Hi everyone, hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

I'm so happy to read about everyone's great progress!

LR, way to to getting ready to move! Awesome idea to take pictures to see your progress. It's so easy to feel like you've worked and worked and worked and nothing is improving. It's good to be able to see how much you've really gotten done. I hope all continues to go well for you!

Tatoulia, great job on all of the stuff you've been purging! I can totally relate on the shredding. I have two big bags of stuff that need to be shredded. I did make some progress last Wednesday morning (my garbage day is Wednesday so I was determined to get at least one bag out there) and I overheated my shredder too! So proud that you were able to totally get out of the storage space, that's HUGE!

Dave and Dianne, hope you are both doing well! Great to hear (see?) from you!

The punchbowl stories reminded me... I think I still have a punchbowl and set of glasses at my parents house. When I go over there next time I'm going to need to take a look (and donate!).

I still don't like cleaning with my boyfriend in the house, at least not any of the major stuff. I wait until he's at work or school before I do any cleaning, but with the holidays and whatnot, I've done very little over the past couple weeks. I'm having issues with my computer too which is distracting.

Yesterday my boyfriend said that since the holiday was over and we didn't have much planned for this weekend, it could be a cleaning weekend. He said this enthusiastically and with great excitement. My reaction was... less enthusiastic. 🙂 He assured me that we would work together and it would be teamwork cleaning. I'm not thrilled about this, especially not for the second bedroom. he's already seen it but I would still rather try to make as much progress on it as I can before he goes in for cleaning purposes. Fortunately for me, I'm scheduled off work on Thursday and Friday, so I should be able to make some time to work on it. A coworker of mine told me that she had a "cleaning day" for her family this past weekend and the agreement was that they would do as much cleaning as they could from 10am - 3pm, and she put out snacks and drinks for them to eat while they were working on it. I like this idea but I'm pretty sure I'd just take a lot of breaks and eat a lot of snacks 🙂

One of my mice apparently made an appearance while my boyfriend was home. The cats found it but it got away from them. He said he found it because it "squealed like a little piggy" before it escaped. For some reason this made me laugh really hard. It still makes me giggle now. I would like to put out a mousetrap but I'm worried that one of the cats will get injured. So hopefully I'll be posting on Thurs and/or Fri night that I have made lots of progress in the second bedroom. Plus tomorrow is my boyfriend's last Tuesday night class until January, which means Tuesday nights will no longer be a cleaning night for me (at least not like they have been). My boyfriend took the garbage and recycling out to the garage today so I need to take a look and see how much room there is - and fill it up!

Hope everyone has a great week!

Re thirds (or 3 3's):

3 pieces of pie.
2 different "chefs" pumpkin plus a piece of cherry.

3 squares of daughter's fudge.

At home, 2 glasses of milk plus 1 heavily "leaded" chocolate chip cookie.

Those were the "bad ideas" after eating other things lightly because pain referenced earlier was intestines, stomach and kidneys hurting like hell from coffee and pop.

I have eaten a lot of sweet potatoes the last few days and have to develop discipline I do not have in regard to liquids consumed. Anything beyond around 3 small cups of coffee in the morning leaves at risk - at some unknown level of seriousness. I am suffering from "ignoring the cane" syndrome and paying the price on some days.

What marvelous work you are doing inside your head to make the changes happen outside!!!

Thank you Dianne and Dave for your praise and encouragement. I feel extra needy right now and appreciate your bring there for me. Tonight quite frankly I'm just relaxing. I have a bit of a headache and merely took the bags of garbage out. A lot going on at work and I just want to relax. Dave, I googled the free shredding and a credit union here also fad a free shredding date--the date has passed, but I'll keep it in mind for next year. Til then, I'll keep working on tote #1 and then go to car to get another tote. I can do this!

Already my house seems less chaotic with the garbage bags out. I will set a goal to have three more bags out in next garbage day (later this week)

Hope you are both well. Missing Diane and Tillie. Would love to hear from Bitsy, Mel, LR, Roxie, etc.

Thank you for getting me to the place where I am today. I think I stumbled upon this site in June or July. I would have NEVER believed I would have gotten all the junk outbid my house and that I would've gotten a 10 x 12 storage space, packed to the rafters, all the way from the back to the front, clean and clear. Thank you.

Tat, what a lot of purging you have done! Someone will love to pick up that punchbowl set this time of year. It might even be wrapped as a lovely Christmas gift for someone. 🙂

I second Dave ~ keep up the good work!!

You are on a roll!!!!
Keep up the good work!!!!

(Lots of nice winter shelter for mice!!!! 🙂 )(Or fireplace firestarter material.)

re shredding,

In our town there are credit unions that offer free shred days twice a year. A commercial shredding service has a big truck and your papers go from your box into a large plastic barrel which in turn goes directly to the shred truck. If one has room to store the documents for a few months, it works out very nicely.

Made it 3/4 of the way through tote. Boy I used to write a lot of checks! Holy cow! Shredder has overheated and I don't want to shred after 10PM out of respect for downstairs neighbor. I unloaded dishwasher and put some shoes away.

While shredding the checks, I kept thinking, look at me, I'm even shredding the cute ones! (I have trouble getting rid of or resisting cute things--thank goodness the checks all look the same!)

Goodnight and thank you. I need your shoulders to lean on.

Great time of year to donate a punch bowl--someone might be making punch and would love the set more than you, me and Mrs Dave!

I'm shredding papers. Slow going. Financial stuff, checks, etc. taking forever. The place I could drop off would be 99 cents a pound/about 90 cents more than I'm willing to pay. Now. Tomorrow might be another story!

Good job with the punch bowl. I have trouble with things like that that represent elegance to me. And failing that, I might have told Mrs. Dave I wanted to get rid of the glasses and keep the bowl for a salad bowl. (Which would then bring up the question of When Do You Make Salad in a Big Bowl? Well..... ) You just saved lots of future stress.

Thank you Dianne. I too have had difficulty. Thanks for alerting Cory.

I shredded all I could shred in the house and went to car to get a Rubbermaid tote of financial stuff. Going to work on it tonight.

The chaos in my home was overwhelming me so I cleaned the kitchen today and cleaned off my desk. The kitchen looks very nice as does my desk. I put out a little Christmas tree on it and it looks really sweet. And to think that a year ago I wouldn't have been able to even see the chaos--or know how to start! Amazing! Thank goodness for this site and all of you!

I took three bags to goodwill and got rid of mom's punch bowl. At the last minute i decided to keep it, really nice style (from the 60s) and all 12 glasses were there. And then, at the last second, I said, "keep it for what?!?" And I let it go to goodwill.

What did I learn, okay to change mind at last minute as long as I realize 59 seconds later I need to change back!

Thank you for your support. Going to do laundry, tonight while shredding papers. Have to go into office tomorrow for training, so I won't be working from home.

Dave, your quote got me through the punch bowl. Thank you!

Wise insight from the Dalai. I hope you'll post more of him, Dave.

GREAT JOB!!!

Dave, thank you for your thoughtful posts. Very helpful. Thank you Dianne for keeping me going and LR I wrote you a post last night that disappeared into thin air.

I can meet my goal today. Yesterday, I Finished up another box of shreddables, have another box of recyclables and even convinced my mom to let me donate some of her stuff.

My house looks terrible right now but I have plenty of strength, my newspaper didn't arrive and my lunch plans just cancelled. Feeling pretty good here!!!

I may have misspelled that. At any rate you persevered in not perseverating.

Award for valiantly (and bravely) wading through mouse poo.

Award for accomplishment.

Today's item in the Insight from the Dalai Lama Calendar

It is possible to make use of good food, clothing, residence, and furnishings without producing afflictive emotions such as attachment, pride, and arrogance. The crucial point is the control of internal factors such as lust and attachment; external factors are not in and of themselves good or bad.

Good decision to get rid of the throw pillows Tat. They served a purpose at one time. Now you deserve some throw pillows that are fresh, new and will brighten your spirits!

WTG!!!

Thank you! I'm going to keep reading these tonight because I really appreciate and need your encouragement. Shredded a lot today and got a giant bag together filled with things that can be recycled. Made the tough decision to get rid of some throw pillows I live but have been sitting in storage for so long that I'm not sure I can trust the cleanliness. As I cleaned out storage there were lots and lots of mouse droppings. I paid a lot for the pillows many years ago but I also used them for many years. Do not want to put them on my bed. Okay, I just reinforced the decision to get rid of them. Thank you!

Thanks, Dianne!

Way to go, Tatoulia!!!!! Whoo-hoo!!!!

GO TAT!!!

YOU CAN DO IT!!!

To LR and Tat ~

I am SO proud of both of you! You inspire me so much!!! Keep up the great work!!

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. I did all the cooking and it went off without a hitch.

Great news: as of today, I am out of storage spot!!! That's right! O-U-T out! Done! Boyfriend came to help me and we finished it today. Had to make some tough decisions and tougher ones are just around the corner--I have an unbelievable number of boxes to deal with. Giant thanks to LR (so happy to hear from you-- good work! Tough decisions on your end too and I'm proud of you!), Tillie, Diane, Roxie, Bitsy, Karl, Dave, Dianne, Mel, EVERYONE! I did it.

Now, I want the stuff I brought into my house put away or thrown away by Monday night! And I need your help.

Much love.

Hi, again, everyone! I haven't finished reading up on recent posts, so I'll save comments on them until another time. (Just to be clear, I don't feel obligated to read them . . . I want to read them! There's a difference!)

I've had so many floods here over the past five or six weeks (not to mention the multitude of other water-related issues here over the past year) that it's hard to even remember the details of what happened and when. Let's just say that I've been doing a lot of flood cleanup (again). Although I haven't posted on the message board much, I did get on chat quite a bit over the past few weeks (once I got Internet up and running at home again) and did a fair amount of buddy-system work (via the chat room).

I've known for a long time that I've needed to move (because of the flooding and for all kinds of other reasons), but various things have made me hesitant to turn in that official (required) move-out notice. Trying to imagine getting everything packed up and getting it done in a way so that I didn't misplace everything had been one of my reasons for my hesitation. (It's hard enough for non-hoarders to pack and move. For those of us with hoarding issues . . . well, you know how it is!!) My wanting to get a certain kind of job lined up first (before setting a move-out deadline) had been another issue. But the floods were getting so frequent and making my life so much more unmanageable than it already was that I finally had to say, "Enough! If I have to put everything in storage and sleep on somebody else's sofa somewhere, I've got to get out of here!!!" Well, this week, I turned in that notice! That's a big, big deal to me. Am I panicky? No (not yet, anyway). Right now, I'm relieved that I made the decision and am moving forward on it.

The frustrating part is that I've had a lot of days of just pure exhaustion over the past two weeks, and I've had a hard time getting anything done. (Getting on chat on some of those days helped me get at least a little done and gave me encouragement.) Today is one of my more energetic days, fortunately. I'm doing some packing, and I'm taking breaks from cleaning and packing to catch up some on the posts here.

As cluttered as things are here, they are so much better than they were when I started here in this group in March. I can see so much more floor, which means so much more space to move around and work in! And my little outside storage room isn't full of boxes (nor is it full of the other "stuff" that those of you who know my story will recall quite well). That's encouraging. The other day, when I was kind of discouraged and was trying to figure out how to "attack" my living room, I took some digital pictures of it first. During a break time, I pulled up some pictures on my computer that I'd taken of the living room back in May (pictures I'd taken as part of one of the Buried in Treasures book exercises). I was able to see how much improvement there had been since then, and that was comforting.

I'll probably be pulling my hair out a few weeks from now as it gets closer and closer to the time I need to move out of here. For now, though, I feel pretty good.

Thanks, you guys, for your role in helping me move forward!!!! Lots and lots and lots of hugs!!

Darci, WTG dealing with the issues! Partnering with your neighbor to host Thanksgiving was a problem solver all around!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL !!!

Dave, you mentioned in the gratitude thread about being thankful some physical issues may not be permanent damage. I'm sorry to hear you've hurt your hands and wrists. It's in a parent's nature (most of the time) to want to help/protect/save our children even when they have become adults.

I bet your daughter has great appreciation for all that you've helped her with. You've given her a wonderful example of generosity and it'll be nice for you when it's time for you to become the recipient. 🙂

Bitsy, great job getting all that medical work done! Eight lbs. lost is a big deal no matter how much more to go. It's really good you now have better control for the HBP and the cortisone shot for your shoulder.

Ramble anytime it's good to hear from you!

On this wonderful day, I am thankful for each one of you. Happy Thanksgiving! Hugs to all!

Dianne and Dave (and anyone I might have missed)

Thank you sooo much for your words of encouragement. I ended up helping my neighbor host her Thanksgiving and my daughter is going to stop by with her boyfriend. And... best part, she didn't have table cloths and decorations etc. so I was able to help her with that. The only food I had to do was the appetizers. I hadn't bought a turkey since my daughter and I don't eat meat, so no food waste.

I evicted my daughter's roommate. Unfortunately, I can't get my name off the lease. My daughter can't qualify. Since I am paying for the roommate's space, I decided to make it into an office where I can bring all the things I want to sell/donate. I get HUGE tax deductions by photographing and logging every item I donate. Saves me about $10,000 a year. I am way behind in filing (yikes... two years) so having space to work efficiently will be great.

Sleeping on the couch has been kind of rough, might look into some kind of cot that folds up or air mattress, but no room for that yet (barely a path between the couch and the stuff I emptied out of my bedroom to rent it out).

Thank you for suffering through my long and whiny post. Just needed to spit it all out and try to release it. You all are GREAT.

Well off to cut veggies for tomorrow! 🙂
Grateful for your support. Be blessed!!
xoxoxo Darci

bitsy,

I hope your wandering tomorrow brings you to a warm place with some pleasant food and drink and peace and solace for your soul.

visitor postponed till Christmas.went to doctor. cholesterol ok.thyroid numbers good. actually lost 8 lbs.still way overweight for my 4'11" height.blood pressure way up. now have two meds for that.kidney numbers off so not supposed to take most pain meds. got a cortisone shot for shoulder.
son is getting antsy... colostomy reversal surgery put off by surgeon till after sometime in january. supposedly my son is not unemployed but his employer won't let him work with the colostomy. so he's kind of in limbo.
daughter, her boyfriend, and my grandson came to work on the yard because the insurance company was going to do a drive by before renewing contract. (house still in daughter,s name although I paid off 2nd mortgage and have paid 1st mortgage for 7 yrs. anyway, they did mow back yard which i appreciated but they also spent hours running the electric blower to blow out the gutters, blow leaves off driveway and from around the house (would you believe into the street)... this neighborhood has about twelve trees in every small yard, most of them various kinds of mature oak trees, and now a week later the gutters are overflowing and you can't see the driveway.just like the rest of the neighborhood.bad timing. sorry... rambling... not getting much done. did get a little bit done in "living room" and i threw out a bunch of out of date canned food. next week my great grand daughter will be 4. i should go spend some time with them. they live 2 minutes away. but it's too hard... too complicated and too complicated to explain.