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!