Conquering Clutter

[Guest guest]

interesting article! I don't think you have to be a senior to go thru this. In my house we call them "collections." LOL. And yes, they are all mine, unfortunately!

 

cyndi

 

 

http://www.aarpmagazine.org/lifestyle/conquer_clutter.html

 

[Guest guest]

interesting article! I don't think you have to be a senior to go thru this.

In my house we call them " collections. " LOL. And yes, they are all mine,

unfortunately!

 

cyndi

 

 

http://www.aarpmagazine.org/lifestyle/conquer_clutter.html

***************

Oh, I loved this article Cyndi, thanks for sharing!

I've passed it on to someone I know who is going through this with her

hubby....he just retired and had to emtpy his sales office. She's having a

hard time getting him to throw anything away.....so her house is now filled

with it all.

 

I found this part very enlightening....

" Frost once speculated that adults who exhibited such behavior were

responding to childhood poverty, but the studies did not bear this out. He

did discover, however, a different background issue-a link to emotional

deprivation and the level of warmth expressed in the family during

adolescence. " That makes me think I am right on the money with the root of

why I clutter/hoard. I always thought that my mom had this hoarding problem

b/c she grew up poor. But it's probaby more b/c her father was an alcoholic

and when she was a teenager, her mother went to work long hours at a sales

job to support the family.....absent mother, distant father due to his

disease.....I can see this as the seed being sown now.

 

I do think this propensity for clutter is genetic. Both my brothers have

it....my mother had it in spades. One brother still has everything he has

every owned since he was a kid. My oldest brother never married and has

lived in the same house his whole adult life. I don't see him ever leaving

unless there is a tag on his toe, if you know what I mean.lol Since he has

no kids, I am already preparing myself to deal with what he leaves behind

for us to clean up.

 

Over the last few years, I've been systematically trying to declutter my

home. Salvation Army, Freecycle and eBay are my Best friends!lolol

2 yrs. ago, I finally let go of boxes of baby clothes from when my kids were

babies. At the time, my oldest was 13, my youngest was almost 9 and my

babymaking days were well past me! I've been carting these things around

for 8 yrs with the rationalization that someday my kids could use them for

my grandbabies. Well, by the time grandkids do happen, IF they happen,

these spit up on rags will be moth eaten! After I pulled out 1 or 2 outfits

they each wore, I was able to finally let go of box after box of baby

clothes. I think that was my hardest thing to declutter.....

 

And don't think that your personal hoarding/cluttering doesn't impact other

people. If you don't impinge on others now, you will after you are gone.

When my mom died, among all the stuff she left, she bequeathed my daughter a

closet FILLED with porcelain and barbie collectible dolls. My mom was dirt

poor til she was 14....lived in an actual log cabin with a dirt floor, the

whole 9 yds. They didn't have money for dolls so in her last years, she

bought her childhood. It made me sick to see all the money she had spent on

these things(money, that she couldn't really afford either!)and she never

even enjoyed. They were all still sealed in their shipping boxes stuffed in

a closet.....she never even looked at most of them, forget about displaying

them!

Besides the financial waste, I also had more crap to add to MY pile of stuff

AND my daughter, except for a brief time when she was 5 yr. old, has always

hated dolls!lolol When she turned 12, we had a heart to heart about the

doll collection from grandma and together decided to keep a couple of them

and have me sell the rest and put that money away for her for college. I

still have some dolls left to sell but have turned most of grandma's stash

into something that will be much more useful for my daughter.

I finally see that it's important not to hoard/clutter too as those left

behind have to deal with your stuff when you are gone. That simple thought

motivates me more to declutter. I remember that it will be a more loving

thing not to burden my kids with the task of disposing of tons of my clutter

when I die.

 

Sorry if I've rambled on....I'll shut up now.....

sluggy