I’ve seen a few stories like this on the Dope, but I thought I’d share mine. Partly to brag (let’s be honest), but partly because my experience may be helpful to other Dopers.
I’ve told the story of my late alcoholic husband on here before, but in keeping that story short I didn’t describe how bad our flat had got by the point I threw him out.
I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder, keeping too much stuff for sentimental reasons. This was fine when I was in my teens, but when you’re in your forties and have been in the same flat for over tweny years, that adds up to an awful lot of stuff. Add to that the state of my marriage and the state of my husband, and things had got really, really bad. Probably level 2 squalor. Certainly CHAOS (can’t have anyone over syndrome). There was no way I would let anyone in the place.
Piles and piles of stuff. Clothes in piles on the floor because the (broken) wardrobe was full of old junk. Piles of newspapers, catalogues and junk mail. Clutter all over the coffee table. Dust everywhere. Mould growing on the bedroom walls. The awful decor and sixties fireplace that were in the lounge when we moved in back in 1988 still there twenty years later - just dirtier. Ancient fusebox, old inefficient boiler, electric shower barely working. Just listing it makes me shake my head yet again at how bad it had got - and how I was in despair at just not knowing where to start.
Well, it’s been nearly three years, several phases of work, a fair bit of money getting professional tradesmen in and an awful lot of effort, but I can honestly say that as of this week, my lounge does truly look like a picture out of Better Homes and Gardens Magazine. My kitchen is stunning. My bedroom is somewhere that’s fun to be.
I am so happy. I feel liberated, energised, and looking forward to hosting the next girls’ night.
(Old thread alert, for those who don’t want to bump a zombie thread!) You might find the old thread Ask the Adult Child of a Hoarder/Clutterer to be interesting as well.
What did you do for the trash haul-off? My local trash service only lets us have one 34-gallon can per week (not including recyclables) for the two-flat house I live in, and an extra fee (plus the need to buy special tags) for each additional bag/item/whatever above that. My sister-in-law used to live on the other floor and left behind a whole lot of crap, years ago, that I doubt will ever actually be claimed by her after many broken promises of when she’d come get it. I’d wanted to toss it before but heard ‘no no, I’ll get it’ and have gradually been tossing the most trash-like bits over time. Plus we have some clutter I want to throw away as well.
Was it a bit every day, or rent a huge dumpster and get a shovel, a combination of both? Any charity donations or was it all too trashy?
It was very gradual. I live in a third floor flat (no elevator), and for the first couple of weeks after I threw my husband out I had a rule where I never left the house without taking a bin bag with me. My street has large communal bins (dumpsters?) as described in this article. You’re not really meant to monopolise them or use them for large scale dumping, but thankfully it never became an issue. If the nearest one was ever full, you just take your stuff to the next one.
I applied a mantra I heard in a radio interview with Janey Lee Grace: “Cherish, Charity or Chuck”. Do you cherish it? If the answer is no (and that’s the tough bit), then ask if it’s good enough or useful enough for a charity shop, if not, chuck it. At first I was creating a separate pile of stuff for eBay, but once the eBay bag had been sitting there for a year without going on eBay, it went to a charity shop too. This was a gradual and repeated process, and it was amazing the amount of stuff that was categorised as “cherish” on the first pass has now been chucked.
Seriously, congratulations! Are you going to post photos? Er, let me think of a question–have you ever had to fight the impulse to bring more (new) stuff home? And, did you have to overcome a habit of overshopping or anything like that as well, or just change your cleaning habits?
I spent a good chunk of yesterday trying to explain the ‘cherish, charity or chuck’ idea to my kids. They both love to keep everything (acorns, whatever they make, old presents, etc.) and we had a grand clear-out. I think my 10-yo gets it–we talked about how this ancient Polly Pocket activity book is not her friend who moved away, and she can let go of the gift and still keep her friend in her heart, etc. And by the end she said herself that she loves to make things because she loves to create, not because she needs to keep all those things. So I hope they have a better grasp of the idea that just liking something is not enough reason to keep it around.
I will post photos. Just a couple of finishing touches required.
I was never really an over-shopper, that wasn’t the problem. My late husband was - he bought tons of second hand DVDs and CDs. He was also an avid reader of books, but refused to ever, ever throw a book out even if he would never read it again. That did make de-cluttering probably more difficult in my circumstances - I was having to clear tons of his stuff as well as my own clutter.
So, far from resisting the urge to buy new things, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed buying nice new things, to go where there used to be nothing but clutter. A shelved alcove in the lounge which used to be crammed with dusty old paperbacks, theatre programmes, holiday memoribilia and so on, is now completely cleared, painted, and has decorative glassware on display instead.
I think the change in cleaning habits has been created bottom up. I know what I can be like, so I’ve gone for decor and flooring that is very, very easy to clean. And no clutter makes things much easier to keep dust-free.
Good luck teaching those habits early to your kids - sound like a good idea. Perhaps try another quote I’ve been trying to live by (which I think was William Morris): “Have nothing in your home which is neither useful nor beautiful”. Or soemthing.
The most difficult part is the shame, and not wanting to let anyone in your house. Anyone. So the gas central heating goes unserviced, because you’re too ashamed to let the engineer in your house. Making excuses to never take your turn at hosting anything. Seeing the look on the paramedics faces as they enter your bedroom to take away your husband who has drunk himself to hospitalisation again. They’d have seen it all before; but I still had to share the blame for how bad it had got.
The other difficult part is the despair. I couldn’t see anyway out of it - I didn’t know where to start.
It wasn’t so much the fact that his bad habits made mine worse, it’s the fact that clutter and squalor becomes a thermal runaway. When there’s already half a dozen newspapers and catalogues on top of your bathroom cabinet, adding another one to the pile is easy. Once there’s a year’s worth, a little bit extra clutter is nothing.
Any tips for dealing with papers? I mean that stuff like homework or projects in progress that aren’t fileable or pitchable yet? I swear, that stuff eats up every horizontal surface in a matter of days…
A tip I have for parents of wee ones: a clothesline strung across a kid’s bedroom makes a great hanging space for a revolving art gallery. There’s only so many spaces, so when a new treasure arrives, the kiddos got to pick the one to take down and throw or give away, and it makes the room very cheerful.
Ikea is your friend. I’ve got a fair number of their Kassett range magazine files and storage boxes. Makes paper storage look business-like rather than clutter. Really easy to dust, too.
I’ve spent an awful lot of time in my local Ikea over the last wee while. I know they’re not that widespread in the States, but they are invaluable if you are trying to de-clutter. Not only do they have loads of home organisation solutions, but I’ve found their big blue bags a godsend when playing “cherish, charity or chuck”. I can tip bagloads of trash in the dumpster* without using loads of environmentally unfriendly plastic bags.
*I’m trying to speak fluent American for ease of comprehension.
Good for you for overcoming it! I think of the stuff and the squalor as a huge, seemingly insurmountable pile of stuff, memories, habits, misplaced dreams that you’ve have faced and won. I know my parents never could.
It must be such a much nicer place to call your home now.
You mentioned how powerless you felt to deal with the issue. How did you get started? Did you hire professionals? Have a friend over for moral support? See a therapist? Other?
What was the first item you threw away? What was the first item that was difficult to throw away?
Well done! It must feel so good walking into a lovely home. I’ve kinda done the same, though not so extreme either way - it was never squalor but it’s not a showhome now either. We do now have very little stuff that we don’t need. I’ve given away easily 500 books this year.
Some of my tidying was actually reorganising - like realising that reason I didn’t really use the wardrobe is that it was hard to get to the doors, so the whole room had to be moved around.
My mother’s version was a big corked area on the wall. She had them put in place by the painter, who was able to obtain big panes used for flooring. Each corked area is about 2mx3m (6’8"x10") and it was the only place where we could hang posters, postcards or whatever. She still has them; it’s a good way to have a space that lets you “redecorate” without doing any serious physical work or buying anything.
For papers, I am one of those people who need to have things in sight; drawers are my doom, anything I’ve put in one and which isn’t in a box or folder may as well not exist. I have several folders (most are the kind with edges that fold in, and rubber bands to close them) and organize “work in progress” in them. Tiny projects can stay in piles (the piles get piled on each other cross-wise, so each level is one project), bigger projects go into the folders; for huge projects I have two divided folders. If you don’t need to have everything in sight, consider a drawer with hanging folders. Oh, and combining both, I can’t go to IKEA’s webpage (at work), but I have two identical carts with drawers from their office furniture section, one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom: they’re tight “wire”, so they combine being able to put items away with me being able to see it without opening the drawers.
My instinct is to keep lots of “little things”, but 17 years spent on the move mean I can’t. Every time I get a new flat I have to fight the impulse to overdecorate it, though! Congratulations on having a place you enjoy and can be proud of, Scougs.
Throwing my husband out was the kick-start. He’d taken what he could carry in a rucksack, and said he trusted my judgment what to forward on to him and what to chuck. So I started in the bottom of his wardrobe… where the first thing I found amongst his mouldy baseball cap collection was seven empty vodka bottles. Easy peasy to throw out.
I’m struggling to remember the first item that was difficult to throw away - there’s been lots. Probably holiday stuff. “What’s on in Copenhagen” from 1985. A local newspaper from Jamaica from 1990. Caledonian MacBrayne ferry timetable for the Scottish Islands from 1991. Lots and lots and lots of stuff like that. Difficult to throw away, but too much clutter to keep. I’ve kept some of it, but it had to be real gems to keep. And what is kept is neatly filed in Ikea storage boxes on shelves in my boxroom.
Which is harder, the doing the big projects and the big clean-outs or the little every-day keeping up?
Were you raised in a squalor-ish home?
Who was your first guest since the changes? Had they seen your place before? Has anyone who did, been over, and did you have a fun “reveal” moment with them?
The big clean-outs are hard to start, but very satisfying once you get into it. My new home is still very new, and I think it will be hard to shift to the little every-day cleaning up, but I’m determined. As I’ve said earlier, I’ve deliberately gone for easy-to-keep-clean, and might just invest in a Roomba having read about them as a result of this thread.
No, I definitely was not raised in a squalor-ish home. My mother would spin in her grave if she’d ever seen the state my flat became. I was always getting nagged to tidy my room from a very young age, I seem to recall.
My boyfriend never saw it at its worst - I thought I’d thoroughly cleaned and decluttered before he first visited shortly after we started dating. Turns out I was wrong! He reckoned it was still appalling at that stage. He stayed away while I had tradesmen in for the last five weeks fitting a new kitchen, redecorating, replacing the manky old carpets with solid hardwood flooring etc. During this time I also replaced some furniture and threw out tons of stuff. So you can only imagine his face when he saw the end result. I’m also really looking forward to hosting the next of the regular girls nights that about six of us having regularly at someone’s house, and I’ve never hosted.
When you did these renovations did you just do it “for you”, or did you have half an eye on potential sale value?
Do you know whether it’s added value to your flat or have you spent so much that you wouldn’t make it back in a sale?
I only ask as we’re currently thinking about moving house, and although we could spend money getting the place looking super-pristine it’s unlikely to add sufficient value to the house to attract the sort of buyers we want.
Purely for me - anybody who has heard about my striking deep red and black colour scheme for the kitchen soon works this out! (Apparently you’re meant to go all cream and neutral for selling).
I did wonder if it had increased the value much. According to my tradesmen work like this doesn’t necessarily increase the value on paper of the property by a huge amount, but greatly increases its sellability. A grotty place will likely sit on the market for a while before someone makes a low offer with a view to doing the place up; a freshly decorated, pristine place might have someone make a higher offer because of how desirable it is. It’s all about if you’re in a hurry to sell, and what the market is like. Or so I believe.
