Welcome to the Blog--Again!

If you're visiting this blog for the first time, welcome! Please check out the archives for what you might be looking for. I spent years decluttering all kinds of things from multiple late relatives, two who grew up during The Great Depression. Post topics range from green decluttering to forgiveness to grief to facing your own clutter. At one point, I hired a professional organizer to help with a garage full of my relatives' things plus some other rooms full of their boxes I inherited. (It was worth having help--her brain worked in a way mine just didn't.) I've tried a lot of things and hope you'll find something helpful here. Some people come here from the Children of Hoarders site, which looks like it has an amazing wealth of information.

These days, I am mostly in the mode of dealing with my own items and trying to find sustainable routines to keep my own things from becoming disorganized. I still have some weird items hanging around, waiting for me to deal with them, like an antique family farm scythe (pretty sure it's from a grandparent's childhood farm) that I guess can go to Goodwill if not to some happy recipient at a family reunion. I have a collectible Edgar Rice Burroughs book (SO not feminist) that I mean to sell for maybe $10, yet I keep putting it off. I will need to let Half Price Books give me a piddly bid and just be done with the task hanging over my head.

As far as resources, I've been enjoying some videos and podcasts by Dana K. White at A Slob Comes Clean. The way her mind works makes sense to me, and she shows cluttered areas that look familiar.

Last night I heard a great 2016 interview on the Psychology in Seattle podcast with an expert on hoarding, Dr. Jennifer Sampson. She had some great insights about why the hoarding TV show's processes usually don't work long term; she also provided a lot of information that I hadn't already heard, and she seemed to have a lot of compassion for those who suffer from this disorder. I loved her and host Dr. Kirk Honda talking about her wanting to hold on to good boxes and packaging--I get it!

Hearing her interview reminded me that I needed to put up a welcome post for anyone stopping by my blog for the first time. One of the most powerful things she said was that hoarding disorder is much like an addiction--people are in recovery long term. I hope you are finding lots of help and support if you are on the journey, whether you had/have relatives facing this disorder and/or struggle with it yourself. As Dr. Sampson pointed out, more people than we realize have too much stuff, and it affects our lives in ongoing and sometimes major ways.

Sweet Moral Support

At brunch today a sweet, wise friend repeatedly offered to help me deal with my house-clearing/dehoarding stuff. She thinks I need to get it off my plate so I can move forward in other areas of my life. And yeah, the Fly Lady says that once you clean up your house, you figure out what to do with your life. I believe it, but man, it's hard to get motivated! I still feel pretty overwhelmed a lot of the time.

But the kindness of this offer revved me up! I don't have tons of projects that I can easily delegate to kind friends, but just the offer lifted me up some and reminded me that summer does not last forever...I might as well use the time to knock out some lingering clutter and make some posts on craigslist. I still have furniture to sell and an old computer lurking in the closet. I think I might still have my dad's tall camo snake boots. If I am really scared of snakes biting me in the country, then I need to get my own boots, right? Haven't used them in the last five years...probably not going to use them in the next five. Thrift store 'em. And those six or more boxes of Grandma's travel slides? I'm sorry, Earth, but 'tis the landfill for them. I can't mail them out to some artist. That's getting ridiculous. I've tried to be green most of the time, but at some point, it's the landfill or my garage. (And no, I'm not going to view them. I've seen enough paper photos to get the idea. She practically went everywhere but Antarctica and the North Pole.) All this verve and brainstorming just from a kind friend's insistence that I let her know in the next few weeks if I might need her help. 

As far as accepting friends' help, I'd say be careful. You don't want to strain a relationship with the tension of power struggles and "I don't think you should keep this" arguments. Yuck. When I did use a professional organizer twice, she clearly let me make most of the decisions as part of her method. She'd literally hold stuff up and look at me and ask, "Keep, toss, donate?" or something like that. Occasionally she'd voice her opinion, but it's important to feel that you are making decisions about your stuff. I appreciated that respect and freedom. I still needed her left-brained help and jump-starting organizational systems, but no, I don't want some Martha Stewart dictator coming in and shaming me into some method or process. And as the organizer said, it's better to NOT have a friend come in to do serious organizing. Not that it's a rule 100% of the time. I might take my sweet friend up on her offer if the project seems right. But as I look at the project as a giant, massive elephant, no, the entire thing is not a group project. However, it's not something to be done alone! We need people to help us in our struggles. Perhaps it's judging when to ask for help and who to invite in at the right times. (Side note: I once felt like my privacy was violated when a well-meaning friend decided to clean up my house while she was house-sitting. I felt like she must have looked at everything. No thank you!)

Anyways, I've been playing a lot of Bejeweled on the couch instead of remembering that taking care of my house will help clear my thinking about other parts of my life....so, some Bejeweled is okay, but it won't take long to post some stuff on eBay and craigslist either to get a better payoff  that will lead to more fun and lightness down the road...