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.

Incy hope your little one feels better soon.

Solo it sounds like you hve achieved a lot today. It's always the small items that are harder as it's so easy to just put them somewhere else and move the mess around. Paper is time consuming to sort too.

Feeling incredibly unmotivated at the moment. It just feels insurmountable! We are now at the stage of getting things for the baby and it feels like more is coming into the house than leaving it. We've done so much decluttering, I know I should be proud of that still, but we are now reaching the point where it's all random stuff that we can't make decisions about.

Today I did pack up some board games (ones we know we will be taking with us when we move) so that's something but it's not the most useful thing really

I've had a busy day! Been sorting more of my kitchen out. It's looking better but, there's certainly more to do. I also sorted a few of my squares out in my shelving unit whilst I was watching a bit of TV tonight. There is so much rubbish! You are riight Incy there is too much paper stuff to get sorted through including Ikea catalogues from 2008 and a Woolworth one from before they disappeared but, I'm determined to do it!
I turned the meter reader away this morning .

Cag it will be fine!

Solo I had to turn the meter reader away last week and write it in the window.

Cag I have an "I don't know" box. So much time spent decluttering for me is staring at something going "I don't know if I want this" so it goes in the IDK box so the stuff I know I am keeping or chucking is put away/ donated asap. I then come back to IDK box later and start the process again. How long until baby now?

I'm not doing anything beyond keeping on top of dishes and clothes today as it is a rare time me and DH off together. We work around eachother for childcare so making the most by having a family roast!

I am starting bathroom this week. It's the only room I can renovate that is not dependent on the attic.

Attic will be for DSS. DD will then have his old room which then frees up mine and DH room as ours properly again so can't do those until attic done.

Depending on what space I can create upstairs for everyone impacts how we design downstairs ie how to layout/ renovate rooms (if needed) eg do we still need home office, toy storage etc downstairs. Keep open plan or split into 2 rooms?

So bathroom is only thing I can do whilst I wait for DH to do the storage eaves and the bedroom conversion.

Plan this week is to deep clean bathroom and start stripping the walls, taking down shelves. Plan how and where to store things as DH has his hear set on stand alone shower where towel cupboard is. It's a decent sized bathroom so it should be doable just working the space out.

Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend.

heart set even.

Sounds like you have a big bathroom Attic . Mine is tiny but much better than it was when I moved in. I turned it round and have now actually got storage units in it which I hadn't got before.

It's the only family sized thing in our house Solo as we have a 2 up 2 down so want to make full use of it. It's been designed badly though so there isn't a lot of flexibility in how to use it so I can't re organise where to put a new bath suite in but it work perfectly fine and will hopefully look nice when I've finished .

Your bathroom sound great now. It's amazing how much a room can be changed and how much better use/ space you get just by re configuring some things.

I'd love to have a walk in shower instead of the bath but it would mean changing the toilet back to where it was before and it'd cost too much money...I'd rather have a new kitchen.

I know it's all so expensive. Walk in shower is last on the list as it's a luxury and still so much to do. It just means no bathroom cupboard which we don't use too much at the moment anyway.

My hay fever is trying to kill me today!

Just off to Iceland to stock up on crap for the week, summer is a killer for grazing children.

Then I'm putting a bookcase up and filling it with paperwork and the printer. That's the plan anyway.

Incy hope you feel better soon!

I have organised DDs toys as there are millions. For a long time she's had one box downstairs and two boxes that she never gets to play with upstairs as it's such a lot of things. No more. All toys have been split into three boxes and I'll change them each day so she has a go with all of them. Took ages to organise so she has a good mixture of puzzles, musical, TV character etc in each. At least any she never uses I can take straight to charity.

Blitzing through washing. I empty the basket every day and yet it fills so quickly! Loads to do!

Done dishes. So much from Sunday Roast I've been playing catch up and finally caught up.

Done accounts. Doing every few days now. So much easier.

Need to have some lunch now.

Hope you are better Incy and I won't give you flowers today as it doesn't feel appropriate.

Attic yes to the washing! Unbe;ievable isn't it!

I'm back to work tomorrow and dreading it! And the place is still a mess!

Feel better soon incy

I have done absolutely fuck all except order baby's pram which is taking up lots of room

I'm sorting my middle child's clothes out today. He has many and very few seem to fit. Hoping to get it down to a handful of bits.

Luck to you all.

You too Incy :)

He's down to the contents of one chest of drawers! I'm liking the streamlines wardrobe.

Time for a cup of coffee though, as my head is pounding.

Not much done this week, in fact I've bought loads but got rid of nothing

Going away this week. DH will finish the storage eaves by end of Aug so I can start putting things away and blitz through mess downstairs in September.

Wow! Brilliant!

I need to get Dd trying on clothes again and add to the bags already bulging (no! I didn't get them gone as intended on my time off!) and get rid!

Hi - I am coming back as a bit of an update on my post in Thread 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 post was from Jan 2017 - it was supposed to come out in bold, but never mind! My update is as follows:

I have, almost, done it. We were ready for the builders to come in at the end of January - I shredded, filed and recycled boxes and boxes of paper, I ebayed, I gave away...The rooms were empty in time, although a few boxes remained unsorted. We then put everything back again after the building work.

What did I learn?

I learned that treasured items can look a lot less appealing many years later - it may be easier to part with things once time has passed.

That reducing is always the first step. Look at five items and reduce by one. Choose your least favourite and let it go.

That many people find it hard to know what to do with things. Many of those childhood Christmas cards in the box were not even mine - they had been put in there by family members who didn't know what to do with them either!

Categories are important. I had loose sheet music relating to my child's instrument, music relating to a time when I played the piano and some books about playing the recorder. Each of these was in a different storage place and part of the clutter that I didn't know what to do with - now there is one box file called 'music'.

Storage should reflect the life that you live now and will live in the future - I had files relating to courses I did years ago, but no single file for my pension arrangements, which are presumably going to be rather important in the future!

My current situation is that, while I have areas of possessions which could still bear some thinning down (boxes for memorabilia etc), I know what is in them all and am not afraid to open them up. My unsorted, random, boxes of shame have all been dealt with apart from one. Yes, I am down to the final box. I will do it soon, but there is no rush - I know that I will.

I feel pretty damn pleased about that and hope that this might inspire others to see that it is possible.

Wow! MaybeDoctor what a fantastic post and example to us all on here! Thank you so much . Your learnt lesson is a lesson to us all and I want so much to be able to do it, get it done and start living! I don't want my Dd to think it's the way to live. I want to invite people into our home...

Sadly I do not yet have a success story but, yours is certainly inspirational and it helps to see others being successful and get away from being a hoarder.

Thank you MaybeDoctor :) Thank you!

I'm so glad you've made epic progress Maybe.

I think the time aspect is important too. I have boxes under the stairs that I've not seen in seven years. I'm making sure there's no paperwork in them then they're going in a skip regardless of what else may lie within. I've not needed it in seven years, so it can't be important.

See, I think that's really brave Incy and something I could never bring myself to do!

Quite busy today. 3 loads of washing and 2 dishwasher loads and hand washing up. Got Dd to sort some of the stairs - which she did do but, she was a nightmare. Got a bag of old (and new) shoes for the shoe bank to go...I'm out tomorrow but, in all day Monday and will do more.

Nothing happening here still. Time's running out! Just can't get the motivation. Got a new pupil coming next week as well so at least need to sort the living room.