The Hoarders Anonymous Thread #7. Keep On Keeping On!

[Solo]

We are a mixed group of likeminded householders that are leading somewhat challenging lives; be that living with too much 'stuff' that we find difficult to deal with, houses that are falling apart (mine included), health issues within the family unit, wider family, or ourselves (myself included) that means sorting out our households is challenging, to say the least. So...

You are all welcome to join us for support, adding your own ideas to help others out, storage ideas, and even tips on actually getting those items out of the house which sounds so simple when you say it, but this part can be so very difficult; we are often attached emotionally to our 'things', afraid of letting things go just in case we need them.
Encouragement and support abound here, and we do not criticise. EVER! We even try not to criticise ourselves as it's not helpful to anyone, but this can be very difficult not to do.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by clutter, mess, disorganisation and generally don't know where to start. If you can't be bothered, but really do want to be bothered. If you think you are a bit lazy, or if you just need to see your highs and lows and everything in between on the screen here, join us, and we will help you. We'll virtually high-five your achievements - small or large, and virtually hug you when the need arises, and if you want a hug, just ask because we are here for you, here for one another because we get it. The art of washing up is sometimes our great achievement of the day, but it's still an achievement.

Welcome to thread #7 of Hoarders Anonymous - Keep On Keeping On!

Thread #6 HERE

@blackheartsgirl Well done. I'm delighted you managed all that. Self care is so important. I can relate to terrible moments we feel uncapable of doing the simpler things. Many years ago I went through depression for a few months. The only way forward is taking one step at the time. Leave the bed. Have a shower. Dress with clean clothes. Reward yourself every time you manage to take a new step. Then doing some work in the house. It's only ourselves that can make those steps.
Delighted to hear you achieved all that. Do it every day, and each day a little more.
And dont mind the inspector calling in. I'm sure he has seen worse as he/ she said.
Well done again :-)

Not much de-cluttering to update because of the state of me.
Healing from a medical procedure has meant I’ve been unable to do much physically beyond very basic maintenance. So I’ve been focusing on sorting out the financial and legal situations, and getting a lot of paperwork sorted, along with doing needed planning part for current work and chasing after future work. Am also catching up a bit on studying. Lots achieved there but everything physical has had to take a back seat and I have another week ahead of being very careful not to overdo anything, and then hopefully the all clear. This weekend I'm hoping to get friend staying with me to help get launderette done, and the worst bits of growth in both aunts garden and mine trimmed back.

Moonshaped IME emotional rollercoaster emotions are normal, especially when you’ve let someone in. I’ve found learning to pace myself between the highs and lows is a skill in itself. (Still trying to develop it more.) Lots of our issues around shame, have been shaped by society. How men in exactly the same situations are viewed can be very telling.
It sounds like you’re developing a good relationship with your builder, which is great.
Do you mean this Guardian article? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/04/you-cant-live-your-life-what-is-behind-extreme-hoarding
The clutter scale images can be really useful, but they don’t entirely work for all types of hoarding. Looking at Aunts and a couple of other people’s situations using them, is really helpful to see how badly a professional would view things. But it doesn’t quiet work for me because of how it’s done.
I instinctively make a hoard seem lesser.

Appearance wise my home can pass at a glance for 2 to 3, but that’s just an indication of how expert I’ve become at hiding and minimizing what’s actually a 7 + in terms of the quantity of contents vs the size of home! (never mind the excess storage!) rather than how it looks.
I used to think it meant I’d escaped repeating my mother’s ways, but I recognize now I’m just doing the same a different way. I’ve given over so much of my life to constantly moving, cleaning and maintaining it all. It stops it showing what it really is; a serious imbalance of stuff vs space. And I am now serving it, instead of it serving me.

Miaowse you know me so well!
I’m trying to do the right thing by a friend whose found herself in a lot of financial and legal trouble at the same time as me. Having her staying and getting it tackled, it has been more fruitful and less time consuming than dealing with phone calls, and spiraling whatsapp's etc. She’s leaving next week, as I’m going to be busy, but hopefully the break and headway made will make everyone’s lives better.
Lovely to hear the plants are able to spread their roots and grow. It’s not the prettiest, but if you take a two litre bottle and make a couple of small holes in the bottom, and bury the base of it in the soil between the plants, and fill it with water, it slowly waters them for you when you forget.

Talk to the hand Is it worth trying ‘what can I do in ten minutes a day’ as a way of habit forming?

Bluesummerbaby Great going! Well done with getting rid of what wasn’t being used. The toasted bags made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Childhood memories of the old Ascot water heater setting the kitchen on fire. Knowing my Mother would be furious if the fire brigade came in, but the alternative was worse.
Glad you were able to sort it easily. I have a fire blanket and an extinguisher in the kitchen. Slight overkill but it makes me feel better.
Sympathies with trying to get the balance of the right amount of food all the time.

Blackheartsgirl Good that your inspector was nice. So sorry to hear you’ve had another bereavement on top of everything else. Life can be very difficult and it’s no wonder you’ve hit a low point.
Glad you went for a shower and a tidy up. Try and get your bed clear and don’t sleep with ‘stuff.’ I totally understand, but it’s really bad for us. IMO It helps subconsciously train us to see ourselves as having lesser needs and needing lesser space. Even if your bedroom is a total tip, either find the PJ’s or (just once) buy another pair. Designate them a place, it can be a temporary hook even, but you need to take care of yourself or you won’t be able to take care of others in the end. My friend staying with me is partly to try and address self-neglect. She stopped being bothered until it became her normal. She’s now finding it very hard to doing anything. Moving stones gather no moss.

girlswillbegirls Just take it at whatever pace your friend wants. The reality is likely to be fragile.

I am just watching this to give me some inspiration to do another round g

I have done another few runs to the charity shop but I just feel that I want to get rid of anything that is not used regularly.

It's hard because I think we do beat ourselves up on our inability to manage our homes somehow.

@Elleherd , I'll try anything!

My plans have been scuppered with the usual childcare let down, which means I've been for a swim then needed a quick sleep.

I'm going to try focus on ensuring better sleeping pattern then hope I can have more energy and motivation for it soon.

My current method is to constantly find things to tidy, however small, not much progress, but an improvement.

Work has been so busy recently I am putting in a lot of extra hours (sadly no extra pay) and not achieving much in the way of sorting my house. I hope others are doing better than me.

TalkToTheHand123 I predict constantly tidying small things/area will lead to incredible results if you stick with it

Literaturemakeslifebetter (great name, so true!) thanks for the clutterbug video. I (re?) watched. Felt inspired but was too busy to take action there and then and now I’m back to feeling overwhelmed and no idea where to start - might re-watch or choose another to try and re-capture that determined feeling.

Elleherd sending healing wishes your way. And hope you can get some of these horribly stressful things of your plate. You sound like you’ve achieved loads though, well done!

blackheartsgirl if you want to take Elleherd’s advice about the pyjamas, I got some lovely inexpensive cotton pyjamas from both Sainsbury’s & Asda recently (though the ancient holey pairs they were meant to replace have thus far been retained as period PJs…)

Can’t scroll back without losing my post, so to all. KOKO.

I liked the video Literature thanks for sharing

Sorry you're so busy at work Miaowse especially for no extra pay. I got pyjamas from there too. Wonder if we have the same ones?

TalkToTheHand I think small is sometimes the way to go, especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed I find it really helps to just do something however small. I'm sure you'll get there in the end

Elleherd it was what started me decluttering. I was keeping them to use as bin bags to prevent waste and save money. There's nothing more expensive and wasteful than burning the house down and everything in it though, which could so easily have happened had I not been in the room at the time to nip it in the bud

Currently in the phase where everything is chaos, it gets worse before it gets better. Going through a room, pulled everything out into other rooms, will declutter what I'm able to, then put it all back more tidily. Desperately hoping it looks better at the end because the room was a total shit tip before I started and looks even worse now

BlueSummerBaby ooh maybe; have you noticed there seems to be a cross-supermarket trend for fruit patterns on pyjamas at the minute?

Your decluttering method of totally clearing the room is my dream. Good luck & report back!

Oh rather annoying update - those plants that I took months to plant out, well two thirds died one is looking very healthy indeed & the rest look sickly.

That's a shame about your plants Miaowse. I went to weed last week and some of my healthy looking plants disintegrated in my hands because they were dead. Shows how much I know! I've replanted with something else now.

So far the only thing to report is all the bruises on my legs from knocking into stuff that's spread everywhere, as I climb over it to get from A to B. I have decluttered enough that I have an empty box though

Sorry to hear about the plants @Miaowse , I too have done this, bought a heap of plants, intending to do a summer border, then just left them, and thrown them out when they die. I can't explain why. But good that you did eventually plant them and one is healthy!
@BlueSummerBaby your progress is inspiring, well done for pushing on. My place is a chaotic mess too, I've thrown away so much stuff but I can't be bothered to tidy up while waiting for the refurb to start.
Building work is due to start in less than a month! I need to start making decisions about what else needs to go and how to get the place ready for refurb...can hardly believe this is happening.

Hi all. I managed to have a little tidy up in the living room and managed to fill a couple of little bags. You wouldn't notice much difference but I'm quite pleased with myself. I just need to keep at it!

Good going TalkToTheHand123! Minimal progress to report here. I put a few bits and bobs in a bag for charity and that’s it.

So all my plans are now a week behind schedule. I got the ok to start moving around at the end of last week as expected. But friend ended up leaving Monday morning instead of Friday, so her bedding missed the weekend launderette trip. So as soon as she'd left I went round there to get her bedding done. Had just got back and started hanging it on the line when I got a message to say she was half way up the motorway, broken down and she'd just found out her AA membership had elapsed and could I lend her some money. I doubted she'd be able to give it back for a very long time and things are tight here.
To cut long story short after losing the day failing to find any way around things, it ended up with me towing her all the way back to here and spending the last few days sorting out affordable repairs and trying to not look stressed. It might actually have been cheaper and more sensible to give her the money!
She left yesterday but I left the bedding on the bed until she was safely home!

Am now trying to figure out if and how I could catch up all the work that hasn't happened this week, over this weekend and next week, without killing myself.

Will try and be more sociable later, when I hopefully have something other than gripes to update!

Why have I never seen this thread before!
You are my people.

Welcome @Karatema

Guest bed stripped and laundry bagged along with towels etc, ready for Sunday. This is harder than it sounds from a wheelchair with limited space. Large amounts of time and energy repeatedly spent trying to retrieve grabber!

Successfully moved one afternoon appointment to Monday where it fits in with other things better. Popped back in here with coffee for swift lunch break.

Welcome Karatema 🙂We were possibly a bit hidden behind a box or two...😊

Moonshaped can hardly believe this is happening. It isn't just happening, you are happening it! Well done you. You can do this.

Building works here stalled some weeks ago and amongst other issues I've been living with a major unfinished job and stuff in the middle of rooms for the non existent contractors access, as well as a drawn out half finished DIY job at aunts flat.
Maybe August will be the breakthrough for all of us with building issues. Crosses fingers.

Thank you @Elleherd sounds like you've been through the mill!

Karatema I have. Some of it’s outside my control, some the result of my poor choices. Quite a lot is what happens when you leave too much for too long, because life is what actually happens, while we’re making plans about it.
Here (thank you @Solo) is the one place where I can try and reason and separate things out in my cluttered brain.
Can I ask what’s going on for you? (Ok to say as much or as little as you want)

Literaturemakeslifebetter (Also love the name🙂) Thank you for the video. I haven’t actually managed to make time to watch it yet, but am awfully aware clutter here costs hugely, from financially to time, to missed opportunity ect. If I don’t overcome a lot of it pretty soon, it will actually bankrupt me.

TalkToTheHand123 Everything in every home was brought in there by someone. Which means it can also be taken out again. Keep doing it, we all have different methods to fit our lives, and children (of all ages!) are renowned for complicating issues, but little and often will get you there.

BlueSummerBaby Scary. It’s certainly an incentive to de-clutter!
It is interesting how things we do ‘to prevent waste and save money’ that make total sense, ultimately can turn out to be the opposite. I’d include trying to be environmentally sound also.
Hope you manage to de-clutter lots that’s come out of the emptied room, but regardless of how much you manage to let go, you’ll also have a fully cleaned and organized room out it all, that you know has no issues with window frames, electrical sockets, carpet moths etc, quietly going on. May the empty box be the first of many.

The situation here doesn’t allow that method, but I love the idea. Keep us posted how it’s going?

Miaowse Shame about the plants, I hope the strong one rewards you at least.
I have a nice patch of lily of the valley that multiplied from the only survivor of a reduced tray. I didn’t know anything about them, just brought a sad looking tray cheap and all but one perished. Was annoyed with myself at the time. Turns out they spread underground via rhizomes and form carpets over a couple of years.

Yesterday’s gains:
Got futon bed folded back into a chair, extra bedroom bin for friend emptied, creating small carrier bags worth of recycling. Put everything back into bedroom that had to come out to create sufficient space for friend.
Would have preferred to use the temporary space created to try and sort, but stuff in the wrong places has been impeding DS, causing irritation, so short term keeping the peace sadly really has to prevail over longer-term gain.

Cleaned portable radiator I put out for friends use and discovered large part the paint in between the bits has lifted and cracked open. Don’t know if it's a sign it’s overheating, about to die or just old paint. For safety think I may need to remove the paint to make sure there isn’t a pin hole oil leak under the paint causing it to lift, and repaint if ok. Another task on the never-ending maintenance list.

Took new photos of the work contractors have effectively abandoned and how we’re having to live round it, to hustle landlord to try to get it sorted.

Emptied narrow rubble sack Ds had tried to use for kitchen bin, went out and picked up new sacks. (Now realize I’ve forgotten to put one in!) Succumbed to buying another project book, that I don’t need until September.

Watered indoor plants. Looked at garden or rather tried to, as recent rain and sun has caused instant shoot up growth of everything. It’s a wall of green again, the jungle is wining.

Gave in and did DS’s washing up pile. Got half the bathroom thoroughly cleaned.

So not much actually gone, but reasonable re-start happening.
Stopped there before I overdid everything! Today’s another day.

Amongst whatever else today, I need to go to work project space today while others are in and see if I can get that sorted out. Remember to pick up a slightly broken but re-useable broom handle, (to replace the one the foxes chomped off aunt’s garden broom that I left out! Ooops!) while I’m there, and get some photocopies done. Try and get a bit of both here and aunts gardens cut back around the weather, so they at least look less like they’ve been abandoned.

Also need to think through exactly what has to be achieved over this weekend, and if anything, else could be. Oh, and convince tired Ds to leave his bed!

I've just remembered something I haven't done, and must do this weekend, so a heads up to all:

👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇
👉 👉 👉 👉all standard Non barcoded stamps must be sent off for exchange before end of this month! 👈 👈 👈 👈
🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

so that's this weekend and Monday as the last chance.

This place doesn't really allow for that method either Elleherd! 😅 Nowhere to put the stuff that's dragged out. But by shoving some hallway things to the side, I was able to create a fire-hazard obstacle course in the centre. Which I then had to climb over with a box to take to somewhere with more room to sort through, then stack it there. I slowly went through all the boxes of the same size over a few weeks, then restacked in a neat stack in the room they came out of. Resulted in 1 1/2 empty boxes and a lessening of the obstacle course. Still got to tackle the rest of the room. Once it's done it'll be a neatly stacked storage room and the completely useless will have been weeded out.

The plan is to use the empty boxes which match those in the stack to store stuff in there that's currently in other rooms. Random boxes that don't match the stack will have to go into another room to be used there. A matching stack is solid, random boxes stacked become teetering towers and are prone to occasionally collapsing, which is a total nuisance.

Well done for making it happen regardless of the difficulties! ‘Fire-hazard obstacle courses’ in the process rings many bells!

A matching stack is solid, random boxes stacked become teetering towers and are prone to occasionally collapsing, which is a total nuisance.
It’s also seems it’s what can be the turning point for people who have a problem in how much stuff they have, but were managing it by boxing it up, and the physical collapse of things ends up becoming a merged disaster zone.
Throw in what weight and time does to the integrity of the boxes, and worse some damp, and we’re headed for something serious.
It’s a whole subject in itself.

I used to use banana boxes because they’re so durable, and have kept a handful to remind myself just how long my problem has been ongoing! Moved onto lots of removal company boxes as they tend to be similar sizes. Also brought a lot of plastic boxes at one point, only to find the plastic degrades and becomes brittle. I later found someone through gumtree who de-boxed serious numbers of printers a month and didn’t want to pay for box removal at commercial waste rates, and took a large number from them. Apart from being rather large, these have turned out to be pretty perfect. Double walled they withstand being hauled in and out of stacks and vehicles well and can be palleted in storage facilities.
But my ultimate aim is to get to a point where I’m able to give them all away!

yesterday: one step forward one step back. Prepared lots of materials for recycling based work at work project space, but only got an hour’s work in, before building got closed. Remembered the broom handle, but didn’t get photocopies done. Did manage to print out forms for stamps, having misplaced previous forms I printed last month,🙄then couldn’t park close enough to get into post office. 🙄🙄
Got half the photos of the contractors abandoned work done, but have to move more things around to get the rest properly.🙄
Hit both gardens and tried not to panic. Both are totally out of control having shot up and out madly over the last six weeks of sun and rain. Brambles have colonized from nowhere! Both gardens were both growing faster than I was managing to cut back before, but thought friend staying might help, only to be told she’d developed hay fever!

Aunt’s front garden yielded half a black sack full of random rubbish chucked or blown in, but quite a lot of cutting back to get it all. Ivy that was at six foot on her wall a few weeks ago, had made it to the upstairs window stills! Took for ever with a pole cutter to get it down to around five foot for now. Three sacks of greenery later out of ours and two from hers, barely touched the surface of either! Back to round two of attempting it all today.