Hi Diane!

Yes, I think you're right! I bet I did post here a while back. I'm afraid my memory's failing fast; probably a combination of aging (I'm in my seventies) and medications that impair my memory.

After eight years in the same rent subsidized apartment, I received a letter from the Seattle Housing Authority informing me that they are downsizing me from a two-bedroom to a studio apartment effective December 1.

After weeks of unanswered phone calls, emails and letters they finally responded that they would extend the deadline to March 1 and give me an accommodation for a one bedroom apartment.

So I managed to stave off what appeared to be a disaster in the making. But I'm disabled by chronic health problems that severely limit the amount of work I can do each day so I'm worried that I just won't be able get the job done in time. I have difficulty getting out, so apartment hunting is going to be a real challenge.

On top of that, rents in Seattle have increased more in the last year than in the history of the city, so I may be forced to move out of the city where I was born (and where my parents born), and where my support network is.

I'm hoping to find here in this forum some folks who have been through, or who are right now going through, what I'm going through. Last month I went to a hoarding support group meeting, but I was the only one beside the group leader who was there :(

I think it would be helpful to be in touch with folks who have already been down this road, to help me along the way,

Will

Night before last I got the urge to watch an old TV show I had video taped from a Spanish cable channel back in the 80s. I had no trouble finding the video cassette, but it needed rewinding, and the remote control for the VCR was nowhere to be found. And the VCR has no control buttons on it. All the controls for it are on the the misplaced remote.

Then I remembered that a month or more ago I had tossed out a whole carload of old electronics, and it occurred to me that I may have mistaken that remote from the VCR as the remote for an old portable TV set and may have tossed it out along with all the other stuff.

But, "Not to worry!" I thought to myself, "I'll just go into the back bedroom and dig out my spare VCR. But when I went back there and looked for it, I remembered that I had tossed it out too, along with all my other old electronics. Argh! So, no old movie for me!

But, I thought, I don't have to watch that old video anyway, it's time for me to start practicing some Christmas music on my guitar. And that's when I remembered that I had also tossed out my music stand because it was so big and clunky and taking up space. And I'm under pressure to downsize and move to a smaller place.

I suppose that these kinds of problems are just part of the process of trying to clean out a 70 year accumulation of hoarded junk, and that I should expect more of the same as I make more progress in tossing the better part of my boatload of junk overboard in the course of the next couple of months.

So, here I am, to introduce myself and say "Hi!" in hopes of getting some help and support with this difficult task.

Will in Seattle