If you want good boxes, got to a print/copy shop like Kinko’s. The boxes their paper comes in are nice sized, sturdy, and have lids rather than flaps. Great for putting stuff in. They even look nicer than your typical brown cardboard box.
Thanks for the support guys, and especially, thanks for the hugs. I can always use a hug.
I really don’t have any local friends close enough that they would help with this. I led a largely isolated life growing up and hnestly, never learned the social skills to make friends. My mother always wanted to live in isolation; she never liked people (I don’t think she liked ME all that much but that’s another story…) so I was not allowed to have my friends from school over. I was not allowed of leave our property to play with the neighborhood kids. They were allowed to come play on my front porch, but they would bore quickly and leave me alone again. My best friends were always my dogs. And so it continues today.
As for a social worker or church… I don’t attend any church. And quite honestly, have NO idea where to begin looking for help. The instances I have saught out assistance for something Ihave run into one brick wall after another. I am unemployed at this time and have been looking into whatever aide is out there. I am diabetic and need my medication, which I am not able to afford now; I was told by someone that they thought I might be able to get medicaid or medicare… When I contacted them I was told very snippily that I would only qualify if I had children or was pregnant. WTF? I have to have children (that I don’t want!!) to get help? I guess only people with kids matter in this world.
Anyway… that was a little off topic LOL…
What is the best way to clean books that have a heavy layer of dust/dirt on them? Simply disting them doesn’t seem enough, and I don’t want to get them wet. Any suggestions? The bookcase woudl be a good start…
Interesting thread. My wife has hoarder tendencies, we are always arguing about the necessity to get rid of stuff we are not ever going to use, maybe I’ll try to get her to read the thread.
I vacuum the top of my books, to be honest! And the bookcase itself. I use the brush attachment on my vacuum.
PapSett, another child of a packrat here. My story isn’t as bad as yours, but I know the overwhelming feeling of facing the huge accumulation of stuff and not knowing where to begin.
I’d moved back home after my mother got diagnoses with Alzheimer’s, and was appalled at how bad things had gotten. I mean, she was never a good housekeeper – that didn’t interest her, she spent her time working for various clubs and charitable causes – but after my father died and the children were out of the house, I guess any pressure to clean up/throw away had vanished.
What worked for me was
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carving out a few places that were tidy, as a refuge. I think you’ve already done this with your kitchen and bathroom, so pat yourself on the back! I think the next step might be to concentrate on your bedroom. Psychologically, you will feel much better when you go to sleep, and wake up! in a tidy room. I’d even go so far as simply shifting clutter to another room if that’s what it takes to turn your bedroom into a pleasant refuge quickly. Yes, you’ll eventually have to sort through that stuff, but for now toss it into a box, label where it came from, and stack it into some other room.
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I created a ‘contract’ with myself. Instead of feeling so overwhelmed by the job that I couldn’t even start – which I very easily could have – I actually wrote down a contract. Mine said that I would work on decluttering for 25 minutes, then take a five minute break with a drink/snack, followed by a second 25 minute session. After that I’d take 5 minutes to haul boxed/bagged discards out to the garage and then I was DONE for the day. And, what’s really important for being able to make myself start, I stuck to the terms strictly. I got a timer and would set it for 25 minutes, and stop the instant it went off.
No “just a few more minutes.” No “I’ll just finish this box.” Because this way I knew that my just one hour of working on this could expand and that would weaken my will to start. I knew that I only had to do an hour – less in fact, because I’d get a break, and got to quit ‘early’ and that made it much, much easier to tackle the job.
And I think I actually got the entire job done faster than I would have if I’d spent hours and hours at a time working on it, because one hour a day works out to more time than five hour marathons a couple times a month.
Anyway. You might well want different ‘terms’ (Half an hour each weekday, one hour Saturday, and Sunday off?) but I suggest setting up a not-too ambitious contract with yourself and treating yourself ‘fairly’ might make it much easier for you.
Good luck!
Thanks Sandra! Good idea!
I am proud to announce that this morning I have gathered up all the dog stuffies and tossed thm in the washer, and gathered up a large leaf-sized trash bag full of junk and moved it to the trash outside. It’s a baby-step to be sure, but it’s a STEP.
That’s awesome! How are you feeling right now?
Sounds like good advice to me. Good luck and best wishes to any Dopers beset by clutter!
Vacuuming works, sometimes. Other times, you need to spray a paper towel LIGHTLY with window cleaner, and gently wipe it across the book. Don’t try this with valuable books, but if they’re just books that you want to keep, or books that you’re going to sell/give away, this is frequently the best way to do it.
After you get one shelf clean, then you can start vacuuming it on a regular basis.
Actually… I feel pretty damned good! I mean, physically, my back is screaming at me and I am TIRED… but even THAT little bit cleared out a noticable bit of space in my living room.
Unfortumately, no matter HOW much crap I get rid of, as long as this carpeting in on the floor, my house will not mbe fit for guests. And there is NO WAY I can afford to have it taken out and tile put down, which is what I want. And I am not in the physical shape to be able to do it myself, with my severe arthritis. But I will keep plugging on to see how far I can get.
The goal I am setting for myself is 1 bag of trash gone each day at the very minimum. If I can do more, great. If not, well, that’s 1 more bag of trash out of the house, right?
Have the dogs gone to the loo on the carpet, or is it just general doggy smell that’s permeated into it?
I believe you can rent a carpet steam cleaner for not too much money. It wouldn’t fix the carpet, but it would probably improve it noticeably. Then when you get more income you could have it professionally cleaned–it doesn’t cost that much if it’s not a large area like a whole house.
If there’s a lot of dog pee soaked into it, it’s probably gotten into the carpet pad as well. But there’s still a lot you can do to improve the situation without replacing the whole thing.
I’m a naturally messy person and I live in fear of becoming overwhelmed with the mess. Although I don’t like Flylady’s constant emails, I do find her philosophy and ideas very helpful. Tackling a little bit at a time, every day, really makes a huge difference in those piles. So best wishes, PapSett.
If it’s just smelly from not having been regularly vacuumed, etc, then give it a really good vacuum (vacuum till you think it’s clean then keep going for another five minutes), sprinkle it liberally with baking soda then go to bed. In the morning, give it another really good vacuum.
I’ve been following this thread with interest from the beginning but have been kind of afraid to post. Anyway, I’m not really a clutterer/hoarder now, but I think I had strong leanings that way in the past, and I still feel like I am fighting a constant battle to avoid getting sucked back into it again.
Right now, mostly having been inspired by starting this thread, most of the rooms in our house are pretty well tidy and clean. My (and my husband’s) bedroom is a good level 1-verging-into-2, though, as is our “office/junk” room. The garage is almost completely unusable at the present time due to empty cardboard boxes that MrWhatsit refuses to let me get rid of, because we might need to use them to pack something in. I would say that I am not making this up, but I know you all believe me. I actually went out there a few months ago and started trying to make a dent in the huge pile of boxes and god knows what else might be stuck down in there, and he came out and saw what I was doing and started saying, “Oh, not that box, that one is good-- and look, that one is really big, it’s hard to find the really big boxes.” However, it’s the garage and nobody has to live out there, so I am not fighting that battle currently and am saving my energy for the house proper.
Before we had kids, I would say that our house was definitely a level 2, based on the pictures in the OP’s link. We didn’t have pets or we probably would have been a level 3 as well. There were stacks and piles of stuff everywhere. Unopened mail, comic books, old pictures, books, magazines, newspapers, pizza coupons, pizza BOXES, etc. I distinctly remember never being able to rinse anything out in the sink because the sink was already full of dirty dishes. Now, we did do the dishes but, I’m embarrassed to say, nowhere near on a daily basis. A co-worker of mine came to our house one day to help me set up my VPN access and asked us if we were moving soon, because there were so many cardboard boxes filled with crap all over the place.
Anyway. Once we had kids, we (well, I’ll admit, mostly I) pulled it together and made things livable. Over the years I’ve put a lot of routines and systems into place so that things never get really bad. Dishes are done after every meal; floor is swept daily; vacuuming is done weekly at a minimum; toys and clutter are picked up daily; newspapers go into the recycling as soon as they are read, or the day after they are delivered, whichever comes first; etc. So our house is not too bad.
But still. I just spent three hours this morning going through our bedroom and pulling out outgrown baby clothes from when our youngest, now 2, was a newborn, and a shelf full of books that were just scattered around aimlessly, and frankly just a bunch of trash. MrWhatsit has a habit of emptying out the pockets of his work pants and shirts and leaving the contents strewn over our dresser. There are receipts, coins, stuff I don’t even know what it is, etc. It just accumulates, and we have a largeish family (3 kids) and a largeish house, and it’s really tough for me to keep up with everything.
Anyway. I don’t know if I want commiseration or advice, or what. Like I said, our house isn’t too bad, but I always feel like it could be better. I know for a fact that my mom’s insanely neat-freak boyfriend (well, ex-boyfriend now, for unrelated reasons) refused to visit our house because he felt it wasn’t neat enough. Now, he WAS a freak, but still, that kind of thing makes me completely neurotic. I spent days cleaning my house after I heard that one. But still, there’s little piles of stuff accumulating here and there, and it’s like playing whack-a-mole. You get rid of one pile and another one pops up somewhere else.
Bah.
Hey, if you can reach the bookcase it’s not as bad as some of the people in the thread! 
Another vote for vaccuum the books; for maintenance what I do is move the books to the nearest table, dust the shelf and then dust each book with the same rag as they go back on the shelf. That’s every few months, but then, it’s been a long time since I last lived in a dusty location. The top of the books isn’t as clean as the bottom but heck, some of them are over 100 years old.
Starting with the books means you can also make a pile “for Goodwill” (or the local public library) and one “for the recycling”. Set a limit date: if you haven’t taken the “give away” books to wherever by that date, they get put in the recycling. I hate destroying books as much as the next bookworm, but there really wasn’t any reasons to keep my father’s law school books, given that Spain got itself a new Constitution since he went there.
Yeah, I call that “housewife syndrome:” I’ve had clients who were working in Maintenance after having been Production and they had the same complaint. Plus too often when you’re doing that kind of stuff, you only get feedback in the form of someone yelling “my machine broke, fix it now!” or “mac’n’cheese again?”
yes, unfortunately the dogs have used the carpet as their private indoor potty on occasion. It started with my dad’s 4 dogs, who went wherever they pleased, so of course MY dogs followed suit.
The bad thing is… my vacuum cleaner died; all I have now is one of those mini mite things, a portable, not nearly strong enough to do any good at all. And there is no way I can afford to even rent a cleaner; last time I did, it was like $42. So as far as the carpet goes, I am screwed.
And, to quote Ms Whatsit: it’s like playing whack-a-mole. You get rid of one pile and another one pops up somewhere else.
Exactly. This is EXACTLY how I feel. And I live alone. Go figure.
After reading this thread, I was inspired last night to:
-Toss out two bags full of the unused cosmetics my mom keeps giving me (she’s a hoarder - she buys food she doesn’t need and makeup she’ll never use because she “hates to run out of things”)
-Break down and recycle a huge pile of boxes my husband has been meaning to get to since May
-Clean out the dishwasher, which has been full of clean dishes for the last week and load it with the filthy dishes my husband had left around the house (I had been refusing to because they weren’t “my” tasks)
-Thoroughly vacuum and clean the carpet in the cats’ room (the basement no longer smells after the cleaning and a thorough airing)
-Fold the piles of our son’s laundry
-Clean all the crap from on top of my dresser, which serves as a recepticle for anything my husband wants to take out of his pockets, and the top of the bathroom vanity
Even though it’s not a ton of work, it has made a huge dent already. And as a side bonus, my husband was “inspired” to not drape clothes on top of me while he got ready for bed last night. He actually hung up his pants and shirt this time, even though I was asleep and couldn’t nag him not to freakin’ dump clothes on me.
Are you a member of your local Freecycle group? You could probably nab a vacuum cleaner for free!
In my experience, Freecycle is kind of a mixed blessing for people with a clutter problem. On the one hand, it’s a great way to get rid of stuff without feeling like you’re wasting it unnecessarily by throwing it away. On the other hand, it’s an even greater way to accumulate piles upon piles upon piles more junk in your house - but it’s FREE!
Anyway. I’m not knocking Freecycle, just suggesting to be careful that if you use it, you don’t use it as a vehicle to accumulate more junk.
Agreed. I got a mini-fridge off Freecycle a few years ago and it worked out beautifully, exactly the way Freecycle is supposed to work: that lady was just as excited to get several cubic feet of her garage back as I was to get the fridge.
…counts on fingers…
Dear Og, that was over five years ago now – and the damn thing still works! Thank you, anonymous Fridge lady!
That’s the best-case scenario with Freecycle, or even Craig’s List for that matter. If you’re a clutterer/hoarder, you want to be that anonymous Fridge lady: excited about getting some space back for yourself.
To then fill with other crap. 