After getting a loft conversion 18 months ago that massively reduced our storage space up there to a small alcove along the front has resolved most of our hoarding issues, although still have more to get rid of. My number one bugbear is Christmas and Halloween decorations, the latter should disappear now the kids are older but there are 9 large storage boxes of xmas decs, usually only about half the contents get displayed each year but my wife refuses to condense these and often sneakily picks up more every year, it takes up 50% of our remaining loft alcove storage.
Interesting thread... OP, I think the result is realising how good it feels to clear out and de-clutter. It's ok to throw stuff away if it means learning the impact of hoarding/just-in-case collecting on your daily space and peace, it's a valuable lesson. Clutter does crowd out your sense of peace I think. Something I only really learned recently.
I recently helped a friend with a house clearance involving an autistic relative and a large house, rooms full of packaging for a toys and electronics collection going back >30 years. Then had to finish off a house move of my own, clearing a large garage and office room full of bike parts and all those 'just in case' useful engineering-bodging bits and pieces. A life of seeing uses in things, valuing what I have and not wanting to contribute to landfill, it adds up.
I had more clutter stuff than I'd realised because space gives you the option to 'hmm... I'll think about it later' and put it away, it accumulates. Lesson learned! Recognising some of the collector-keeper habits in myself and have spent recent weeks booking tip runs, organising space better and sorting stuff for the local bike project charity.
It feels good, way better than having some of spare stuff. So I looked up Marie Kondo who I though was good at this process .. found a website full of things to buy to clutter your home : )
There's an idea that you can try to have just 100 possessions in life. I think that would be good.
Can't help with the OP.
But...I have a customer who hoards. I had to condemn her gas boiler 3 years ago and she has been with out hot water and heating since then. A new boiler can't be fitted as I can't get properly into any room. I occasionally go in to repair some plumbing or other and its got so bad that I can't get my tool box through the house.
Its impossible to describe how bad it is. Just stuff new and old pilled floor to ceiling every room, bathroom, kitchen and up the stairs with a tiny corridor through that I have to slide side ways to get around!
I've offered to help her many times and so have her friends but she declines any help.
The only clear area is the roof space.
Sad to see.
Muddylegs - That sounds just like my aunts house. I had to refuse to do a bathroom for her as you just couldn’t get at it, the bath was full to the brim with bogs rolls (new) the shower was full of towels and blankets. There was a path down the hallway you could just about walk down. There’s was nowhere to sit as all the chairs were full of unworn clothes.
When she died, my mum had to help clear the house and there was thousands of pounds worth of new clothes, handbags, makeup, toiletries etc all over the house. So sad.
Owning stuff just seems to breed stress.
I identify with this very strongly, I have a large collection of retro computers I love, dont want to get rid of, except when the stress of the volume of house they take up gets to me!
my wife’s compunction to put the recycling on the worktop next to the recycling bin….. rather than in it.
OMG I think I've got the same wife.
I have a mug. It is mine. I like it, it is good. If I have a brew, it is in my mug. This instils in me a degree of self-discipline, if I want a brew and my mug is dirty then I’ll wash it out rather than lazily reach for a clean one.
I just pull a clean one the next day. My work mug is one of those ones that gets properly cleaned whenever bits start floating off the sides.
I do rinse it though, I'm not an animal.
Owning stuff just seems to breed stress.
Yup, hence why I have so many boxes and packing materials for selling stuff. That are now in the way of the stuff I need to sell and causing issues of their own.
I believe we’ve bonded over hoarding previously. From memory it was my wife’s compunction to put the recycling on the worktop next to the recycling bin….. rather than in it. I believe yours favors the lid of the bin.
You are correct, and have a better memory than me!
I came he here looking for solace, but find none. I'm both embarrassed by the hoarding in this household, and now living in terror of how it could get worse in ways I'd never imagined.
My sister and I are dealing with similar with our Mum at the moment.
She's lived in the same house since we were kids so there's a small amount of our stuff still there...and then vast amounts of general clutter and tat from her 35+ years in the same place.
It is a comfort blanket to her, she just potters around "clearing up" which basically means moving a pile of tat from here to there or occasionally splitting one big pile into two smaller ones.
Occasionally she'll get fixated on one thing and insist that nothing can be done until [thing] is resolved. Usually something that's been there for years and isn't in the way. Finding anything is an absolute mission involving archaeological digs, the discovery of things lost and forgotten from any period starting "yesterday" and extending back to "the dawn of time" and a general explosion of more clutter as stuff is dragged out, looked and then "just left there for the moment".
I've managed to throw out a few things on the quiet but sometimes even that is fraught with negotiation. I found and threw out a load of old road atlases recently - dating back to the pre-satnav days and obviously way out of date and utterly useless. Even that was met with resistance - "oh but I like looking at them" - no you bloody don't, they've literally not moved off this shelf for a decade!
I think my sister and I have largely accepted that, since Mum is basically [i]compos mentis[/i] and can cope, it's easier to just leave things be and deal with it by means of a large skip in due course.
Her parents / our grandparents were the same, their house was cluttered and full of crap... They fondly imagined that a lot of the crystal glasses stored in those terrible wood/glass cabinets were worth a fortune and the "really nice dress" could perhaps be passed to my sister and it was all just absolute tat.
Our Mum is now doing exactly the same. Regularly says "oh leave that, I'll pass it to the girls" (my sister's 2 kids). My sister simply accepts it, puts it in the car then drops it all off at the tip on her way home and has regularly told Mum not to do this.
Maybe we'll end up like that one day...
9 large storage boxes of xmas decs
You have to cull them annually. Conservation of decorations. You also have to do this when putting them away each year without informing the other parties in the house.
I only hoard bikes, but Mrs TiRed does have a habit of collecting clothes. I have a strict clothing policy, rotate every six months and if it's not been worn... Charity shop.
Decant a quantity of stuff into a box, and then hide said box for 6 months. If the contents of the box weren't required in the intervening 6 months, take it to the skip. Rinse & repeat.
Time consuming, but very low-key, and eventually you get nearer to where you want to be.
My ex wife's idea of tidying-up was just to hide stuff. It didn't matter what went where as long as it couldn't be seen. It was literally drawer after drawer packed full of random stuff. God forbid you had to try and find a particular article, as you were in effect sifting through every single article in the house until you found it. My enduring memory was opening the fridge door one morning to find a claw hammer sitting in there. Her iPod went missing without a trace, and years later I found it under the bath. At some point she must have unclipped the wooden decorative fascia on the bath and stuffed a number of random articles into the void under there whilst 'tidying-up'.
In my mum's latter years, she started to suffer from 'cognitive impairment'. One time, her bank card went missing. My sister and I must have turned the entire house upside down, and handled every single item in the house at least once. Eventually, it turned-up hidden in one of her socks mixed into her sock drawer. At some point, for whatever reason, she must have thought it was a really good idea, and then 2 seconds later she had forgotten that she had done it.
Another coping method that I developed after 21 years of being married was the '24 hour rule'. If she had a brainwave it would get parked and revisited again in 24hrs. If she still thought it was a good idea, after the 24 hours, we would go ahead and do it. But 99.9% of the time, after 24 hours, she would have gone off the idea. It worked like a frickin charm! It started off as a wee bit of a joke, like me teasing her about it, but over time (even although she would never admit it) I think she started to see the value in it herself.
I'm sure along the way, she developed a few sleight-of-hand/coping mechanisms for dealing with me, that I was blissfully unaware off!
I'm now starting to recognise, that in hindsight, I have made a few decisions along the way where I would have benefitted from apply the 24 hour rule to myself!
I only hoard bikes,
Including a couple of old bikes that have been kept from my youth I have ten housed in a purpose built bike shed.
It’s the reason I can’t really object to the wife’s shoes. The biggest difference being, my bikes aren’t in the house!
Only recently my wife and I moved in together. (don't ask, long story) my moving van was half a 7.5T Luton - which included, bikes clothes, content of my kitchen chairs a sofa, some book shelves the books that lived on them, literally my entire life...Hers was at least a full Luton....
We have a kitchen with so much space (for us) we have a drawer that's literally just got 3 sieves in it.
Growing up, one of my friends dads had a rule that if he didn't tidy-up his toys they went straight out to the bin, or if dramatic effect was required, thrown onto the coal fire for the whole family to see. No exceptions regardless of how old the toy was or how much it cost.
Back in the day I thought that dad was a bit of a dick, but in hindsight I think I would probably have benefitted from that sort of upbringing because I have a tendency to leave everything lying at my arse!
Only recently my wife and I moved in together. (don’t ask, long story) my moving van was half a 7.5T Luton – which included, bikes clothes, content of my kitchen chairs a sofa, some book shelves the books that lived on them, literally my entire life…Hers was at least a full Luton….
We have a kitchen with so much space (for us) we have a drawer that’s literally just got 3 sieves in it.
Pray to God she doesn't start 'collecting' semi-antique (all the shit that no one else wants, but it could be spruced-up one day) furniture, and you end up with a house where you struggle to see a foot square of floorspace. My ex got to the point where we were having to stack couches one on top of the other.
In my mum’s latter years, she started to suffer from ‘cognitive impairment’. One time, her bank card went missing. My sister and I must have turned the entire house upside down, and handled every single item in the house at least once. Eventually, it turned-up hidden in one of her socks mixed into her sock drawer. At some point, for whatever reason, she must have thought it was a really good idea, and then 2 seconds later she had forgotten that she had done it.
Can relate but in a different way - my Mum is actually surprisingly good at putting the stuff she uses all the time in the same place. The small bag containing her purse always hangs over the back of that chair.
Except for when it didn't. We turned the place upside down, my Mum was looking in the same places a dozen times over, moving piles of crap to see if it was under that and there was more crap being piled up as the search continued.
Eventually, I got her to check her online banking - no spends so it probably hadn't been stolen.
I tried to check location history on her phone to see where she'd been that she could possibly have left it but that was turned off - of course it was. So I turned that on.
Finally, running down the list of possibles, we found it buried in a shopping bag under a pile of potatoes because she takes dozens of cloth "bags for life" with her to the shops and stuff randomly gets chucked in any old bag - she gets a bit overwhelmed at the checkout as stuff comes rolling down to her and there's no order to her packing. In getting everything, she'd just slung the purse in with any old shopping and forgotten about it.
So I bought a Tile bluetooth tracker, set it all up and put it in the purse with strict instructions that it just stays there.
Sure enough, next time I'm down there, she's lost her phone (which naturally is on silent) so I said we could find it using the Tile which would ring the phone, even when it's on silent.
"Oh no, I turned off the Bluetooth cos it was using the battery."
FFS!!🤬
Restated the strict instructions that not only does the Tile stay in the purse, the ****ing Bluetooth STAYS ON.
Rage-tidying
Is def. a thing. And very cathartic!
My ex wife’s idea of tidying-up was just to hide stuff. It didn’t matter what went where as long as it couldn’t be seen. It was literally drawer after drawer packed full of random stuff. God forbid you had to try and find a particular article, as you were in effect sifting through every single article in the house until you found it.
This is my partner. We have an immaculately tidy house which is great, but I can't find geoff all. Worse, if asked she'll deny all knowledge. Just this week my bank card went missing whilst I had a taxi waiting outside. It turned up in the drawer where we keep stationery. Prior to us living together I could immediately lay my hand on something I last saw 20 years ago.
she’s lost her phone (which naturally is on silent)
If it's an Android phone, Google's "find my device" web page will set it to ring at full volume even if it's on silient.
Rage-tidying
Is def. a thing. And very cathartic!
I was doing it on Sunday, having shouted and sworn at everybody in the vicinity. Then the cat took a dump in the middle of the kitchen floor behind me, as I was doing the dishes and I started to smell the most awful stench. I calmly dried my hands and went to listen to music in the bedroom for two hours until I was normal. Some days everything hates you.
