BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 08:09 PM

Donna, you have my wholehearted sympathy. Here, there are two of us. I've got a collection of piles of books - they are all wanted, I was leaned on hard last year and took 11 bags to Oxfam in one day, and others after- plus the debris of 25 years of self-employment and another lot from a longago hobby of model trains, before the kids (who are in their 30s now). But my Wife is even worse- she's into Recyclng (definitely Capitalised) except it never leaves the house. And her late father's possesions. And all the kids' toys and books, and hers from 50s childhood including the inevitable black doll. And that chest full of memorabilia that was plonked in the bedroom when we moved here 25 years ago, has never been opened, and never will be (hide and seek anyone?). And the rest.

Now the question is, are you unhappy with it, or merely unhappy with the way you think other people see it? Be true to yourself, even if it offends some people who think untidyness equates with moral turpitude.

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 09:40 PM

I don't suppose anyone has ever walked into what I found when I was designated to clear our mother's home of 28 years. (I'm sure some have!) Four BR, each with large walk in closet; there were paths through the piles. I was told, when I phoned my bro in despair, that others had already removed 17 garbage bags of stuff.

"Don't you throw away a single piece of paper." I didn't: I spent 3 weeks going through interminable piles of junk mail, cash register receipts, personal letters, newspapers, magazines.... "junk, junk, personal,junk, junk, junk...." Every piece of paper that had ever entered that house was still there! I took station wagon loads to dumpsters, put garbage bags full in a neighbour's garage. Found my father's suits in one of the walk in closets; he had died 20 years earlier; someone could have used them.

A few students helped load a 24 foot U haul truck. As we neared the end, she asked, "What about the cellar?" I never went down there. I gave up. I drove us back to Pennsylvania where her 2nd husband was in the VA hospital with Alzheimer's. I got on a bus and returned to my peaceful home in Ontario. My poor brother put everything in storage and gradually managed to disappear stuff. His second wife never saw what I saw. She complains about him being a pack rat. HE should have been the one to clear mother's house; just possibly it might have helped cure him.

I have about 4 file boxes of my personal archives. I am mindful of not wanting my children to have to deal with "mother's stuff" - not like I did!

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Charmion
Date: 08 Mar 15 - 04:59 PM

Dorothy, your mother sounds like my mother. After she died, I helped my father clear the enormous house where they had lived for 18 years. There were parts of the cellar where I had not seen the floor since about 1966, and a whole room down there (the door was behind the furnace) that I had not known about -- it was full of bundled Time magazines and stacked firewood.

Emptying that house took me four months of hard labour, many trips to the dump, and an estate sale that the local antique dealers were still talking about five years later.

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 09 Mar 15 - 08:27 AM

Ah, Charmion! WOW!!!

Then there was the woman for whom I was a caregiver for just over a year. When she died, the "kids" hired someone to do an "estate sale" in her small 3 BR home. None of us realized quite what the situation was: 2 of the three bedrooms were so full there were not even paths, two sheds and - WHERE was all this stuff. It was like the old joke about people coming out of a VW beetle.

But much worse and NO joke at all. She had bought stuff - that junk mail? She ordered stuff. Mostly she did not even know she had. Packages would come.... Finally I started asking her, Did she want.... Finally I took one back to the post office and conferred with the post mistress. Yes, if it were unopened, we could just write "return to sender on it". So, did you order this? I don't remember. Back it went to the PO.

It was not, as we joked, "She never saw a piece of kitch she did not love!" It was, she had no idea what she was doing. She was bright, with a clear mind but she did not have any idea...

Her kids had no idea. This unopened stuff - years of it - was tucked away everywhere! Two weekends of "Estate sale" got rid of most of the "good stuff". The kids kept saying, "I never saw this before!??" Then I did a few weekends of yard sale, then "Please just take it!" Then a truck load for each of two thrift shops. Then the house was fit to be sold.

Heirs beware! The time, if you can manage it, is early on. Gee, Mom/Dad, what IS all this stuff? Would you like me to.... I found a place on line where I could cancel almost every catalog!!!! Catalog companies prey on the weak and elderly. I developed a full blown contempt for them, esp those not on the online site. If I had to phone to cancel, the poor phone answerer was blasted with my fury. How dare they not have an easier way to cancel!

That poor woman did not mean to hoard. She was too nice to say "no".

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Mar 15 - 11:29 AM

Dorothy, I did that for a friend a couple of times in her lifetime. She was housebound, injured at work and on a low level of Social Security, yet the money seemed to trickle through her fingers to the mail order folks. A three bedroom house was packed. I insisted we had to make it a safe place for her and worked on it once on my own, and a few years later when it was packed again others helped. It made it easier for her oldest daughter who was to manage her estate, such as it was.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: GUEST,Mrr at work
Date: 09 Mar 15 - 06:26 PM

I got better - but I still avoid used book- and clothing stores. I'm not allowed more books than shelves or more clothes than hangers.

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 09 Mar 15 - 07:32 PM

more clothes than hangers. ????

I have my grandparent's wardrobe, a lovely 1920's solid wooden wardrobe with limited space bought by a house painter & clerk when they married.

So I bought 2 of these 5 tier shirt hanger - one for long sleeved t-shirts, the other for summer shirts!

and unfortunately I do have books on the floor - 1 pile from each local Library + others that have no shelves to sit on.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Mar 15 - 03:26 AM

"Now the question is, are you unhappy with it, or merely unhappy with the way you think other people see it? Be true to yourself, even if it offends some people who think untidyness equates with moral turpitude."

I'm not sure if it's as simple as that. Let's face it, most people DO care about what others think of them; not caring - or pretending not to care - can easily lead to social isolation.

Another advantage of having less clutter is that it's much easier to keep the house clean and less dusty. I've found that, after de-cluttering, I have now developed routines for keeping it reasonably clean and tidy - it's no longer a monumental and impossible task!

Min you, I don't suppose that I will ever reach the other end of the spectrum - OCD (Obsessive Cleaning Disorder)! That can't be much fun either!

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 10 Mar 15 - 09:08 AM

Clearing up someone else's mountainous hoards is made even more unpleasant
when multiple cat ownership is involved.

Fortunately my sibling had only one cat,
and the worse 'surprise' I encountered was a plush lined electric guitar case reeking of stale piss.

My mum [in her 80s] now has the cat [which is about 18 - 20 years old],
so who knows what's to be found under the beds in her house...???

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Mar 15 - 11:11 PM

My father never threw away the box for any electronic device or the styrofoam supports that came with it, so after he died I was able to find the packaging for all of the electronic gadgets he'd bought over the years. This wasn't necessarily a good thing, but it made transporting stuff for his heirs easier. He had a storage shed that was about 3x the size of his house (on a very pricey beach). He just lived there; now the house is updated by the person who purchased it to represent a beach lifestyle. If he'd lived in the house that it is today, he probably wouldn't have kept all of the cardboard and styrofoam. One hopes.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 11 Mar 15 - 10:10 AM

Today I have space to set up my knitting machines so I can make things for my family faster than hand knitting. During the sorting I have found lots of cones of yarn, so all my sorting and throwing away has been rewarded.

I was not a shopper, but I have not had therapy, I just made the conscious decision to reclaim space. It is strange to have to argue with yourself over throwing away something which you don't really need, but you want it so much. I've found that one day later it is forgotten.

I have needed to work out how to create enough space to get to cupboards and drawers so they can be emptied out and used properly. There is a sort of domino effect. Just being able to put away the laundry can have startling consequences.

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 11 Mar 15 - 10:25 AM

My grandad was a rather spartan old army man.
His attitude was "if you've not used something for over 5 years, you don't need it, so get rid of it".

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 12 Mar 15 - 02:11 AM

"His attitude was "if you've not used something for over 5 years, you don't need it, so get rid of it"."

I took a similar approach to drastically thinning my library. It occurred to me that if I lived to be 500, I would never get round to reading them all!

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 12 Mar 15 - 10:51 AM

Been nearly 30 years in the same house, and just accumulated stuff from:
ourselves
2 children, one of whom has still a lot his stuff here.
4 parents (RIP)
Contents of our workplace offices brought home when we both retired: some of it is confidential so will need to be shredded.
Books everywhere, including now some titles in triplicate from said sources, but himself cannot decide which 2 of the 3 copies to part with! As for the rest " I might want to read them again"!
All the LPs, cassettes, video-cassettes and CDs we have ever bought - and still have the equipment to play them on! Pictures have also multiplied exponentially.
Himself just will not throw anything away so the garage is full of broken things he would repair, odd bits of piping and wood, that "might come in useful": can't remember when we last got the car in there. Loft space too.
30 years ago we had no computers, but at least now I rarely get photos printed. Ah yes, all this old photo albums too.
All those clothes that no longer fit, but "when I lose weight" they might!
Despite all this, I try to keep the place acceptably tidy and clean - "organised chaos" being the modus operandi.
Having too much of a ball since retiring to spend days sorting stuff out!

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Mar 15 - 07:35 PM

Tattie, it sounds so familiar!

I'd suggest giving a passing thought to those kids - how much are they going to want to sort through? Maybe just decide on one thing you want to do to start, because revisiting some of these collections can be very interesting. I'd suggest shredding the papers first - that can be entertaining and it looks productive when you cart the volume of paper out of the house once it has been through the shredder.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Charmion
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 09:46 AM

Oh, yes; the cross-cut shredder. Every house should have one, and don't think I'm kidding.

Here in Ottawa, we have paper recycling. Every two weeks, the waste-paper baskets are emptied into a big blue bin with the fortnight's accumulation of newspapers and magazines, and the whole thing goes out to the curb, where it sits for hours.

Have you ever thought about the amount of sensitive personal information there is in some of the stuff you pitch into the waste-paper basket? The counterfoil from the credit-card bill that you routinely pay on line, for example, has your account number and your name and address -- just what your friendly neighbourhood fraudster needs to steal a piece of your identity. Bank statement, likewise.

Every month or so, I put a paper bag of shreddies out with the newspapers and toilet rolls.

Recently, my sister-in-law had to clear out the boxes of family papers that had accumulated in her basement -- something like three generations' worth. I took the shredder over to her house, and she filled something like six tall garden-waste bags with shreddies before she was done.

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 11:49 AM

Any sensitive paper is shredded, and I pour water or whatever grease drippings are handy into the resulting bag to make it a sodden mess, and that goes to the trash, it doesn't go to the recycling. I also put the shreds inside something else so it isn't apparent that it is a bag of sodden shreds.

Mine isn't a cross cut shredder, but one if these days if I see one for a reasonable price I'll pick it up. (Garage sales are good for that kind of stuff, and soon we'll be in the season.) As it is I have two regular shredders, one in my office, one in the kitchen, both places where papers get shredded. The kitchen one is where I open bills and solicitations to the kids to open expensive credit card accounts (they are in or have just graduated from university, so are seen as prime candidates. Even after "opt out" listings, the solicitations continue.) Do you know that those things now come with a convenient code so if you don't want to mail in the form with your name preprinted on it that you can log on and enter the code? These things are dangerous for anyone just starting out establishing credit. I had to harangue the bank with angry messages several times before they stopped mailing me pre-printed credit card account "checks" with my statements.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 04:31 PM

My sink is clean and I am washing milk bottles and putting them out for collection.

Why I find it so hard to return milk bottles is beyond me, but now I am doing it.

OK - I have managed two lots, but it is a start.

Along with the milk bottles I am doing the dishes. I am putting things away. The mental exertion required is ridiculous, but every clean dish and pan is a battle won.

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 07:07 PM

well done!

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 03:01 AM

I have a small 'hand-driven' shredder in my kitchen. I use it to shred any debit/credit card receipts. I also remove/tear-off my name and address details from any envelopes, before I re-cycle them, and shred those bits of paper. The contents of the shredder then regularly go into my compost bin along with the usual kitchen waste.

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 05:55 PM

Composting shredded paper is good. It also makes excellent fire starter if one has a wood stove.

Subject: RE: BS: Are you a hoarder? House a mess?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 06:12 PM

a local pet shop also likes shredded paper & promises their animals will not read it!