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Post by fluffychild on Feb 16, 2011 8:29:58 GMT -5
When I began living alone, my house was fine for about 2 years. Then one night I was sitting on the couch and I thought, boy, this house is a mess. I saw an article in a Guide Post magazine that mentioned this site and I came here. I feel that I am with people who understand what I am going through. We can look up to the people who have escaped clutter.
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Post by drivermom on Feb 18, 2011 18:22:12 GMT -5
I'm a carryover from Squalor Survivors too. I think I found them when I was looking up Messies or squalor or something. I saw my house when I looked at all the pictures. I started reading the posts and saw all the support and, as others have said, non-judgmental people. I love the people. I love the people here too, SS and SooS have saved my life. I don't post so much anymore because life has gotten in the way but I do try to read at least a couple times a week. I miss the chat rooms and on occasion I will pop in. My house if not perfect, but it is much better than it was.
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Post by Tiger on Feb 19, 2011 5:33:47 GMT -5
In May 2002, I was home from work sick, browsing a women's magazine with an article about Flylady. I joined Flylady. Her emails worked to a degree and for a while. My bathroom has stayed fairly presentable since then. I still can't get my head around doing the dishes after supper. About that time DD moved out. (DS was killed in an accident about 10 years earlier.) The loss of DD from my house seemed to trigger a terrible acquiring spree which lead to eBay addiction. (The eBay addiction stopped when I was diagnoised with breast cancer and I was too sick from chemo to do eBay.)
In the summer of 2007 I found a link to a hoarders site. I'm not clear if the link was on Flylady or in an internet news article. That hoarders site had a link to another and eventually to the old Squalor Survivors site. I very clearly saw both me and my husband as hoarders. Any attempts in the past to get DH to clean up have been counterproductive, so when the old SS site said that this is for your problems only, I decided to ignore DH's stuff and concentrate on what I could control. The daily "Working in Threes" thread in combination with Flylady's daily emails have helped me cope somewhat with my bad habits and my accumulation of stuff.
If I suddenly disappear from the site again, it will probably because DH strenuously objects to my "on line friends" and I need to sneak any posting I do.
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Post by onwardandupward on Feb 27, 2011 14:07:21 GMT -5
Like Script, I first found SS via Julie Morgenstern's site and Kimmy's story. It was amazing to see that someone had overcome a mess that was even worse than my own. Kimmy gave me hope. The SS members gave me support. Through the bravery of Kimmy and my friends at SS, I started to have hope that I could heal. It has been a journey of ups and downs, but each time, the downs are not as low as the time before, and the ups last longer. I am at a point where I begin to be uncomfortable when my home is messy, but before it becomes truly cluttered or dirty. I still have a few bad habits to conquer, but I can see the end in sight.
Onward
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Post by dailystruggle on Feb 28, 2011 13:19:31 GMT -5
I was majorly depressed because I was living in level 3 filth. It wasn't really that we had a lot of stuff, we just didn't have a lot of space. My husband and kids, and I were sharing one bedroom. The rest of the home was used as "storage" because it would get so cold or hot in there, that the rooms weren't really usable. We could run the central AC or heat, but it was really costly because the apartment was one in a over hundred year old house. The type of house that's made to stay cool in the summer. Anyway, things started because I was depressed after having a baby. I just couldn't function. That depression just kind of lingered, and hadn't really gone away. So, while I was depressed, and sleeping most of my days away, the house got in horrid shape. We had roaches and mice, and god knows what we didn't see. It got so bad, that we had mold growing in the bathroom before we left. So, one day, my husband came home to tell me that the landlord was going to be over to look at the house because the neighbors upstairs were complaining about mice. My heart left into my throat, and it was beating a hundred beats a minute. The landlord didn't give us a specific amount of time as to when he would be there, so we just cleaned as much as we could. We worked for four days, and hadn't put a dent in the amount of mess that we had in the house, but we did get it clean enough to where the space that the landlord would see wouldn't be so bad. After that, I realized, that the reason that my heart leapt into my throat was because if someone saw our house, we might get kicked out, the kids might be taken away, and I just couldn't stand the embarrassment. I can't remember exactly what I searched for on google, but I found this site.
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Post by PJ on Feb 28, 2011 20:26:53 GMT -5
I'd lived in varying degrees of squalor through most of my life. I desperately wanted to dig out, but I didn't know where to start. I went to Google and typed something to the effect of "my home is a mess where do I start?" Somehow one of the very first weeks was squalor survivors. I thought to myself, what is squalor anyway?
I read some stories and looked at some photos. Some were levels I had lived in, others were where I was at the time. After I looked all over, I found a forum link. It was disabled, but some people had continued it at, drumroll please, here! Not long after joining, I began posting before photos. It took me over a year to get to a semi-manageable level. Now, though, I'm at about 0.5 in nearly every room, and I'm finally maintaining this time.
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Post by dayeanu on Mar 1, 2011 16:23:10 GMT -5
In a siege of desperation and depression - one of MANY over the past 30 or so years, I began to google housekeeping, organizing, and any other relevant keywords.
I stumbled upon the link to Squalor Survivors. I was shocked at the term "squalor." I always thought of people who lived in squalor as being impoverished backwoods redneck Arkansas hillbillies who live on the backside of nowhere, go barefoot most of the year, wear grubby clothes, live in an unkempt, ill-repaired house, and don't have Internet or TV because it can't be gotten there! It slowly dawned on me, that was a pretty accurate description of me! I was drawn by a strangely compelling curiosity about people who would actually SAY that they lived in squalor. I tried to view the site, but due to sorry Internet access I could never get the link to open. So the next time I had my computer in a town where there was a signal, I went there. I was shocked, horrified, and saw myself in much of it, both pictures and story. (My squalor has fluctuated back and forth over the years from "can have friends over with reasonable comfort level" to "OMG please don't let anyone report me to the authorities.") I am forever grateful to the people who had the courage to be a part of Squalor Survivors.
I kept reading there over and over. I could not believe there were other people like ME! I finally followed their link to here, where I immediately knew I was home.
(I would like to add that I had found Flylady several years earlier, and tried her way. I love her, and still read her on a fairly regular basis. I do get somemgood stuff from her, but realized fairly early on that most of her members are NOT like me! It was a great place, but I really didn't/don't fit in there.)
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Post by yearning4order on Mar 22, 2011 20:54:46 GMT -5
Somehow I'd come across an article or something on Oprah about squalor, only I think it was referred to clutter--which led to a test I participated in that proved, yes indeed, I was a clutterer.
My google search after that took me to the original site and I do remember being so grateful but also not quite ready to take action. When I was ready you all were here for me.
Still in shock some days as that life and this life seem so different. This year we hosted the first at home birthday party for my daughter since she was in...kindergarten? Something like that. So basically 6 years I guess.
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Post by shosha on Mar 23, 2011 3:14:32 GMT -5
A message board I was on had a thread about people feeling bad about their messy homes, so (to make someone feel better about her not very messy home) I posted a pic of my living room. People were shocked and pretty unpleasant, but one person posted a link to the old SS site and suggested it might be helpful. I posted quite a bit, on and off, and read more. I've not been here as much just because I've had some quite bad health problems and just wasn't able to do anything much beyond getting DD to school and back. I'm now on some medication which seems to be helping with that, so I'm back.
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Post by Chrysoprase on Mar 24, 2011 9:10:48 GMT -5
I saw a link to this forum on a different messageboard with a thread where people were trying to help someone. I noted the address but couldn't bring myself to look at the site.
Then one day I hit rock bottom. My neighbours had defecated in the outside landing again and I was just an absolute wreck. I could see no way at all out of this mess. I felt so hopeless. I went to a depression site I'd visited before only to have the memories of how unhelpful the site had been come flooding back. Then I remembered this site and I came here instead, wrote a really painful post which was pretty much a scream for help. Then I dropped into the chatroom and people there were just so nice.
It's so hard to explain how much this site matters, how much it does make a difference, even if I'm not around all that much.
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failed1
New Member
BOOK II / WHERE FROM HERE?
Joined: April 2011
Posts: 40
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Post by failed1 on Apr 12, 2011 10:06:56 GMT -5
Last night, referred to SOS from www.squalorsurvivors.com - "Pigpen." I registered for membership.  I've struggled for 4 years. Here I am. f1 |
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Post by nell on Apr 12, 2011 19:38:34 GMT -5
I was/am so stressed by my home, but unlike some people I was/am all too aware of my problem, and what it's name was/is. I suffer from a hoarding complex that is overlaid with traumatic stress, depression and OCD. I had therapy, but that does not help you with the actual digging out. They can give you some tools, but the rest is a solo flight. One evening while looking for something to help me get dug out, I came to Julie Morgenstern's site, among many others. I was paging around, crying, looking for something I could identify with. What if you desk/closet isn't cluttered? What if you whole life is? What if you are drowning in your own self made hell of debris? And then I found the Kimmy thread, and I read every single post. I found a kindred spirit, I found someone I could see myself in. I found hope. I felt relieved by her journey; I knew now there was a light at the end of this tunnel. Further digging for more to the Kimmy saga brought me here to SoS. I am so very grateful too, because you all give me strength and self empowerment. You understand the challenges, you support me, you cheer me on. I am not alone anymore. My own journey has started, and I will make it, because I have someplace to turn to anytime I need.  Thank you all so much. |
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Post by Saoirse on Apr 19, 2011 10:19:11 GMT -5
Hi Everyone  I found SOS through a different route than most of you. I've been a long time reader of a certain blog by a stay-at-home-mom. I started reading it when I got married because she wrote a lot about being frugal with your grocery purchases, and I learned a lot from her. One day she started talking about cleaning methods and tips (she's a cleanie), and mentioned the old SS site. She said that sometimes, when she feels (like not cleaning--when I posted it blocked out the "L" word) or whatever, she goes and looks at the photos on the old site to get motivated. She wasn't mean about it, and she wasn't looking down on the ppl at the site--simply saying that the work they did was extraodinary, and if they could do all that, then she could surely keep her little home clean, too. While checking out that site, I was led here, where I found all of you! |
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Post by creativechaos on May 1, 2011 1:12:31 GMT -5
wow, how wonderful to read all the posts on this thread of how we got here!
i am an "unrecovered" hoarder. this site has always welcomed me anyway. i am a trauma survivor who has a wicked creative streak, and sees the "possibilities" in things. it's still hard for me to put people ahead of things.
i have been slovenly and a hoarder my whole life. i recognized these differences from early on, just didn't have the name for them. but there was something else, something more than hoarding that carried over to affect everything - lack of personal self care and nurture, hygiene, diet, under-achieving - all of it. i have been in despair many times over my seeming inability to form and maintain good habits in any area of my life.
i joined an online hoarding group based on flylady, but although i loved the ladies, it didn't help. but why didn't it, i wondered, when flylady helped so many? one night in desperation i looked around my apt. and thought, "if i had to describe this in one word, what would it be?" "squalor" was the word that best fit. i googled that one word and instantly found the old ss site. i set up a membership, but didn't have the guts to even lurk - not for a whole year. one night something shifted and i started reading - and reading, and reading. i read every one of kimmy's inspiring posts and all the stories from the people on there.
by the time i started posting on ss, the site was winding down but thanks to the great people who started this site and who maintain it, i have a place to go no matter how bad things get. y'all accept me even though i am not the poster child for recovery. i can't tell you how much just simple acceptance and encouragement has helped me.
i don't get on here nearly enough, but i can honestly say i don't know what i would have done if i had not found you people. i give thanks every day for all of you, and every time i come on here to read i am either inspired or i get some things done - thanks to you.
luv,
cc
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Post by Arid on May 7, 2011 13:28:29 GMT -5
cc:
If it is any comfort to you, I'm not "the poster child for recovery," either. However, I do believe that coming to this site has helped me to change my thinking enough that my "squalor" isn't nearly as bad as it might have gotten to be had I not had this avenue of help. I keep "chipping away" at it, and from time to time, I can tell that things *have* gotten to be a bit better.
I always look forward to reading your posts.
Take care. Arid
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