Hoarders Anonymous. Thread #8. We Are Keeping On Keeping On. Fighting The Cluttered Fight.

[Solo]

We are a group of likeminded householders who 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 is), health issues within the family unit, wider family, or ourselves (me too) that means sorting out our households is challenging to say the least. So...

You are all welcome to join us for support, adding your 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 in our band of clutterbugs. We never ever criticise anyone! We even try not to criticise ourselves as it's not helpful to anyone, but this can be very difficult to achieve.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by clutter, mess, disorganization 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. 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

Some helpful links. They aren't for everyone, but have a look if you fancy:

• Help For Hoarders by Jasmine Harman (the author/producer of the BBC1 documentaries My Hoarder Mum and Me and Britain's Biggest Hoarders)
• The FlyLady Cleaning Method by Marla Cilley
• The Organised Mum Method by Gemma Bray
• The KonMari Method by Marie Kondo
• A Slob Comes Clean by Dana K. White
• The Getting Things Done Method by David Allen

And a LINK-#7

I'm not sure if The Flylady link is working, but if not, you know what to search for.

Welcome to thread #8 of Hoarders Anonymous. Thread #8. We Are Keeping On Keeping On. Fighting The Cluttered Fight (and winning, one small step at a time).

@Solo Well done!
"A bit of a machine" yup it's a survival mode to prevent the breakdown I feel I'm absolutely entitled to, regardless of who's 'fault' any of al this is, but can't afford... I may have got very depressed at times about what felt like an endless tsunami...

@BlackeyedSusan Well done, especially keeping on keeping on, regardless of spoon availability a lot of the time.

Saturday evening and yesterday was interspersing MN with prepping vehicle for going in for something major that's beyond my abilities, to reduce the potential of complications, as well as acquisition and fitting of some additional parts and fueling up.
Also cutting down large amounts of what should be bushes but are trees, which I was hoping to sort out later today, but will have to wait. Three bags went to recycling yesterday.

This morning's been spent on and off here, waiting for something to dry on vehicle so it could go to repair, and then taking it in, which I'm now back from. But have paid work to go off to soon.

Well done Elle.

I can add washing , rinsing, spinning hand wraps.
Took kiddo to club.
Took out washing at ex's put more in.

Got a contractor coming in organised by management of flats. Need to clean and clear hall and the stairs pantry and kitchen. Made a start on that. Will do.more. makes me dizzy though.

Stairs pantry got cleared yesterday and put away.
Drove kiddo to college.
Washing collected from ex. Sat in his garden eating ice-cream.
Can't remember if I did anything else.

Today:
College day. (85 miles)

Washed up some pots.
Put some away.

Top up shop

Wiped and put away most shopping. Still some to do.

Hand washed hand wraps and snood. Rinsed and spun one set of wraps

Squashed some recycling.

DD tackled more bits on the stairs and took her stuff upstairs. More to do yet.

Traipsed down two flights of stairs to let the postie in and back up. The intercom is fucked.

Ran up (ok walked quicker than normal slow) up the stairs as ex neglected to tell me he was going out when ds was going over and ds needed the key to ex's.

Need to hang yesterday's washing and body is refusing to co-operate. (I've forgotten how to spell)

Caught up on sleep after kiddo late home.

Yesterday and today, not much actual de-cluttering but lots of work.
Driven slightly mad cleaning behind contractors
Vehicle fixed and returned. Big relief.
Vehicle cleaned inside and out
Some paperwork gone through and shredded
Eight bags of tree branches chopped up and taken to garden recycling center.
Window box planted, and watered alongside other plants

Aunts: Mold on French window frames and bases bleached and scrubbed.
Curtains washed and line dried
Curtain rings scrubbed
Back windows cleaned inside and out
Started on hoovering there but may have killed my much loved Meile vacuum
T.shirt that got bleach splashed, doused in more bleach to see if anything can be done with it.
Knackered!

Yesterday:
Kiddo to school.
Petrol
Two loads of laundry, sitting at ex's

opened post looking for important stuff. Not filed but put in filing box to be sorted later. (Still no news from contractor)

Threw some receipts away.

Put some carrier bags away.

Talked DD through a meltdown remotely.

Waited up for kid to get home in early hours. (From dad's house, after gym. Spent quite a bit of time trying to stop this late night gym use. )

Rinsed and spun hand wraps.

I've been doing the course I mentioned before. The one from Field Of Boaz. It turned out not to be decluttering this time, I think that comes in part two that you probably have to pay for. This part was free and it was about not wasting all your life doom scrolling, which was helpful. I followed the instructions to build new habits and it lead to more time available, which I then used for journalling to clear my head and that enabled me to make some decluttering type decisions that will lead to ongoing progress. I'm going to try to keep it up throughout the month to cement the new habits in place.

@BlackeyedSusan Well done! Landlords contractors are a breed of their own and seem to be so 'suit themselves!' Even the nice ones don't seem to have any idea of others lives having any importance when it comes to appointments and schedules. Hopefully it's allowed you more time to get everything clear and whatever access is needed sorted, at least. The intercom situation sounds unnecessarily annoying, hope it can get fixed soon.
Ours broke years ago and has stayed that way. Some have managed to rig their own ones up to the remains of the landlords one, but it leads to the front door left open a lot.

@BlueSummerBaby it's really interesting and much appreciated hearing your experiences and progress accessing these courses. How are you finding journalling fits into life generally? I don't mean to pry, so please don't go into it, if it's an inappropriate question, just interested in how it ties in to better able to make de cluttering decisions. Someone around me does an awful lot of it, noting things down several times an hour, which is both vaguely intriguing and slightly annoying as their hands are nearly always full, but they also are a clutterer and doom scroll...

I've taken on unexpected paid work this weekend that got thrown to me. Going to run across October. Underpaid but a good cash injection over the month which I really need, even if its the opposite to the plan of getting on with sorting out everything else.
I'm going to have to work out how to keep everything else going, as well as doing it, and use other people to babysit contractors more of the time.
Feels a little overwhelming but maybe a good thing to learn to split my days up better. (and not get too drawn into MN main boards!)

So by end of lunchtime I hope to have read and signed a contract, written a work plan, and a piece of work outlining the project, and family laundry and launderette run done.

I use journalling in several different ways elleherd.

On a daily basis it's part of my evening routine. This is to process my day, get out all the thoughts that are whizzing around and may otherwise prevent me sleeping. It's also because I have bad memory so I can't say when something occurred without looking it up, the journal functions as a kind of timeline information log. So the nightly journal is notes about my day, thoughts and feelings. It might take 5min or it might take an hour or I might skip it if nothing of note occurred in my life or within me emotionally. I very rarely go back and read it unless I'm looking up the date something happened or the specific details of what happened.

The declutter courses contain journalling prompts. These go into a separate notebook. It's a bit like being back at school, you write a question then you write your answer. It's to gain insight into how your own mind works and to figure useful stuff out about what to do that you somehow didn't know until you read the question and started writing. A lot of the time, if you can figure out why you're hanging onto a particular item or hanging onto items in general, you can see there's no logic to it or there's another way of addressing whatever the need is and so it helps with the letting go of stuff. Not necessarily instantly, but it seeps into your psyche and your brain is working on it in the background while you're doing other things. Then 3 months later you realise that thing you've hung onto for years, you're suddenly able to let go of. Or that category of stuff you've been adding to since the dawn of time, you just are able to stop doing that.

When you just take notebook and pen to sit and write, all manner of things will come out and your brain goes where it wants. I might sit down at the end of the day and write down my thoughts about something that happened last week, then just a few lines about what I did today, for the timeline. Wheres when you work with journalling prompts it's a bit like therapy, with someone guiding you to think in a particular direction so what comes out is less chaotic and you don't derail yourself, because the next prompt brings you back to the subject in hand. This declutter journalling can be useful to re read, either to see if you still feel the same way or to remind yourself of your hopes, dreams and goals or the conclusions you came to, as a way of keeping on track and making progress with the mindset of changing/fighting against hoarding.

I'm taking my time with it all. I'm a slow-progress kind of a person anyway. Not a big-push, mad-spring-cleaning, get-it-all-done kind of a person. I used to be, but life threw spanners in the works and everything changed and now I'm a slow plodder with lots of gaps/breaks when it comes to getting things done. I'll put down a project and not pick it up again for weeks, but I'll get there eventually. That's why paying for these declutter courses (well, some are free) and doing it slower than intended, in my own time and at my own pace, really suits me.

This one I'm currently on. It's one week of very simple tasks and a tiny bit of journalling. There's also 6 emails, which I think are another 6 10min videos to match the first one. I haven't looked at those yet. I was probably supposed to watch them daily as they arrived, I'll do that next week. As well as sticking with the small tasks, and the journalling side of things if I feel the need. It was basically habit stacking, designed to be completed after a week and show you another way of living. But I'm slow to assimilate things so I've planned to take a month on it to really establish the new habits. I'm happy to come at situations sideways like this. Create a bit of peace and tranquility, bring my focus back to where it ought to be, create a bit of free time... and then, if I sometimes use that freed up time to declutter or think about declutter decisions, that's a good thing.

At this point in time I'd say I could average it out to say about an hour of solid thinking time goes into decluttering each item. Obviously it's not that simple, some decisions are quicker and others take months of dithering over in the back of my mind. There's no point getting frustrated though (which I was, which is why I'm doing these courses so I can feel like I'm taking action), if it's going to take me an hour to make a decision then the sooner I get started the sooner it's finished. I felt stuck and these courses are helping me get started again. Even though it adds time to do the courses, it's getting me unstuck, so I think it's going to end up overall being faster than not doing them.

@BlueSummerBaby I'm reading your post carefully and with interest. I'm currently too over loaded on the practical side to do anything that absorbs more time and aren't managing employment related learning and videos etc well, but that's hopefully not going to be forever.
There's a lot of what your saying that rings sensible bells of how to create and tailor your own self help.
Thank you for the explanation of how you're using journaling, some of it ties in with what I try to do looking at things, will be interesting to see if at the point in the future things aren't as crazy, writing it down, changes progression with it.

Update: Sunday: did read and sign contract, made tbh sketchy work plan, but the work outlining the project had to go on the back burner after getting a call to say the project parameters they want had changed, so the attempt at 'split days' didn't really work out.

Family laundry and launderette run happened, and then sorted out and cleared up some more obvious storm damage, but that laid me up entirely and there's more to do.
Contractors arrived on Monday to discover just how much stuff flew off the building, and just how unhappy neighbors are about it. Left them to it by escaping to a very long work shift, and hefty meeting to try and resolve problems. Have spent this morning dealing full on with with contractors, and now about to try and do some major moving stuff about for them, so they can do things tomorrow morning before I'm at work, but also have work later on today, so it's see what can be achieved in a short amount of time.

Driving day. (3 hours)

Petrol

Laundry at ex's. (He set a load off and I did another shorter load. ) Sat in garden.

DD sat on the kitchen floor and passed up things that have fallen off. I've got vertigo again, and dizziness from an ear infection/cough/cold sinussy thingy. Things on the floor are inaccessible without me ending up on the floor as well.

Wiped and put shopping away from the stairs.

Hoovered ds's air purifier.

DD is managing some washing up.

We are not ready for contractor but my body is not cooperating with cleaning. (I walked round the garden one lap before pain stopped play)

@BlackeyedSusan sorry you've got vertigo and dizziness again, sounds miserable. Hope things with the contractor are survivable and work out even if it's uncomfortable not having things in great shape.

Contractors started at 6.00am which has outraged the flat next to me. If the early start didn't disturb others, the neighbor certainly has!
My attempts to fit a gallon in a pint pot yesterday, feel pretty feeble and mainly churning.. Achieved the absolute basics of what was needed but pretty badly and stacking up problems for later by not getting enough done.

Trying to remember anything is better than nothing, it is all progress of one sort or another towards the end goal.
About to kick contractors out so I can quickly clean up behind whatever they've managed to achieve in an hour, and leave for paid work..

Hope work goes well.

Driven kids to school and college.

Spoken to contractors. A couple of minutes in the flat, they say but at some random time.

Moved coats and bags out of the hall. (Up stairs)

Put dd's dry pots away, dried any that were still wet, washed up some more, put those away. Still a lot more to do but shattered now. (Can't stand up for long)

Topped up kids dinner money account.

Put some of the stuff out on work surfaces away.

Body is sore.

Contractor been. Twice. (Install, then test)
Picked up DD.
Sorted clothes for ds.
Put hand wraps into soak but he has taken a new pair.
Wiped down after contractor.
Fetched down bag from ds's room.

Dealt with a kiddo emergency by phone. Kiddo has been adulting quite well. Really proud.

Well done Susan. Glad your contractors have been and gone .

Mine have created so much dust. I'm up at crack of dawn prepping for them to come and do another quick stab at things and out again so I can do another days work. Had to bring stuff back with me to finish, and its only going to get worse by the looks of it. They want a huge amount for not that much.

FFS. The bloody thing broke...

Fingers crossed you can get them back out fast,

No contractors here today just straight to paid work plus this weekend,

Contractors were here in the communal areas this morning. Can't tell if it is fixed without another person at the other end!

Driving.
Shopping (supermarket and other stores)
Petrol
Collect laundry from home
Laundry at ex's. (Relax in his garden, overdose on space invaders)
Put shopping away.
Just about to head off to drive again.

Also yesterday:
Driven,
two more stores, (got birthday presents) fished out the hand washing from the bowl, need to spin today.
DD hung washing

Not really started today yet.

Great thread, just checking in so I don't lose it. My place is awful, I'm so messy it's embarrassing. I never have people round. Hard to change a lifetime of bad habits.

@BlackeyedSusan Well done. Hope things are fixed.

@DrowningInSyrup The trick is to to start on one bad habit and work on it. It's the Flylady principle of keeping the sink clean so you can always use it.

I'm doing so much paid work I've no time for much else until later next week.
Will be working the first three days of this week as well, but am struggling physically.
Essential washing has had to be hand washed as leaving too early and getting back too late to make launderette. Just managing basics for now.

Handwashing everything is quite the task. My tumbler just broke, so I've been putting off washing as the drying takes so blooming long! Outdoor drying is not an option.

Hand washing stupidly expensive and fragile boxing handwraps and some woolies.

I use ex's washing machine for other stuff. I keep almost digging out the washing machine so it can be accessed and replaced, then something else happens and the space is filled again. Still got some stuff from holiday there. I need to clean out the hall. Cleaning for the contractor has moved that bit further forward. (Silver linings etc)

Needing to replace DC's bike (now in at least three pieces) is one of those extra things.

Disability really does not help. Illnesses hit harder. Energy is almost non existent.

Life would be very different without the five disabilities and numerous conditions we have between us. Can't change that but acknowledging that this is a significant reason for how we live is important.

Offs.

Now it's a virus (sore throat, temperature, head ache, cough, sinussy thingy)

WFH until midday today, as contractors need access and I can't get anyone to baby sit, or leave them here alone safely. Left arm and leg are both so severely swollen that I'm struggling to get in and out of vehicle alone, but carer's unwell, so just having to leave ene more time than already leaving.

@DrowningInSyrup Yup, it is a task and a half. Outdoor drying is weather, for months contractor dust, and ability to get it up onto a line, dependent here.
The later is a bigger deal than it sounds. I'm afraid on Sunday I took in underwear and dried it on the radiator at work before anyone else got in!
Unable to get bedding dry, in desperation succumbed to buying an emergency (dry!) cheap duvet cover and sheet at the 24/7on the way home in the early hours of Monday morning. The original's are currently refusing to dry in the bathroom.

@BlackeyedSusan Glad to hear some silver linings in the contractor needs.
Acknowledging what is genuinely making things difficult, or needing differentiation, is really important, including in regards to what we're requiring or keeping too.
It took me a long time to realize I was 'buying for the life and abilities I wanted,' not the one and the disabilities we actually have.
I used to dream of nicer things than extendable poles and tools.😊
Hope you can get better soon.

Thanks . You too.