Probably the biggest project we did over the weekend was the DVD shelves. For space reasons, we bought new materials for these rather than using our old shelves, and it took a while to find everything (we’re now familiar with every branch of B&Q in Newcastle). Once Dad had put them up, though, the finished result was well worth it:
All our DVDs, videos, and console games, neatly stored in a corner of the living room.
As with all of our shelving projects from this week, we’ve got room for more. It’s really good use of the space as well, and I was quite surprised by how small the collection looks on the shelves. Of course, in reality, it’s not at all small (we’ve probably got close to 1,000 DVDs), but considering that when we stored it on Billy shelves it took up half a room in our old house, it feels much more compact now.
It’s also meant we’ve reclaimed some more space in the living room from the endless mass of cardboard, which is always good!
One of the shelving projects that Dad and I (mostly Dad) did over the weekend was for my shoes. Even though I got rid of a lot of shoes, I still need a good amount of storage for my remaining 59 62 pairs, especially as I’ve been on a bit of a shoe binge lately (though I think I’m satiated for now). Some of my pairs are ‘legacy shoes’ (i.e. old pairs I’ll never wear again but am keeping in storage boxes or on display for sentimental reasons), and there are a couple of pairs for gardening that I’m keeping in the cupboard off the kitchen, and my dancing shoes live in my gym bag, and my running shoes tend to stay in the Skubb hanger I bought for the hallway…but that still leaves a good 48 pairs that needed a place to live in the dressing room. Which they now have:
Dad built the shelves, out of our old Billy bookcases, to fit around the wardrobes, chests of drawers and mirror that I have in the dressing room.
As you can see, there’s plenty space for more, which is probably a good thing knowing me.
My shelf for all my tall goth boots.The wall is looking nice and colourful now though it probably needs a few more pairs.
It’s very nice having all my shoes to hand. Of course, since I put them all up, it’s been pouring with rain and I’ve not been out (save for a very wet run this morning) so I’ve been living in my slippers indoors. It will be good to get some use out of them once the weather clears up, though!
I’ve been buying a lot of stuff the last few weeks. At first it was all house stuff, but lately it’s been mostly treats for me. New clothes for my almost-at-target figure! New makeup for my new makeup storage unit! New shoes (quite a lot of new shoes) for…uh, they’re not for anything in particular, I just love shoes.
I mentioned before that I always feel a bit guilty if I go on a spending spree, but I’ve found it difficult to resist these last few weeks. It’s mainly because I’ve been carrying out a ruthless cull ofmy entire wardrobe and so the state of this particular collection is always on my mind at the moment. Post-cull, the gaps in my wardrobe are far more apparent, and there are a few areas (underwear, jeans, skirts) where I genuinely do need to buy new things.
I’m not delusional enough to think that’s the case with the shoes, obviously. But I did get rid of an awful lot in the cull, and shoes are pretty, and shoe shopping makes me feel better at the end of a difficult day. I’m very aware that I’ll need to replace this habit with something less expensive soon. Seeing as I can’t go back to binge-drinking now that I’m (sort of) healthy and slim, I imagine it’ll be baths, especially as the bath in our new house is so awesome. I just have to hope I don’t develop a ‘luxury bathing products’ obsession instead, although in fairness it would be cheaper than shoes. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks.
Yeah, so that turned out to be a bit of a waste of time, given that I threw 90% of them out today.
When I was packing up the old house, I knew that I’d end up chucking quite a lot of stuff out to make things neater, but I didn’t expect that I’d end up being so ruthless with my clothes and accessories. The thing is, I’m just sick of the hoard. The hoard is everywhere, I’m currently spending my entire time sorting through it and tripping over piles of it and moving boxes of it about so that I can access more boxes of it, and it’s causing me a lot of anxiety and stress, especially on ‘sorting days’ like today when my hoarding nature means that I have to go through every single thing and devote mental energy to agonising for a few minutes about whether I should keep it.
And with jewellery and hair accessories it literally is EVERY SINGLE THING I’ve ever owned in my life, because you don’t outgrow necklaces and scrunchies the way you do clothes, so my collection genuinely dates back to when my parents first decided they needed to tie my hair back in 1987:
New baby bro scheduled to arrive next month, gotta raise my style game.
Yes, I still have those green tartan ribbons. Of course I do. They’re not being chucked out (they’re in an inaccessible part of the hoard right now, so I couldn’t even if I wanted to), because if it dates from the ’80s, it obviously stays. (What, you thought I’d been cured of ALL of my issues?)
Thankfully, I’m coming to the end of the ‘sorting days’ as far as my wardrobe is concerned, but next month, there will be the study. Oh dear god, the study. Boxes and boxes and boxes full of old correspondence, and schoolwork, and the first fumbling childhood steps in my lifelong fiction-writing habit, and the most painfully private diaries and poetry – all of which will need to be carefully scanned and then frantically shredded (and ideally burnt, but I’m not sure the atmosphere could cope). Mounds of receipts and paperwork and keepsakes, which will need to be sorted and filed. Piles of old broken electronics, and the manuals for the old broken electronics, and the twisted and tangled mess of connector cables for the old broken electronics. Artwork and other wall decorations that I don’t like any more but have been dragging with me through approximately five house moves. Cassette singles I bought in the early ’90s, which I won’t throw out, but will instead stare at wistfully for ages, marvelling at their glorious age and endurance, remembering a different century, wasting time when I’m supposed to be getting on with the hoard.
I know I’ll get to the end of it sometime. It just feels like such a mountain to climb. A literal mountain of stuff.
But I’m going to climb it, because there’s no other way through for me.
I spent today getting on with my wardrobe cull. I got rid of a lot of dresses, underwear, scarves and hats, and a lot more shoes – I’ve now got the previous total down to 59 pairs. That’s a pretty big drop, and it means my new shoe shelves will look really neat and uncluttered.
Well, at least until I replace all the thrown-out pairs with new ones!
No, I’m kidding. Like with everything else in the house, I’ll be instituting a one-in one-out rule once my shelves are full, in order to avoid things getting back into the chaotic hoarding state that has made this house move so stressful. Neither Geth nor I have ever been in the habit of throwing things away, but that has to change from now on, for my own sanity.
I’m quite looking forward to seeing what it’s like to live without mounds of stuff everywhere!
Well, I didn’t want to start doing the mega wardrobe cull until I’d hit my Slimming World target, but after weeks of chaos upstairs with having to clamber over stuff and not being able to find anything, I admitted defeat and started putting stuff in binbags and donation bags today.
I’ve come a long way with my hoarding problem over the years, but I still find it hard to let go of stuff, especially clothes. I think it’s partly because I was so broke for so many years post-graduation – during that time, even a £5 Primark top was a hard-earned purchase, and it feels almost disrespectful to my struggling younger self just to toss the item away, even if it’s old and full of holes.
I’ve been trying to mitigate this by using the digital hoarding method – taking a photo of each piece so that I still ‘have’ it. I’ll probably never look at these photos again, but knowing they’re there makes getting rid of the physical stuff a lot easier.
I threw out a lot of shoes today. My previous total of 91 pairs first went up to 95 pairs, because I found four pairs that I thought I’d previously thrown out but it turned out I hadn’t. I’ve now got it down to 77 pairs, and I reckon I’ll be able to get it down further when I finish the cull job tomorrow. It’s especially tough to get rid of shoes, because I love shoes, but I’m trying just to keep thinking about the lovely neat shoe shelves I’ll be able to have up in the dressing room (not to mention, I must confess, the shiny new pairs I’ll be able to buy).
The biggest motivation for all this de-hoarding is the fact that I can’t wait for the house to look nice and uncluttered, so that I can finally relax and properly feel like this is home.
We’re having to buy a lot of new stuff for the house anyway, so I’ve just treated myself to some new makeup storage:
Sorbus Acrylic Cosmetics Makeup and Jewellery Storage Case X-Large Display Sets. I had to copy ‘n’ paste that ridiculously long name off the Amazon website.
It’s going to sit on my dressing table, once I unbury the dressing table. And buy a new mirror for the dressing table. And buy some new lights for the dressing table – well, it’ll live there eventually. In the meantime, it’ll have to perch precariously on the bathroom windowsill. I don’t mind, though, ’cause it’s pretty, and I’ve been desperately wanting to organise something pretty – everything else is so functional and crammed in at the moment.
Also, all my lamps have decided to pack in at the same time for some reason, so I’m currently sitting in the dark. I will be doing the giant Ikea order this weekend, so hopefully there will be more storage organising (and light) soon.
You know those games (physical or digital) where you have to get a ball from one end of the board/screen to the other by moving blocks around so you can slowly work the ball through the path? I’m terrible at them. It always takes me ages.
That’s how I’ve felt about working on the new house for most of the last week.
The current project is to get everything into its correct room, if not its correct place. What this means is I’m just constantly moving boxes around, trying to clear paths for other things to be moved through, filling one room and then another in an attempt just to have some tiny space to manoeuvre stuff. It’s really tiring, and I feel like I’m going round in circles.
A big part of the problem is that there’s so much stuff that doesn’t have a place yet. We’re going to be building new wall shelves out of our old Ikea Billy bookshelves to house the DVDs, videogames and some of the books, and I’ve designed a wall of Ikea Kallax units for the boardgame collection. As such, until these units are in place, our books, DVDs, videogames and boardgames have to stay in boxes, and there’s a lot of them.
I know, logically, I am making headway. I’ve spent today making rows of all the boxes that go in different areas, so once Geth gets home tonight and helps me with a couple of heavy lifting jobs, I’ll be able to fill the study with all the Stuff That Goes In The Study (as opposed to the all-kinds-of-everything totally random stuff that was in there before) and use that as a dumping ground to help me sort out other rooms. After that, over the next couple of days, I can move my magazine Kallax upstairs, then move all the boardgame boxes to the space where their Kallax storage is going to live, and that will mean there’s a bit more breathing room around the piles of boxes of books and DVDs that are currently having to stay in the living room.
The whole thing really is doing wonders for my hoarding habit though. I can’t wait to start sorting through things properly and getting rid of stuff.
One step at a time. It’s just frustrating when there are so many steps.
I’d almost forgotten about my extensive shoe collection (89 pairs 91 pairs! I forgot about the two new pairs I bought last week). It was the first thing I packed back in January, so it’s been hidden in boxes for some time, and the shoes are only now making their reappearance.
The thing is, they won’t have anywhere to live until I build some custom shoe shelves in the dressing room, so until then, they’re just going to have to snake around the upstairs rooms, maliciously tripping people up.
They looked so innocent when I was packing them away.
I’m definitely going to get rid of most of themsome of them a few, but I need to build my shelves first to see what will fit.
No phone box tonight, ’cause I did promise some house pictures. This is a start:
All of our ornaments (well, all the ones I’ve come across in the unpacking so far) sitting on an Ikea Billy shelf, which may or may not live there long-term.
Once we have access to the hearth (it’s currently hidden behind various shelving units and a hoover), I really should start using all my candles and incense and various other home fragrance stuff. Having it on these shelves instead of stashed away in boxes will hopefully remind me that it’s there to be used.
