General Chat

Or do you get stuck thinking "maybe I should keep this in case it comes in handy"?

Aside from paperwork ( how long to keep), clothes ( I don't have many and they only go when completely worn out ), books ( fairly easy, did I enjoy and will I read again) I am stuck on deciding on material and crafty things. I bought a sewing machine years ago with the intention of 'sometime' using up interesting bits of material, maybe to make Christmas stockings. But now I have a lot of pain in both hands from carpal tunnel and arthritis I don't see me being able to do it, but am loathe to part with the 'idea' as such.

It would make more room if the things weren't here but...

Any thoughts? do you also struggle to accept your limitations lol.

The problem with de cluttering is that it involves tidying up. So you end up not knowing if the thing you are looking for has gone to a better home or you just can’t remember where you tidied it up to. :-D

There is that namelessone. I know I do sometimes go looking for things I must have got rid of when I moved 15 years ago but still think 'must be here somewhere'.

Nightmare :-0
All that fabric with good intentions lying unused for years :-(
My mother was absolutely the worst for clutter, I'm surprised the house walls didn't bow :-0

I used to be good at keeping clutter tidy as I worked from home in a 9'x11' room. don't know how I managed.
Now I have a 3 bed 2 recep house with two persons clutter to cull. My partner passed away a year ago so de-cluttering is a very daunting prospect.
Where does it all come from is my question.

Paper - can't even burn it on the stove because it flutters :-|

Island I am very sorry for your loss. It's especially difficult to let go when there is that emotional attachment to the items also.

Clutter does seem to expand to fill the space available to it that's for sure. When my son ran a business from home I swore that mobile phones he bought and re-sold were breeding in the spare room. Mostly gone now but still a lot of 'bits', packaging and cables and things that need to go, when he has time.

As I am getting older and wiser and have moved twice in 3 years recently, I have become a bit ruthless with decluttering. This house is notable smaller than the privately rented 3 bed house I was living in with an attic space to die for...so huge.

So I went through every box and decided anything I'm not using like old xmas tree decs, old birthday cards(just general) and other general stuff all went to the bin or charity shop.

I have now just 2 large plastic storage boxes with all my say memories/souvenirs that I do want to keep. I have a sewing machine and put all my material into a cool bag and into another all my wool. It fits on the shelf in ,my wardrobe all tidy.

I shred paperwork now on a monthly basis to keep my filing cabinet in order.

I have come to realise that should I pop my clogs tomorrow, my children really wouldn't want old cards from 50 years ago! So I have now condensed everything to make life easier for them when my time is up.

Old keyrings which were holiday souvenirs ...all gone, belong to the past!

I have now just what I need and less of what I don't actually need.

After my mum passed last July, it was a thankless task of going through 85 years of nic nacs, clothes and photos. My mother was a hoarder and so thankful she lived in a small flat but it still took weeks to go through it all.

Yep we all need to be a bit more ruthless!

Florence in the hebrides

Florence, moving does make you focus. My brother and his wife have lived in the same house for 40 + years and they started de-cluttering by necessity when his MIL died and they ended up with a lot of things as well as their own. He says that he really does not want to leave so much for his children to have to sort out.

I've told my son that if he want's something when I'm gone to keep it and if he doesn't not to feel guilty if he then gets rid of it.

Rose mobile phones struck a nerve. You May remember Tony used to mend, buy and sell old mobiles. When he died there was a large drawer full of all the bits. They have now been disposed of but I still have a lot of chargers.

I did manage to take his clothes to a person who lives near me who collects things for several charities. But I still have stuff in the garage that he hoarded, loads of tools including some that belonged to my dad and he died in 2001.

Ah yes Ann I remember you saying about Tony's mobile phones. Dan has chargers left also, they are on ebay and going maybe one a week on average. There's a couple of monitors and keyboards that need to be sold as well. Quite a lot has gone from the garage, mainly boxes.

One of my siblings used to hoard everything, it drove our Mum mad as she ran out of cupboard space to store it all.

I have books that I'm loathe to get rid of ................ I re-read with the idea of passing the book on, but then put it back on the shelf!

But worse of all ......... I have trouble negotiating the basement area that is OH's office.

He had 5 (FIVE) offices on the university campus when he officially retired at the end of 2003. He was then asked to stay on mainly unpaid but also every now and again becoming "interim something-or-other" for pay, until he was finally asked to give up his last office in 2018.

Every time he closed an office, there was furniture (desk, chairs, filing cabinets, etc) as well as files, books and papers to be moved somewhere. At the beginning it was from one office to another, but gradually the available space got winnowed down and it began to come home ............. not just the files and books but filing cabinets and boxes of ?????. Luckily he didn't bring a desk home, but he did bring home a very nice desk chair that we had bought. He wasn't "stealing" anything from the university, because the things that came home had been bought many years before on special money from outside and the university did not want them.

But the worse came when a) he was asked to write a history of the Botany Dept. and then a history of the Science Faculty, b) he was asked to write a history of the Botanical Garden, and c) he was asked to go through all the files left by a very productive faculty member whose assistant had saved at least 5 copies of every draft of every paper or book the prof had written.

Some of that stuff went back as he finished with it, but there's still one heck of a lot down there, and there is little space to walk.

I keep asking him to get rid of it, or who do I phone to come and collect it!

Then there is the workshop area, with his tools, his father's tools, a circular saw, etc etc etc.

Or the storage shelves with our stuff, extra glasses, crockery and whatever, as well as still some of the daughter's left behinds ................ There may even be some of our university books or work books, or even a few 6th form essays, etc :-0

We won't even mention the clothes that I have tucked away at the back to the closet that are so far out of fashion it isn't funny or that haven't fitted me in many years, but they still have a meaning to me! I have been pretty good over the years about getting rid of clothes, but these ...................

Sylvia, sounds like a very interesting basement :-)

We have 7 small filing cabinets courtesy of Dan's work office who were having a refit amd sold them at a pittance to anyone who wanted some ( proceeds to charity) , plus 2 cabinets ( 1 in the garage one in the house) which is fine as they are useful, but they've filled the gaps that would have given us more space. And because he worked from home through covid and can do so now at times, he has a stand up motorised desk for the work monitors etc, in his room which he refers to as "The hovel" , it isn't actually, it's very tidy, but quite full.

Well with the chargers Rose, I have not really got any idea what they are for, although I did find a spare phone charger for my Iphone so that was good. Basically they sit there while various members of the family dig around if they need one. and yes there are keyboards, at least one of those found a home when one grandson visited recently.

As it is all in what was his office I usually forget it all exists but every so often........

My granny was a hoarder :-S
My mum and I were interested in genealogy.
We threw a lot out when gran died, but some stuff couldn't be thrown out
Mum took some stuff, I took a little.
Mum died. I ended up with everything.

By 'everything' I mean love letters between my grandparents, letters my great uncles sent during the war. Birthday and Christmas cards - one dating back to 1872,. I have menus from the SS Empire Windrush (my parents and brother came back on this), menus from SS Devonshire :-S

I've also got the tea set my g grandad brought back from China for his sister, my g grans Victorian piano stool, my gran's HMV gramophone, g gran's home-made sewing table.
True, there are boundless postcards, 78 gramophone records - but they go well with my (not working) bakelite radio, and my art deco bed.

I thought I'd lost the Astrakan collar and fox fur granny had (I don't approve - but they're there) when I moved, but it seems my daughter took them for me, and can't wait to bring them back!!

Add to that my own collection of tin toys, old bottles and books - this isn't clutter - it's history! :-D

Definitely not clutter Maggie. Who will keep it after you have gone?

I accumulated boxes in the loft for items bought that needed to be returned in their original packaging in case of problems under the guarantees

We needed to clear the loft because we were having the house electrics rewired and it was omg why do we have all this crap in the loft on a just in case needed basis

Many of the boxes were for items long gone anyway !

I say i.m not a hoarder but in fact it’s surprising how much I do keep “just in case “ and
“ too good to throw away “

But !! After a year I did suddenly say I,m ready to sort out hubby’s clothes and give to charity which I know he would have absolutely wanted

Having now sorted all of mums things which has taken 8 months, I now do worry about father's things as he not only has his own stuff(hoards of it) but everything my grandparents had as he is an only child and he just wrapped all their china etc and stored it in the attic. he has never sorted any photos, letters, docs so the enormity of what's to follow is already a nightmare especially when you live 900 miles away.

Trouble is, my grandparents had lovely furniture but as much as i would dearly love to keep say the welsh dresser, I simply do not have space in this house!

When the time comes, I will have to go down for 3 months at a time and just painstakingly declutter bit by bit.....what a thought.

But apart from my daughter, son wouldn't be interested in old things so who do I give things to? Its a house of history as Maggie said from 1911 to present day but also, my grandparents have their family history from before that too like their parents so a huge task to deal with.

At least all my things are in order :-)

Florence in the hebrides

Ann, one of my nephews is 'into' genealogy - and a grandchild may be interested in the future.
Otherwise, the local Records Office, various museums etc may show an interest.

I've already sent a couple of things that belonged to my mother's husband off to museums - after asking his family if they wanted them (they didn't).

I suppose without someone else's 'clutter' a lot of museums would not have so much to show us.

Strangely I have just had a conversation with my OH along these lines:

Him: I am going to work in the garage. I need to sort out all those jars of screws and things

Me: Well, I think we ought to have a good clear out and declutter the garage. It's not fair to leave it for the kids to do when we go.

Him: They'll probably just dump most of it at the tip.

Me: So why can't we do that gradually over the next couple of months and save them the job.

Him: Well, some of it might still come in handy.

Ever had the feeling you are going round in ever decreasing circles? Apparently we now have another jar on the shelves. This one now contains bolts that don't have matching nuts! Give me strength. He is coming up 86. How much more diy is he going to do?