What’s New Pussycat?

 

A blogpost is possibly percolating about hoarders in the media, possibly focusing on the UK media since awareness of hoarding is only really getting started here in the mainstream but I would like to see a bit more of The Hoarder Next Door and have a good think first. ( CHAnGE are wanting to read and discuss that I know.) I have been taking notes and everything. I don’t know who I am any more. Whatever happened to watching mindless tv while dribbling slightly and eating chocolate?  I am worried Readers, very worried. Also, I am out of chocolate.  It just isn’t right. 

If you have an opinion, article etc. to share with me on that please do. I try to google about and find stuff but word of mouth is always more effective for these things. 

An update on the Hoard of The Dragons. Hold on to your hats and anything else you treasure. 

While drunk on teapot power, WE FILLED THE CAR UP WITH STUFF AND IT LEFT THE HOARD.

Oh yes. Even more shocking? Minimal argument. There was a bit of whimpering over cardboard boxes but it was easily dealt with.  I am not sure what happened there. I think I might blame clutter hating aliens. Welcome Visitors From Another Planet. I worship you muchly and make you an offering of binbags.

So where did this car full of cardboard boxes, paper, bedding, towels, pet food the cat yacks on the 10 inches of free carpet if she so much as looks at it and an old duvet* go? To the cat and dog home! 

Which is kind of perfect for the items you don’t think are good enough for a charity shop but still feel guilty about throwing out.  The major difficulty for Major Dragon is the “but there is nothing wrong with it!” yell that catapults out of her mouth when something floats too close to a binbag. (She also has the “I paid good money for that!” yell but that might be another blogpost with extra swearing. If anyone has any good tips on how to handle that one I am all ears.) But at the same time she hates the item and has already replaced it anyway. At least twice.

I could have hugged the nice lady in the cat and dog home. They will take pretty much anything and use it. Even shredded paper she said (rather hopefully. I assume it is used as bedding for the smaller animals that they care for.)  I am filled with joy that all the “useful” cardboard boxes that Major Dragon insists on squirrelling will have somewhere to go that isn’t the Hoard.  Also it gives me a list of items to gather when a good natured friend offers aid and a car.  I still feel a bit guilty enlisting them on dump runs but a trip to the cat and dog home to give them things and aww at all the cute animals sounds much more palatable doesn’t it?  The only downside is I want to cuddle all the animals and take one or seven home. Not that they would actually fit in here so they are safe but I do turn into a utter idiot in there, only capable of making weird noises and waving my fingers at kittens with a dopey smile on my face.

So, clutter clearers, hoard cleaners and people with a bag of worn towels. Phone your local rescue centre and see if they can use what you have. Chances are it will be a big fat yes.

*in general pillows and duvets are a no no owing to difficulties cleaning them but as we turned up with one, they will use it regardless and likely bin. But pretty much everything else can be used. Our local centre is also looking for spare wool as a nice lady knits them patchwork blankets they then sell in their shop.

Teapot Tales

Last week I threw a teapot in the bin.

Hmm. That doesn’t really fully capture the import and emotion of this event.

Reader, I PUT A TEAPOT IN THE BIN. There. That is probably a little closer.

The thing you really fight with the most in a hoard is not the objects (well, they do put up a hell of a fight but that is another blogpost, a lot of other blogposts,) but rather the guilt. For the sake of household harmony you learn not to lob stuff in a bin without due care and attention. If you don't, well things can become a little fraught. Major Dragon still mentions items that I, whisper it, might have flung in landfill about ten years or so ago. I still haven't confessed to that. I just remember the freedom of standing at the edge of a cliff we had backed up the loaded car to, swinging my arm and just letting stuff fly away from my hands. (it should be noted this was before local councils got going with all the recycling schemes. I highly doubt that landfill area is still there. And if it is I bet they don't let people walk up to the edge of it and just drop stuff in any more.)

In many ways the brave new world of recycling is the worst thing that could happen to anyone trying to corral a hoarder. It adds to that guilt I mentioned earlier. A hoarder is often brought down by the decision making leading to item disposal. The discussion over every single item is now drawn out even further. Should it go in the bin? And once that is answered and the non hoarder has prevailed - the final question/argument has to be hammered out: WHICH bin should it go in? Should it go in the bin at all? What about the charity shops? The council recycling centre bins? The cat and dog home? I walk the fine line that runs between responsible recycling human being and freedom banshee that wishes she could shriek and just push everything off the edge of the landfill cliff.

I had been quietly hating the teapot for years. It, of course, was one of Major Dragon’s ”I’ll take it” items from a workmate (remember The Table? I sometimes wonder if they bring stuff in the office to save themselves a trip to the dump. I don't think there is anything given away in there that MD doesn't bring home.) The teapot was a huge, horrifyingly twee thing, with enough patterns and flowers to give you sugarshock. But I felt like I couldn’t get rid of it as MD had brought it home for me since a previous teapot had jumped to a shattering death from the kitchen counter. Actually two of them had. I reasoned that if I was going to become an accidental teapot smasher then I may as well keep one I hated, since obviously it would die in a few months. Ha. Years later I found myself glaring at it. ”I am going to throw that teapot away” I told MD. ”but you can’t!” she immediately replied. ”there is nothing wrong with it”

I started fixating on teapots. Adding them to my amazon basket, staring at them in the shops. I apologise to any shop assistants I probably frightened while lurking in home sections of the supermarket. I WAS ON A MISSION. I was going to find the most beautiful teapot ever and I was going to buy that sucker. Then Horror Teapot was going in the bin NO MATTER WHAT Major Dragon said. And I finally did it last week. I bought a beautiful little round teapot from The London Pottery Company. It keeps the heat and pours neatly and I am just in love (check me, so British it hurts. Sorry American readers, you must be baffled!)

The other day I poured a lovely cup out for MD with it while she looked on approvingly.

”Does this mean you are getting rid of the other one?” she said.

”I have always hated it”

The Idiot Box and Comfortable Carrots

I have nothing exciting to impart about the Great Hoard Clearing Attempt of 2012.  We are still staggering along.  Avon items for ebay are roughly priced after Reformed Dragon had another small shouting fit (there was a bit of a moment where Major Dragon tried to create a list of the things she wanted to keep out of the sale list. RD did not take this well and said quite a lot about that.  It featured quite a few swearwords.  RD is quite talented at sweary rants.)

The bins go out and come in again on the rubbish tides.  Sometimes there is even rubbish in them.

Generally I would rank the Dragons as doggypaddling along rather than drowning.  There are no great achievements but no utter disasters for the time being.

I think that might rank as a great achievement in itself. 

A lot of my  time has been spent finely tuning things to be just annoying enough to make Major Dragon want to deal with them.  This is a verbal alchemy that only a child knows, the right way to say things to mildly irritate a parent into action.  I could mend a lot of little things for her but all the books say tis better for a hoarder for make these decisions themselves.  I don’t know if it will work but I am a gobby bugger and might as well try it out.

Case 1: The tv or the freeview box has broken in the living room.  We aren’t sure which.  This doesn’t particularly bother me.  I am not a mad tv watcher so it doesn’t grate.  However Major Dragon has a fairly large idiot box addiction.  BUT of course, she has stacked so much stuff in front of the tv that it isn’t easily reachable to test, fix, swap for another tv out the stash of them MD has acquired over the years.  And I am not doing it.  A rough count tells me we own 7 televisions.  I think. They are the ones I can see anyway. There may well others I have forgotten.  Well strictly speaking I own one of them.  But no tv reception in my room means MD kept appropriating for her occasional tidy up attempts so it drifts round the house like it is lost usually.  It is a small flatscreen tv so it worked for her “getting stuck in” moments.  Which apparently need to have the tv going as she works in case she gets bored. This applies to just about every domestic chore from cooking to ironing.  Don’t even ask me to explain.  It makes the red mist rise.  She will spend more time farting about setting up the tv and watching than clearing when she has one of these attacks.  I have put it beyond her reach for the time being so when MD is feeling ill used that is good for a complain and insistence since I don’t watch tv it should be her tv and she should be able to use it any time she wants. Ha, NO.

Anyway. That was the first shot in the campaign. No tv, no free floating tv she could set up hurriedly meant she would have to clear, yes?  Well she is still holding out for the time being since tv can happen on her laptop but happily it BSOD’d the other day (possibly from tv streaming exhaustion) so I live in hope that eventually an MD going tv cold turkey will eventually lead to some clearing effort.   I can wait it out longer than she can.  And am happy to gently point out if the stuff moves out the corner of the room I will sort out the television and do all the crawling about behind things and meddling with cables.  So there is the quest.  Perfectly achievable with minimum effort, (the couch really isn’t all that far away to drag stuff to so she can sit and sort.) and the reward carrot of a nice working tv.

Case 2: I am taking the television carrot reward idea and running with it.  Major Dragon’s bed is covered with boxes.  I think I mentioned that before. She sleeps in a small space on one side of it.  I started out by pointing out how uncomfortable that must be.  And bad for her health (dusty and she has asthma) but mostly uncomfortable.  She hates the bed anyway. Why not get one of those lovely beds with TELEVISION space in the foot of it.  I think they are hideous but perfect for Major Dragon. I have extolled the virtues of a comfortable, convenient bed, tv perfectly stationed to watch comfortably in it.  I have never used the word comfortable so much in my life. I am hoping eventually the word will result in a Palovian dog response.  “COMFORTABLE” *madly tidying parent*  I naturally had no hesitation in looking the beds up online and checking prices.  I have drawn beautiful verbal pictures of MD snuggled up in her bed in winter in a COMFORTABLE warm room watching tv.  The little wheels are turning in MD’s head so we will see if that will work.  I am sneaky wee git but not feeling much shame. 

All this effort did lead to a five star hoarder conversation though.

SD: So what is in those boxes in your bed anyway?

MD: um. Magazines.

SD: Seriously? That is a lot of magazines MD. You totally don’t need them you know.  I read that a magazine is 80% adverts to 20% content.

MD: It is only this years magazines! I am much better about them now. I read and then I stack for recycling or to show you something in them!

*SD looks at double bed covered with boxes* *looks at MD* *Lip trembles slightly trying to hold back laughter* *MD realises what she has just said and has similar lip tremble*

SD: MD… it is only March. And your magazines are monthly.  I don’t really think it is possible for that to just be this year’s magazines. 

Thankfully we laughed together on that one.

Actually I might mark that as the achievement for the month.   I still am not sure what is in those boxes on the bed though.

Magic In The Mess.

Well that was a bit of a holiday for you all from me wasn’t it?  But fear not!  I have returned!  Fully medicated!
How did February go?  Well, to be brutally honest, a lot of it was on my face in my bed with a biscuit or ten gripped in my hand.  That was a fun week or two for all the Hoard inhabitants. Thank you to all who applied gentle and not so gentle verbal levers to my prone form. 
The thing I really had to choke down on in the past few weeks along with the biscuit crumbs was the shame.  And not just mine either. There was a reeling moment of “What the hell I am doing?”  “WHY the hell I am doing this?”   The initial shame of the Hoard and remembering this isn’t how I want to live and that I didn’t always live like this (that part can get far more easily lost than you think) also morphed into worry about forcing someone to living how you want them to.  Even an extra worry about this blog.  It forces Major Dragon’s life into the public domain.  I suddenly understood why so many children of hoarders chose to let it go and just empty a house after the hoarder has left it.  If they are not there then that is half the problem solved in terms of a hoard and your own problems can take the lead.  (And boy do children of hoarders come blessed with a plethora of problems.  But that is a post for another day.)   I had lengthy talks with friends that helped me so much but when I mentioned this to MD she was actually quite upset at the thought of me discussing her with them.   My needs vs. hers are a very fine tightrope to walk.  It is quite a hard decision.  Every time I choose to talk I choose to put myself first.  I am certainly no saint but that isn’t just a difficult decision that has been made, it has to be made every time.  It still does feel a bit selfish even if, ultimately, MD benefits.  I have to keep reminding myself that it does help us both in the end. And watch this a few times. (hat tip to Brené Brown for inspiring the name of the post. Her blog is over here if you are curious)
Anyway, the Hoard Status report:  Still Hoardy.  A good few of the verbal lever appliers reminded me that baby steps still count.  So I shall count it as a success that it might not be any better than a few weeks ago but it isn’t any worse.  Actually in a hoarding situation that requires a lot more work than people assume.  When you are in a guddle there doesn’t seem much point bothering with picking up after yourself.  After all it doesn’t make much a difference to your surroundings.  My walking on the hoarding spot policy is, even if none of the Hoard is undone, that a full bin WILL go out weekly.  Even if does mean standing at 7 in the morning shouting at MD for her to give me her rubbish bag out her bedroom.  And actually in a bid to fill the last of the bin there is a quick shoot about to gather up stuff to pitch which eventually should begin to show a difference.  I have stationed rolls of binbags everywhere so there is never a search for them (well in theory,)  moved the wheelie bins to the house door passed through and by most often.  I don’t know if that makes a difference but I feel all organised and stuff. Line up brain, bins and hopefully the body will follow.
And MARCH!
Next time on the Secret Dragon Hoard, Boxes and the Idiot Box. Unless I have a squirrel moment.

Cat Herding And The Magic Ten Minutes

Nothing is getting done and this time it is me. If I don't do things then Major Dragon won't do things and we end up having a good bellow at each other instead of a good binning. Not of each other I hasten to add. Though I suspect lately we have both been sorely tempted.

The winter months and the dark and cold of them are fairly splatting me miserably on the floor. Or as close as I can get to it in the current situation. I have misplaced my Prozac prescription while in a haze of tired blahs because I am a idiot (probably hiding it from myself) and seem to have lost a myriad of other things. All my time seems to be spent wandering about wondering where the hell I have put whatever this time. And truly, they could be anywhere in here. I caught myself peering hopefully in the fridge earlier in case I had put anything other than food in there.

I have not slept tonight. I had planned on a day out tomorrow of various domestic things like food shopping etc. but now wondering if I can get out of it. MD has a free day but has done her usual GRAND PLAN which seems to have layered on to the day a list of things that would ordinarily take us 3 days to achieve. I don't know if this is a hoarding thing or just something especially MD in its pure lunacy. She has no concept of task length and time. It has taken years to convince her that the Hoard can't be sorted out fully in a week. She still treasures hopes. In her head she is 27, with a youthful turn of speed that can achieve all. In minutes. Then she assumes that well if she isn't? Then I am half her age and it should be no problem for me. She remembers the 20-something who springcleaned the house madly in about a week annually while MD was away on holiday (oh the days of free rubbish uplifts. And the youthful lack of respect that let me flip things in the bin with nary a guilty qualm.) It doesn't seem to totally register that that was ten years, good health and over half a hoard ago. The only thing I can do at any speed these days is drink a cup of tea. Actually, thinking on it, this would be another way MD halts herself from Hoard cleaning. All jobs should only take ten minutes. She starts something, gets miserable that it is taking too long, gets disheartened, gets thirsty, gets hungry, stops for a rest and ooh look what is on the tv and doesn't get started again. And neither do I since her chair is bang in the middle of the house bang in a hamster run and usually in my way. Also then she becomes a back seat cleaner and generally risks having a carrier bag stuffed in her mouth as I grow more and more irritated with comments from the gallery.

Anyway. The Grand Day Out. Kicking myself since I KNOW this happens and if my brain had been a bit more present I could have been all glowing girl scout prepared. So trying to herd a few cats, er, task preparations that I can airily drop in MD's lap for her to do while on my way back to bed. Well I say bed but in a mad Puritan moment, in a bid to try and make me do something before my mood went down, I struck my bed and have been sleeping on the floor. Sometimes this works. The general discomfort usually gets me up and vaguely productive. And indeed it did initially. Enough that I have managed to pull my own room apart into equally as disastrous area as the rest of the house. Oops. So the current net result of this strategy is a sore hip, extra tired grumpiness and a distinct feeling of failure. Balls.

I think I am going to give up on the stick and try a bit of carrot for a while. As long as the carrot is chocolate.

Mighty Mental Oaks

May be grown from confessional acorns.
Either way I feel like I ran into a tree. (I didn’t. Though I have headbutted the new jumbo ironing board that still lurks in a box in the hall still more than once.  Not on purpose. Mostly.)
It has been a stop and talk time at Casa De Dragon Hoard. Well actually it has been a stop and talk time OUTSIDE the Hoard.
Major Dragon spent some time with her siblings recently.  I hadn’t really thought anything of it till my aunt started discussing MD’s hoarding with me a few days later.  As an actual problem.  I was so startled I am sure I was standing there like a concussed owl.  Turned out MD had actually told her sister she may have a bit of a problem. 
To put this confession into a OMG YOU DID WHAT scale for you - I thought MD actually admitting to anyone that she had a hoarding problem (without me standing behind her poking her with a large stick) less likely than the current British Government suddenly standing up and shrieking “BUGGER AUSTERITY CUTS!” then hanging out of the windows of Westminster lobbing 50 pound notes at the people below. To actually admit she has a problem and talk about it independently is right off that scale.  Never mind going all the way to 11, you can safely add zeros to that number.  Even more amazing considering that before Christmas location arguments I was told to stop mentioning MD’s hoarding problem in front of her.  She sulkily told me I was crowing about it since I kept mentioning it.  I thought she was working up to the 5 steps back I have been expecting since the step forward when she first grudgingly admitted she had a problem.  I may have Channel Four’s Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder programme to thank for that.  Right about at the point I could have expected a major wobbly about how I am bullying her and it is her house and my god she has done that so often I could actually type out the full rant, she saw this on tv and it put, as my granny used to say, her gas at a peep. Well, for now anyway. There will always be another Table Saga to clip my clutter cleaning wings. The day there isn’t I will have to coaxed out from under the Jumbo Ironing Board with cake and reassures that the sky isn’t about to fall.
I probably won’t believe you but I do like cake.
So where does that leave the Hoard this week?  Standing on fertile ground it seems.  And not just where that stuff got dropped on the carpet.  Aunt clearly had done her research.  She offered to pick up stuff for the dump any time particularly when MD is out at work and can’t sneak it back in the house.  Just bag it and pop it on the doorstop, give her a ring and it is away.  I am caught between guilt at making her do an hour round trip if I take her up on her offer and kissing her shoes.  The offers of aid lately are a bit stunning.  There is wild, crazy talk of a skip party in the spring but that is wild and crazy talk for another post. (not actually in a skip but the skip would be there and we theoretically would be flinging stuff in it. That isn’t Major Dragon. Maybe... Bad Secret Dragon, that is no way to solve your problems. Tut.  You know this is why I started a blog, I was totally starting to talk to myself.  And the cardboard boxes. Can I blame the mental walking into trees?) 
Starting to wonder if I should be handing out badges to them. “I fought a Clutter Dragon! (and it didn’t win)” with singed edges. Or “I have the moves like Jagger a glacier” Mine will read “Have acorn, still searching for sanity”
It is a start though. Hi 2012, are we finally ready?

Note to self: find new word for "problem" or you will be typing it forever on this blog.

Any Old Irons?

Ah the iron. That weighty clothes smoothing object. Which I do not use. I really don't. I was a proper scruffy student and then in the following years I had jobs with children and all the mess that would suggest. That led to buying simple, soft fabric clothes that are as wash and wear (and tumbledry) as you can get. The job is gone yet the clothes remain. And also the inner scruffy student that says "ach body heat will makes the creases drop out"

I tell you all this to underline my lack of ironing interest. It does make life easier. Particularly in a hoarded house. Clothes don't do well in a hoarded house. They get lost, crumpled, caught on things and are a pain to drag in any amount through hamster runs to wash and dry. I am willing to do that for me. And for Major Dragon. It is one of the last bastions of personhood? Pride? Against a hoard. One that Major Dragon might lose if she were on her own. Well, I don't think she would lose entirely since she holds down a job and is seen in public so there is a point where she will decide she needs clean clothes. But there was a time in the last 5 or so years where I decided I was taking over the laundry since she would keep putting it off then would have to go to work in a dirty blouse and a cloud of febreeze on a Monday morning. There are many things I let slide in the Secret Hoard for the sake of my sanity. Major Dragon leaving the house without a fresh blouse and clean underwear is not one of them. Even if I do spend a whole week yelling up the stairs for her to gather the dirty laundry.

I do not iron though. There she is on her own. A lack of ironing is also easier in a hoarded house. You may have had a "damn, where will I put up the ironing board" moment. But only hoarders and possibly people living in London bedsits wonder where they can put up an ironing board and be able to stand next to it. Without zebra striping their midriff.

This, interestingly enough, is where Major Dragon will not give way. She has to have ironed clothes. (she has recently destroyed a crinkle fabric blouse by continually insisting on ironing it despite my protests) I am not actually sure how many irons she owns. I can see two from where I am sitting. I am willing to bet there is at least another two in here. Even after I gave one away without MD noticing and I managed to throw away a broken one she had initially refused to part with on account of hating the new one. She didn't use the old one but getting rid of it would have ranked the new inferior iron as acceptable. I think she didn't want it to get delusions of adequacy. The new one was only a temporary measure anyway since the new very expensive iron (the one from the side quest over here. Remember?) still hasn't been found. We thought we had found it once. But it turned out to be a steam cleaner that she didn't remember buying. And we don't know if she bought it thinking it was the iron or they sent the wrong thing because she never opened the box as she didn't want it "spoiled". Or if the steamer is an entirely separate item and there is still a mystery iron living as a soldier of fortune travelling the Hoard and fighting for domestic appliance rights.

Then the ironing board broke. And left in the Great Rubbish Pick Up of 2011.

Just before the festive holidays and an overdose of shopping channels for a happy Major Dragon.

Yes, she bought a new huge and expensive iron. And a jumbo ironing board. Which doesn't fit in the space left by the previous not jumbo one. So are still in their boxes and left languishing behind the front door catching the elbows and hips of anyone passing by, desperately begging for human attention. While Major Dragon irons with Unacceptable Iron on her bed (the third of it not covered by boxes).

This is becoming the plot of a bizarre French film in my mind. With unrequited love and demented suffering. Don't let me get started on the Tale of Tin Openers. It would probably go all Lars Von Trier and I am not sure any of us would recover.