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No get down and dirty real life - this is my life pictures? I have major clutter problems and NO drive to clean after a lifetime struggling with this issue. (I am 62) There are other things that I would much rather do, like artwork and gardening. Then when I am done with that I am too tired to do any housework. Life is just too short to spend so much time with this endeavor. But my main problem is lack of motivation and boredom. I really would just like to get someone to come in once a week and do the basics and live with the rest. DH is even worse than me, haven't figured out if that is good or bad. At least he is not always on my case about the state of things. I don't need organizing ideas or systems, what I need is to just do it.
I'm catching your drift.
I have been cluttering for about 15 years. That is how long I have had my own place. I have always been creative and messy. I suppose I will be thus til I draw my last breath.
I hope having someone to come in will help you. My Mom likes to have her girls haul stuff away. I would like to have my girls come and haul stuff away. Problem is, they all have clutter issues too. And they are too busy to come and haul stuff away.
The reason I want to stop this cluttering thing is that it is causing me too much work. I have to remove garbage bags and boxes of "treasures" in order to access the lawnmower, sewing machine, vacuum cleaner, etc. Not that I want to vacuum, sew, or mow. In fact, maybe that is why these things are traditionally hidden behind my bags'o'fun.
My DH is a sentimental clutterer. He moved around as a kid and 19 times in 21 years of Army life. So when he finally got his own place 15yrs ago, he decided he was going to keep whatever he wanted. So his stuff is off-limits to me and vise-versa. We have yard sales every few years, but it only clears out a little. And guess where the proceeds go? To other people's sales!
I have been sharing my problems on this site since March 09. It has been working. At a glacial pace, but I am slowly and surely reining myself in. Here is a good example:
We had to tear down our outdoor kitchen/BBQ cover. It had been tarted up with party lights, windchimes, trellises, etc. We built a new one in a very simple design and painted it a lovely shade of pumpkin. I love it just as is. I have no desire to clean off all those cobweb encrusted doo-dads and spend hours re-installing them. And then have to clean them whenever we throw a party. Now I just want to concentrate on the food for the party and to heck with all the cleaning and decorating. Ok, we still have to clean, but we won't have to clean 25 windchimes, if you get my drift.
I tried to play happy music in order to de-clutter, but I had to do so much re-arranging of stuff to plug in the boombox that I got disgusted and gave up. That's how it goes for me most of the time. But I'm really happy to be starting to de-clutter.
If your real problem is motivating yourself to declutter, my favorite trick is to just set the timer for 10 minutes and go work on an area until the timer goes off. When you're faced with a huge mountain of clutter, it's too hard to imagine the hours and hours (or days and days) it would take to get it cleaned up, but it's much easier to set a goal of just working on something for 10 minutes. If you do that every day (or a couple times a day if you can work yourself up to that) you'll be surprised at how much progress you can make. And anyone can find 10 minutes a day and still have plenty of time for gardening and other hobbies.
If the problem is emotional attachment to items and having a hard time throwing things out because of that, or if you're reluctant to throw things away because "you never know when you might need this", then what I usually suggest to people is go rent a storage space and take all the things you can't bear to throw away and put them in the storage space. That way you still have them, and if you do end up needing them you can go get them, but they're not cluttering up your house anymore. And when you start getting that monthly bill for the storage space, it can help you think more rationally about whether you really want those things enough that you want to pay every month in order to keep them.
Ok, Ok! You both have me cornered. I will play the first 4 songs of my happy music CD while I sort thru one garbage bag of stash. That is one bag in 15 minutes. Tomorrow morning. I won't get distracted. Let you know how it goes. I'd do it now, but it is scary in the shop at night.
It's scary anywhere with a bag of trash to sort...I finally figured out what happened to all of my laundry baskets - yep, stuff to sort...
It's even more of a challenge when you have a DH who yells when you throw anything away...I have "rented" a storage space in the basement for rubbermaid containers of these "don't touch" piles. Our basement is rather like a cobwebby dungeon, but it is fine for dead end storage like this.
I dont have a clutter problem,But we do live in a small house,and I collected baskets longaberger,depression glass and pottery.DH retired in 2000 and I told him Id stop collecting,well I did it,no remorse,no regret,i do not buy or bring any,so called chachkee home,i wanted new livrm furniture,I had a huge garage sale,just me,worked dilegently on it,I made 2249.00,kept telling myself less is more , less is more,less is more ,I got new furniture and it fit ,less baskets,less stuff,less stuff,less stuff.I feel for you ,but dig deep do you really need all that stuff,as you sort Imagine a clutter free closet,or bedroom corner,and when you need somthing you can find it,how great would that be.OK OK now I will tell you,I clean houses for a living,Iam an organizer,dont worry Iam not anal,there is laundry on the floor,cathair on the floor,the sheets need changed,and Iam playing on the pc,with my feet up!! no one pays me to clean here!!my house is a lot easier to clean without all the collectables,there is not anyone thing I got rid of that I even remotely miss,less is more .less is more,less is more.
I'm happy for you huggergirl, I really am. I would like to have someone come in once a week for a few hours, but to be honest, I am too embarassed by the state of affairs that I can actually see doing that.
Huckleberry, Sorry, I misread STASH for TRASH! ;>))) My DH actually goes ballistic when I sort through the piles of junk mail, magazines, newspapers, etc. he stores over most of the "living room" floor. I have had to learn to keep a laundry or sterlite box for the recent piles, and pile them up just in case he needs something. Then you take the earliest pile at the bottom (before the top one topples the whole pile) and quietly, without any fanfare, disappear it.
Caitlinsgarden, your DH sounds like my Dad. We would try to clean up the newspapers and junkmail and Dad would come home demanding to know what happened to last weeks Sears ad and we would have to retrieve it under a barrage of parental outrage. That has to be the #1 hardest reason for clutter to disappear. Tyranny! Hang in there and stick to your goals. Feel free to vent your frustrations here. OK?!
My DH gets mad at me when I try to de-clutter him when I haven't de-cluttered myself yet.
Huggergirl, congratulations for earning $2,249.00! from your sale of treasures. It is important to have a non-clutterer sharing wisdom with we clutterbugs. Nearly everyone I know has too much stuff, even those with almost no money. It is wonderful to know that Less really can be More. I have seen it. Now I have to believe it. Help us believe it by telling us how nice it is to relax without nagging ourselves that we should be dusting knick-knacks or cleaning closets.
He comes by it naturally. His mother was a world class "saver". She threw nothing away. And I really mean nothing. She used to keep the books for the farm and things would inevitably get lost among the piles of newspapers, etc. DH would have to go in and try to find things in the mess, sorting out some of the newspapers, etc to disappear, and she would be in tears, threatening to call the sherrif if he wouldn't leave her stuff alone...
Thank you for saying I can vent here; I have actually made some progress since I started to post here!
I wonder if the "saver" trait is passed to us genetically or by observation. Or maybe I'm just copping out by saying that I have a "'saver' gene". What do y'all think?
JuneyBug Dongducheon CpCasey South Korea (Zone 4b)
I am absolutely sure that it is inherited.
I looked up as much as I could find on it when my DH started hoarding. The gene kicks in around the age of 50 for those that were not raised that way. That is what happened to him. I was raised by folks that never threw anything "useful" away and loved gadgets and God forbid that you got rid of those clothes! They will be back in style in 15 years! I have never had any air-space in my closets or storage areas in my entire life until this winter when I started decluttering. My MIL filled her entire house with crafting projects and stuff that she was "going to make money on in a yard sale". For her, it started in her late 50's, I'd guess.
My Sister and I had a funny conversation about this at Easter. What a hoot that the eldest brother was clearing out his garage and couldn't throw some stuff away because "it had been Mom's" Including a coffee can... As my Sweet Sis is a Katrina/Rita victim, she took it all in a heartbeat and then began wondering at how we were raised to have such strong emotional attachments to "stuff". I had come to the reunion with a fully packed van of stuff that had been set aside through the years by our parents and all the knowledge that I had gleaned from the internet about hoarding and emotional attachments to objects. We were able to give the young 'uns a lesson in letting stuff rule your life and the warning that this is genetic so to be on the lookout for it happening to them. My parents were born in the teens, so they spent their teens and young adult lives in the depression and learned to never, ever throw something away that could be useful. As I am a late life baby, I never knew them when they were not folks with closets bursting at the seams. It was "normal" to me that the barn was 1/2+ full of stuff and 1/2 or less for the animals.
DH and I are now running "lean" households and will be on the lookout for any more signs of this in each other. (!If this house ever sells so that I can go to live with him!)
Hot Dog! hope you get some quality de-cluttering time in. Don't neglect to de-clutter and clean some of your own mess, or it will look like you are just a pot calling the kettle black.
I believe there is a hoarding gene. Think of the generations of our ancestors who made it thru lean times and migrations and just plain'ol winters. They risked their lives going to the store for a part or food and squirrelled away all they could. At least I imagine that's how it went. I also have a "hibernating" gene. It seems like a natural cycle, for people who survived the temperate, seasonal climates. Up and at'em in the spring and fall. Down and out in the heat of summer and the cold of winter. My moods and energy levels are very influenced by the weather. I must think all this stuff is acorns!
I do grow and preserve all the food I can. Part of my de-cluttering goal is to get rid of all the goofy stuff I have that distracts me from this main labor of love.
I can see the floor! (One room only, but a big clutter room!) Today I clean the floor...Any kind of progress fosters hope, and it is easier to keep going once you have a little hope!
JuneyBug, I re-read you last post several times. My parents grew up in large families when they had to "make do". They scrimped and saved so they could put a large family through college, and retire with dignity. My dad had more projects going on his place than carter had liver pills. I guess if he got bored with one, or it frustrated him he'd go to work on another. He loved to read and had books and magazines all over the place. We recently sent his collection of OLD National Geographics to the goodwill. I guess a collector will find them there. When his arthritis got bad he had to move to a warmer climate. And that's kind of when it got really bad - or seemed to get really bad. He moved from the country to the city - he had a stroke a year later and wanted to keep the house. It would be "good therapy for him to do the projects in the house". But he never did any projects - he just kept the parts for them.
Now my mom is a terrible housekeeper. She doesn't throw stuff away because it's too far for her to walk all the way through the kitchen to the trash can in the laundry room. She has stuff piled up on the table worse than my dad ever did, and it will be scarey to clean her home when she is gone.
My heart was broken again yesterday when my DIL said she didn't want the brand new very expensive beanpod candles that I found in an unopened box; they don't need them. (We moved here almost 2 years ago.) My son used to love them and so I spent the afternoon in a cobalt blue funk. When my husband came home he very delicately reminded me that I have hualed several van loads of stuff from here that I didn't want. So wasn't it okay that they don't want my stuff? I'm still trying to answer my son's question, "Why do you old people keep all this crap?"
You know, I think it is actually something we have as a natural instinct; to save, to hoard against the coming winter or drought or famine. It is only with the rise of the new consumer society where there is just so much stuff out there everywhere that it has become a problem. My grandmother was always a saver; she just didn't have the extra money to throw away on all of the stuff that I do. It was a virtue to save, to mend, to make do.
We came home from our last trip, and I had a ton of change in my purse. I got out the paper coin rolls and began gathering up our loose change. DH saw me working away, went over to his prize stash of State Quarters and added them to the pile. We had a blast counting and rolling it all up. Deposited $62.00 in the bank the next morning.
Baby Steps.
I hope you are getting some happiness in your de-cluttering project. Keep in touch!
Glad I found this thread and others like me. I hate cleaning.. or should I say, I like cleaning when it's done.. lol! I never want people to come over because it's a mess but can't seem to motivate to cleaning it. I hate it dirty and really hate clutter. Funny thing is, after cleaning my mom's house out, I vowed I would never have such a mess... the other day, I went up over my garage and it looked like a bomb went off up there... what happened? Did the stuff start reproducing? I'm afraid of the "gene" for this as my mom seemed to be a packrat. I have always been of the "give it or throw it mentality" myself but still the stuff is accumulating. I'm just starting to rid myself of Longaberger baskets (which I never use) by listing them on Ebay... I've been inspired now to get rid of something today! lol! Anyways, nice to meet you all... my name is Lisa...
I seem to be a natural born messie. I have a streak of thriftiness and just recently realized that "YES, I can afford not to buy stuff." My mom frequently says, " You can't afford NOT to buy that." If I can't easily store it, have more of it, won't use it, and can live without it, then I need to leave the stuff on the shelves. Even IF it's free!
It's hard for me to say no to adding to my collections. And I argue with myself at every turn. I love living with less, but have not always done so. It really helps me if I just stay out of the stores.
Just start with small parts of your room. Start with one little drawer. Do another one the next day. Those people on TV who empty a whole room out and only bring back a few things have professional help. You and I are real people. Just do a little bit at a time. And don't listen to the lies that are in your head. Like you might need it someday...
I think messies are like alcoholics. We can get it cleaned up and nice, but the desire to add to it is still there and we have to fight those urges all our lives. Keep us posted on your progress.
