Hoarder's Part Deux

No, you aren't seeing things I have attached this picture again because I love it.  Her stuff looks interesting, not dirty, and her face is priceless.

I need everyone to step up their game and share the inventory.

So far only the organized have come forward....well one sister in the trenches...but come on!  We can conquer this if only so that when we need to find a pen that writes we can.  Baby steps...inch by inch is a cinch.

How about a box that contains everything you need to wrap a gift?  My present action plan is lacking success.  Because I.....
1)  buy a gift and forget to get a gift bag.
2) go home and find wrapping paper
3) find paper, but where are the scissors?
4) found the scissors, I used them to trim the dead parts off the plant in the dining room
5) no scotch tape...anywhere
6) use a glue gun....
7) burn my finger so I abandon the glue gun idea
8) completely give up and take the gift in the store bag, exchange gift tags at the gift table with a gift wrapped like royalty.
9) enjoy the evening

This morning I went through an entire stack of magazines.  I kept the Christmas ones, and the one that said I could live longer and get rid of unwanted hair.  Even Susie Vogel would keep that one.  Evidently she is the new patron Saint of organization on my blog.  I gave her a battlefield promotion.

But then I missed the garbage pickup this morning!! My guys must get up on Monday morning with the sole intent of coming before I am ready for them.  I could put it out the night before, but I live on the Prairie and sometimes the critters get to my garbage before the disposal technicians do.

So what shall we organize next?

I am learning from Jan who said she cleaned out the attic and her semi-hoarder husband didn't even notice.

I don't want to clear out everything, some of my stuff makes me interesting.  When I read a book I keep it...as a reminder of a good time.  I have a ficus tree that I got 34 years ago.  True story.  Raymond and I found it in back of a florist and brought it back to life, and it is still doing just fine.

I am mostly sad about my closet, not that it is so unorganized, because it isn't but because so many of my clothes don't fit and I don't want to get rid of them.  It is like conceding that this body is OK.  I will need Dr. Phil for that one.

To all of my friends who are such great chuckers, there is a lot of thought that goes into my selective hoarding.

So I am regrouping and hoping for more ideas.  Everyone is curious as to what great stories we do have to tell.

Seriously!

Hoarder? Me?

The show "Hoarders" makes me so uncomfortable.  I have only been able to stand a few minutes of it, because when the poor folks find out they have to part with their stuff I feel so badly for them.  Don't get me wrong, I want to chuck their things out the back window just like you, but there is something painfully sad about how they look at a bag of panty hose and just cry.  They all say the same thing, I will use that someday.  On a much less intense level I have done the same thing.

I am an odd hoarder, I don't have the kind of mind boggling assortment I have seen on the show, but I have stuff.  I admit to having a hard time throwing things away.  Even after going through my dad's things after he passed away.  He had an airplane hanger that was filled with stuff.  After having to find a place for 5 non-working refrigerators I still keep more than I should.  It should have cured me...like aversion therapy.
My dad had so much stuff that it took almost 2 years to go through everything.  My uncle kept saying, "call the auctioneers!"  But I couldn't, I was too connected.  So it took forever.....the day I walked through his empty home the last time was such an emotional moment.  I wondered how much he would have loved the order...and then I knew, he would have hated it.   His personality was such that he had to be surrounded by stuff.  Is that where I am headed?
In my bedroom is a stack of magazines....
Books to read....
Drawers of clothes that don't fit...but they will!
Notes to be filed in appropriate places rather than on 50 different scratch pads...
a drawer full of pens, glue sticks and pencils
a drawer full of wires, mostly computer connections to computers or electronic devices i don't even have any more, or do I? What if I need some of that and I don't have it?  I won't even know how to ask for it at Radio Shack.  I better keep that drawer full of stuff.
In the library I have stacks of stuff...I move them around as though that will cause them to shrink.  Bills, phone numbers I may need, reports to read, more bills, pictures and papers I have no idea what to do with.  This room also has a computer that doesn't work but has all my pictures and documents on it.  Money is what is keeping this from being fixed.  I would love to drive to Best Buy tomorrow with my computers, the lap top is on life support also, hand it to them, pick out a new computer wait while they transfer everything....maybe even get a different device for my pictures and GO HOME!!  The I would hook it up with the biggest smile known to mankind and start writing in my beloved library.  I love writing in the library, all my books are there, but the computer is broken, so I use my daughters computer which is annoying to me because it is an Apple, and I have to try and get used to that....I am only marginal on computers as it is.
Yikes!!

Doesn't this part of my life look like a giant ball of twine that was rolled up by the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland?
 I crave order but I am something of a hoarder.
And isn't too much stuff toxic?  My husband had papers and maps from a failed business venture.  He stopped using that area...we all just avoided it completely.  It seemed possessed.  Then one day he just cleared it out, threw all that stuff away, moved the desk to another position, and just like that, we could use it again.
What is your fave "cleansing" story?  How do you get rid of things?  Are your drawers orderly?  closets streamlined?  How long do you keep bills? Can we just keep them online...
Help a girl out with some good advice...Just one thing maybe?
Please?