Clutter/Hoarding

[insertNameHere]

I decided to make a spin off of cleaning. After watching some of those hoarding shows, I have been taking steps to reduce the amount of clutter I have because I am good at stacking lots of shit into a small space that I really don't need and realize while those shows are extreme cases my family as a whole has plenty of those tendencies. Although my method of leaving shit lay allows me to access stuff without having to move everything, works great in a barn when you have multiple mowers and attachments to pull out. my dad likes to stack shit to create one big open space to fill with more shit, than to organize in some practical manner.

In my basement I have noticed tons of X-mas shit like extra trees my mom got on clearance since it was only $10 normally $150.... SO WHAT you already have 2 big trees and couple small trees that you realistically only put 2 up anyways why get another unless your ditching an old one? Not to mention going out of town past couple x-mas to visit family out of town so no tree. Along with a collection of various sized tins from small to large popcorn... which sure some MIGHT be worth something but those mass produced boyscout ones aren't. Then there is the tower of knitting things from when my grandma passed as my mom didn't want step aunt getting it to sell it sits in the basement untouched for years. Along with a bunch of random stuff. Sure I am all for keeping some toys for when i have kids, but the flavor of the month kitchen gadgets that haven't been used in years. Do we need all those? Or the random jeans that fit nobody? We would have a lot more space if we got rid of things that haven't been touched in years and have no sentimental or monetary value.

Back to the barn, during a garage sale, inevitably people try and lift tarps covering expensive tools and offering pennies on the dollar.... no thanks I know my air compressor is worth more than $50. And by the time you go through all the work to set it up you don't make anything compared to the time you sit around. I am about to offer my mom $50 to throw everything that has been in that barn and not sold (some of it been 2years). Plus lately this area has had a problem with break-ins after a garage sale.

[Rapscallion]

I'm throwing away two large bin bags I sorted out from the front room today. More to follow.

Raspcallion

[Greenday]

My step-dad was a hoarder. In his parents' house, his old room was literally FILLED with crap in it. In my house, he had the garage filled, the basement filled, and a spare room filled, along with various closets. It was embarrassing. My mom would force him to have some garage sales and he'd sell a few things. Finally my mom got him to go to a therapist and it finally REALLY hit him. The basement is cleared out, the backroom is clear, we can actually park in the garage. It's awesome.

[Rapscallion]

In my defence, a huge swathe of what I'm getting rid of is envelopes...

Rapscallion

[HYHYBT]

I've often thought about having a garage sale... but it's just too inconvenient, especially since it's attached to the house.

[Android Kaeli]

A few times me and the roommate had to go through the spare bedroom because it's a magnet for crap that we just don't need. A few times before the last major cleaning, well before it was decided to keep the ball of purring fluff inside, that room was so bad I'm surprised we managed to get IN the room.

I'm not the neatest person in the world but at least the house isn't piled ceiling high with stuff. I just need to get rid of a lot of stuff that's in notebooks, like scraps of paper that I THINK I need for my stories.

Now my shed is another manner. Since I don't use a traditional fake tree anymore [my palm tree that I have in a corner does just fine] it's just sitting in my shed, gathering ants, dirt, and dust.

[AdminAssistant]

Now that I have a working shredder, I'm considering scanning alllllll the many notes I have from 4 years of undergrad, 2 years of a MA program, and 3 years of Ph.D. coursework.

[protege]

In my defence, a huge swathe of what I'm getting rid of is envelopes...

Raps, I hear ya on that one!

Seriously though, even though my basement workshop, and my office are currently in disarray, I've actually made quite a few things "disappear." Some of it went to the church's annual junk sale, but a fair bit went to various "reuse" places, such as Construction Junction. In fact, that's where most of my old computer stuff went. The rest, went into "more deserving causes," or was sold for scrap. Cleared out quite a bit of crap that way.

Still taking up space, are the million or so projects I have going on. I'm slowly working on the massive backlog of sports cars, trucks, buses, and other vehicle models. Eventually, those will all be done, and I'll have more space on the workbench and in my various cabinets. Not sure where I'll park the finished models though.

Another project that's no longer taking up as much space...is the MG. Up until this year, I had a huge pile of carpet and other interior parts lying around. This has lessened a bit, since I've been trying to get that reinstalled.

One thing that I know will be going, are the 30-plus years of train magazines. Even though they're carefully stored in binders, they do take up quite a bit of room. However, with the publisher recently announcing that they'll be offering DVDs containing every issue from 1934-2010, I have a feeling that their days are numbered. When they do go, they'll either go to my cousin (her husband is into trains too) up in Michigan, or they'll get recycled.

[insertNameHere]

OH, I forgot my mom's office. she sells kitchen stuff, so she has plenty of extra crap in her "office" also known as bunch of shelves with no order things stacked floor to ceiling. and a desk with crap stacked on it. Then in the family room, she has bunch of paperwork all around the end table and floor by her chair...

I also went into basement and tossed the majorty of my school notes and work from high school and earlier. Still keeping the college stuff for now but think i will eventually let that go but really, since my brother is out of HS now, there is no use for it.

[Boozy]

I despise clutter. I grew up in an old farmhouse that had been in our family for six generations. That means six times the clutter.

I think the only reason most people get rid of crap is because they're moving. That doesn't happen in farmhouses. For over two hundred years, the residents either never left at all, or left all their crap behind because Mom and Dad still lived there.

My mom did her best to clear things out while she lived there, but there's a limit to what you can throw out when everything belonged to Great Aunt Delores or Great Grandpa Jimmy. Argh.

My house now is a clutter-free and well-oiled machine. Everything has it's place, no drawer is too full, no closet overstuffed, and I am draconian about the "one in, one out" rule. I won't live amidst a pile of stuff ever again.

[AdminAssistant]

My grandmother and great-aunt were twins and hoarders. We were able to keep Grandma's house under control, since we visited her often. When she was starting to get weak and I was cleaning for her, I was under instructions to take out some newspapers, organize photos, etc. There was still a lot to clean up when she passed, but it wasn't so bad.

My great-aunt was a miserable old maid who lived in her parents' house. We would go to visit on Christmas Eve, and that was pretty much it. When she went to the nursing home....we started on cleaning up the house. It took us a week just to get through the living room, which was piled to the ceiling with stuff. We were able to get quite a few nice things from the clutter...a lot of old photographs, depression glass, Ball and Mason jars, more quilts than you could imagine, and my great-grandmother's 1915 pedal sewing machine. But at a certain point we had to stop worrying about historic preservation and just get the job done. Ugh. Now that my folks have divorced, my sister is wanting to just go ahead and get the remainders of our things from the house. Luckily she has storage and is willing to put my stuff up until I have room, but even then I know I'm going to have to part with a lot of it.

[protege]

I think the only reason most people get rid of crap is because they're moving. That doesn't happen in farmhouses. For over two hundred years, the residents either never left at all, or left all their crap behind because Mom and Dad still lived there.

My grandmother's house was like that. For many years, the basement was filled with stuff, and so was the first floor of the garage, and both floors of one of the outbuildings. All stuff that had been kept for one reason or another.

Most of the boxes in the barn...were business records. Grandpa's family owned a feed store, and after he retired (and sold the business), all of the records were boxed up and moved home. They sat in that building until his death in '89. As much as I would have liked looking through those records, just to see how the place operated, it wasn't to be. They were heavily mildewed, and not worth saving. The entire lot was hauled into one of the fields, and torched.

Anything else that could be burnt was tossed onto the pile--scrap wood, the rotting wooden wheelbarrow, etc. Nearly everything else was hauled away. Grandma said that in addition to the two carloads my dad and I hauled off...several *more* went away in the neighbor's pickup

[Andara Bledin]

It's amazing the sheer volume of space clutter can take up.

My father had somehow managed to store 2 full roll-off dumpsters worth of crap in our garage. How he got it all there, we have no idea.

We just recently moved, and the amount of stuff we flat out tossed was amazing, and we didn't even clear out the place completely. And this was just a 1-bedroom apartment. But it was never our home. Now that we have the house, there's a moratorium on clutter and the stuff we moved over (and didn't sort) is getting integrated into the household bit by bit and gone through before it gets to come inside.

^-.-^

[anakhouri]

I do not like clutter. I am not sentimental.

Husband does not mind clutter. Husband is WAY sentimental (like, he has D&D character sheets from when he was 12 and one day his mom accidentally threw one of them away and he flipped his lid).

So far we are keeping each other in balance. He's not nearly a hoarder or anything like that. but he wants to keep things. Lots of things. For reasons I can't understand.

[Ree]

I'm a hoarder.

I am just too sentimental and attached to things.

I probably need counselling.