Four days down, too much to go!

My last post was about my little secret. Maybe not a little secret anymore, my hoarding is getting too much.

Day one (Friday) started off badly. I wasn't feeling good so had a nap when the girls went to school. My "nap" turned into 3 hours sleep, I finally got out of bed at 11.15am when I had originally planned to be up and ready to tackle the smallest bedroom at 9.30am. A big fat OOOPS! By the time I'd sorted the boys with their brunch (which consisted of toast and a bowl of cereal for J, he's going through a faze where he has to have two different cereals in the same bowl, this morning he had coco pops and shreddies, and Baby B had his normal bottle, full to the top.) it was almost 1pm. I had 2 and a half hours until the girls were due home and another hour on top until we had to go out.

Stood in the doorway, I wished someone or something would give me an excuse to not start this now. I look at the pile of junk just in the doorway. How on earth was I going to sort through it all? We had 8 years worth of clutter, stuff I didn't even remember we had, books unread, cds unlistened, and I don't know what else!

I thought to myself, If I don't start now, it'll never get done. So, I picked up a black bag and began filling it. It didn't take me that long either. Over the three days, up until yesterday, I spent about 3 hours in there each day. Once I got past the stuff we had put in there before Christmas, and after (tree and decorations!), it was quite empty. There were three big boxes of stuff which we had from the move that we'd never got round to emptying so I just put the stuff straight into a rubbish bag. 9 black bags full and numerous pieces of wood later, all that's left in there now is a table and two 2-seater sofas. And I can't move them until tomorrow when the Mr has a day off work.

Now onto the kitchen cupboards........

And so it starts.....

For the last few years, our local housing association have been putting in new kitchens and bathrooms. It was going to happen eventually, but I was hoping we'd have a while longer until it was our turn. But we have the planner coming next week to go through what will happen, what colours I want, and to discuss all the bits in between. Now, most people would love a new kitchen and bathroom. Not me. Well, not right now.

I have a secret. I've not told anyone before now, and I need to do something about it.

You see, I am a Hoarder. No where near as bad as those we see on the programme on TV - as I do like to move easily - but my attic is full of junk. Any cupboards that aren't for clothes, are full with junk. I have kept almost everything from when the kids were little. Their first drawings, work sent home from school, toys, books, the list goes on. I've always threatened to throw it all out. I'm good at that. It's the departing with it I don't want to do. But now I have to.

The workmen will need to re-wire the house before starting any work, something that I've been asking them to do since we moved in almost 8 years ago. I've never decorated, purely because when our flat was re-wired, the wallpaper got ripped, marks were left on paintwork and, in my opinion, the place looked worse than it did before they started! For the first 6 months after we moved into the house, I kept on to them, asking them constantly to re-wire the house before we unpacked properly. Since then, the house still stands un-re-wired, un-decorated and un-homely!

 Don't get me wrong, my house isn't dirty. I sometimes let it get messy (I do have four kids you know!) but give it a good clean at least once a week. I think I need more storage, but then that'll be adding to the problem not helping it. And I hate throwing out things that aren't broken. I have sets of books (the girls are avid readers) that are too good to chuck, no local charity shop will take them and I don't drive so can't do a car boot sale. I've tried a certain auction website but with postage prices rises I'll lose money or they won't sell.

So, the "Big Clean-out" starts..... just one small problem.

Where do I start?