to clear the backlog - I’m almost done on the washing and now have the mammoth ironing and putting away session to tackle. I doubt I even have space to put everything away though!

Sentimentality- lost both parents in the last few years. Clearing their house was such a task and so much stuff has ended up here. Boxes and boxes that I just can’t bring myself to clear/get rid. So now I have loads of the stuff they hoarded as well as my own! Also I have boxes and boxes of old letters from my parents, a former (now sadly dead) boyfriend, my best friend from school. All people who loved me and who I loved and are mostly no longer with us. Can’t bring myself to part with them though it makes me so sad to read them.

I also get really sentimental about silly things like, for example, I can’t get rid of a tee shirt that I’d never wear again (and is too small anyway!) but DH bought it for me on our first holiday together.

Inefficiency - I don’t think I’m very organised/efficient at cleaning and tidying. Some serious time management issues...

OCD - I seem to have a weird version of OCD. I know this probably means I should be super-tidy but it manifests itself in an odd -and very inconvenient -way. So, although I’m utterly paranoid about germs and food hygiene it actually makes me a bit fearful of tackling some tasks. An example - a couple ofweeks ago we had a mouse in the pantry. Just one lone, stray little mouse - this was confirmed by the pest control man and it was caught immediately. Clear there’s no others now. However, I now feel weird about the pantry. Can’t use it until I’ve cleared it and sterilised it but can’t bring myself to do it - I don’t want to touch anything where the mouse has been! Consequently I’m not using the pantry at all and all the food I’ve bought since is crammed on one pan drawer. This is not helping the situation!

Now, I’ve probably made myself sound a lot weirder than I actually am!

I recycycled some clothes that had been sitting on the doorstep in a plastic bag. They were dd's bagged up since a year ago, shameful that they didn't leave the house earlier..it took a fox trying to rip the bag to make me act.

toomuchtupper I have dealt with a few mice in my time (cat leaves them on the floor in bits [eugh] but I know how you feel...I take my glasses off to deal with them and feel quite odd afterwards. I think living with three cats has made me more insensitive

I am also struggling with laundry, perpetually. It is a bit sad of me but I was imagining what a good thing if ds went to uni because I would be able to send some of the excess towels and sheets with him and not have to throw them away. I don't iron things though which allows the laundry to move faster through the system I tend to wash things, hang them over the bannister and hope someone puts them on before I have to put them away...

I think letters can be kept, they don't really take up much space compared to all the other things we fill our lives with (magazines, excess crockery, clothes, ornaments) I think letters are historical documents not clutter.

I'm not sure what to advise on the house sale front - would it be worth putting some things into temporary storage so you can declutter at your leisure or assess whether you want to keep them when you have moved house? Might make it easier to organise and clean the house for the sale. I know it is an expensive short term solution but it is difficult without knowing what your new house/flat is going to be like to bring oneself to dispose of useful furniture things in advance. I remember putting stuff into storage, bringing it out, putting in the loft o fnew house, and then throwing it all out ten years later, really made me think what a wasted opportunity it was to keep it all so long. things like fabric for curtains and old clothes, old duvets, sleeping bags excess to requirements. Never found any of it when I needed it, as there was too much in the loft, and then I never really wanted to use the fabric as it was the wrong kind (10 years on) So so glad I got rid of it I haven't missed ANY of it 2 years later.

Hi Toomuch and welcome! You sound very similar to me in some ways.

I've got nothing done at all this weekend barring some laundry. Got a double puncture which I got fixed today and visited a relative this afternoon. Bought some essentials and some not so essentials from the supermarket.

And I lied! I cleared the sink, washed up, filled the dishwasher and ran it like that's a great achievement!

I've tidied and hoovered and dusted ds1's room. Not much I could throw away/declutter though except sweet wrappers.

Hello Solo and Nettles and thanks for the welcome.

Both DH and I have a tendency to acquire and hang on to too much stuff but it’s got far worse since losing my parents...I’ve struggled with depression since then and everything has just got out of hand. Made a serious commitment to de-cluttering a few weeks ago and since then have taken countless carloads of stuff to the charity shop and dump. I can’t begin to imagine where it all was because we still seem to be completely rammed! I’ve also been decorating the hall, stairs, landing at the same time, a particularly long-winded task as all the doors were stained a very dark brown and have needed six coats of paint!

Today I took two more sacks of clothes to the charity shop and painted some skirting.

Ironing still not done and I still haven’t dared tackle the pantry...

I've done nothing today.

Nettles you are doing well if that room is in good order!

Toomuch you too are doing well. I took out a storage unit for a maximum of 6 weeks. That was 3+ years ago! I could not understand how I still had a house full of stuff when I'd removed so much already! I'm mightily fed up with it all though and really have to get on top of it. I'm desperate for work to be done on the house!

Toomuchtupperware Welcome to the thread.

Dishwasher emptied. Wash load done overnight and hung to dry this morning. Tonight, dishwasher filled and put on.

Slightly annoyed with myself as I ordered a footstool last night. It won't be delivered until mid May so, that's something I suppose...