Posted on 01/09/2006 6:22:49 AM PST by plain talk
A woman in Shelton, Wash., who was reported missing by her husband, was found dead under piles of clutter in their home, where she suffocated to death, according to police. Shelton Police Chief Terry Davenport said the home was so cluttered that police officers' heads touched the ceiling as they climbed over the clutter.
Authorities found the body of 62-year-old Marie Rose buried under clothes after 10 hours of searching. She reportedly suffered from a condition known as hoarding. Rose's husband believes she fell while looking for the phone in the house this week and suffocated. There were so many piles of items that the man did not realize she was dead in the home.
(Excerpt) Read more at local6.com ...
But then I couldn’t put my hands on it instantly! Well, after a week or so of searching.
I am working on it – but it’s like giving up smoking.
Wow. That was an eye-opener. I book-marked it after looking at Kimmy's pictures. I can't imagine ever being that brave.
One compromise I came to (trust me, at first it wasn't easy) was getting rid of all my paperback books. There were a very small number that I had to hang on to since they weren't available in hardcover editions, but the culling of the rest of them really helped matters and made me feel good in the process. If you're freaking out about getting rid of them, try putting them in a box for a month or so. Once they've been in there for awhile, pull them out and take another look at them. I think you'll find that once they've been seperated from the hardcover books and the ones that you really treasure for some time it gets easier to load them into the back of your car and get rid of them.
Waste nor, want not! Except that when you want it, you can't find it!
I'm reading it (flylady) and signed up. My goal is simple--I want my kitchen island to stop being a magnet for junk. Then maybe I'll go on to bigger and better...I'm surprised to see a thread with so many freepers recommending flylady, and so quickly--would love to hear about experiences...?
Tell me about flybaby! I've just started. See remark on my kitchen island. It sounds silly, but I think my whole life would be better if I could put barbed wire around my kit island.
I did that about a month ago with an old barbeque. Someone stole the damn 'FREE' sign and left the barbeque.
My cousin suffered from this and to some extent I seem to remember that my Grandmother had some difficulties.
I wanted to read more about it and found some interesting reading online. I don't remember the name of the titles but they weren't hard to find. One book did recommend some form of therapy along with an understanding family member to help get some of the clutter under control.
Others on here have recommended Flylady.net. I read some stuff on her site but found her emails- at the rate of 12 a day pretty hard to keep up with and have any kind of life!!!
Good luck. I understand some of the need to hold onto stuff for fear you'll need it tomorrow. What we found helped with my cousin was to move stuff to a box in the garage. She had 3 days to retrieve anything - and since she usually forgot about it as soon as it was out of sight, her husband got the Kitchen and much of their house under control.
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LOL! Ours was broken, so we didn't have much hope. We were lucky. At our old house, someone took two moth-eaten oriental rugs we put out with the trash, and some other junk as well. The little boy down the street took two of our plants right out of the ground and gave them to his mother as a present. She made him give them back.
I guess it all depends on the neighborhood. :)
Maybe the stuff could get, uh, accidently damaged & have to be thrown away. It's happened at our house...
I hope he 'found' some nice pots to put them in before he gave them to her.
What we found helped with my cousin was to move stuff to a box in the garage.
The good thing about flylady is that you can jump right in. When I joined it a few years ago, I, too was overwhelmed with the emails. I think that was a hurdle I needed to get over, though - learning to delete and begin with the most recent one. :)
I went through drawers that had USED wrapping paper in them. She was thoroughly enraged that I would dream of throwing that out. Holiday paper plates and napkins that weren't wrapped and yellow from sitting in a drawer - "We might need those some day."
Her wedding picture was upstairs and I forgot to bring it downstairs to her for a while. She says, "I supposed you threw away my wedding picture!"
My husband and I started taking bags and boxes of stuff out of the house and into the garage in the middle of the night!
She can't understand why we might need the drawers for clothes when she has USED wrapping paper in them! UUUGGHHH. She keeps saying that she needs to get rid of stuff. She will look through a bag full of letters from 1975 six times and end up throw away 2 pieces of junk mail from that bag.
I hear you. I'm ruthless as well. Twice a year I go through drawers, closets, and the kids' rooms. Any toys I haven't seen in 6 months get donated to charity!
It is a sad situation.
Nope. Not silly at all! I swear, in my kitchen, my only mission is to keep my island free of crap... From last week a couple of examples. A handgun, and an air compressor tip.
Not silly at all....
I thought her idea to polish the sink with lemon oil was nutty, but now it's the last thing I do before I shut out the kitchen light.
There is a show on cable about a guy who goes into apartments in NYC cleaning up for hoarders. Then there is Clean House, and How Clean Is Your House.
LOL Hey, why you pinging ME? ;)
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