Good Evening 🙂

Hi Tatoulia 🙂
WAY TO GO!!!!!!
for allowing the old drapes & rods go to someone else who can have them cleaned! 😀
So wonderful when we can let the old/past go to make room for the new/present.
YEA!!! Kitty for keeping Tatoulia safe from those papers! 😉

Hi Anonymoniker 🙂
Sorry you have had to learn such a frustrating and expensive lesson about just what those tarps can handle and can't. (((HUGS)))
Please do whatever it takes for the baby raccoons to learn that humans are not an easy or acceptable source for food.
My feral cats learned to eat their food during the day when I had it out for them when I had that baby skunk problem.
The now grown up skunks still come around my yard but it's to hunt for their natural foods.

Hi Subclinical 🙂
Steven also loves to get stuff for free, mostly from dumpsters.
Making decisions can be very hard and you always worry if you are making the right decisions.
"Good enough" light fixtures really will be good enough until the day you find exactly what you want. (((hug)))

Washed dishes and wiped up the kitchen, really need it too since I didn't do anything this weekend.
Have 2 nightgowns and 4 blouses that I have decided to get rid of.
I feel better now. 😀
Just need him to clear off the back porch where he has left a whole bunch of his weekend purchases.
I insist that porches remain clear for easy escape in case of fire.
Even though right beyond the back porch is where his hoard begins.
At least the front porch opens up onto my clutter free garden/lawn area.

~Hugs & ice coffee clinks to all!~
....i just lost the post i was typing...dangit...ok, just like my tarp, i need to just start over & not let my wasted efforts hinder my needs..
Tillie, i am so sorry you have to deal with all that stuff. It is so strange how often our issues will keep coming at us in new , seemingly unrelated ways?! I wish there were some way that the deep underlying battle with Steven could be resolved. I do think he is doing this as an attack strategy.
As far as the baby raccoons, my main concern is that their parents know there is usually cat food in tbe bowls, so they have no motivation to teach their young to find food in the woods! If i take up the food bowls at dark, they will simply come before dark, and my cats wont have their food after dark either. My plan for now is to do that enough to push the parents to at least teach them natural options!
I am very interested in the brain & the power of the mind! I am now leaning towards putting effort & emphasis on visualization & brain nutrition, rather than just willpower....which has not been working...
Im ready to order a seriously sturdy tarp. It has been such a waste of time, effort & money so far with the regular tarps, that it has made me question everything i want to do!
I am so amazed how just knowing i have help waiting in the wings, has changed my excuses & concerns, etc. It has been fantastic!!!
~♡~Happy Homing To All!!!~♡~

Tatoulia, how wonderful! And it found like your kitty is not too bad if she is up to hunting paper.

Tillie, I just wondered if maybe knowing you didn't keep the things would make him stop, but clearly not. Your way is best!

I brought the baby pool thing on myself. It will take time for him to really believe I have changed. I am trying. He is trying.

I do not shop to make myself feel comforted - I mostly hate shopping. I hate stores and crowds and new stuff that is expensive. I rarely feel like new things are worth the money unless they are exactly right. With our addition, dh keeps making me buy things (like light fixtures) that are "good enough" because I wait too long looking for "exactly right".

I do surround myself with stuff to feel comforted though. And I love a good bargain (not a sale, a bargain, something truly useful or quality or loved that is cheap or free - like our new table.) and I love rescuing or salvaging and repurposing things.

Final drapery panel is up and it looks so lovely! We still need to hang the roman shade.

We took down the old curtains that were up on tension rods I paid a great deal for them and thought about having them dry cleaned. FOR WHAT?!?!? I should launder them before donating but honestly they are silk and someone else should do that.

So they are in donation bag along with the rods.

What a great feeling that will be to get them out of the house. As soon as I make a donation bag I get very excited about seeing it leave.

Will go take garbage out now.

Tillie I feared he was being manipulative by bestowing upon you a bunch of sh&$. I am so grateful that I've been able, to a large extent, to just stop getting tons of sale items for the heck of if. I I was not at Steven's extreme but bad nonetheless.

Laundry downstairs is going very well. It helps that I'm home during the day a couple of times a week!

Beautiful cool humidity free day here. We also had a beautiful weekend.

I have gathered up tonight's garbage, run the dishwasher, cleaned kitty's box and have swept the hallway. I've worked on my remaining papers--shredded tax returns from the 1990s. Kitty is sound asleep in her little carrier. Still limping but the paw and leg are cool--not warm the way they would be with an infection. She seems very happy and attacked a bunch of papers today. The papers didn't stand a chance!

Good Morning Everybody 🙂
Beautiful quiet cool morning here.
Ice tea "CLINK!"

Hi Anonymoniker 🙂
Thank you (((HUGS)))
He knows exactly what I want as gifts.
Nothing...
Since I was sixteen years old I have always insisted that nobody buy me any gifts.
I too was really hoping that by his giving away the guitars it meant he was ready to start letting go of stuff instead of gathering more.
How's the honey clean up coming along?
Any new ideas for securing your home against the weather and intruders?
I have seen pictures (MRIs) showing a non hoarding brain along side of a hoarding brain when the people were asked to make decisions and there is definitely a difference in which areas of the brain light up.
Sorry that I don't remember where they are to post a link for you.
Baby raccoons are sooooo cute. But just like baby skunks we can't ever feed them no matter how sweetly they beg. 😉

Hi Subclinical 🙂
YEA!!! WTG!!! for starting the 100 day challenge!
After a while the daily tasks will get easier and soon become routines you don't even think about, you just do.
If I tell him that I will not keep the things he will, as always, get nasty and mean to me.
So to avoid the verbal/emotional abuse I will just donate without him being informed.
I'm sorry your funny story about the baby pools was misinterpreted. (((HUGS)))

Hi Joan 🙂
I have seen articles where children with cancer play video games where they target and wipe out the enemy "cancer" and the researchers who conducted these experiments claim that the children respond better to their treatments than those who don't play the video games.

Hi Tatoulia 🙂
Happy the new drape has been altered. YEA!
So nice that you have that downstairs washer and nobody is monopolizing it.
How is Kitty? Still improving? (((HUGS)))
Steven didn't buy the stuff for me to be nice to me.
He has been on an acquiring frenzy and somehow feels that by giving me some of his bounty this makes it alright.
That I shouldn't complain because he feels that I have benefited from his skills at buying sale items.
My neighbor friend would gift me with items she owned but she knew I had a use/need for them and I truly do appreciate what she has given me.
My strict directive that nobody buy me any gifts/presents is due to my muther's abuse of me.
And gifts trigger terrible emotional trauma in me still to this day.

Going to be another hot day here but not ridiculously hot like the other weeks were.
I still have some veggies and fruit so no need to grocery shop till later in the week.
Lots of yardwork/gardening needs doing but will have to wait cause I'm just not up to it yet.
Except for some pieces in the Russell Stover's all the rest of the chocolate is milk chocolate.
I only ever eat dark chocolate and really like Hershey's special dark.
Think today I will sort through my clothes and see if there are any there I can donate.
The more he brings home the more of my items I get rid of to try to make me feel better. 😀
The living room/dining room/kitchen area here are getting bare and there is now a slight echo.
I do admit that I have the opposite end of the hoarding condition and must be strict with myself not to go overboard with the minimalism.
As hard as it is for you to stop the acquiring it's just as hard for me to stop the decluttering.
Same conditions just different places on the spectrum.
When upset, nervous or depressed you shop to self medicate whereas I want to reduce everything so it would all easily fit into a car to make it easy for me to run away and escape.
LOLOLOL ;D

Everybody have a wonderful day and week!

Tillie, what a terrible mess. How awful. And donating your "portion" is exactly the right thing! Years ago a couple friend of ours used to buy me lavish gifts for my birthday. I appreciated it but they were just too much. One year as we were preparing the dinner plans, one of the couple said to my BF, oh I'll run to Tiffany's today and my BF said, do me a favor, go to the dollar store and buy $25 worth of stuff kids would enjoy. She can open each gift during the dinner, then take everything to good will the next day. So we've been doing that for probably 10 years now. It makes for a fun evening, as I see what they bought, and then it's off to the donation center. And I'm not burdened with having to buy a lavish gift for their birthdays.

Just donate it in the most peaceful way possible, whether it's showing him it's wasted money or whether it's just a little side trip you take.

I'm enjoying my iced tea now. Worked on some papers last night. Doing a load of laundry downstairs. I'm adapting and I'm happy about it.

Iced tea clinks, everyone.

~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~

Also, I am starting the 100 day challenge tomorrow.

The kitchen is much, much, better. The few dirty dishes are in the dishwasher. But it is not clean. Plants, papers, things...

Tomorrow. Tonight I am too tired to finish.

Oh Tillie, I'm sorry. I'm guessing you have told him you don't want this stuff (although I'd have a hard time saying no to a year's supply of chocolate!) do you think not being quiet about donating it would help?

Anony, baby raccoons are hard. They are really cute. But they grow up to be big raccoons.

Tatoulia, I'm excited that soon you will have all your drapes!

I'm exhausted from open house! It was fun, but I am not used to so many people. It will be better when classes start and they leave their parents at home.

Dh is still reacting to the hoarding. When I got home I started telling him a funny story that involved me picking up some free baby pools from the curb on the way to open house, and he got angry and interrupted to ask "why do we need baby pools?" And I told him "we don't. They're at school for my class and I already used them and they're staying there. Now listen, this is funny." But I think he was still focused on the baby pools.

Anony, I had trouble posting because you were posting at the same time, I think‼️‼️‼️

Yes, the implant I have just been having removed over the summer caused biting and scrambled my "decider". Exactly.

Tillie, so sorry to hear about it‼️‼️‼️

Anony, I think of you. I am concerned that your brain has also been scrambled by some nasty implants. Unfortunately, so little is known about them right now, that I cannot give you any substantial help in removing any that might be there.

Go ahead with the visualizations. We have much more power now than we used to have, and healing images sent to your brain of good health can only help.

Oh, sweetie, i am so sorry...i cant even imagine....but i love your idea to donate it to a good cause. You are a Brilliant Light with solving things with Love...♡....i had so hoped he would expand on that good feeling of having donated those guitars & do more in that direction. Is there any way you can gently explain what you would really like as a gift, instead?

Hello everybody 🙂

Really bummed out due to his shopping frenzy yesterday and again today.
So much stuff we have absolutely no use for. So much money wasted.
From the hardware store summer clearance sale today he brought me two electric wax melting units.
I abhor small electrical appliances.
And a bunch of miscellaneous assorted clutter.
From the grocery store clearance rack yesterday he brought me over a whole years worth of chocolate candy.
From the thrift shop he brought me more useless crafting supplies for crafts that I have absolutely no desire to do and a bunch of plastic beads, I really hate plastic anything.
For himself he bought two truck loads of stuff over just these last two days.

Shhhhhh....
Don't tell him but this week all that stuff he brought me is going to the thrift shop that supports the food pantry.
Maybe then I will be able to be happy again. 🙁

Hello to all!~ 😀
Joan, its interesting what you said about your place reflecting your brain. That same day you posted about that, i had been thinking, with all the advancements made recently on the brain, that i would like to see a chart of what part of the brain makes decisions, and what it looks like when a brain is indecisive vs making a decision. Then i would like to start doing healing visualizations specifically towards that!!! As crazy of an approach as that sounds, itd have to work better than my current system....
Tatoulua, every time you mention your boyfriend, it reminds me there might be a guy for me out there somewhere...♡
SubC, i now have 5 baby raccoons that are like a bunch of toddlers in my yard every night! I find it much trickier to deal with babies...
Right now is the worst time of the year with bugs & critters of all sorts....just keeping them all out of my house & things is my almost a legitimate excuse for avoiding other stuff!!! (sorta sarcasm) ;D

Joan" I am so glad to see you posting. You are doing very hard work. I am standing right by your side, cheering for you,

The woman re-sewed the final curtain panel today. She is so lovely and so pleasant. I took mom with me for the ride. I was a little cranky on the way up so we rode with the windows open and enjoying the breeze. After a short while with mom I felt so much better. BF will help me hang the drape tomorrow. He offered to do it this afternoon but I know how many errands he has to run and I will wait. It might also give me a chance to clean up in here a bit.

I am grateful to you all, When I log in and see that someone has posted it feels like such a gift.

SubC, the short answer to your question is NO, I cannot do that.

If I had been able in any way to have made my living situation more comfortable, I would have done it. Everything in my system, EVERYTHING, was totally stuck due to very advanced, sophisticated energy implants that had been imbedded in my system. These implants sabotage all normal human functioning. It has taken me all of lifetime, and very specialized expertise, to remove these implants and repair the damage. This all goes on in the nonphysical world. i am talking about the universe we live in beyond the strictly physical, the places from which all physical, linear manifestations emanate: The source(s) of all physical manifestations here.

This more expansive realm of our universe, even when it is acknowledged, is generally misconstrued by humans. There is almost no good information about it out there at all. For basic background on the history of this planet, I highly recommend the free Kryon audio channellings on the Kryon website. The planetary grid shift that happened 12/21/2012 is of particular interest, and the channellings given in 2012 and 2013 are especially salient. They help to explain what happened at that time

Last week I had a breakthrough in my work on myself. I suspect it changed my abilities to handle the world around me. Thus, I am testing my hypothesis by removing my containers from the dish drainer to see if the dish drainer remains accessible. If so, then I am correct, and I can proceed with having a life - which I have never had on planet Earth, due to the sabotage of my system.

Thanks for your question

Good morning!

Tatoulia, I'm glad you are feeling hopeful! Did you get something good to eat?

Thanks to your laundry update and Tillie's comment on fresh blankets, I am washing my overdue sheets as I type.

Tillie, the clearance sale thing sucks. I don't do that anymore, but I remember!

Joan, instead of trying to do a big clean and sort on the containers you have, which is really demanding, do you think you can decide you have enough and put any new ones that come in into the recycling or trash right after you eat? That would keep them out of your dish drainer and stop them from piling up anywhere else. I want you to keep enjoying your clean sink forever!

I am doing a 100 day challenge. It's supposed to be something that will make a change in your life. I'm not sure what the rest of the group thinks about me, because they have picked things like exercising and diet changes, and one woman is working on becoming a writer and she pledged to write a page a day for 100 days. I thought about doing something related to my pottery, but I decided what would make the biggest change in my life is my kitchen.

So I am going to go to bed with a clean kitchen every night for 100 days. By then (December 4) it should seem normal. I am going to have to change a bunch of habits to do that, but I think I can. I gave myself some exceptions - like if the dishwasher is running at bedtime I can leave rinsed dishes waiting for the next load, or letting the cast iron pan cool on the stove, or if dh has a snack after I finish. But I'm going to try really hard.

I'm hoping today will be the hardest day. I have almost finished the counters, but the kitchen table is still buried. (In part with stuff I took off the counters)

Good morning, everybody! Feeling much more hopeful today.

I'm up early and have nothing in the house to eat. I think I'll quickly run to the store to get bagels and cream cheese. I will head up to seamstress today to have the one panel fixed. I changed my sheets last night and I managed to do one load of towels. So it's actually going pretty well using the big washer here.

Have a great day, everyone! Joan, I bet you feel good when you wake up today and see your sink!

Tat, I have been thinking about you, too. Never underestimate the power of the nonphysical connections between us. I live mostly in the nonphysical world, and I could feel lately that someone wanted me to post. I have to wait until the time is right for me, and I am well enough to manage it. I really appreciate your good thoughts of me.

Tillie, thanks for the suggestion. I am not at the point of making any decisions about the containers yet. In the past I have organized somewhat along those lines. As I said, though, with my health collapsing after a sorting job, containers just pile up again. That is really the big problem, for me. Yes, it was REALLY a big deal for me to get a new kitchen sink pad. I am so happy to see it there. A real morale booster.

Take care.

Hi Subclinical 🙂
That table sounds lovely.
Twice now Steven has brought home a solid wooden shelf unit from the school library.
I immediately took both of them.
One is used for shelving in my pantry and the other smaller one is in my room.
If your family isn't going to keep the table it will be very easy to find someone who has a need for it. ;D

Hi Joan 🙂
Wonderful to "see" you.
It helps if you pick a number for the containers.
Figure out just how many you could reasonably use and then let the rest go.
As a new one comes in you would then either keep it and let another one go or just recycle the new one.
Setting limits for ourselves on the number of something really helps take the hard decision making out of the equation.
WAY TO GO! for your new sink pad! 😀

Hi Tatoulia 🙂
WAY TO GO! for all the very hard mental work you have done to help stop the acquiring.
(((HUGS)))
Good luck and best wishes that the rug and microwave will be gone soon.

The hardware store in town is having their annual summer sidewalk sale this weekend.
Of course he came home with bag upon bag of stuff.
The sale will be 75 % off everything tomorrow and I know he will go back.
"Heavy sigh"
Today I stayed home and did some laundry and took care of the cats.
Tonight Scooter and I will sleep with freshly washed sundried blankets.
Priceless. ;D

Joan! So glad to hear from you. I was thinking about you a lot today, so this is such a pleasure to hear from you!

You've made and important realization! And congratulations on having a clean sink!

SubC, yah oak library table is something I would definitely want, I love those old quarter sawn oak library tables. Great use for daughter's wedding meal! I love it!

I am up after a nap and going to try to make some progress here. Any progress.

Hi SubC!

Good point, you have to reduce the "in" first. I did that many, many years ago. I have been too sick for at least a decade to shop for anything but food, so that answers that.

The containers are food containers. Most get recycled, but when I find nice ones, it is hard to throw them away. I have piles and piles of old food containers. I have also been too sick to do anthing on the stove but boil water in a small pan. Three of the four burners have been covered for at least five or ten years (front butner open wine bottle dates back to May 2014). So almost everything I eat, I buy in recycable containers.

Thanks for the feedback!

Hi Joan!

I think you are on the right track!

For me, stopping the in (ok, clearly I haven't stopped it. -controlling? Minimizing? the in.) was the first and most important step. Before you can start to make it better, you have to stop making it worse.

So you know what you are NOT going to do with the containers. What ARE you going to do with the containers? Where are they coming from?

Dh loves this table!

Hi everyone!

Just now I got a major new insight into my hoarding behavior. No matter how I tried to organize or clean things up in the past, midway through projects, my health would collapse. Then the projects would stop, half done, and new stuff would get piled on top of the semi-organized batch. This is what was happening in my brain, too, so the house accurately reflected how scrambled my thinking had to be at the time.

Tonight I realized that the biggest issue for me is MAINTENANCE, not cleanup. I just got a new pad for the bottom of my kitchen sink today. I always hated the old one, and now it is all moldy. Maybe I will throw it into the recycling. Anyway, seeing my clean "new" sink, I thought for the bizzillionth time how I would like my dish rack to only hold dishes. There are always, these last years, cleaned containers all piled on top of the dishes in the dish rack. So I just took the containers, put them in a big plastic bag, and set the bag down atop my dining room bags.

If I'm right, and my brain is working better now than it used to, then I'll be able to keep the dish rack just for dishes. If so, I can then sort through the containers later and reduce the amount of containers I have. If I cannot MAINTAIN the area, no point in putting in the time and energy to sort through the containers. The problem will just grow back again.

What do you think?

Today I finished setting up my classroom for tomorrow's open house.

I also put the new lid on the kiln. I threw the old cracked kiln lid in the dumpster instead of trying to figure out if the material could be used for something. It didn't even bother me, so I have come a long way. I also threw out the cardboard box the new lid came in because it had spray in packing foam stuck to it.

I cleaned out the kiln room and I filled a large kitchen sized trash can. Some of the trash had metal parts that might have been recyclable, but not easily. I threw away a really old extension cord and a plastic table cloth.

I can throw away things that are broken beyond repair or soiled beyond cleaning or dangerous or truly useless.

But there is a large oak table in my truck. It is a long solid rectangular table from the school library and the building manager had been told she had to get it out of the building before tomorrow and she couldn't find a charity that would take it. The surface is marked with rings and scratches but nothing bad - light to moderate sanding. I am going to put a table cloth on it and use it as an extra table to serve ds's wedding brunch on next week instead of the flimsy plastic folding table, but after that I don't know.

Good morning everyone.

What a struggle this is. I see everyone's point. And I don't disagree. I don't want to live with terrible broken stuff, I hate to see wasted the planet is important, etc. the only thing I can say is I need a balance. A balance where my life isn't cluttered and filled with this thing and that thing. I got rid of boxes upon gift boxes upon gift boxes. I can't be a repository or a museum. I just had to learn to not keep things or take things or buy things because someone somewhere might need them, I try very hard not to buy stuff because it would be fun to own the item.

I read somewhere (likely here) not to hang on to stuff for someone else-- it may turn out they don't even want it/like it. So I try to live where I reasonably recycle things, I donate where possible and the rest I just have to say goodbye to,

Speaking of which I really want to see the rug and the microwave go this week, I wonder if i will do either,

I've done absolutely nothing to improve things around here and they are going downhill. I'm sleeping too much. I also overate the past two days, a habit I thought I'd broken,

Well it is after 11 and the calls from the brother have just started now, so I got a little alone time after all.

I'm really sorry about your situation with Steven. I'm not Steven, but school dumpster diving did make the hoard problem worse at my house for a while. I homeschooled my kids for years and the local public schools where a huge source of resources, but I brought home more books and worksheets than I could sort out in a reasonable time.

Otoh, I have a huge blackboard in my barn that we love and all my math resources were free, and I didn't need to buy printer paper for 12 years, and I still have half a desk drawer full of envelopes....

My school is not usually very wasteful. Compared to the public schools, almost nothing was thrown out. The teacher who threw away the fabric is just too exhausted and overwhelmed in her life to do anything other than toss stuff. She was cleaning out the art and sewing closet. She actually apologized to me for throwing things away because I was in her room helping her. I told her it was ok, I'm doing better. (We are old friends) I did "rescue" some sponges and two drawing dummies for my classroom while I helped her. Each of the dummies is missing a foot, but I really don't think that impairs their service as sculpture references. And the fabric. She still filled an entire 32 gallon trash can and two large boxes and I just let it go.

The thing that is hard for me is that if people just took a few extra minutes to seperate the recycling (like, an extra five minutes for the whole trash can if you sort as you toss) there would be half as much trash. And we have a parent volunteer whose support job is to collect the recycling from the classrooms every week and take it to the drop off. Every parent has to choose between a support job or a fee and recycling is important enough to the administration to make that one of the jobs.

I also rescued nine bug nets from another teacher's trash for my insect unit.

It is also very hard for me when I feel like I participated in the problem. It is still bothering me A LOT that my plastic bottle went in the trash and I didn't pull it back out for recycling. I didn't do it because I know it is socially inappropriate and I was meeting the new teachers. But I think it would have been the right thing to do, so I feel like I let social pressure convince me to do something I know is wrong.

The bug net teacher is going to teach me to make hummus so that I don't have all these little non-recyclable hummus containers in my life.

Subclinical
Steven works at a school.
For many many years he has "rescued" so much of the things thrown away there.
He always says somebody could use it or it could come in handy someday or it's cool to own this stuff or he can use it for parts, etc...
Most of the stuff was thrown out because it was old, worn out, broken/damaged, outdated...
The vast majority of the massive hoard here at my house is from his dumpster diving at the school.
The stuff is all still here all dirty and ruined from being in a huge heap.
Just this past week he drug home many very old outdated computers.
Very little has ever been recycled, gifted or donated.
He has also brought home a LOT of dumpster kittens that I have rehomed except for the two I have kept since they are too feral for the general population.
Yes, schools and other businesses are very wasteful and neglectful about recycling so now I live in extension of the dump because he sees value in owning/rescuing everything.
I really hope I die first so I don't have to clean up this mess. 🙁

I am sorry about the bunny.

I am reading and thinking overtone, but too overwhelmed right now to formulate good replies.

Today was hard for me. We are setting up at school and so many teachers are throwing so many things away.

We had a lunch today and nobody even recycled the drink bottles. Someone cleaned up my plate while I was getting a cookie and threw away my drink bottle. I want to run around the school rescuing things and pulling recycling out of the trash, but I know I should not. I need to be doing other things.

I did rescue some fabric another teacher was throwing out. I don't need it, but it is big pieces. It can go to goodwill or the upcycle store?