If music be the food of love ... Play on!

I love music, I don't think a day goes by when I'm not glued to You Tube or have the radio playing in the background.
Sometimes my mood can feel quite bleak. It might be hormones (mine or my daughters)
It could be another hour long call when a relative feels the need to remove the weight of the world from their shoulders and place it very firmly onto mine, or even worse ... When another piece off my old house falls off and I cant afford to fix it.

So I feel very lucky and grateful that I have music to help me through the day.
Its a soothing, reassuring background noise, its an occasional mad dance around the living room when that brilliant tune comes on, or a bedroom door slammed when mum is listening to her music too loud "oh the irony " I was told off for having Radio One on too loudly as a kid and now I get told off from my daughter even though I'm the grown up!

Anyway back to today's posting. I thought I would add a few videos to the page that typify my hoarding ... I'm not sure if its allowed but I'm sure any of the kind folk that happen upon my page  will advise me if I make a mistake.
In no way shape or form do I own, or own any rights to these videos, they are just to a little nod to my hoarders life.

 

Everybody was shuffling

 

Everybody was shuffling, if there was an Olympic sport dedicated to moving stuff from one place to another I know I would be up for Gold.
If I had to count the hours I had productively spent sorting my possessions it would be vast. I have great plans, I put the music on to keep me company and I set off to tackle my hoard.

Sometime I set a goal time say 30 minutes? Other times I get lost in the tidying!
I will get my head down and tidy like there is no tomorrow, I work with such gusto I forget to eat and drink. I look up at the clock and hours will have passed.
Its round about here that I start patting myself on the back and congratulating myself.

• Today I got on with it!

• Today I didn't procrastinate

• Today I really worked hard till my back/knees/head hurt (Please feel free to add your own achy body parts here)

• Today my daughter will see how hard I've worked

• Today my mum will have no reason to turn her eyes to the sky and start nagging

Yes today has been a brilliant day! So I sit and stare around the room to enjoy the space I have created and I look forward to easily moving through the area that was so cluttered .... but in reality I just want to cry!
The room looks 100 times worse! But How? What the Hell? I don't understand?

Five hours spent shuffling. Now I didn't know till recently that this is a 'thing' that some hoarders do, its called Churning You may be very familiar with the term, you may be very familiar with the task, but what a soul destroying energy wasting occupation it is.

Churning, shuffling whatever you want to call it, it's one of the things on my to do list and to learn about list. I really intend to research the subject and speak to a few experts to see if  they can come up with useful hints and tips on how to break this cycle.

 

 Cos I'm a one man band

 So Leo Sayer? What has he got to do with hoarding, not much as far as I know but I do resonate with the title, Cos I'm a one man band
In general I'm a happy kind of person, a glass half full kind of a gal - I genuinely cant help it, yes I do have the odd moment when the world gets on top of me but I'd say 99% of the time I'm annoyingly upbeat and happy!
I draw people to me and I don't mean that in a bragging or boastful way, it just is.
I'm the kind of person who will sit at a bus stop or cafe and someone will tell me their story.

I believe every story is worth listening to and at one stage I did start training to be a counselor (but that's another story)
It's fair to say people want to be in my life and very often try to invite us into theirs.
They want to pop round for a tea or a coffee, they want come across when they are at a loose end or when I post on social media that I feel bored or lonely when my girl has gone to her dads.

Hoarding in my personal opinion is one of the loneliest conditions/illnesses.
I can not open my home to the masses, I can not open my home to my family and friends, and I can not open my home to repair guys/gals to fix my tumble down home - even if I did have the money to do so ....  And yet as much as I reject  people I am really desperately lonely at times.
It's a terrible paradox really ... Like a sad eternal loop that cant be broken. I hoard so people can not enter my life, I'm lonely.
I don't always want  people in my life, but I'm lonely.

Loneliness is a killer, it sucks big time, its a painful and miserable ball all rolled into one and yet it is still not a big enough inducer to sort out my hoard. So part of my brain and its a big part of my brain is telling me that as lonely as I am I don't actually want to invite folk into my home and into my life!

See I have the understanding behind hoarding but not necessarily the tools or knowledge to defeat it quite yet, but I'm hoping these things will come in time.

I just quickly like to add that as a one man band only I am allowed to sort my hoard out, many hands do not make light work ... many hands induce anxiety, but that's a subject I will touch on at a later date.

Under Pressure

 

Unless you are a total hermit and that's a valid enough life choice for some - you will probably come under pressure from someone or maybe yourself to clear and sort your hoard.

I'm often made to feel guilty, bad, ashamed and under inspection from the small circle of people within my life where my hoarding is concerned.
I'm in my late 40's now and I can honestly say hand on heart I'm no longer into self depreciation.
I'm not a terrible person, I'm not a fantastic person I'm just me, a person who happens to have two house worth of possession in one!

But I am human and I do feel social pressure to conform and have a 'normal' house and home.
I have had neighbors comment on my garden and the length of my grass, my ex pops in occasionally to use the loo when he picks our child up and I feel terribly judged as his eyes scan the rooms.
I feel angst ridden when my mum start another lecture on the toys the washing (insert whatever household object here) the irony is she also was a hoarder until she moved in with a 'neat freak' her words not mine!
And I feel under pressure from friends who in that past have told me just to skip it all.

The sad thing about hoarding is yes there may be an accumulation of junk but there's also an accumulation of memories as well. Mixed in with the clothes that no longer fit is a string my Ex husband threaded cheap plastic heart beads on from a Christmas cracker.
Buried in the wardrobe is old pressed glass that came from my grandmas house. Under piles of stuff are drawings my daughter made when she was one, two or three.
All of these things have great emotional value to me and it feels disrespectful and painful to even think of skipping them.

But having said that statement the logical side of my brain is saying "if these items are such beloved treasures why are they buried and lost to my eyes and mind"

I can see to an outsider how all of this hoarding malarkey makes absolutely no sense, and I suppose that's the crux of the problem, if we could make sense of the hoard, the sense of the emotions and sense of the behavior untidily rapped around it all, then we possibly wouldn't be hoarders any more.

So that's all for today I feel like i have rambled a little so my apologies.  I don't expect you to read all my musings - drop in when you want and take from it what you will :)

and if you have stuck with me this far, thank you for listening to my Untidy Mind