Please will you kindly support and advise me, as I try to help a friend sort out his home?

[EatingTheElephantInChunks]

Yesterday I started to try to help a friend sort out his home. If I tell you that it took me nearly 3 hours to clear a space on the bathroom floor about 3ft x 4ft, you will probably understand how things are. Today I did a little better. In about 2 hours I cleared another space the same size, which meant I could open a cupboard. Two shelves were almost empty, so I was able to clean those and use them for storage. I will carry on next time with the other 2 shelves and continue clearing the bathroom floor.

It was very satisfying to get rid of a whole binbag of rubbish yesterday and a half bag today, plus a bag and a half of recycling, and a small bag of confidential waste to shred. There is a folding storage crate of things to keep so far, but I'll go through that again to see if I've missed anything that should be thrown out or recycled.

My friend has got into this situation after many years of serious illness and close bereavements, has no family left and few friends, certainly not really close ones. He has been at the stage for several years where he doesn't have visitors. He needs many repairs and much decorating doing, and is getting to the stage where carers visiting would be helpful. I am hoping to get him to the stage where that will be possible. He is such a nice guy, and it's a shame that life has gradually got smaller and smaller for him over the years. It must be terribly lonely.

I feel honoured that he has trusted me with the truth of how things are. I can't talk to anyone IRL as I know it's essential to protect his privacy, and I have changed my username in case anyone makes the connections. I could do with some mumsnet wisdom and support! I have never felt such a sense of achievement over a bit of floorspace 3ft x 4ft, but equally the enormity of the task hit me.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
The author - writing under the pseudonym EatingTheElephantInChunks - claims and owns the copyright of all her posts dated on and after 14th August 2018 as her intellectual property and as a moral right and which are all her own individual and original work. Reproduction in whole or part or any other use is strictly prohibited without her prior written permission.

[Edited by MNHQ at posters request]

Thank you so much for your posts, Hell and Mum.

Welcome to the thread and thank you for your very kind - and probably undeserved - words, Mum. Having been a bit of a bookworm since childhood, the thought of having a book of my own in print, especially one that people enjoyed and got something from, is just mindboggling. The confidentiality thing would be my main concern - I'd have to call it something like Confessions of a Secret Chunker, and write under the pseudonym Nelly, wouldn't I?! They say that everyone has at least one book in them, but it seems an impossible dream to find the time, especially when I sometimes even struggle to keep the homefires burning with the required loo roll, clean socks, pants and shirts - and most importantly teabags, chocolate, cake and gin. But I really appreciate the thought!

Sorry to hear you're under the weather Nelly. But it's lovely to see your updates. You do have a lovely writing style! Hope the lurgy departs soon.

Thanks so much, Pash - I hope all's very well with you.

What I can do is try to say a little bit about Christmas, better late than never. I think I mention in a pp that my update at the time disappeared when I tried to post it, so I think I'll divide this post up, rather than lose it again.

I wanted my friend to have options this year, but with absolutely no pressure to do anything other than what he wanted to do. He knew that if we went away or stayed at home he would be welcome to join us, but he decided that he wanted to have a very quiet and low key Christmas at home, which I completely understood. He didn't actually want to ignore Christmas, and so we set about thinking what we could do to mark it in the circumstances. We didn't go away in the end, and I spent some time up until Christmas Eve trying to achieve a bit of Christmas for him...

Christmas update continued 🌲

It's fair to say that when I finished it didn't look a lot like Christmas, but it looked a little bit like it at least. I found a small real tree, which sat on the corner of the desk in the lounge, decorated with white fairy lights and a few precious and meaningful baubles and chocolates. Alongside some special photos and Advent Calendars for him and his cat, (silly, I know), I put my friend's Christmas cards on the mantelpiece and on a string above, and put some more white fairy lights in the grate. My friend could sit at his desk or on the sofa with a throw and cushions, facing the tree, lights and cards, and read, watch TV or DVDs, listen to music, and hopefully relax in a little bit of comfort...

Christmas update continued 🌲 🌲

Christmas lunch had to be limited to what could easily be heated up or cooked in the small accessible oven, and eaten at the desk or on a lap tray. I found turkey, gravy, Yorkshire Puddings, carrots, sprouts, roast potatoes and pigs in blankets all pre-prepared, thank goodness. Together with apple and cranberry sauces, mince pies, a Christmas cake, tangerines, grapes, cheese, pickles and crackers, fresh orange juice, breakfast pastries, tea, coffee, a bottle of fizz, and some nice but disposable plates, cutlery, cup and napkins, it hopefully made for passable fayre to get my friend through a few days...

Christmas update continued 🌲 🌲 🌲

Again silly I know, I made Christmas stockings up - just some chocolate, socks, a book light and a good hefty book for my friend, and a toy, blanket and treats for his cat.

They say it's better to light a candle in the darkness than to sit in the dark. I believe that, and had to keep reminding myself of it at Christmas when thinking about my friend. As I've posted before, while I can see the progress made, it is far, far less than I'd hoped it would be by now, when I first started back in August. I hoped to have a bedroom done, the kitchen ready for cooking and eating at the table, the lounge done. Instead I had to tell my friend to keep his blinkers on and to look in a forward direction only from the sofa and his desk!

But a candle has been lit, and I hope it was enough for my friend to feel that Christmas was a little bit better and even a little bit enjoyable, that someone does care, and that there is some hope for the future.

Here's to lighting more candles.

🐘

OP - this is the most uplifting thread I've ever read on Mumsner

Thank you for the lovely update Nelly, sending get-well vibes to you all! 🍇

Thank you for updating. Hopefully you are all fully recovered now. And I'm sure your friend had a nicer Christmas than he would have had, thanks to you. [santa]

I love coming back to this thread every time. Well done Nelly, keep going!

Lovely updates. The Christmas arrangements sound perfect.

Wishing all the Nellyfamily better.

Hello Nelly, hope you're not literally snowed under! Have you been watching Marie Kondo? She makes it look ridiculously easy although it's quite soothing to watch in a weird way. But it might help boost your resilience over the whole thing given how happy everyone is when they've finally cleared out everything! Your Christmas ideas sounded lovely and I'm sure they made a difference to your friend. Maybe buy a bunch of daffs for your next visit, I've spotted them being sold already! They always make me smile. (imagine they're daffodils )

Hi Elf, I stumbled across your thread in its infancy and Just found it again now. What a delight it has been to read of your progress! Well done to.you. your Christmas posts were really heart warming and your style of writing is very warm and comforting. Keep chunking!

for you. You're doing such a lovely thing. Hope you're all recovering from the flu now

Any more updates? I do look forward to reading them as it cheers me on in my own decluttering efforts

Hi, I've also loved reading your posts and hope you're well and making progress. You sound like a really lovely person and your friend is very lucky to have you.

Hello Nelly, I have been meaning to check in on you and your thread for a while now. I am still behind you and hoping things are going well. Also hope that your lurgy from the new year is now a distant memory! Your Christmas update made me well up. It sounds like a perfect Christmas for your friend to me and I bet it was the best they'd had in a long time. Lots of love to you x

Ps I agree with a pp re the book. I reckon you could write beautifully on any topic, not necessarily chunking!

The distant trumpeting from across the jungle is gradually getting louder, as I make my belated, apologetic, return to the herd for a catch up...🐘

An elephant-sized thank you to everyone for all the very kind posts since my last update - just reading or re-reading now.... 🐘

I'm not sure if it's MN, my service provider or my phone, or a combination of all three, being excruciatingly slow, unresponsive and then losing what I've inputted again before I can post. It's infuriating and makes me want to flap my ears and charge about, trumpeting wildly in frustration. As it's too early possibly on a week day to open the gin bottle, better put the kettle on!

How annoying, nothing worse than work being lost through no fault of your own. Maybe try typing it out in an email (if it auto saves) or word document, and then just copy and paste it over into mumsnet when you are ready.

So great that you are still progressing how are they coping mentally with all the changes? Are they finding the tidy areas tidy?

I keep trying to find another chunk of time to update, but I just wanted to pop on to mark 500 posts, which seems significant. I'm not saying that there's 500 skips to go - thank goodness! - but I bet there's easily 500 bags. That thought is enough to drive an elephant to

Ahh glad you're still there! How are you getting on?