Clutter/Hoarding

[siead_lietrathua]

we try not to be horders. we have alot of stuff, for gaming and otherwise, as it is without keeping broken junk as well. but sometimes it can be hard.
try as we might we can't seem to break our families of the habits of giving us stuff. either passing on "heirlooms" from relatives or just random nicknacks.
i think i'm jsut gonna start pawning it or tossing it up on kijiji. i mean it's nice you've kept so and so's teapot from xyz time period but it would be better going to a home where it will get appreciated instead of tossed in a cupboard.

[HYHYBT]

Please make sure nobody else in the family really wants it either before you accept heirlooms with the intent of getting rid of them.

[siead_lietrathua]

they were given to me in an intense state of disrepair, to the point where the manufacturers stamp is outright gone, parts are broken off, etc. not even for me to "accept", just put in a box with a "here, take it" mentality. things my grandparents had tossed in a box in an attic that they hadn't time to deal with. but my aunt is a horder, so she kept it all.

i take pictures of any of that stuff and archive it digitally with any notes, photos, etc that i also have from my grandparents.

[protege]

Later also flipped out because on advice of the Gf I took bunch of old childs puzzles and games that have been down in basement since we moved here 11 years ago and not touched put those in plastic containers I pointed it out to her and she started screaming "don't fuck with that I need to go through that to know what is there!!!" Honestly I could probably have put half of it in the trash and nobody would have ever known it was missing.

I went through the same thing last year with my dad's mom. Grandma's in her late 80s, and has been thinking of moving lately. She's lived in that house since it was built in the '50s. Lots of memories...and lots of crap in the 'back room' under the garage. We're talking lots of scrap wood, and other hardware items...left over from when Grandpa finished the basement. When they moved in, it was just one big room. No paneling, no shelves, no bedroom, bathroom, work room, laundry room...

As a result, there were shelves of old paint, various cleaning solvents (he was a sales rep for a major cleaning company manufacturer--think Glade and Shout) he'd collected, lots of mops, tools, boxes of books and other items. But, among the gems...was quite a bit of shit. Shit, that had to be disposed of.

Most of the junk "disappeared" over a couple of weekends. That is, it went in the dumpster at work. Some of the other stuff...wasn't as easy. I can understand wanting to hang onto things. Trust me, I know that it sucks getting rid of things.

But, are moldy, falling-apart Braille textbooks (Grandma actually taught Braille for awhile, and had the "typewriter" used to do the characters) really worth keeping? These books hadn't been touched, or even moved out of that room, in about 40 years. They were rotting, in other words. Totally not worth saving. Yet, when I suggested tossing them, she flipped. Same with the 1970s-era paint cans. Again, worthless, and she insisted on saving them.

Needless to say, those cans went into one of the trash bags when she wasn't looking. 2 years on, she hasn't noticed.

[HYHYBT]

they were given to me in an intense state of disrepair, to the point where the manufacturers stamp is outright gone, parts are broken off, etc. not even for me to "accept", just put in a box with a "here, take it" mentality. things my grandparents had tossed in a box in an attic that they hadn't time to deal with. but my aunt is a horder, so she kept it all.

i take pictures of any of that stuff and archive it digitally with any notes, photos, etc that i also have from my grandparents.

Oh, that's different. I was thinking of things like the teapot example somebody used, or... well, anything that someone might actually want to use or display.

[blas87]

I've touched on it before, but both of my parents are BAD hoarders. Even if Mom wants to slap the label and blame solely on Dad, she is just as bad. I fully admit to my own holding on to certain things before I go nuts and finally do something, but their house is...just...embarrassing.

Bad enough that no one else cares enough to try to keep the house clean, but other than that, the main theme at my parents' house is CRAM. C-R-A-M. As in, they have SO much shit, everything is crammed together.

This is a decent sized, very old house. Every nook and cranny is taken up with something. As much as I try to keep the house clean and not mess with stuff, there is no way of making it look very neat, because they have SO MUCH FUCKING CRAP!

Sure, I can keep the floors and rugs clean and make it look somewhat normal, but go around the borders of the walls....there is something covering nearly every damn square inch!

Open a cabinet, just about everything in the front row falls. I don't just mean junk, I mean my parents never actually think before buying stuff. Every cabinet, every drawer, is packed. Smashed in packed. Some drawers barely open.