[wi_fighter]

Where would people who keep clutter due to emotional reasons post?

My big reason for hanging on to stuff is because if I throw it away, I feel like I'm throwing away money, and money is tight these days. I'm afraid to throw out/give away/sell something that I haven't used in 10 years because I might want/need it the next day and then I'll have to pay for it again and can't. Then I'll never have that thing again.

I won't make friends because my clutter is an embarrassement. It's hard to keep the house clean because the clutter is everywhere. I've moved three times since my divorce, and I have stuff still in boxes from the first move. I obviously don't need it if it's been sitting in a box for four years, so why can't I get rid of stuff like that?

Outgrown kid's clothes and shoes. Clothes I haven't worn in years, magazines 4 years old that I never read but might get around to..... you get the idea, right?

Add to the fact that I just hate housecleaning in general and my kids hate house cleaning and my daughter has to hang on to every stuffed animal she's gotten since the day she was born, it's a huge creator of stress.

Now, I'm not like the little old lady with newspaper piled to the ceiling from 50 years ago or anything, but I want to streamline and be like I was pre-kid, where you could actually see the floor and tabletops and there was a place to sit down.

I know there are entire websites devoted to clutterers, but I thought that since mine is tied to emotional attachments, others here might be dealing with the same thing and would be interested in a forum, or know which one already deals with it.

[darkeyes]

Oh my, most of what you posted here, describes me!
I am trying to part now with some stuff, even thinking of getting a table some weekend at a flea market.
You can post this in General forum, I'm not the one to say, but I'm not sure if there is going to be a Clutterers forum in the near future, but you never know

Take care,
DE

[wi_fighter]

I'm getting better at actually getting it ready to do something with it. I'm having a hard time actually getting it out of the house.

Like, old kid's clothes. I have some boxed up, but the box didn't shut tight and the cat decided it would make a nice sleeping spot, so now everything is covered in cat hair. Well, I don't want to throw the clothes out, but I also don't want to take the time to wash them again before donating them (which I'll start and not finish) or donate them covered in cat hair, so the box is sitting out on my enclosed porch taking up space and reminding me of another thing I've started and haven't finished.

[ctbslo]

wi fighter
i have a friend how puts things in boxs. he then puts a date on that box. if the box has not been opened in 1 year he gets rid of it. if you have not opened it in one year you don't need it. remind yourself how good it feels to finish a task. and get it done.

[Kalamity]

I think "hoarding" is an OCD or anxiety issue.

I hoard little things but I have to have absolute order or I can't cope. I have receipts dating back to 1996, give or take a year, and I simply can't bring myself to part with them.

Sorry I don't really have any advice. Maybe you could just take some baby steps - maybe pick out one pair of old shoes to throw out or donate to charity and see how it feels.

[wi_fighter]

I think it's more an aversion to cleaning. LOL

Then when I do get cleaning, I get distracted by magazines and stuff.

I live a long way from a city with any kind of donation place, so I procrastinate on putting stuff in the car to have ready when I am in town.

I don't really hoard stuff so much as just never get around to cleaning. I didn't get the dust and vacuum gene. I don't know why I need to hang on to magazines that I don't even read. Like, I somehow got a subscription to Home. I never subscribed but it's been showing up for three years. They sent me a sample copy, I canceled it, but it still keeps coming. It's mostly for owners, not renters - focuses on remodeling and stuff. Why don't I go run them down to the two laundomats to replace the magazines that are like 5 years old? I'm sure the laundrymat regulars would appreciate some new reading material.

I've even tried the "cut out just the articles you want and file them" trick. They never make it to a file. If they do make it to a file, they never get read.

Besides, with the Internet and info readily available, is it even necessary to clip articles or buy the darn things in the first place?

Jeeze, I HATE cleaning but I'm oddly drawn to it. Except for my desk. It redefines clutter. I say make a forum.

Ry

i'm to the point of going to get a flame thrower and just zap everything..

[wi_fighter]

hahahahaha Pat, I hear you, man do I hear you.

[darkeyes]

Hey, that is a great idea
As far as my son's outgrown clothes, I was lucky, there was a woman who owned a thrift shop, looked over what she wanted for her shop and then wrote you a check right then and there. In the begining I'd get all sobby driving home, felt like I was giving my kid away, remembering what we were doing the time(s) he actually wore those clothes.
Later, I turned this into a positive thing, the money from the check would be used for new clothes as he grew.
Consigment stores, drove me mad, so I put the clothes in a bag and into a drop box for the various charities they go to.
Oh, it is so hard to part with things for me, my husband can easily throw things away, I use to go through bags he was ready to throw out, I once found sentimental stuff of mine, had an argument, told him throw his own junk out or let me see what he is throwing or wants to, of mine.
I am getting ready to start to part with my clutter, it's quite a task, plus I always use to by 2 of almost everything, "just in case one breaks" or if I will not be able to find the item again, this took awhile to break this habit, I used to call it the "Noah syndrom", like 2 of all creatures he loaded into the Ark, ha!ha!
Wow, this is still a project in progress, but once clutter is under way, I appreciate the openess of closests, rooms and most of all the basement.
Good luck to all of you on this thread, good one you started here

DE

[wi_fighter]

I'm going to take pictures today and put them in my album. You guys will be the FIRST people other than my immediate family and my kid's friends who will have seen this pig sty that I live in.

It's so bad, I won't even let the kids take pictures when the cats are doing something cute, because I don't want the mess captured for everyone to see. I have almost NO pictures of my kids from the last three years because of it.

My first apartment was always kept pretty clean because I was working a 9-5 job. Now I'm a contractor,and the work day doesn't stop until I've hit 1500 lines of typing. Because I spend too much time doing things other than work during the day, I could be "working" from 8:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. and ZERO cleaning gets done.

I know a lot of the problem is that there's so much to wade through now, I don't know where to start because I can work on it for hours and it looks like I haven't even made a dent in the mess. I end up feeling like "why did I even bother? It still looks the same."

[yossarian369]

I look at saving things as like I am paying to store them. I pay for where I am living and I am giving up square footage to store things I will probably never use. I tell myself I can use the space right now, as opposed to maybe needing some thing later. Also, I use the $20.00 rule. If I can replace it for less than $20.00, and I don’t know for a fact I will need it ever again, out it goes. So far, I have not had to replace anything. Your statement, “I won't make friends because my clutter is an embarrassment,” could be another incentive. I would rather have a friend than anything I am hanging on to. I read once that clutter in your house reflects the clutter in your life. I think that is true.

Another thing you could do is save, but be more selective. If you have a box of baby clothes that have fond memories, pick out a favorite and keep it. Just for sentimental reasons. If you have a box of your own old clothes, maybe you could make a quilt out of the material. Making new, useful things, out of old things is a good way to recycle. But make a definite project out of what you save, and give yourself a time limit, so you don’t fall back into saying, “I better keep that because I might make something out of it someday.”

Whatever you decide to do about the clutter…donation or garage sale or chucking it out, it might help to enlist the help of your daughter. She needs to see how you think your past hoarding needs to be dealt with because you know it is not healthy and it is time for a change. This will let her see maybe her learned habits could/should be changed. And celebrate your new uncluttered space by inviting someone over!

[jmo531]

This is and OCD issue. I have a hard time with unloading items. I am a pack rat and my husband usually has to pry things from my hands to get rid of it. This causes me much anxiety. I have always been this way and I really do not see an end in sight. I keep old magazines, old receipts, old envelopes, and other meaningless things that should be thrown away. As far as the clothes issue go, I have gotten alot better with this. I hand my old clothes down to my younger sister who is 16. My girls older clothes, I hand down to my best friends daughter and my sons clothes I habd to my husbands friends son. By handing the clothes off to another, I dont feel like I am "throwing" it away. I feel like I am actually helping someone out. We all know how expensive clothes are these days. LOL. It takes time to feel comfortable with letting go. Like I said, I still have alot of anxiety when it comes to throwing things away.
Maybe if you tackle one corner of a room at a time this could help, doing it little by little. I dunno. Dont be to hard on yourself.

[downsolong]

Hi Wi_fighter,

Good post idea. I'm a terrible pack rat . I have a Dennis the menace comic on the frig. where he's holding some nondescript piece of junk and saying I don't know what it's good for so I keeping it till I do. I doubt it is always OCD as I have had good reasons for not joining the throw away society perhaps like your own rooted in thrift.

I ran across a web based group on yahoo called Freecycle that might help there are many location based groups across the country, who list stuff they want and want to give away. So people may come to you to pick stuff up, and save landfill space. You have to give something before you can get, a nice idea.

Good luck with the messes~Down

ps ~ anyone want some 1978 popular science magazines, lol?

[dalila]

<font color="green"> I have found flylady.com to be helpful, I have a long way to go to having a clean home but I do see some progress.</font>

wi........i've been trying for a week to remember "flylady.com"!! i'm glad someone else suggested it!..it helped me enormously!.hope it helps you too

[wi_fighter]

downsolong, we have several freecycle groups in the area. I should look into it again.

jmo, my cluttering isn't OCD related. Please don't paint all clutterers with the same brush. For instance, people who survived the Depression are often clutterers. It had nothing to do with OCD. It was a frugality thing. You couldn't AFFORD to throw things away.

1. Cleaning is last on my priority list.
2. Money is tight and if I had to pay $20 to replace something, I'd be up a creek without a paddle.

I don't save useless things like envelopes and scraps of paper that I didn't pay for. I hang on to things that I had to work hard to earn the extra money to pay for. It's a security thing and a cleaning thing. Some of us are obsessive-compulsive about NOT cleaning? If I was going to take a guess and give it a medical reason, I'd say ADD for me. No, maybe depression because the mess is overwhelming and I don't know where to start, so I just don't move. By the time I'm done working and taking care of everyone else, I'm too burned out to want to clean. Maybe it's chronic fatigue syndrome. Do we have to put a diagnosis to everything? A pill from the doctor isn't going to cure me of my cluttering and dislike of cleaning (I'd be freaked out if there was - sounds Stepford-wifish), but there is some emotional reasoning behind hanging on to things for me, so I thought this was the place to ask about it.

I have a NordicTrack that we paid $600 for, 14 years ago. It doesn't get used, it takes up space, and I feel guilty for not exercising. Once every few months or so I'll get on it for 5-10 minutes, thereby justifying keeping an expensive piece of equipment. I have two knitting machines and a ribber. One is 20 years old. I've never made anything with either of them. The instruction manual has been lost for the expensive one, and the other one I've never been able to get to work proprely. I've tried to locate an online manual with no luck, so I won't sell it or give it away since I have no instructions. I need to get over the thinking that everything I get rid of today will need to be replaced tomorrow at a greater cost that what I paid for it originally, especially if it's something I haven't used in years. Then I need to organize the things that don't get pitched. I also need to assert myself and get the kids to pitch in and not think they're going to hate me for asking them to help clean.

It's frustrating.

I checked out flylady. The first testimonial sounds EXACTLY like me. Having a whole day to clean but ending up watching TV or going out shopping to bring in more clutter. I just joined the site.

[darkeyes]

Cool Sounds like a great idea, when I get a chance I have to check that website out

Take care now,

DE

[wi_fighter]

Here's another dilema.

Lots of things that need to get pitched are in glass or plastic. If I take the time to clean everything out in order to put it in the recycle bins, it just doesn't get done. If I just toss the stuff, I'm left with guilt over choking the landfills with unnecessary waste. I usually end up tossing it in the regular trash so I can get it out of the landfill that is my house.

Anyone else ever faced with this mix of emotions? Doing what's best for you or what's best for the environment (which also affects you in the long run).

[wi_fighter]

I have a glassed in front porch and I told the kids I would get it cleaned out so they could use it to hang out in with friends this summer. I won't get quite so interrupted while I'm working, but they won't be running around town all day either.

I filled up half of my 90 gallon trash can with junk and took a trunk load of stuff too Goodwill. I have a Sebring and we've taken to calling the trunk "the cave" because it's so roomy. Sooo, it made a significant dent in cleaning out the porch. I even got rid of my knitting machines that I've had for over 20 years and never used for more than making sample swatches. (The manuals have gone missing and I can't locate replacements online).

I have a reptile aquarium and two wire cages that I'm going to donate to the animal shelter.

It's only a small dent in the entire household, but now that I've made a start I'm hoping to keep at it little by little.


Oh, I made my son bag up a pile of clothes that got ruined in a washing machine flood/cat incident after he pulled a not-too-smart stunt last week. It's been down in the basement for probably two years but I just kept walking around it instead of taking 15 minutes to deal with it. It seemed like just enough of a slightly unpleasant chore to stick my son with to make him think twice about biking 5 miles from home in the dark without telling anyone.

[(JD)]

WHHOOOO HOOOO! very good! I know you must feel good about yourself for this... at least I hope you do! This is a good accomplishment.

I agree about cluttering being an emotional issue that we don't really address much here at PC. It does have it's roots in issues of insecurity, pressures to not waste because we may want later if we do, etc. I know the generation that went through the depression ALL have this "hoarding" response.

I like the 'flylady's' suggestion of throwing out um 28? things each day... even if they are very small like old pencil tip eraser and rusty paper clip.
But this is a good thing you have done.

[h0kie]

Way to go!!!! I bet you feel great!

My mom and I are "spring cleaning". We're half done and the garage is full of trash bags to go out tomorrow.

We've never cleaned this fast. It's great! I'm so glad you have found some motivation! That's the hardest part for me. Every night, I ache but I love looking at all the clean rooms.

Don't lose that timer! Good for you!

[wi_fighter]

I just happened across this site when I was looking up how long to keep minor documents - light and phone bills, etc. - and it looks REALLY good. I just have to pass the address along to everybody.

http://www.lifeorganizers.com/

[Parker10]

Perhaps its time to call "Clean Sweep" !!! LOL I love to watch that TV show - and it amazes me at the clutter people have ! The lady on there says if u dont use something in 6 months, its a goner. She says if you (or your child) has too many stuffed animals, you have to choose a certain number to keep, the rest go to charity, etc. I have really learned alot of strategies for getting stuff outta my house (still have a long way to go tho !) from watching the show. I hear what u are saying tho, you want to get rid of it, sorta, but you just don't actually DO it. How about setting a date - perhaps a weekend, and you and the kids work at it together, and load up the car with what you can take to a consignment shop or to a charity, and once it has been taken there, treat yourselves to a nice dinner out or a movie........make it a family project with a reward ! (Might even up the stakes for the kids by saying whoever has the most boxes gets dessert - the other doesn't) . IF the clutter is bothering you, the longer it is in your house, the more it will bother you ! (The cat hair on the items in that box - take the top clothes outta the box that are covered in cat hair- and shut the box tight......that way you only have a few items to wash !)

With all that said - I REALLY need to clean up my craft room !!!!!!!! LOL

[January]

My goodness, all you people have been busy!!!!!!!!!!

I try to keep things straightened up, but if I'm not feeling well, resting helps me more than cleaning. I also don't have regular bedroom furniture other than a bed, so I have totes stacked in the bedroom. Actually there are three more stacked in a nook. At least they're green, which is my favorite color!

Cheers!!!!!!!

Jan