A difficult topic. I’ve had these links pasted into the draft for this post for six months now, waiting for the right time, or a good time, to share them.
I subscribe to Unclutterer through Bloglines. Several times a month, I get a tip or a flash of inspiration to help me manage the minutiae of my life. I have many interests, and I rotate through them, and I come back to old ones (witness: I am now noodling around on the recorder, after a lapse of 25 years, and the purchase of a new-to-me one on eBay two or three years ago; it was during LittleBit’s senior year). So for me, it makes no sense to get rid of things related to old hobbies, because I am quite likely to live to be 100, and there will be another quilting jag, another scrapbooking season, etc.)
The trick, for me, is to keep it organized and to keep it under control. So that when I do graduate to the Great Yarn Shop in the Sky, my kids can go: OK, all the quilting stuff to the local quilters’ guild; all the knitting stuff to her Knit Night friends; let’s divide up all the cookbooks; doll stuff goes to the younger sibs; and it will be easy for them to sort and bestow.
Because when their father went into the nursing home, it was an ordeal for them to clean out his apartment. To say more, would be disrespectful.
There is, apparently, a show about hoarders and hoarding. I don’t have cable, so I’ve never seen it, and I probably couldn’t watch it if I did. There was a link to it last August on Unclutterer. The comments are particularly interesting.
And there were links to organizations which educate about hoarding. The OC Foundation. Squalor Survivors. Children of Hoarders. I don’t know if those links are still good, but they might aim you in the right direction if you, or somebody you love, is a hoarder.
And now, if you will all kindly excuse me, I am going to wash some dishes and pitch out the latest batch of junk mail.
[Knitting postscript: I finished the gusset increases on the second sock at Knit Night last night and have begun the decreases. And there was a young man sitting next to us who wants to learn how to knit. One of my friends handed him a spare ball of yarn and told him where to go to buy needles. I quipped that it’s like the bad stuff: the first one is free...]
About Me
- Lynn
- Eleven years into widowhood, after one year of incredible happiness and nearly 14 years of single blessedness. Retired, and mostly enjoying it. Still knitting. [Zen]tangling.again after a brief hiatus.
2 comments:
The OCFoundation link was bad, the second and third links were working. I couldn't even look at the Children of Hoarders site because I started to cry. Way too many emotions flooding over me to look at that any time soon. But the Sualor Survivors site was easier because people took control themselves and overcame their problems. I'm so glad that Tyson is compulsively organized and makes it easy to keep the house clean.
I probably won't look at any of it until I am safely home and the house is quiet. Maybe on Saturday when Derek is at work and Ash is at Trader's Village.
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