A professional guide to hoarding - and scouting for an observatory position
Yep just before christmas Alan Meehan came to visit and measure up a pier for his observatory, so since I had a Pier and no home we measured up mine and what he needed. Thats when we got busted . My darling wife came outside just as we had placed the eq6 on the pier looking at the height ( and of course the positioning in my yard for a observatory). She is a wonderful woman - but has the brain of an elephant - she never forgets (or forgives) and those words came haunting me - sure you can have an observatory right after you clean up the garage and your rooms up the back.
OK I admit that I am a horder, I don’t throw away much in computer gear (I still have a ISA controller card and 5 ¼” floppy drive), or astro mags, computer mags and the such. I have too much gear that I will be having a garage sale in the new year. Now must pluck up the courage to set the date and clean out everything. Geez I even have an electrostatic Mutoh IP510 pen plotter which is near new but 17 years old!!! Only used this 33 times cost me $1700 now I would have to pay to have it removed!! I have my dad’s golf clubs, which I have only used once since his passing (7 years ago) so I admit I have a hording problem. Is there a cure, I don’t know but I have heaps of astro gear – so much so that I have no room to even get into the “office”. I have a pentium3 500 computer I have not used in more than 6 years, and another AMD 2400 with over a terabyte of storage I haven’t turned on for 2 years (I just moved into laptops and left it). So now I will hoard a few cardboard boxes and pack the good stuff in them for a garage sale and the rest of the “stuff” – pay council to mind them for me for eternity!!!
But I digress far too much. Look at this wonderful pier and its possible new location. I took up the offer from Steve Bain in 2006 and bought one – it is a wonderful hoarding prize!!! I hope to finally have this installed before this time next year Steve (if you are reading this). The model in the pics is of course Alan Meehan (I know you were all looking forward to a blonde babe in bikinis, but hey, Al looks better at night !!!!
H0ughy I don't think you have any problems. Everything you have done sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I have a three bedroom house and sleep in the lounge room as all the bedrooms have irreplaceable valuable stuff in them. I had to empty the master bedroom of 'stuff' so my daughter could stay for a week or so just recently. She said that she knew how highly I thought of her after she saw all the junk (her word) that I had moved so she could have a room to sleep in.
You never know when anything will come in handy. So never throw away or sell anything! It is alright to donate to a fellow hoarder as the item is not lost for all time!
It might help though if you pander to her irrational demands and that way you could install the pier and build the observatory. Then just put the stuff back where it belongs.
A good fire takes care of hoarded treasure... after lamenting the loss of many years of treasure collection in the last bush fires I find that nothing that was lost is now remembered and certainly I have not found myself saying .."now if only I had such and such my world would be a better place"..
I realised these things had no value because they would never have been sold and would never be used..they were in fact a burden not only cluttering floor space but cluttering my mind.
I am happy to be free of the responsibility of looking after all that treasure..the energy I would waste moving things from one place to another, the cleaning, the maintenance etc all seems so stupid in retrospect.
I recommend the simple life and concentrating on the present not the past.
Too many "things" not only clutter floor space but they clutter your mind...how much time is wasted on a visit to ones treasure trove..pick up this ..look at that..feel guilty that you have not fixed this or that..run off on a meaningless project that is irrelevant in the now.
Have a garage sale, trim down, free yourself of the burden that is treasure and concentrate on the future that sees an observatory that will be used completed.
hOughy....garage sale first!!!!!before you throw it..er..part with it by other means!!!...then build!!!...been there...done that..and now I have MORE room for stuff!!!...but still no observatory!!!
Cheers!!!
I was charged with the sale of a house owned by a horder..a friend of my parents who was a...collector... you could not walk in the halls of that house because of the stuff stored to the ceiling...he slept on a small lounge and had less kitchen left than on a racing boat...well what could be sold was sold, what was not was given away and what was left was thrown out... the departed did not benefit from one item of treasure and lived in horrible conditions ..placing the value of his treasure above the value of his life style which was the acquiring of more treasure...it was a sickness so many have yet only a little more extreme because he had no fire in his life.
alex
hOughy....garage sale first!!!!!before you throw it..er..part with it by other means!!!...then build!!!...been there...done that..and now I have MORE room for stuff!!!...but still no observatory!!!
Cheers!!!
A good fire takes care of hoarded treasure... after lamenting the loss of many years of treasure collection in the last bush fires I find that nothing that was lost is now remembered and certainly I have not found myself saying .."now if only I had such and such my world would be a better place"..
I realised these things had no value because they would never have been sold and would never be used..they were in fact a burden not only cluttering floor space but cluttering my mind.
I am happy to be free of the responsibility of looking after all that treasure..the energy I would waste moving things from one place to another, the cleaning, the maintenance etc all seems so stupid in retrospect.
I recommend the simple life and concentrating on the present not the past.
Too many "things" not only clutter floor space but they clutter your mind...how much time is wasted on a visit to ones treasure trove..pick up this ..look at that..feel guilty that you have not fixed this or that..run off on a meaningless project that is irrelevant in the now.
Have a garage sale, trim down, free yourself of the burden that is treasure and concentrate on the future that sees an observatory that will be used completed.
best wishes
alex
thanks for the feedback - but it was fun collecting it
Make that triplets.... My biggest problem is that a lot of the stuff I have, HRH won't let me throw out. She insists we should garage sale it and I'm not all that keen on garage sales due to the risk of post sale burglary.
I am so very glad to find I'm not the only hoarder here.
I have the "Great Wall of Boxes" in the big shed, under our house is stored more boxes and books, I have so many books. But I can't get rid of them.
All this stuff is essential and non throwawayable. Still, it's not as much as I used to have.
If you feel you need help to cope with overwhelming clutter, I highly recommend this website. http://www.flylady.net/pages/flyinglessons.asp
It's full of tips on how to declutter and keep your home tidy and clean.
When you register, you will be sent daily emails outlining your daily decluttering mission.
I am so very glad to find I'm not the only hoarder here.
I have the "Great Wall of Boxes" in the big shed, under our house is stored more boxes and books, I have so many books. But I can't get rid of them.
All this stuff is essential and non throwawayable. Still, it's not as much as I used to have.
If you feel you need help to cope with overwhelming clutter, I highly recommend this website. http://www.flylady.net/pages/flyinglessons.asp
It's full of tips on how to declutter and keep your home tidy and clean.
When you register, you will be sent daily emails outlining your daily decluttering mission.
If anyone ever shows that to my wife I will grind their optics with a belt sander and a roughcut belt thats danger territory there
JJJ I thank you for your suggestion and shudder at the consequences. I need to find the yellow brick road and get some courage…..LOL. it will be painful, but necessary, sorta like cutting off ones leg so to speak – you can function after it but not well
Well done Dave - admitting you have a problem is the first step! I must say I am an anti-hoarder - if I find something I was keeping, haven't needed it in the past 6 months, aren't likely to use it in the next 6 months, and its not saleable..... in the bin!
Your C8 is safe and well!
Well done Dave - admitting you have a problem is the first step! I must say I am an anti-hoarder - if I find something I was keeping, haven't needed it in the past 6 months, aren't likely to use it in the next 6 months, and its not saleable..... in the bin!
Your C8 is safe and well!
I am glad its safe. Now need a home for the vixen, the 10" LX200R and the losmandy
Well done Dave - admitting you have a problem is the first step! ...........
I refuse to admit!
However, the failure of my router last week led to it being piled up in the corridor, together with the previous router and dsl modem, together with the 56k modem - well some of them still work! And I found this nifty monitor base with a nice set of stereo speakers built in right up top of the shelves.....
All in the corridor until I decide what next.
I'll keep all the power cords and power bricks. You never know when you'll need a few dozen power cords!
Well I made a start, this was yesterdays effort. The biggest joke was I went to the tip, and arrived at 3.03pm , the joke was they shut at 3pm. So I came home and loaded up more stuff, even filled the car. Off soon with this load.
My wife was indeed shocked - she even offered to help sweep and dust for me (wont knock that back). I can tell you you guys don't want to know what is within that pile!!!!!
I feel for you Dave.
My sister helped me with my shed earlier this year, I threw away so much "good" stuff. But once you've tossed the first couple of things away, it just gets slightly easier.
Congratulations on the effort.
Ta too for the congrats, 3000 hey, not as much as some though.