Sorry about the patchy service. I’m currently splitting my time between two houses and spending more time driving than tidying. One is gradually emptying and the other is gradually filling, We have also got rid of some stuff – around 150 books and three bags of clothes yesterday. It seemed lot, but hen I look round I can’t see a difference. I’m now afraid I’m going to fill the new house with clutter before we manage to empty the old one. It’s a strange thing to fear, and definitely falls into the category of First World Problem.
It all goes back to something in my childhood. I don’t know what, but there are lots of internet sites willing to discuss the problem of hoarding in the context of mental illness and childhood roots.
Autumn _ Arnot Hill Park
My grandfather was a hoarder. He had a cellar with four rooms in it, five if you count the coal bunker (with external chute). One was full of tools and stuff. one was full of scrap timber, a third had more timber and the fourth opened onto a rock wall with ferns and running water. It must have been something to do with building and foundations, or it might merely have been a portal to as wet, cold magical realm. I wasn’t quite clear at the time and am none the wiser now.
It took me months to clear it out for my grandmother and, forty years later, I still have many of the tools in my garage.
I’m not sure if he suffered childhood trauma. It wasn’t a great childhood, leaving school with a special license at the age of 12 to work to support his mother and young brother (his father was an invalid after an industrial accident), but I’m not sure if it was traumatic either. People just got on with it in my day. My great-great aunt, as I have probably told you, was not much older than my grandmother. She broke off her engagement in 1919 and gave up the opportunity to move to Canada so she could look after my orphaned grandmother. She could have been a bitter women, but was in fact one of the most cheerful people I have ever met. In WW2 she worked in a mill and took in refugees. That generation didn’t traumatise easily.
Time, I think, to throw more stuff out and pull myself together.
Autumn Leaves – Rufford Abbey
You wrote, “One was full of tools and stuff. one was full of scrap timber, a third had more timber and the fourth opened onto a rock wall with ferns and running water.” I would loved to have had a room like that! Where I grew up there was a wooded hillside across the street, with rocky cliffs. Under one of the overhangs there was a little cave-like space with damp walls, ferns, lichens and moss. I used to like to sit in there.
My parents kept all kinds of things, “just in case”. Tons of books, too. Both of them were born before WW1, lived through the Great Depression and WWII. Dad was a WWII veteran.
Yes, it was “make do and mend” in those days, not hoarding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Do_and_Mend
And still relevant! 🙂
🙂
You are doing very well. Keep at it. Getting rid of 150 books is a triumph.
It seems to be getting easier to admit that I will never get round to reading all these things I put aside for retire,emt projects.
I have a lot of retirement projects still to do but time is running out.
I have just restarted a project. I remember making the initial notes in the 1980s then put it to one side. 🙂
I think I would have liked your GG aunt. Anyway, get on with the job.
She was very easy to like. 🙂
Yes, I am getting on with it.