Right on! The hammock sounds wonderful. Those chairs sound great, and you could always nail a scratch post to the back for your cats if they like scratching standing up. Or lay one on the ground. You would even have a signature style: “porch-style living” 
In an earlier thread, I recommended you a book. I’m going to mention it again, because it is great, if you should move, to design housework out of your home.
My problem is that I did that, and there’s still enough useful stuff left to fill up my house. It’s not full of garbage, it’s full of books and a couple furniture items, craft supplies, sporting equipment, projects, and at one point, enough stuff to outfit three kitchens (Goodwill got most of that).
That’s the problem with a show like Hoarders, it gives people the notion that hoarding is always accompanied by filth and garbage. That’s not the case. It is entirely possible to accumulate too much stuff, to the point you can no longer use the space even if there is no filth involved.
Ain’t that the truth. But still, that much stuff has to be addressed with similar strategies. I recently helped a lady pack up to move–she and her husband were being transferred to another country and could take 1800 pounds with them. Her kids are grown and they could buy furniture down there, so it ought to be totally doable.
But she’s a ditherer, and nearly incapable of sorting things out and getting rid of them. Her house was clean–no bugs or filth or anything icky at all–it’s just that she had saved everything and couldn’t get rid of it. She preferred putting the stuff into a storage unit (for 3-5 years, in hot summers)–even the rather old large couches, and the silk flowers in baskets, and the toys she’d bought for visiting grandchildren, and the old rock fountains, and the boxes of her kids’ old CDs, and Walkmans! (In the box with the Walkmans there was also a converter for 8-track into tape.)
She had also spent the past few months buying stuff to take to the new country instead of sorting and packing, so her 1800 pounds included 8 blankets, 3 comforter sets, etc. not to mention 2 fake trees (!) and a whole lot of yarn, fabric, and crafty supplies–at least 600 pounds’ worth. I wasn’t there for the end so don’t know how much she wound up actually taking.
I sympathized with her, but she definitely showed some hoarding tendencies in her inability to let go of anything. I used some tips I’d picked up from Hoarders! The whole thing made me want to go live as an anchorite in the desert.
Yes, the houses full of garbage and filth didn’t start that way, the situation had to evolve. If you’ve got “hoarder tendencies” you need to recognize that and learn to deal with them before the situation becomes overwhelming, that’s how you *avoid *being crazy lady with junk piled floor to ceiling in every room.
They have occasionally featured non-garbage hoarders on the Hoarders show. I remember one man who lived in a house that was crammed to the brim with knick-knacks and figurines and all sorts of things like that. From a distance it actually looked fairly charming and adorable, but as the camera came in for a close-up, you could see that most of the stuff was covered in dust and grime, because there’s just no way he could keep all that stuff clean. (He couldn’t even get to a lot of it.) But there weren’t the giant piles of garbage that you see in a lot of the places featured on that show.
I think changing the furniture sounds like an awesome plan–it’ll be easier to keep clean, more functional for how you really want to use the space, and you’ll have to keep the place relatively clear to be able to get furniture in and out.
One thing that can also help is to pack away or get rid of extra dishes and such so you have to wash them every couple days. It takes up less space, and it really limits how bad things can get. And it helps you get/keep in the “do a little every day” groove. There’s also the psychological factor–if one area always looks pretty reasonable, and it didn’t take any significant effort to get it like that, the rest of the place looks worse by comparison and seems easier to tackle.
I’m gonna have to come down on Broomstick’s side of the low-level hoarder debate. Hoarding isn’t defined by how much stuff you have, or how much of that stuff is garbage, or how clean that stuff is, or how attached you are to it, or why you have it, any more than alcoholism is defined by how much you drink. It’s more an issue of whether it interferes with other areas of your life. And it sounds like the stuff and the crafting obsession are interfering with the other areas of you life. You can’t have anyone over, not even your closest family. You’ve mostly stopped interacting with your pets. You don’t even want to eat when the crafting bug hits. If you described these sorts of life changes being due to booze or pot or sex, every single person in this thread would be advising you to seek help.
It’s funny how motivating these threads are. I spent the morning with the kids decluttering their bedroom. We do it every few months, and yet they still manage to produce an amazing amount of trash and stuff to donate. Today I got them to let go of a stack of American Girl and Jedi Apprentice books (I almost never buy new, and we still have a ridiculous number of books).
What a coincidence. I spent yesterday getting cleaned up for the exterminator today. (Which I don’t mind. Last summer I had a spider living just inside my front door, and boy!, did he make a good living. No spider this year–yes please, spray away.)
The bathroom and the kitchen are generally clean, but dusting, vacuuming, and picking books and papers off of every flat surface in my apartment only get done for a reason. That reason appears to be visitors. You need more visitors.
FWIW, this totally sounds like depression to me.
Yeah. I have dysthemia, so I rarely feel sad or angry or ‘depressed’, or really dwell on any emotions (I’m not a very emotional person), but when I’m going through a depressive phase I totally lose my ability to give a shit about much of anything, except a few things I hyperfocus on. I will even stop eating or sleeping or getting out of bed on any regular basis, much less grooming or picking up after myself.
Do you have the money to get a cleaning lady to come in once every month or so? I wish I could loan you ours, but I don’t think C. ranges that far afield. She not only cleans, but she consolidates and organizes stuff - by her own internal rules, but they’re fairly sensible, and if you’re starting from near-chaos, they’re a good start. She’d be perfect for you.
How we found her was we sent an email around to a bunch of local friends, asking what they did about cleaning people/services, what was included, and how satisfied they were. Try this! You may not wind up with someone as great as C. is, but then again, you might.
Sorry if this is intrusive, but have you tried cognitive-behavioral therapy? It really helped me with dysthymia and general anxiety and depression.
Absolutely. Every time I open this thread, I get up and do something of a cleaning/tidying/sorting/tossing nature.
Long may this thread live!
My strategy is not letting things get to the point of no return. If an area becomes really messy though, or needs major reorganizing – I just tackle it in stages and concentrate in one area first before moving to the next.
Good point. Not for monstro, particularly, but in general. A really good cleaning lady also tidies up before she cleans. I clear out most of the clutter, and she does the rest. She is a treasure.
How much does it cost to have a weekly cleaning lady?
rhubarbarin, I don’t think this is depression. Perhaps I do still have dysthymia, but even as a kid I was a slob. My bookbags would be jumbled with loose papers, my desks would be overflowing like a garbage can. I have “islands” of orderliness, I guess. I rarely leave clothes on the floor, for instance. They either have to be hung up (even if that means in door ways) or piled on my bed. I don’t have a problem with doing laundry because I don’t have enough clothes to get away with not doing it. And when it comes to my crafts, I don’t leave them all around. I keep them on shelves or in their own rubbermaid container. So I do know know how to do some things. It’s just the other things that don’t register on my radar.
Um, yeah. It’s this kind of attitude irks me. It may not be hard for you, but obviously it is hard for me or I would not be starting this thread, asking for advice. I’m not a dummy. I know how to clean up. What’s missing is the positive reinforcement (the good mood) that comes with having cleaned up. I’ll clean up, wipe my brow, let out a sigh of relief, and think, “OK, that was an ordeal!” And then I’ll go about my life again, ignoring reality.
It’s kind of like telling to someone with an eating problem that it’s easy, JUST EAT SOMETHING, FER CHRISTSAKES! Obviously there’s something holding them back…it’s NOT something that comes easy for them. They have to think of a strategy to eat because the natural impulse is not there. Unfortunately, I’m dealing with this too. My strategy for this is just to eat the first thing that comes to mind…even if it’s expensive and not healthy. So it may be that for cleaning, the first thing I see amiss, I need to fix it. I need to buy a broom and a dustpan and a garbage can for each room, and buy an egg timer that I train myself to use every single day. I can put the egg timer in a different room every day so that over the course of a week, each room gets managed. In other words, I need to go above and beyond what is normal routine so that I help myself be a better housekeeper. I can’t rely on “what comes naturally” because that’s not obviously working.
I have finished the living room, the dining room, my bedroom (still need to go to the laundromat and wash my comforter and sheets), kitchen, and back room. All that is left is my bathroom, which shouldn’t be that bad. I’m not going to say Martha Stewart would want to spend the night here, but it’s all tidy and smells good. And it didn’t take too long, so maybe it wasn’t in as bad of shape as I thought it was.
monstro: I’d say if you already have reasons to want to move, (lack of climate control, etc.) then that would be a very good way to get a fresh start. It will force you to clean, throw/give away stuff you don’t need/want, and organize the stuff you do keep in the new place. You just need to make sure you get off to a good start in the new place by fully unpacking and organizing there. If you start off by living out of your moving boxes, you might make it even worse. But if you start off nicely arranged and organized with no junk, you’ll have a much better chance of making it stick than you do staying and cleaning up your current place.
Look for a place that’s nice and comfortable enough that it will inspire you to want to keep it clean. I get the feeling that your current abode is somewhat lacking on that front. (I know if I didn’t have A/C, I wouldn’t want to get all sweaty while wrangling dust-bunnies.)
There are several threads on SD about how people found a cleaning lady and how a good working relationship is best established. There are also Dopers in this line of work giving input. About 15-20 USD an hour is good, and a smallish apartment should be doable in 3 hours a week, or a month.
Short version: audition several people through an ad, or ask for recommendations at work. Let the ladies to a (paid) trial clean. When you are both okay, set the working hours, and ask for a copy of her passport. Then give her the house keys and let her come in and work while you are not there. That way you don’t get to have her around and she gets to set her own working pace.
Some of us don’t get a good mood from seeing a clean house, or a bad mood from seeing a messy one. A house or office has to be really dire to affect my mood, would probably have to have some bad smells. It’s frustrating if I have to try to find stuff, but just looking at the mess without having to do anything about it doesn’t affect my mood.
I’d like some cleaning advice that doesn’t assume you feel good from seeing a clean house, just that you recognize that it would be good for your house to be cleaner than it is. I’d especially like some that doesn’t assume that my self-esteem is tied to how clean my house is, or that doesn’t imply that I don’t like myself because my house is messy.
Some tips that have really helped me get into a “maintenance” routine: (Many are from Flylady)
-
Never leave the house without a bag of garbage to take out. Mostly these are small bags from the grocery store, but I always take a quick look around to see if there’s anything else I can toss while I’m walking out to the car. Not taking out the trash is the single biggest trigger I identified. If I don’t do that, then it’s easier to put that junk mail back on the counter, or let that piece fall onto the floor from the top of the can. Once I start overlooking those little things, it’s like I stop seeing the mess at all. I have to be able to deal with it immediately.
-
Always empty the dishwasher first thing in the morning. Kitchen horrors happen when I can’t put the pan or dinner plates directly into the dishwasher. Then things pile up in the sink, get crusty so it’s a huge overwhelming job to clean them, and that takes over all the cleaning time I have today so nothing else gets done.
-
Put in a load of laundry every night. Empty the dryer and put the washed load into it every morning. Prevents “Mount Washmore” from forming. This kept us above water while Celtling was potty training. I shudder to think what our house would have become otherwise. I have now graduated to trying to always put things away straight from the dryer. This is more logistically complicated, because Celtling has to be awake and out of her room for it to happen, but I’m working on it.
-
Get a timer. That thing is pure gold, and it only cost me about $2.50. No matter how much I’m dreading a certain job (I hate doing dishes more than cleaning toilets!) I just tell myself “I can do anything for 15 minutes” and set the timer. Nine times out of ten I’m done before it goes off. And extra added bonus has been that Celtling will see the timer going and not interrupt me until she hears the bell. What a blessing!
-
Get a DVR. Being freed from the schedule allowed me to chosoe to get my work done before I setttle in. I ahd to face the fact that once I sit down on the sofa I set up like concrete. Now I can get my work done first without having to miss the 1-2 hours (per week) of entertainment that matters to me. Now if only I could find one for the radio so I don’t keep missing “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell me!”
-
Don’t overestimate the effort. This is also largely an outflow of the timer. It really is surprising how much one can accomplish in only 15 minutes. On weekends I try to work 15 minutes out of every hour. That gives plenty of Celtling time, and because it’s spread out over the day she doesn’t feel neglected. It’s easy to look at th hosue on Saturday morning and think “It’s impossible.” But really, it’s not all that bad if you allow it to be many small jobs.
-
Get three storage bins and put them somewhere accessible. Name them “Put Away” “Give Away” and “Throw Away.” The first is for things you can’t deal with right now, but are in your way, or starting to breed a pile around themselves. The second is for your now bi-weekly trip to the consignment shop. And the third is for things you know you “should” give up but aren’t ready to yet. Toss them in there and eventually they’ll either make it out the door to the garbage, or migrate to one of the other two boxes. This avoids the entropy of putting things back and back and back but never using them.
-
Admit how much impact it’s having on your life. My golden moment was when I wanted to invite a friend over, and realized it would be days before I could have the house together enough. I never want to feel that way again.