The Hoarders Anonymous #5

[CherryMargo]

Thread #1 | Thread #2 | Thread #3 | Thread #4

Is your house/flat in a complete mess? Do you often feel overwhelmed and helpless when it comes to sorting it out? Do you procrastinate a lot? Do you struggle to declutter due to emotional attachment or decision-making fatigue? Are you embarrassed to invite people in?

Then you and us have a lot in common!

Join in for advice, encouragement and support. Here we share our struggles no matter how big, and celebrate our progress no matter how small. Welcome to thread number five! 🤗

P. S. Here are the links to various methods mentioned in previous threads:

The FlyLady Cleaning Method by Marla Cilley
The Organised Mum Method by Gemma Bray
The KonMari Method by Marie Kondo
The Getting Things Done Method by David Allen

I am not very good at getting rid of stuff but I am going to work on not buying more.

Hand hold, Susan. I've got a huge box of dd1's early art to sort and cull at some point. It is hard not to hang onto everything, but there's just too much isn't there?

You are DOING THE RIGHT THING Susan to throw away some of the pictures.

Thanks.

I am knackered.
I never finished the washing up but I did put away what I had done. (About half of it)

Washing never got further than the basket but will have to move once again the next lot is done.

However:
all Christmas baubles away.

Two magazines in charity bag
Kids Tooth brush pack in food bank bag

A waste paper basket full of old tights and old clothes and old cards. Sorted the two strings of cards and put the handmade ones from DD into the cupboard. Even one from Ds which actually says I love you on it. He has only said it once I can remember. A new mothers day and Easter card on the string from DD. Old bloody cards from ex.

Old crayon pictures thrown out into recycling. However this is now stuck in the hall. It might have to wait until tomorrow to go out or until after I have eaten and can do the next step.

Found two cards for ex

Hoovered part of the floor around my bed. Moved all the furniture back with the stuff that is stored underneath. I need to work on finding other places for these but for now they are tidy and dust free clutter.

Emotionally exhausted. Feel tearful but this is mainly dust allergy...runny eyes and runny nose.

They don't want to be sorting it when I die either.

I keep cards from my children. And a selection of their birthday cards from their friends to remind them about birthdays past.
Tbh I am more likely to keep correspondence nowadays than books...books can be bought again (some) but personal messages cannot.

Ive amassed a large suitcase of stuff which is going to travel elsewhere in uk and stay there. Not be thrown away but it isnt going to be in this house again. I love getting things OUT. Rubs hands at thought of being able to properly tidy emptyish room tmw.
To be fair it is strewn with shredded newspaper as dog got involved.

Just hopping on the thread again to say thank you to everyone for the ASD advice and well done on any cleaning/ tidying/ decluttering people have done (especially @CherryMargo' s kitchen, I'm in awe!!) - everything is on hold here really until the DC go back to school on Tuesday. I've kept on top of the washing, cooking, shopping etc but any deep cleaning will have to wait till they're out from under my feet...

DS1 is being such an utter nightmare at the moment - he hates bedtime, doesn't want to go to sleep (not helped by DP being useless at actually putting him to bed) and is up promptly at 6.30am every morning, so if he doesn't get enough sleep he is awful. Today was sulk, tizzy, whine, whinge, screech, meltdown and repeat, for several hours I can't wait for him to go back to school, that does at least seem to tire him out a bit. DS2 is very snotty - bit of a cough but no temperature, I've COVID tested him and it was negative, hopefully school will allow him in.

@GlumyGloomer I think you said upthread about how broken and traumatised you feel, and that is pretty much how I feel at the moment. Five years of DS1's grumpiness/ bad temper/ meltdowns and DP's unhelpfulness/ hostility (not to mention DS2 not exactly being an angel most of the time!) and I just feel like a shadow of my former pre-DC self. I know it doesn't happen to all women, but I'm just so utterly exhausted, five years of parenting twins has been relentless. (@Nettleskeins and @Babieseverywhere I take my hat off to you both for coping with more small DC than I have!!)

Next step here is to give the bathroom and utility room a good scrub out, tidy the loft again and make a start on the garden. Oh, and continue with the job hunting; DP has just started a new contract and is working longer hours plus Saturdays, and is soon to increase his hours again, which makes it even harder for me to find something. I feel like I need an aim or qualification to work towards, but nothing has sprung to mind for me so far...!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4217279-As-a-hoarder-AIBU-to-ask-how-much-stuff-youve-kept-thrown-away?watched=1&msgid=106432845#106432845

More useful thoughts from other parts of Mumsnet....

Despite finding children exhausting I did feel like having a "goal" other than the children when they were properly at school. I volunteered in schoolibrary - I think it was a social thing for me...seeing other adults, chatting to them. The creative side of me I fulfilled by organising house renovations. My sister used to write and research not for money really, just to get.away, and spent a lot of energy making complex holiday arrangements for £..
My mother did OU course. Some people move house (that takes massive amount of extra energy)

By the time they were older im afraid I was too worn out dealing with kids to want to do more than have time to gather my wits. I had to persuade dh to become self employed because I was on my knees dealing with kids as they approached 9..admittedly 3 of them.

That was to Clara! Oh, and we got a kitten then another when kids were 6, 8.

AmberItsACertainty Well done both for all the work and in recognizing the problem whatever size. Knowing an issue is there is the first step to fixing it.
I feel I should have been able to recognize what was going on with me earlier, but think because I’d grown up with hoarding presenting as chaos and squalor, I just didn’t connect my very different looking habits as being part of the same condition, just managed differently, sadly until it was already very far out of hand.

GlumyGloomer Well done! Accepting that we aren’t going to be in a position where these things fit, is a big part of being able to change.

BlackeyedSusan I tell myself all the time that everything I haven’t been able to let go of is going to be a problem legacy to my children.

Nettleskeins Sounds like the dogs enjoying the process too.

Clara sorry it’s rough going at the moment, hang on in there, it does get better.

We’ve been living with missing shelves in two main kitchen cupboards after the clips broke. Nothing here is square and the clips and holes were bodged with all different clips and nonstandard sizes, and either the cupboards are very slightly wider at the front than back, or the shelves aren’t quite rectangular. Ds was procrastinating so in a bid to change the mood; we went out to buy shelf clips.
Went past the bins on the way back and they’d been emptied, so went for getting more of the tree cut up and out so Ds could ‘see’ where I’m after putting the shed. He cut up some of the bigger branches which was a win.
Have filled the kitchen cupboard holes and drilled them out to the size of the new clip pegs and refitted the shelves. Annoyingly I caught the tip of middle finger in them doing it, so permanently rude gesture at the moment!
So yesterday’s progress was two big sacks of tree gone, along with a large broken pot, a dead plastic bucket, and a carrier bag of assorted rubbish, and we have shelves back in the main kitchen cupboards. Slightly concerned that bins were almost full again in just one day.

Clara the SEN board is often a very good place to pick others' brains on some of these matters...self care and relationships being so bound up in coping with twins and children with extra needs. I think working with twins is just harder although people think you have got them into free childcare sooner, somehow you have lost out on that adjustment stage and their needs arent resolved by school...they come out with the same demands, if not even a more concentrated version thereof, making after school even WORSE.. so you are squeezing chores and childcare into a smaller more unweildy zone.

Good work with the kitchen shelves. I think when a job needs diy skills I really just blank it out! My dad is fab at diy and I always have jobs for him when he visits!!

With little kids, just getting through the day can be exhausting. Hugs all around. I took the kids to the park today to try and wear them out.

I washed a duvet today. I'm hoping it'll dry. Not too much progress, but better than nothing!

Would he like a working holiday? I'd love to blank it out, and don't really have skills but there's no one else to do it and I feel like I can't make a much worse job of anything than the people the landlord eventually sends round when they deign to.
Almost every job they do I have to either put something right afterwards, finish off the job, or live with shoddy repairs, so at least when I get something a bit wrong on my own stuff it doesn't show up!

I spent two hours cleaning oven, oven shelves and the grill pan. It still isn't full clean. Sigh. But it IS much better.

I cleaned the final kitchen cupboard. And sorted out all the cleaning stuff, chucked loads.

Sorted out a space directly under the sink for the now clean grill pan. Plus the new baking trays when they arrive. So when the kids are baking they don't leave the grill tray on a surface or worse still leave it on the floor in a tiny kitchen. Now it has a place to belong.

I have sorted out my mini cleaning set in a caddy, placed in a canvas bag, so I can carry it around! So I can dust, clean mirrors, leather, fabric, general spot cleaning with my bag. Well, that is the plan. Have white vinegar, will clean!

Just lying down trying to get the energy to shower and change.

Can I join please?

Hi 52andblue I'm quite new here too.

Thanks Elleherd. My home was always tidy-ish and clean but I'd seen hoarder TV programs and saw inside my mum's filled-to-bursting wardrobe once. And the bags-of-bags in the kitchen, the junk drawers etc.

I had regular clear outs as a child because I didn't want to be like her! Didn't know what I was doing, pulled everything out piled it in the middle of my room then spent weeks ruthlessly going through it. Didn't stop me collecting more tat precious items though. So the clearing out became something I did every few years.

What's done for me this time is putting down roots, meaning I don't have to travel light because I'm going nowhere, followed by lockdown, which I basically spent my way through as a survival method.

For the first time ever, I have piles of unopened parcels lining the wall in my cupboard windowless room. Unopened because although I dearly want the contents I have nowhere to put them. Which is ridiculous. A bereavement also saw some things come into my home with nowhere for them to live. So it's been a time for reorganization by necessity.

I remember the death of my grandparents too and seeing their treasures discarded. It's made me conscious of the future and how I don't want my treasures going into a skip. I realised one collectible item is likely to be sold to a collector. A shelf full is likely to become landfill due to the hassle of selling and not wanting to live in a shit-tip with the items until they're sold.

Once I no longer look at/ handle/ otherwise interact with an item on a regular basis any more, I've decided it needs to be found a home. My aim going forward is to have An Enjoyable Thing(s) rather than a collection of any one type of thing.

Amber I absolutely agree with you re collections. It was an odd thing to get my head around but very liberating when I realised I could just keep my favourite example and get rid of the rest.
It was actually being uprooted multiple times that made me confront the fact that I simply have too much stuff. It's always at the back of my mind that I might have to move again, and I want to travel light if I do.

Hello, and welcome 52andblue . How are you doing? If you want to share your story with us, feel free, but that's not necessary if you'd rather not.

I did read the thread last night, but I'd spent another day dealing with mum's shopping and cooking a Sunday roast at hers, so I got nothing done for myself - again. Today, I haven't been home for long, so nothing today either, but I'm hoping to get something done tomorrow, after work.

I used to do all my own DIY and decorating, but the ME put paid to that, sadly, and I doubt I have the confidence anymore...that said, I did replace the flush handle on the toilet cistern a month or so ago. I used to love doing my DIY :(

My home used to be tidy, and my collections - pierrot clowns, and bells were fairly small. I got rid of the clowns as they seemed a bit childish, and back in one of these threads, I gave away lots of the bells, only keeping those that held a special meaning for me, like the ones that had been given as gifts. I don't really have anything that I collect (except some crystals, and dust bunnies ), but I could easily have my head turned...!
I love fabrics and yarns, and I would like to be in a position to use them, sit and sew, or knit. That's my aim.

I'll try to talk about my books later.

Keep up the great work, everyone :)

Today is International Day of Human Space Flight! 🌍 🚀 👨‍🚀 Hundreds of thousands of man-made objects are zipping around our planet, and most of this debris sits in the low Earth orbit but… outer space decluttering is way beyond my competence. Back to Earth!

Welcome @52andblue!

@Nettleskeins thank you for spreading the word! 🙏 Maybe we’ll see more new faces soon! And yes, ‘treasure trove’ is a good way to describe my hoard!

@Elleherd It doesn’t look like people’s idea of hoarding, but at its serious end, causes just as many problems. Spot on. TBH I always relate to everything that you say! I feel like looking into the mirror when I read your posts 💖

Nettleskeins and @BlackeyedSusan I am sitting on a pile of cards collected over the course of 20 years. I cannot bin them, and I’ve been meaning to organise them for years. Right before Office Outlet went into administration, and closed its stores in April 2019, I purchased a bunch of lever arch files, pockets and document wallets from them (there was a 50% off clearance sale). But… it’s been two years now, and I haven’t touched any of that yet 😞

@ClaraTheImpossibleGirl wishing you lots of good luck with job hunting 🤞 I know how hard and confidence-crushing it can be, so I hope your experience will be smooth and painless!

@AmberItsACertainty an absolute win for finding the strength to chuck those magazines! 🏆

@DownUdderer you’re doing a great job! Please keep the momentum going. You’re inspiring us all! ❤️

Very kind words for me! Thanks, it means a lot.

@Elleherd I think it's great that you sorted the kitchen shelves. I know what you mean about terrible handy man repairs from landlords. You end up wishing you'd never reported a problem.

Today I've got two bags bursting full for the charity shop! I'm chuffed to put them in a charity bin today!