Tillie, I could have sworn I made a post last night telling you that I'm happy Mr tail lie is doing better-physically and hoard-wise. I must have dreamt it. In any event, it does look like things are looking up and for that I'm grateful.

Roxie, you are doing so well! It is draining to take care of so much. You are coping so well!

For me, I have decided to not let my brother's mental illness bother me. I'm going to try to do that because it's been keeping me up at night (for decades, but recently very, very bad). I long ago gave up celebrating his peaceful moments since there really is no point.

Today I got two bags out to a Goodwill. Very pleased by that. Need to shred papers and get the whole house vacuumed. Getting help tomorrow with some things and need house yo be acceptable. All I want to do is sleep, but I don't sleep, don't get anything done, and feel terrible all around. Friend arrives in a week. I know she will help me but I need it to be clean before she comes here. Once she's here, she'll take my kitchen and make it sparkle. She did it last year and I know she'll help again this year. Very loving, giving, and non judgmental. How's that for a friend?

I hope Diane will drop by to say hi. I miss her, along with several others who used to post regularly.

I'm not sure what I'll get done today. It is late. I slept late. I am a slug. 🙂

Good Morning 🙂

Hi Tatoulia 🙂
I dropped Diane an email note this morning with greetings from all of us. 😀

Yesterday I got the usual weekly house cleaning done and washed laundry too.
So nice not having people in and out all day long. Got to work uninterrupted.
Today I can start on those long over due projects that I have had to put off since March.
But maybe I will just relax and enjoy watching birds.

It's important that no matter what else we do every day that we take the time to enjoy the little blessings in life. 🙂

Tillie and Oodles, I'm so glad that you are here! And that goes for Roxie and Bitsy and Diane and LR and Gem and Reader and Mel and I know I've forgotten someone--Jess-- and I'm sure I've neglected to mention others too but thank you. thank you. You are so supportive and lovely and giving and wonderful and your bad days help me and your good days help me and I need to keep posting. My backsliding coincided with not posting

Thank you!

Ps Tillie if you talk to Diane can you tell her I say hello!

Good Morning Everybody 🙂

Hi Oodles 🙂
How are things going for you today?
That is the nice thing about new days, we get a new start on our plans.
The hoarder that I live with was not a hoarder to begin with.
A brain tumor slowly started growing and as it grew so did his hoarding.
It went undiagnosed for about 18 years and I can look back and see how as it got bigger so did his hoard.
The tumor was successfully removed and his ability to take college courses and graduate with honors was never affected by this.
But his thought processes about "stuff" were still the same.
I have been slowly, daily using CBT to try to rewire his thinking about getting and keeping so much stuff.
"Buried In Treasures" has a lot of things I have been using.
He did not want to change and as we all know, the person who hoards needs to have the desire to change or nothing will be accomplished and forcing them will only make things worse all around.
What I am trying to say to you is that I truly do understand your struggles with a TBI and that I think you are doing a GREAT! job working through all these obstacles you are facing.
It takes time and patience and I want you to be kind to yourself even when others are not being kind due to their ignorance of TBIs and the hoarding connection. (((HUGS)))

And YES!!!!, you CAN overcome this! 😀

Oodles
(((HUGS)))

It is Sun & I am starting all over again. I feel like I was at base camp of Mt Everest the top was in sight then got blown completely off. Daughter ended up in the hospital. The dogs escaped I thought I lost the 12yr old sick one.(found & are ok I left the gate open) I accidentally broke my phone cord/no internet.My daughter ended up in the hospital. I physically collapsed. Worse I experienced humiliation/guilt of my family. I don't want them to see me like this. We moved my daughters things in & my house is 10 x worse now. My brother did text me the next morning & said he loves me. I have to complete this over hall of OOdleness. I have to beat this!I saw MO's post. I understand & it is sad/tragic like any addiction that this illness wrecks families. I wish I had never been struck by lightning, I wish I had never gotten sick. But I did/am & I CAN OVERCOME THIS AND SO CAN ALL OF YOU!!!! Love/prayers for all of you and let's have a forward moving week!!!! We are in this struggle together! I am going to visit my daughter then work on the kitchen tonight.

Good Morning 🙂

Hi Greta 🙂
Happy you enjoyed a nice time away and also got to see that rainbow. 😀

Hi Roxie 🙂 "clink!"
WAY TO GO! keeping a good handle on the medicine schedules by refilling the container. 😀
Good luck with your filing and bill paying.

Cloudy cool day with a few little sprinkles of rain.
Nothing planned for today except to just relax and enjoy it.
These past five months I have not kept up with the usual daily house cleaning since he was always here or in hospital or needing me to take him to Dr. appointments.
Tomorrow he returns to work, with some limitations on what he can do.
I plan to get back to my weekly schedule of cleaning the house on Mondays instead of the daily touch ups I have been resorting to to keep it sort of livable here.
But today I will just enjoy the fact that he did not die or lose his leg and life is returning to normal here. 🙂

Greta, it was good to read about your trip. If you didn't take "before" pictures, I encourage you to do so. I have some before and after pics that really help reinforce maintenance.

Hugs and coffee :::clinks:::

Hi everyone it is great to see all the wonderful support here. We had a nice time away I was relaxed and eating better and enjoying being with my family minus one child who didn't go. Now back to reality " that stinks" but it's life. Hopefully soon things will ease up but enough of that. We got to see a beautiful double rainbow while away. Even though I don't didn't mention all your names I still have you all in my thoughts I hope you all have a wonderful day! And will write more very soon hugs to all

Hi Everybody 🙂

Hi Tatoulia 🙂
GREAT! to hear from you. 😀
WAY TO GO! for maintaining the bedroom!
You are always in our thoughts too (((hugs)))

Hi Roxie 🙂
YEA! for sleeping in a freshly made up bed!!! 😀
You have been doing an amazing job taking care of things day after day. (((hugs)))
Your cabin sounds like a little piece of heaven.
My family are Ojibwa from the Quebec area.
My Grandparents had a cottage on the shore of a Michigan lake and my memories of days spent there are my most cherished. 🙂

Cloudy today and we had a little rain so far already.
I decided to bake chocolate chip and pecan cookies.
Maybe it was his close call of possibly losing his life or his leg over the past five months but I have been noticing a huge change in his attachment to his hoard.
He has sold some guitars and other stuff to the pawn shop and donated quite a few truck loads of stuff to the charity thrift shop.
He has also taken truck loads to the dump.
Still a long way to go but his progress has been amazing! 😀

Coralie, so nice to see you posting. And you posted a good plus sensitive commentary to Mo. I also felt his feelings of anger/grief, etc. needed acknowledgment but wanted to warn others before reading that his posts can trigger some things for sensitives. Anyway, kind of you to respond.

Good morning everyone! So great to read your posts! Jess, I am excited about your new job! Everyone else--I am so proud of your accomplishments and am truly going to use your posts as my inspiration today.

I have to see brother early today. He has been increasingly needy and erratic all month and it has taken a toll on me, but I will see him today, hopefully have strength to get out with my mother today, and then really buckle down and get going on my place. Bedroom has sated 90% good, so that might be doable right now before the brother calls and needs me to get going.

Hope you are well. Forgive me for not mentioning you by name, you are all in my thoughts!

Hi Jess 🙂
Thank you and YES it is such a relief to have that done! 😀
WAY TO GO!!! for keeping the morning routine!
Have a safe trip (((hugs)))

Hi Roxie 🙂
Wishing you the best of luck finding a kind, caring, gentle and capable dentist soon.
Just getting this one tooth done has already made an improvement in my life. (((hugs)))
WAY TO GO!!! you have been accomplishing so very much! 😀
Did you get all the crumbs out of your bed? 😀
Keep enjoying nature as you keep watch on the neighborhood.
This morning I found a peacock feather in my yard.
Last time I started finding peacock feathers I ended up with a peacock and his peahen living here for several months.
Every evening they would come up on the porch and look in through the screen door at me waiting for me to come give them some cat kibble.
Then their owners finally tracked them down and took them back to their house.
I missed them. 🙂

Hello Coralie
Welcome 🙂

WAY TO GO!!! for what you have accomplished! 😀
Yes, sometimes it is hard to see the progress but just by keeping at it little bit by little bit you will eventually start to see it all come together for you. 🙂

By the way...
I am not a hoarder but I do live with one.
One thing a person needs to do when faced with the trials of living with a compulsive hoarder is to educate themselves as much as possible about the hoarding phenomenon.
Cory created this website as a place for every
body, hoarders and people who know, love or live with a person who hoards to get educated and find support and helpful advice.
Together we CAN do this 😀

Just wanted to share that I love reading this thread although I don't (yet) know most people posting around here. It's so nice to see the support, friendship and daily talk going on between the posters... 🙂

I'm really glad to hear your dentist appointment went well and you're ready to go back to work, Tillie! I totally agree that you need a day off, just enjoying the current season, doing the dishes and not much more once in a while. Hoarding can truly clutter and take over your mind if you try to fight it non-stop, day in day out.

It's nice to read that you've already started seeing the benefits of beginning to deal with your medical bills, Roxie. I could sense the start of relief and some form of new-found peace of mind in between the lines of your last message. Also, spending the summer in a cabin sounds divine! I hope you and your son will be able to spend some lovely quality time together when he gets there.

Good luck (in advance) starting work on Monday, Jess! It's really encouraging to read that you're finding such great benefits from following a daily morning routine. I need to figure out one for myself so I don't find myself wondering what needs to get done before I leave the house! (and then getting to work and remembering I forgot this and that, feeling annoyed with myself)

Oodles, all I want for Christmas is... a completely livable home too! 🙂 (now I've got Mariah singing that song stuck in my head in the middle of summer, haha!) Wishing you continued progress.

On my side of things, I had several days away to enjoy a little summer break not far away from here. I've returned to a still cluttered home (but with a pathway all the way through the living room!) feeling both happy to be home and annoyed with the current state it is in. It's the bittersweet paradox of being in the (forever?) midst of cleaning up your hoard: it feels satisfying and great when you've accomplished an important step, but once you leave your home for a longer period of time and return back to it, you can barely see the progress and all that is left is the rest of the stuff. Oh well, it could (and has been) worse.

So, instead of trying to find some more things to bag up today, I'm going to take the bus to pick a parcel at the wrong post office (ah, summer time, when the mailman goes on holiday and his replacement drops off anything too large to fit into your mailbox at the other side of the city isntead of your usual post office!) nice and early, get some groceries, and then apply myself to figuring out how to organise my clothes closet while starting to put the must-keeps back in there. I have rid myself of easily 70% of the clothes I used to have (if not a bit more), so it's going to be interesting to see how I manage to organise what is left and how I react to a much more minimalist closet as the days go by. Stay tuned! 😀

Wishing everyone on here a lovely start to the weekend! Espresso on me for everyone.

Jess, how wonderful to hear of your organizing work and tentative plans to take a few steps forward. Way to go.

:::clink::: of coffee and happy days, folks.

So many good updates in here! I'm so proud of you guys 😀

Tillie, you made it through your dentist appointment! Yay! I bet that is quite a load off of your mind!

Oodles, you are doing fantastic! So inspiring!

So many other posts that made me smile too, you guys are just wonderful.

I'm getting ready to travel back home for the weekend, which is good but also stressful for me. I start my job Monday so it's not the ideal weekend for this trip but it has to happen now. I'm doing pretty well not freaking out about anything. I did my morning routine today (which has been such a positive thing for me) and now I'm taking care of a few online bill things. The only other thing I MUST do before I leave is print and fill out some forms for my first day of work. I don't want to leave it for the last minute and have a problem with my printer or something like that.

Have a great day everyone! If you're feeling stuck today I encourage you to take a step no matter how small, push negative thoughts away for at least a moment and take some action, fight back against feelings of helplessness. You can do this! You are worth those feelings of accomplishment!

Good Morning Everybody 🙂

I gave myself the day off yesterday from doing any housework.
Today I need to wash dishes.
And of course do the always, everyday type stuff for the cats.
Should get out and water some stuff too.
Maybe pull a couple of weeds.
So, sort of a laid back day today with not much planned.
We still have all of August to enjoy. 😀
Will miss summertime when it's gone.

HI 😀

Hi Roxie 🙂
Ice tea "clink".

Hi Oodles 🙂
WAY TO GO!!!
Fantastic progress! Keep up the great work you are doing and YES, you can have all rooms livable by XMas. 😀

Back from the dentist! 😀
My teeth are fixed!
Next month I have an appointment for a cleaning but that doesn't worry me.
More good news to report too.
The vascular surgeon has cleared him to return to work. Next Monday he goes back to work with a few limitations.
YEA!!!!!
Things are starting to get back to normal around here.

Way to go, Oodles. By Christmas? I think you will have made a lot of progress (a lot more, I mean) by then. Step by step.

Thanks for your support, Tillie, and everyone.

Hugs and coffee clinks.

Having trouble posting reply today - finishing off carpet. I am so happy I have a new staging area. On to the other room and then moving daughter in by Friday- coffee clinks and support to all. I hope to have all rooms livable by X-mas.

(((HUGS))) Roxie 🙂

That is a lot of very heavy mental "lifting", no wonder you are exhausted.

I am reading with delight each of your entries. Please excuse a short message from me today, as I am very tired and blah.

Good morning 🙂

Hi CriticalMass 🙂
WAY TO GO!!! pushing through the funky mood and accomplishing some tasks! 😀
Good luck sorting out that nagging paperwork task today.
I totally understand how you feel about dentists. As a child I too was abused by a sadistic dentist. (((HUGS)))

Hi Tatoulia 🙂
WooHoo! for getting busy to the music! WTG! 😀
True, sometimes all we need to feel better is to just do something positive. Even something small like brushing our hair. (((hugs)))
Diane has a broken computer. 🙁

Well, yesterday was hard.
Didn't sleep well the night before, then went to the dentist.
Came home and just needed to de-stress and was so sleepy, too sleepy to think straight.
Unfortunately, the dental office had an opening to fit me in for the work to be done tomorrow.
So today I am working to not get myself all upset.
I will be very happy when this is over and done with and I can eat properly again. 🙂
I have known Dr.H for many years. He is a very skilled, gentle and kind dentist.
He will be doing a crown on the broken molar and while I am there and all numb anyway he will do a small surface filling on a bicuspid.
Today I am baby sitting 3 dogs and 3 cats. They are at their own home nearby and I just need to periodically make sure they are all ok. Their people will be home this evening.

TTYL 😀

Tatoulia, thanks for the nice compliment! 🙂 I feel at home here and blessed by the wonderful give and take and encouragement we all share. What's not to love! 🙂

I was kind of bummed yesterday - I think it was just that I was having one of those mentally disorganized times. The kind when you don't know where to start, and a pessimistic mood lurks waiting to ensnare you. I did accomplish a couple of minor tasks despite it, but I confess to having a pity party some of the time. Better today, though.

Today I have to go somewhere so the day will be a bit broken up, but I found a portable, pick-up and put-down type paperwork task that should fit in with the time constraints, and it's something that's been nagging at me anyway.

Good day all, and happy decluttering!

So I out on some Stevie Wonder and got to work! Shredded some papers (working on pile that's still on my soon to be given away coffee table), got the dishes in the dishwasher, washed my unmentionables and hung up to dry, gathered up garbage and recycling and put out back and folded and put away laundry on chair in bedroom. Still lots more to go and I can see I own too much stuff. I've been adding rather than subtracting. This is no good. I need to remind myself that when I feel frustrated or upset, that doing something, anything makes me feel better.

Hello all! I haven't been keeping up with the boards or my place--I need to get back on track. Tillie I love the stories of the baby bunnies. LR good to see you again. Oodles I am proud of your accomplishments. Sending you strength from afar. CM you are a lovely addition to the group. Hello Roxie! Keep up the good work! Glad to see you regularly posting! Hello to everyone!

Missing Diane and Bitsy--hoping they are well and can stop by sometime!

Going to go get something done, in honor of everyone here.

And another week begins . . . hello everyone!

Tillie, I can sure relate to the dental phobia. I had bad dental experiences growing up and my dentist was insensitive to my anxieties. When I was old enough to have a say-so, I never returned to him. Or any other dentist for the most part. I said goodbye to two cracked molars rather than endure the root canal/crowning process - and I did so under IV sedation, thank you very much.

Oodles - you are doing so well, keep going. You are a survivor of so much, it sounds like, and there's a reason - God has something special for you, if you're not a believer, just believe that good is going to come of all what you're going through and have been through. You're inspiring US here to keep going and the bond of friendship we're building is a positive thing! 🙂

YEA!!!! OODLES!!!! 😀
WAY TO GO!
You are doing a fantastic job. 😀