Not quite a horder - decluttering

DIL doesn't do leftovers like that, but does leave a jar in the frig with one olive or 1 tsp peanut butter. DS is ruthless when he cleans it out. At least it's still edible. DIL's mother is a true horder, so DIL is doing pretty well considering what she grew up with. She says she came home after her first semester at college to discover her room had been stuffed with stuff.

My goal this week is to get the filled bags to Goodwill.

I did not tell you ladies how broken hearted I was when we moved! We had been in the same how for 17 years (my grandmother's house ) it sat on 28 acres and it was my home. My DH wanted to move and purchased the house we live in now. It is bigger and is so much easier with my girl (adult multiple handicap child) I have one little bitty step in the carport to get her in and out of the house. It really was better for me to have her in the bigger house with wider halls, doorways, no steps (the she has to use I wear the ones out going downstairs! ) and she got her own bathroom. 2013 was a hard hard year! ( to pour salt in a wound our cat of 18 years died in August that year to) I was just getting my act together when my sister died. (2015) We stayed the same age for 3 weeks every year. She was barely 11 months older than me. Then BAM... BC...in December 2016. My parents still don't know. They have lost 2 children I didn't need them worrying about me. Sorry about getting off the subject of hoarding but it's this stuff that leads to hanging on to every sentimental scrap of paper, picture or useless object!

So today's update:

Cleaned and organized the upstairs closet that holds stores the cleaning supplies and equipment and cleaned out the med cabinet to!

This stuff has got to go!

Varga, I’m glad you feel comfortable enough with us here to tell us more of your backstory. I think it can be cathartic to talk about the past as it keeps the present in perspective. You are where you are at because of all that. It is very understandable that you have stuff to declutter. You have been dealing with heavy life issues!

In some respects, you also dealt with the “loss” of a house you loved. I can understand that. In March, I sold my 2005 car that I owned 13 years, and got a beautiful 2015 suv with less than 20,000 miles on it. I needed to upgrade but still pine a bit for the old car and it is taking time to adjust to the new. I hadnt expected to feel like that!

Isn’t it amazing how many people are actual hoarders? I wonder why. Then there are others who lose everything in a flood or fire or hurricane and never go back to owning as much. Its all kind of fascinating.

Nice for the dresser to give you a tip!

didn't have much time for decluttering and packing today, but I did manage to clear out two small chests with drawers: two bags of garbage, two bags of recycling, two small boxes of photos and momentos to keep. Yay!

Wren, Poodles--I always wonder what was in someone's past experiences that made them hold on so tightly to things , even when it makes no sense.

Vergadoll--Wow, that is a lot of change and loss in a short period of time. No wonder it's hard to let go of stuff sometimes! But now you are 2 projects up, Good For You!One step at a time, a baby step if necessary, they all add up.

MrsM--I think that we sometimes do not realize that change involves loss, and that losses need to be grieved. If we aren't allowed to grieve the losses in our lives maybe that makes us hold on to things harder?

Octogirl--Progress, Indeed! Great job! And $10 worth of coins is a real bonanza! And now two more projects done, way to keep the momentum going!

Verga--it sounds like the things you had downstairs was part of your grieving process, and having them there was necessary for a time. Now the grieving has reached a different point and having those things are no longer needed, and you are moving ahead. GOOD FOR YOU! And there is nothing wrong with holding on to a few things of sentimental value. Decluttering does not mean we have to get rid of EVERYTHING.

So, others may have many more photos than I do, but I will admit that photos are one item I don't toss....I have much more clutter from knick knacks, household items, clothes and books than from photos. But regardless I don't toss them. Part of this is because many friends lost almost all of their photos in a wildfire that burned almost all of my neighborhood but spared my home. I saw the anguish of losing irreplaceable items, especially photos, and remember it still, so that is one item I keep...I do enjoy looking at them, even if I keep them in a box in the closet and only pull it out once a year or so...

If there are just too many of them you do have options: first, you can put them on a disk or computer or some other form of virtual storage. Even better, ask relatives if they'd like to have any of the pictures....but if you've tried those options or they don't work for you, I wouldn't feel bad about tossing them either...

I'm not one to save a lot of stuff, but I do have two Rubbermaid containers filled with miscellaneous pics. This are what remains from boxes and boxes of pictures I found prior to selling my house. The sad thing is that so many of them were meaningless. I can't tell where they were taken or who the people in them were. Some are dated and have names on the back, but they don't ring a bell with me. Why did I keep all this stuff? I don't want it and I know for sure my kids don't want it. The pics I've kept are meaningful to my family. When i die, my kids won't be going through endless boxes of crap they don't care about.

Bad memory jolt there Mrs M. We too used to look through pictures regularly & the older generation would tell stories about the people. My Mother took tons of pictures too and always wrote the date on the back of each one. However one time when she got mad that her age 20's children weren't "towing the line" and turning out like she hoped, (we chose different churches) she went through and cut her head out of most of the snapshots that showed all of us. Very discouraging. My remaining brother said he rescued all the negatives, but if that's true - he's had them in a storage warehouse for 50 years. And they were mostly from pre-1960. I don't suppose they've aged well if he even knows where they are.

Never the less - I have 5 or 6 huge moving boxes full of photos from my parent's house. Some are back to my great grandparents. I do have a cousin i can send some of the old relatives, but no one else will want my parent's wedding picture - for example.

Poodles - I don't know if it makes it easier or harder if you don't know the people in the pictures. I need to do exactly what you've done. There are so many I know my son, who is not having children to pass them on to or tell stories to, won't even do more than a cursory glance - if that.

Hi Ladies, I have seen this thread title for as long as its been here, but never checked into it. Now that I am actively getting stuff sorted and moved along, I found you all again, and am very glad I did! I want to keep plunking away at streamlining our household goods, and am very interested in cheering on anyone else's success, as well. I will read back aways and see if I can catch up some.

Last week my husband and I took one hour and sanctified it to attend to a single shelf unit in our neglected garage. It was so gratifying to see how much we got done, and that since it was just an hour, we maintained good dispositions. He took stuff to ReStore shop, and I put trash out. I took a few things to Goodwill, and we had a cleared space, like magic. We both got revved for doing more. I know that other things will get in the way, so want to stay connected here for motivation. Thanks to you all for sharing

Hi MamaMe! You are off to a great start in the decluttering process. “Chunk it down” into manageable parts is really key. Then you are not overwhelmed and just give up.


My mother in law across the street in an apartment moved to her daughter’s about 40 minutes from here. She will be 90 next month and failing health. Dh amd I have looked after her for years and finally get a break since the daughter who never did nothin is finally stepping up to the plate. Since we moved MIL to our street three years ago from her house where she lived 67 years, she has many belongings but thankfully had gotten rid of things during her move. Thank goodness. We took four Windsor kitchen chairs from her apt but I learned they are very uncomfortable so someone else can have them or we will sell them. Got several more items but really don’t want anything else. MIL is absolutely certain her belongings are all extremely valuable and that we are all coveting them. She thinks we are impressed that she wants to give all her kids some boxed fans of which she had eight or ten. Oh boy.

DivineMrsM, I went through the same thing with my mother. She believed her stuff was so valuable, even though she bought most of it from Sears or Montgomery Ward before 1980. Her late husband collected model airplanes, 100% of which were still in the boxes. Did I mention that he had about 1,200 of them? At some point he told her that ONE of them was worth $5,000...and she believed him. He never told her which one. My brother and I tried to catalog them by looking the serial numbers up on Ebay. Everything we found was listed at $12-18/kit. When we told her that, she refused to believe us. Dave said there was one worth $5,000, so it must be true! Ack... We finally convinced her to give them to his grandson, his only living heir. Yeah. 1,200 model airplanes. I'm sure his young wife was just thrilled. And that didn't include all the tennis shoes and jeans that had belonged to her husband. He died in 2002 and all his stuff was still there because "he paid a lot of money for these things." No, he didn't. God love him, Dave never paid top dollar for anything, except the airplane kits.

Mother had so much stuff and she truly thought the five of us wanted it all because it was so "valuable". She did not understand that an item's value is what someone else will pay for it. She thought that because she paid $200 for a couch in 1970 that the couch must be worth $200 in 2018, maybe more! Mother wouldn't give anything to us while she was living because she "didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings." In other words, she wanted to divide everything evenly or not at all. I'm pretty sure she is spinning in her grave now, after we threw away all her trash and gave the salvageable treasures to the thrift store. Some of the big stuff-- washer, dryer, kitchen ware, china hutches, beds, living room furniture--went to various kids and grandkids. But we didn't even try to even things up. It was more like, "Laura needs a car, she gets the car. David needs a new bed, he gets the bed. Patti is the only one who wants the dishes and china cabinet, it goes to her. John is a musician, he gets the musical instruments." Mother would be very upset that some got things of greater value than others. Not that WE cared, but she just always tried to keep things equal. If she spent $30 on one kid at Christmas, she had to spend EXACTLY $30 on all of them.

We used a similar system for my MIL's things when she died: some cousins of hers who lived near MIL needed a car, and got hers. They were so grateful...but truth was, none of MIL's kids (hubby and siblings) needed a car and the closest child lived 1200 miles away: no one wanted to drive the car home, selling it seemed like a hassle given the number of miles it had on it, and so it went to the right (nearby) home. Each sibling took only what they really could use, plus a few items that had some sentimental value. We later found out that a (very) few of the items had significant dollar value as well, but it wasn't a concern since we only took what we really wanted or needed.The stuff nobody needed or wanted was donated to charity or sold...

So, I made progress today on my on-going 'de-clutter before selling the house and downsizing' efforts. Today I cleaned out three cabinets and two drawers in our master bath, and sorted through a lot of clothes that were in a bedroom dresser. I now have empty drawers that people can peek in when we put the house on the market. Yay! End result: two more bags of high quality clothes to donate, three bags of garbage (how does that happen?), a small box of stuff I want to keep and move, and a bag of unused, unopened hotel toiletries (what can I say, I traveled a lot on business and always collected the soaps, shampoos etc. Bad habit that I hope to stop!) that I plan to donate to a women's shelter...

Next up: master closet!

Octogirl

I cleaned out the cupboard over the toilet in the bathroom. Tossed a bottle of vitamins that expired in April 2004. It was a really big bottle and took up a lot of room. I hid it in the trash from my study so DH couldn't rescue it.

This morning DH said he looks at stuff and wonders why he's saving it. I suggested a box or bag that he could put it in when he thinks that.

I have 2 file drawers full of things from my mother's house. I think most are old photos and perhaps a scrapbook. I will go through those and cull out the things that don't mean anything to me. One drawer would be a reasonable goal.

Question: I have a lot of framed photos of grandkids through the years. I don't have much wall space and would prefer it hung with landscapes and other paintings. What do you think about getting a photo album with large pages and putting the photos in that? It would be a lot more compact, and I don't want to get rid of the photos.