Does anybody else's garage get like this

[Primrose]

Just think - all these stocks are a good hedge against inflation ! I think we too have enough cleaning products to last a lifetime. If only the housekeeper would spend a little more time indoors cleaning the house instead of being outside gardening, they might get used up a little more quickly!

[Motherwoman]

I always buy Vanish (other stain removers are available) for the holiday cottage washing and around January you can pick up 3 tubs for £10 instead of £8 each so I stock up for the year! When I stacked the shelves I think I had around 20 tubs, still going on it, about 8 left I think. Ooooh I like a bargain

[Ricard with an H]

Why have I just ordered another mixing bowl for the Kenwood mixer ? Do we really need two mixing bowls when we have a stack of other bowls ?

Once, just the once if memory serves me did we need a second bowl so we didn't disturb what had just been mixed in the bowl.

I'm off to do some tidying up.

[Elaine]

Oh I'm so glad I'm not alone in this hoarding malarky!

My latest item is boxes of the Tea bags we use. The big boxes have been only £3 instead of almost £6, so I have been buying a couple of boxes a week, knowing these offers are usually on for three weeks or so. My husband surveyed the ten boxes (okay, so I might have bought a couple of extra boxes....) and muttered something about loving his cuppa but wasn't this over the top a bit.

MW..I also took advantage of the tubs of Vanish offer.

[peter]

Elaine, mix em together, problem solved.

[Motherwoman]

And the tea offers can be good for your mental maths skills, working out if the smaller boxes that are on special offer work out cheaper per teabag than the big loose pack...

Why do they never make it easy to compare? If there is 'extra free' is the 100g price before or after they add the extra? And why not put how much per teabag? Loo rolls are pretty good though, price per roll is generally quoted.

MW

[robo]

When my grandmother died and we where clearing her pensioners bungalow out we found 26 bags of sugar hidden behind the hotwater cylinder as well as 4 more in the kitchen , I think she was the cause of the sugar shortage a few years ago

[Stephen]

My sister and I spent several of the weekends ng July and August clearing our father's former house (well, he still owns it but lives at my sister's house), so that it could be rented out.
Hard work! Not just the physical effort but the emotional side too. Both of our parents had highly developed hoarding instincts. Partly as a result of impoverished upbringings during the depression of the 1930's, substantially reinforced by the deprivations of wartime.
My sister and I took as many of the easy decisions as possible. There were boxes of decorative boxes, old calenders, boxes full of paper, decade old homemade jams and chutneys, crates and crates of dress making materials, and so on and so on. As much as possible things went to charity, a theatrical dressmaker took the material and some old suitcases.
However we both now have houses overflowing with furniture, photograph albums and other things you can not get rid of. So I now need to have a clear out.
It seems to be an endless (re)cycle.

[Motherwoman]

My mother hoards bleach. national shortage due? My father's shed used to have hanks of electrical wire, household and striped out commercial stuff, goodness knows what he thought it would be useful for.

[John]

Hello MW
Tell your mum that its not worth hoarding bleach. It's not a very stable solution and she'll finish up with old very weak stuff.

John

[Motherwoman]

You try telling her John, I got into enough trouble last week trying to tell her how to separate her recyclable rubbish from her rubbish rubbish.... I got the loud sniff followed by 'Well they can't expect us to do that!' But she is 90 and still doing all her cleaning (with dodgy bleach!) and cooking for the two of them so I cut her a bit of slack.

[Monika]

Unfortunately, in our household, my OH is the hoarder, I am the thrower-away - not a good mix. Ok, sometimes, I regret that I have got rid of something later on, but I am all for decluttering.

I have already told all our offspring, the only thing I would want them to keep after my demise are the photograph albums (not many), the files with the family history and my diaries which I have kept for the last 36 years. Everything else they can sell, give away or put in the skip .....

And as for buying too many consumables: we always have ONE spare of everything, so the moment one item comes to an end, it's replaced by the one in stock and then put on the shopping list for the next supermarket visit. Very organised.

[PLUMPUDDING]

I've inherited four huts and have cellars and attics so hardly ever throw anything away. I do seem to be the only person who knows where things are, so when my son comes to "borrow" something I can usually find it.

I have noticed a lot of the useful stuff doesn't come back again so I have to get him to check his garage/workshop when I need to fix something which is maddening.

[retropants]

at the moment, my garage appears to be infested with rats :/

[Chantal]

I come from a long line of hoarders and have to fight the instinct to stash things almost daily.

My grandfather (long dead now) had an amazing garage/shed which was large but you could only get in a couple of feet for all the stuff in there. He had a Morris Minor with two engines. One in the car and one on blocks in the garage, so if there was an issue with the car, he just swapped engines and fixed the dodgy one at his leisure.

One fine day back in the 70s, my grandfather, dad and uncle had a massive clear out and emptied the contents into the back garden for a sort out. In the mix was the bicycle he'd been given when he left school to go down the pit aged 14 (he was in his 60s) and all sorts of ancient stuff that hadn't seen the light of day for decades.

Anyway, they filled up his trailer (made from the back end of a Mini van that he sawed in half with a hacksaw ) and went off to the tip.

When came home they had managed to fill the trailer with stuff they'd found at the tip that "looked useful" and were sorting this out to stuff into the garage when one of the neighbours drove up with a covered trailer. "Tommy" he called out, "take a look at all this brilliant stuff I've just found at the tip. I knew you'd want it so I've brought it all back for you". It was almost everything they'd dumped there earlier in the day! They didn't have the heart to tell the neighbour so unloaded it all and crammed most of it back where it came from. The overflow had to go into the under stairs cupboard, it took my grandmother years to get it out the house and the garage didn't get another sort out until after he'd died.