Keep it or chuck it?

[cyberknight]

Can all these OCD people come and sort my sons room out, hes 6 and already turning into a hoarder, which reminds me i have to go sort his room out while hes out...with a bin bag as i am bound to find a bag ful of scrap paper etc !

 

[asterix]

Is he of French descent? That's the norm round here - keep everything even if it's broken or rubbish.

My experience was very different. There was some firewood and some hay in the hayloft and some 2nd hand tiles that I've used one way or another. Otherwise, zilch. When we first saw the place there was an old farm table dumped in it but they took that as well - shame.. In the UK when gardening I am used to finding shards of pottery, maybe a coin, clay pipe fragments, but apart from a stash of ox-shoes, nothing, we've had to bring all our rubbish over from the UK! (Oh,there was one coin, the cheap sort the Germans gave the French after pinching all theirs for scrap).

 

[swee'pea99]

I don't think I'm obsessive - I do chuck stuff out, and wouldn't keep anything clearly useless - but I must admit to erring on the side of retention ('hoarding' is such a vulgar term, don't you think?) 'You never know when it'll come in handy,' as my mum used to say.

 

[ThinAir]

Chuck it. Can't stand clutter.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Chuck Norris.

 

[Speicher]

I keep lots far too many items "just in case they are needed". It is organised though, with similar things together. In the garage, instance there are cupboards. One is for car related items, one for plumbing miscellany, and one for decorating/diy items etc. These are old kitchen cupboards removed from the last house, because the new occupants were going to fit a completely new kitchen.

All the old (and of assorted length) pieces of rope are all together, and all the paint tins neatly on shelves.

I have a very strong aversion to throwing anything out. For instance, chipped mugs are kept for storing pens, pencils, and paintbrushes. It is all very neat and tidy and I can find anything that I am looking for.

Please let me know if there is anything you need.

 

[tyred]

I have a friend who never chucks anything, as in rusty pipe, bags of cement half rock hard, gallons of oil he bought cheap sometime in 1962, spares for lawn mowers that ceased production thirty years ago etc etc etc. He has two huge barns full to the roof with

Where is this Aladin's cave/tourist attraction? Sounds like somewhere I would love to visit....

 

[Hill Wimp]

Can all these OCD people come and sort my sons room out, hes 6 and already turning into a hoarder, which reminds me i have to go sort his room out while hes out...with a bin bag as i am bound to find a bag ful of scrap paper etc !

I have 3 God daughters who are sisters. When they were little and driving their mum to despair with their untidy bedrooms i used to turn up with bin liners and do their rooms with them. This lasted 2-3 times then all it took was for me to say on the phone to one of them " well i'll be down on Saturday with the bin liners then " and their rooms would be spik and span before i arrived.

The oldest one has just graduated and when i went to see her at her Uni digs her house mates told me i must be someone special as she had spent the previous week cleaning and tidying up. I'm obviously still a scary Godmother

 

[swee'pea99]

[QUOTE 2582459, member: 30090"]You can't beat a good clear out. Sometimes I get a bit sentimental about chucking something but then I ask myself when was the last time I had used this particular item...?[/quote]

Rock solid rule: however long it is since you needed something, the next time you need it will be more than a week and less than a month after you threw it out.

 

[Silver Fox]

Less is more.

Clutter dost offend mine eyes.

 

[Globalti]

Taking rubbish to the dump or the charidee shop is cathartic; I love getting rid of stuff.

However I have still got a big plastic bin in my garage that's full of bits and pieces from countless jobs I've done over the years, old hinges, coat hooks, bits of metal, plastic, gawd know what... and sometimers I delve in and find exactly what I need to bodge something with.

 

[DougieAB]

"When we bought the property next door, the old lady was in care, her only daughter had just lost her husband, so we agreed to clear the stuff ourselves "

I thought you were going to say that you found her husband amongst the clutter!!!

 

[palinurus]

I like music, but I hate having a record collection. Charity shops and record collectors do well out of me.

But other stuff does accumulate, odd nuts and washers, bike parts. I don't clear out that stuff so often.

 

[Christopher]

Re Alex H's post, that is interesting. When my parents bought their place in France (an old farm), the barn had several hundred empty bottles from a failed bar the owners used to have. So we took all that out and the barn is again semi-full of a mix of the useful and the useless: a dozen horse-drawn farm implents (ploughs etc), a winnowing machine last used in ~1978, an outboard motor carefully crated up in 1975 and never taken out of the box since, a blacksmith's drill that has siezed, rusty guttering... then again they have loads of properly-seasoned tibmer, chainsaws, proper tools etc. Main challenge when doing a job is finding the tools and meterials...
Oh forgot to say the neighbour down the road found an old German rifle in the loft (7.92mm Mauser) left over from the war but carefully stored - oiled up but no ammo fortunatley.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

I'm doing the grandaddy of all declutters, moving from a 3 bed semi to a 2 bed flat.
British Heart Foundation has got some furniture from it, I'm donating 1 bike to a bike recycler in Sheffield, and Ebay is benefitting from all the listing fees for other stuff.
I'm amazed that Acornsoft Elite for the BBC Micro can go for £50+, that'll be on Ebay this week.

Needless to say my better half is a demon sorter, so I'm finding lot's of stuff I don't 'need' anymore!