The playroom

Oh what to say about the playroom.  This is the bane of my existence as it is always a disaster.   Today I cleaned out a bin that had been sitting in the corner for over a year and for all that time it had sat there full of stuff we didn't need.   I recycled a handful of ripped flashcards, plastic containers saved for crafts, paper with drawings on them (you can't keep them all!).  So I have one corner cleared out but there is so much more to go!
Sigh!

Living room

Hello all!
Sorry it took me so long to get a new post out. 
Here are the before and after of our living room area.  It took me all day today to do it and I got rid of one bag of recycling and one bag of garbage and lots of things went back to their proper homes.

This is the before picture (above.)

 And here is the after picture.

One more after.  Sunlight messed with the exposure but you get the picture.

The plan

So after foundering along for about a week now I have developed a plan.  I made a list of all of the rooms in our house.  I divided them in to five so that I could try to rest and have a bit of fun on the weekends.  So Each day has four or five areas to tackle.  I am promising myself that I will work for at least 15 minutes in each area to get the plan moving again.
I have gotten rid of three more bags and three more boxes.
So wish me luck and hopefully this week will go a bit more smoothly than the last week went.

Derailed

Got a bit derailed with school beginning and new schedules to deal with but will get back on track this week as things start to settle down a bit.

Why of hoarding

For those of you who do not hold onto things and do not understand why people do it here is a brief summary of why I think it happens. 
For the most part people hold onto things for two reasons, emotions and possibilities.  Let me explain.  The emotional link is a bit easier to understand.  People who hoard things hold onto items because they have an emotional attachment to them, they remind them of a time or a person in their lives.  Also most people start to hoard things after a traumatic event in their lives.  For instance when a member of their family dies they hold onto everything they can find that belonged to or reminds them of that person.  For some reason the trauma of losing that person triggers the hoarder to cling to things that have a connection to the person they lost. 
The concept of possibilities and potential is more difficult to understand.  For someone who  hoards each item they hold into has inherent possibilities.  That stack of coffee cans will become a shelf one day, the stack of magazines will become a collage of meaningful pictures or artwork.  For the people who don't hoard it is just a stack of junk that should be thrown away but to the hoarder it is a dream, a promise of the future, a way to make their life better.  They see only what it could be or what it can become if only a little work could be put into it.  But over time all the possibilities and promise builds up and becomes overwhelming. 
So part of the reason why it is so difficult for hoarders to cast off items is that each item is full of emotional connection and potential.

Basement

Working on the basement a bit today.  Not getting a whole lot done but working on one small corner is helping. 
Got a bin back from the consignment store today and took another in.  Will freecycle what they didn't take.
Will go through girlies clothes today and take some more in on Friday!

Entry ways

Today I decided to conquer the entry areas.  Moving the ppiles of shoes coats toys and junk was challenging but I got it done in about 2 hours.
Here are the two pictures, before and after.

Rainy day

Just wanted to stay home today but got moving and finally took all that recycling in in the pouring rain.  Also got rid of two bags of stuff through freecycle.
Todays tally
10 bags
three boxes.
Tomorrow to go through the girls clothes and take to second hand store.

Tally so far

Ok so here is the tally so far
8 garbage bags
1 large bin
1 small bin

Recycling challenge

Good results so far!  My minivan is so full of recycling there is barely enough room for me and the kids to fit!

My office

This is my office.  Which also holds the play house which won't fit in the playroom.

Starting pictures

Here are the start out pictures.  I want to make this better!
This is the utensil spinner.  Doesn't seem so bad but I have two stuffed full!

Step one day one

Ok so I decided today what I would do is go through the whole house and collect all the recycling and take it all away.  I will let you know how it goes.

The thing about stuff

There are two kinds of people.  Ones who form lasting attachments to stuff and those who don't.  The two sides have a hard time understanding each other.  The people who don't form attachments don't understand why people can't just throw things away and the others don't understand why they can.
People who hoard come in varying degrees.  From those who can throw some things away to those who can not throw anything away.  The collection of things fills almost a visceral need to surround yourself with things.  Some people can live with a toothbrush and a change of underwear but for people who hoard they do not feel safe or whole until they are surrounded by their things and when some of it goes they feel varying degrees of loss from a sadness to a paralyzing sense of devastation.  It is like they don't feel whole unless tey are surrounded by piles of stuff.
Neither is able to understand the other as they think in completely different ways.  For the non hoarder things are just things they have no attachment to their items.  For hoarders each item has a meaning and personal significance.  This makes it much harder to remove nay of the items from their home.  It is like a piece of themselves goes missing. 
People who don't hoard can cast off things like the wind casts the leave from the trees into oblivion without a care.  For the hoarder each thing is a building block to their identity and sceurity and each removal threatens thier stability.
Hoarders may envy those who can discard anything but to them it is almost impossible to seperate themselves from thier belongings.
So I am guessing by now you can guess where I fall.  So this challenge will be definitely that a challenge to my way of thinking and my attachments to the items in our house.

Beginning

Every year I panic at the thought of Christmas coming.  So many plans so many unfulfilled dreams.  All because I can not get a hold on the clutter in our house. 

I have always been a keeper of things,  Like some kind of disease I just can not get rid of stuff!  As a result we are all suffering and I am in a continual state of stress because of the state of our house.  So this year I am pledging to get it under control so I can relax at Christmas and start the new year with a new vision for our house.  

I have four months from today and I am really going to try to make it happen.

I will be posting some starting pictures and hopefully some completed pictures.

Also I will be keeping a tally of all the boxes of stuff that leave our house.

Wish me luck!