#4 - Hoarding, Sorting, Organising, Friendship, Understanding. All On One Thread.

[Solo]

Are you a hoarder? Are you in a mess, untidy, disorganised? A bit lazy with housework? Are you are ill and not coping with the housework? Are you totally overwhelmed? Are you are emotionally attached to items for whatever reason and can't let them go? Are you unable to just ask someone in for a cuppa at a moments notice or do dread the meter reader asking for access?
Do you find yourself nodding whilst reading any of this? If you have a combination of any or all of these things or something completely different, please come and join us. There is no judging. We have something in common here 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 4.

Yes I have a feeling Elvanse is one the BFN said no to. I was a little worried about my one but the slow release seems fine - the wearing off in the evenings was tough at first though. I think that is less of an issue with elvanse and similar as they work differently but I wouldn’t want to stop BF quite yet.

I am full of cold 😖 hoping it doesn’t develop. I’m keeping myself entertained by planning some home ed projects.

Hello to you all. Xx

I managed to clear up a small area to the left of my sink. It's where the bottles of olive oil etc accumulate. It's all lovely and clear now!

The only problem is that I haven't actually managed to take any of the things I don't really need out the door to the food bank / charity shop / rubbish. It's all been relocated to the dining table! I am posting about it here for some accountability so that it doesn't just stay there...

MOD I get bags of stuff ready to go to charity, rag bank, shoe bank, cash 4 clothes and they sit there looking at me for months and months. I'm sure if I looked back, I've still got bags of clothes for C4C that I got ready several years ago .

Keep up the good work, piece by piece. I'll be back.

Oops just realised my last post about ADHD meds I forgot to switch back to my old name. Oh well. Here I am :o

Having a bit of a panic as I’ve had some interest in piano lessons which is causing a huge amount of anxiety for many reasons. The house being a big one.

I am itching to tidy and organise but also very aware I’m in relapse at the moment - although I’m not completely incapacitated (yay!) I’m getting very dizzy and having bizarre symptoms.

DH’s health/emotional state slipping further and further into the abyss too. I’m not really sure how to tackle any of this! Gah.

I think I need to join you. I have anxiety and depression (have recently started new medication) and have addiction issues, also being dealt with. My family are really messy and untidy. Over recent years I have sunk to their level. My house is a messy, shabby hole. I need to deal with it and I dont have a clue where to start. I dont drive otherwise my first job would be a visit to the tip as my DH is a horder.

Solo - that is very similar to what I do! I have a real problem actually getting the things out of the house. I have no car and that feels like the tricky bit.

Hello Phoebesgift and welcome! I'm also just starting. I have discovered Flylady's Baby Steps and am finding it extremely helpful. It encourages me to take small but achievable steps, and I feel like some deep habits are changing. (Link here: www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/)

My family have real problems with keeping stuff. Although their houses aren't messy like mine, both of my parents' houses are packed to the gills with things that might come in handy one day, 'treasures', and random items.

@MotherOfDragonite your family sound like mine!! My DM recently moved house and the clutter she's accumulated had to be seen to be believed... she'd had years to take action on it as well, knew she wanted/ needed to move and still did nothing to sort out all her stuff. It got to the point where she just wanted to move to somewhere new, clean, tidy, manageable and make a fresh start, but I know that without new habits she'll be back to living in a hoarder's paradise in no time. And don't even get me started on DF

I'm still feeling quite overwhelmed by my to do list; don't get me wrong, I can make an AMAZING list, but when it comes to ticking things off it I'm not quite so amazing! Just seems like I start one thing, then something comes up which has to be dealt with ASAP and everything else has to fall by the wayside for a bit - for example, our printer just will not work at the moment, I must have spent two hours contacting HP about it last week with no joy. Grrrr.

One thing that has helped is taking my resolutions one at a time instead of trying and failing to do everything beginning January 1st, as I have done previous years! I made myself a list of resolutions and add one every Monday, gives me a week to make the previous one into a habit. Fingers crossed, it seems to be going ok so far, although my current one (budgeting/ money control) is being spread over two weeks as it's such a large issue for me. I'm reading an interesting book at the moment which essentially says that you have to make habits completely ingrained to the point where it's stranger/ more hassle for you not to do something than do it, that's the point I'm aiming for each week.

@Solo is there anyone that could give you a hand with your bags? I never bother with C4C as I got so little for the pile I took last time that TBH it wasn't worth the petrol money! All my clothes, shoes, rags etc go to a local charity shop, and they will collect, much easier for me

Hope you are feeling better @LaneBoy and @Phoebesgift

Checking in I'm cry9ng a bit today so place mark for when I'm not

Sending to you too @slipperywhensparticus and hope your day gets better!

Hi everyone, welcome to new people :)

I feel like I'm a bit lost with name changers! Lol, it doesn't take much to confuse me!

Nothing done here. I'm losing the will to live. I really do need to get going.

Hi hi.
No progress here. Still in flare up but it’s stable so I’m in that “not pushing myself” phase.
Feeling quite low about all of it, I know I’m not alone there though. It’s really demotivating isn’t it. ❤️

Ruby, I think we do learn certain habits from how we grow up (and probably our parents learnt them from their parents, etc!) and these can be hard to tackle.

I find I have to be really careful with my mum as she will say "oh, are you sure you don't want to keep that [it's nice / it might be useful one day]" etc...

I was only thinking earlier @MotherOfDragonite that one of my NYR was to keep the house 'visitor ready' at all times if I could (think I might have posted it here too?) - then I thought, I don't really invite people round, why am I that bothered?! Don't get me wrong, we do have people over, but mainly because DP invites them or because they pop in unexpectedly. And I thought a bit harder about it and realised that I don't invite people round because when I was young our home was always an absolute tip, embarrassingly so. I don't remember DM & DF ever doing any cleaning, the floor was always grubby, they never finished even basic DIY jobs and the heating was constantly packing up making the house freezing. My house is nowhere near that bad but I guess I have this lingering belief that I could/ should only have people round if my house is spotlessly clean and tidy (never going to happen with two small DC!).

Anyhow, I'm having a bit of a cleaning spurt at the moment - this week's NYR that I've added to the previous ones - then hopefully it will be easier to keep on top of. And maybe when I'm happy with that it will make me a bit more sociable!

Hello, I'd like to jump aboard if that's ok. I've so much to do in my house that sometimes I wake up in the night worrying about it and can't back to sleep. Then, when I wake up in the morning, I'm late starting and get through so much less than I could do otherwise. It's really frustrating.

I've read some of your posts about DHs. My own has really contributed to making this house a mess. He doesn't organise things. He either bungs things down or throws them away without checking if we need them first.

I've started cleaning and tidying more recently. But, I get so cross when I see all the things he's messed up and that I'm clearing up after him.

Welcome @WitchWand

Does your DH notice he's causing mess? If you asked him to lend a hand with the cleaning would he?! Mine will moan and moan about x not being the way he wants it - but will he help? Nope, so it has to stay that way till I have time to do it which is never with small DC around

Hello @RubySlippers77,
Thanks for your reply. I don't think my DH is very aware of what he's doing. He often flits from one job to another without finishing them off and then leaves a trail of things behind him. If I ask him to get involved in the cleaning, he's usually got another job lined up for himself and so can spend the time when he's "lending a hand" being pretty uncooperative. It's really annoying. And so I often prefer to do the tidying and cleaning without him. But it's slow. And also, he seems to keep creating mess in the rest of the places he is. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that he's sounding like a child. I'm also realizing that if I start standing up to him more about it, there's likely to be fireworks .
How have you handled this sort of thing Ruby ? Any tips would be welcome.

@WitchWand - frankly I haven't handled it very well as DP is still a selfish arse - for example I cleaned the bathroom yesterday and it was sparkly clean (yippee!). Today he decided that he had to cut his hair, got the clippers out, cut it over the sink. Hairs everywhere he did get rid of most of them but there's plenty left, looks like a werewolf's been hanging around. He claims that he can't see them so they don't need cleaning up - he has terrible eyesight though and wouldn't put his specs on!!

One thing I do do is gather up any and all of his paperwork and dump it all on his chest of drawers. Is there anywhere just of your DH's that you could dump all of his clutter?!

How is everyone doing? I had an unexpected visitor yesterday, which is one of my phobias, rarely invite people round let alone expect them to pop over. I was a bit as the kitchen still isn't clean (well it's clean, but not as clean as I would like it!) but hey, the sky didn't fall in or anything, so I guess it was ok...

Hello! @RubySlippers77 funnily enough I did too -- somebody came round to babysit the DC as I needed to go out and see somebody in the evening. It had the opposite effect on me and I really hated letting her in the house while it was so messy (even though some areas, like the kitchen, are improved).

The crux of it is that I need to really significantly cut the amount of STUFF we have, not just put it away. And I'm still not sure how I can find time for that as it feels like an unmanageably huge task. But I need to work towards it.

Welcome witch! :)

Ruby I so relate to the childhood home - we had pests, mouldy food (I really paranoid about food now) and when my window broke during a storm dad put a sheet of plastic over it and it stayed that way (cold) for the remaining years I lived there. Mum was telling me recently that they passed the house and what lovely things the owners are doing with it - no! I don’t want to know.

I happily have various friends round now but only those I know really well. Lots of us have similar struggles - SN, health issues. But I don’t feel visitor ready for anyone else these days.

I don’t even want my family support worker round at the moment as it’s much worse than the last time she visited, even though it would probably be sensible for her to see how much more we are struggling.

Relapse turns out not to have stabilised after all. Absolutely nothing done, barely keeping up with the basics!

Oh blimey @LaneBoy, you've reminded me of the years my parents took to get round to any sort of DIY/ home improvement. Looking back I think some of it was due to money issues - we struggled for several years in a freezing cold house as they couldn't afford to replace the central heating system - and some of it was due to them just 'not getting round' to simple jobs like screwing a cupboard door on. Like your dad with the plastic over the window, they leaned the new cupboard door over the gap and simply left it... I think it was there for 20+ years until they left the house!

I hope you can chat to your family support worker soon and see if there's any help available for you at the moment, even if you don't feel up to having her over. Sending

@MotherOfDragonite could you book a charity shop collection so you have a date you can work towards? Is there anyone that would have the DC on (for example) a Saturday, giving you time to have a good clearout? I tend to need a deadline otherwise I just think "oh I'll get round to it", but of course I never do!

@RubySlippers77 .... they do collections??!!!!

It's absolutely the lugging it to the charity shop that stops me. I put stuff aside in a pile all the time and then never manage to take it! The nearest charity shops are out of my way and I don't have a car.

Gah, lost a post last night, must remember to charge devices before they reach 1% 🙄

Mother the difficulty in decluttering is one of the few things that make me sad about not having a car! Health issues prevent both of us driving. TBF I think one of my best friends would probably be more than happy to do a chazzer run with me at some point, and DSS grabbed some stuff for the tip recently when he was taking things for his mum.

DH sometimes takes the odd thing to the shop next to where DD does ballroom but we are at the stage where we have loads. We often gratefully accept hand me downs (not in a position to say no really as things are so tight now) but then anything we don’t keep lingers! For example a folding buggy really is too difficult for us to steer, and some clothes that DS won’t wear due to sensory issues, and a huge amount of age 2-3 clothes - basically kept half (friend had boys and girls so I mostly just kept the girls stuff) and even then it’s probably more than she will ever use! Although that is partly because she prefers being naked at home :o

Anyway all that stuff is lingering as I haven’t had the energy to deal with it.

Still haven’t moved the Kallax upstairs yet either which will help a lot with the living room, but the bedroom is too much of a state currently. It really is like a Rubik’s cube as sorting one thing seems to mess up something else!

We are all unwell here anyway so nothing is happening.

@MotherOfDragonite yes, near us the BHF and a smaller local charity do collections. The YMCA used to as well but they closed their shop nearby unfortunately. Sometimes they don't advertise but if you give them a call they will help if they can (even if it's a staff member dropping by to fill up their car boot!).

@LaneBoy do you have anything to sell/ Freecycle if it's in decent condition? For example someone might be grateful for the buggy and you could specify that they had to collect, two birds with one stone

DTS2 helped me tidy up the garden and do some planting yesterday. I think most of the compost ended up on him and I doubt that any of his bulbs will flower (he puts them in upside down, skimps on the soil and then drowns them in water) but he was happy!

@LaneBoy I feel we are facing many of the same challenges! I also have lots of 'kid stuff' that is either too small or no longer needed, but, as you say, lingers...

I also know exactly what you mean about the Rubik's cube. I feel like I need an extra totally empty room just to be able to begin to declutter properly! Otherwise, when I empty out a cabinet etc to sort everything out, the living room gets even worse before it gets better (which is tough with children going in and out, so I keep putting it off).