@Starpolisher wrote:
@gidgetgh wrote:
Just pick a day and gather all of your papers together and go through them, one at a time. Shred what you need to shred and keep what you need to keep.
You'll feel so much better for getting it done. I keep very little paper. Bank statements and things needed for taxes. That's it.
I could never do all I have in one day!...lol Even my filing cabinets need to be done. I often feel overwhelmed with all these papers and trying to find places for them! Not to mention, I have saved every card that dh and ds' have given me in the last 42 years including the one's from my wedding, my bridal and baby showers and congrats on ds' births. What's a "sentimental girl" to do!
I need some intervention...lol!😉
I once asked my youngest son what he was going to do with the cards when I'm gone to which he replied, "Ma, what you should do. Throw them away!" Now we joke about how I'm leaving them to him in the will to dispose of.😀
This past mother's day he gave me a very big card(about 8.5X11)he said so I couldn't save it. Well, of course I found a place to store it...geesh, I do need help!😱
OK. Do you REALLY want an intervention? If not, skip what is coming next here. This is not specificaly for the above poster, I know she was making a joke about the cards, I get that. And I'm sure her situation is nothing like I faced, BUT for others who might read this and maybe rethink some things:
My husband and I have cleaned out and sold houses for three couples in recent years: his folks, mine and an aunt and uncle. Nobody should have to do what we have done.
The aunt and uncle lived in the house 50 years. She kept every card and almost every letter she ever received. She kept gas ration tickets, tax bills, carpet receipts from the 1950's. Now to look at the house, you would not suspect this. She wasn't really a hoarded, but also had two outbuildings full.
We have spent the past 15 years of OUR LIVES dealing with junk other people should have thrown away. I'm not doing our house becasuse we've spent our time and lives doing it for other people.
What good is that paperwork and these cards doing you? NONE. Except it is difficult to throw them away and somebody besides you will have to bite the bullit and do it. Keep the five best cards and throw the others in the trash. Or think about your loved ones having to spend their time to do this.
Broken stuff? Used up stuff, old clothes, butter dishes, one house had FIVE old mixers in an upper cabine, picnic baskets (nobody's been on a picnic in my 60 years of knowing them), thermos bottles, miscellaneous cups and dishes. Really? Are you going to USE this? THROW IT OUT. Don't worry about donating it. THROW IT OUT. There are plenty of people donating stuff. God won't hold it against you.
Old slips? Pajamas never worn. Magazines and newspaper clippings, ink pens that don't work, bent forks, step stools (you have six of them?), jelly jars, makeup you don't like but won't throw away. . . starting to sound familiar?
So get rid of it. Don't leave your left-overs for someone else to deal with.
For FOUR YEARS, at least once a month we hauled an SUV load of STUFF from one house. NONE of it good enough to donate. Had it been we would have. That couple spent four years for him and 3 for her in the nursing home. We paid the bills, took care of the accounts, sweated them running out of money, and all the while were trying to get the house raked out for the inevitable sale when they passed. While they were in the nursing home canned goods stashed away exploded, so we had to clean those out. Some were where we weren't expenting canned goods to be.
Last spring we took SEVEN large boxes of paper work and old checks to shred day at the bank. Do you know how many hours it took us to dig through that, box it up, store it in our garage in space WE needed to take to shred day? It would have taken days to shred it ourselves.
People, it isn't funny, it isn't a joke, it is other people's lives you are co-opting to take care of your mess. For us, it was more than the last 15 years and we have another one coming.
I love my relatives, I miss them horribly, I would have done anything to help them any way I could while they were alive, but I HATED going through their stuff, and they would have been so ashamed to know what we had to do after they passed. The time, money, anger, sadness, hurt, and loss we had to endure for weeks and months and even years to get rid of this stuff. . . Because we both worked, an awful lot of our own stuff went begging during these years.
That's the reality of it.
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