|
|
Post by Bungalow Dweller on May 7, 2011 15:01:05 GMT -5
I was on the old Squalor Survivors board just after its inception. I'd also been on Julie Morgenstern's board when Kimmy popped in with 3rd-degree Squalor post. I don't know how long I was on SS board before drifting away--maybe a year, give or take, maybe more
I needed to come back because of recent realizations of myself, and the SS Community page redirected me here.
|
|
|
|
Post by mallery on Jun 29, 2011 9:23:07 GMT -5
I clicked on a link that someone had posted on a completely unrelated site; so glad I did!! My place is a hundred times better than it was.
I was raised in level 3/4 squalor. I knew it wasn't normal. Mom suffered from depression, Dad drank heavily, and we kids had very little supervision. No one taught us about keeping a clean home.
I did ok out on my own, when I was young and didn't own much, and when I was married I tried to stay on top of things, because it was expected. I divorced and in 2000 I bought my home, and within 5 years it was a complete disaster. Not just full of stuff, but filthy. This last 10 years has been a challenge. I'm only now seeing some real progress, this last couple of months. I am so thankful for this site. I truely believe that I will conquer my messiness once and for all.
|
|
kitrin
New Member
Joined: June 2008
Posts: 65
|
Post by kitrin on Jul 1, 2011 9:29:39 GMT -5
I don't even remember what drove me there anymore. If I am not mistaken it was 8 years or more ago for me? I just know it was a life saving and life ALTERING experience.
Well I know it was Kimmys thread that brought me to SS but not sure what brought me to the infamous Kimmy thread.
btw anyone heard from Kimmy or Pigpen or Angelina lately?
|
|
|
|
Post by Celeste on Jul 5, 2011 12:17:50 GMT -5
btw anyone heard from Kimmy or Pigpen or Angelina lately? Kimmy pops in here from time-to-time. She was here last in September 2010. Pigpen has been quiet. I've sent her a few emails with no replies, so I don't know what's going on in her life. I'm in regular contact with AH. Our dear AngelinaHedgehog is going to be at Squalorfest 2011 with Eagle, Script and I! We can't wait! |
|
|
|
Post by BetsyMarie on Jul 5, 2011 23:26:27 GMT -5
I've always been messy - when I was a kid, I filled my room with stuff. Mom was a boarder-line hoarder, but was far too frugal to buy very much - she just saved everything that even remotely could be useful. I missed the lesson on getting rid of things. Dad was a minimalist and tried at times to toss things into the garbage, but mom would always check the cans and 'save' things.
Maybe a decade ago I started looking around for something on the internet on decluttering and found the old decluttr mailing list. It was sort of helpful, but a bit too inactive for my tastes. Some months later I returned, and they were in the midst of some sort of member upheaval with various unhappy factions. I just wanted to clean my house so I unsubscribed. I think now they are defunct.
So I started to search again... and eventually found my way here. I don't remember the search words, but I am very pleased to have found this board. It's been very helpful.
While my house is still not there yet, I've made good progress. I also am interested in the reasons behind cluttering and other 'dysfunctional' behaviors (I am more than just messy), and am making headway there too. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel but it still looks like a pinhole.
Slow and steady wins the race.
|
|
digginout
New Member
!!!
Joined: August 2011
Posts: 6
|
Post by digginout on Aug 5, 2011 0:52:57 GMT -5
Let me see... Yesterday, I had a conversation with someone who works with kids with special needs, about understanding non-verbal communication, and said I'd send him a link to this awesome video on youtube. Today, having spent the whole day web-surfing to avoid dealing with the mess at home, I decided to look for the video and email it to him. I finally found that video, "In My Language": which led me to another video called "How to Boil Water the EASY Way" which referred to another video called "How to make a phone call, in 70 easy steps" which led me to this page: takeonestepatatime.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=print&thread=13851which led me to wonder what forum this was where people were talking about about ADHD and decluttering/cleaning, since both of those are major issues for me... which led me to join the forum and here I am! |
|
|
|
Post by mouse on Aug 7, 2011 13:50:18 GMT -5
Late to this thread, but oh well.  I came across this site by accident, from LiveJournal. One of the people on my "friends list" at the time was a clean freak, and she posted in her LJ about searching Google for a way to get a stain out of a carpet, if memory serves. Her search brought up the old Squalor Survivors site. She was horrified. Went on and on about how awful and disgusting and nasty and horrible it all was. Of course, she had no idea what effect she might be having on people on her friends list who might not be as obsessively clean as her. She even helpfully provided a link. I decided to click the link, and see what was there. Once I got to the SS forum and the personal stories and the pictures, I realized that I was staring right at variants of myself. Maybe I didn't have trash bags piled halfway up the wall, but the room with the cat pans was overflowing. None of my clothes were put away. I had no bed, and slept on a bare futon mattress on the floor because it was "too hard" to make it up with clean sheets. When SS moved here, I moved with them. I haven't been around as much. Work has kept me busy, but I've stayed on top of the mess for the most part, with the help of an awesome cleaning lady who comes once a week to mop the floors and do a surface clean of the kitchen and bathroom. I don't need more than that in order to stay on top of the rest of it by myself. In short, I would like to thank my now long-gone friends-lister for her inability to see the people behind the messes, because it led me directly here. ~Mouse  |
|
|
|
Post by glimmercat on Aug 8, 2011 3:10:00 GMT -5
I've been a slob all my life, though only in my personal space. But my room was getting really unmanageable last spring (missing out on stuff because I couldn't find things, etc) and I decided to look for online help. I googled "Hoarders Anonymous" (which I didn't find) and found this site. Joined the next day. Thanks to my crappy internet for the past year I haven't been here much, but I really need to make more of an effort, as my room is once again in the scary zone.
meow
|
|
|
|
Post by hangers on Aug 18, 2011 20:35:52 GMT -5
One night I was feeling very depressed, no hope. Been there done that, but this time I just googled something like, "My house is a pigpen, I can't fix it, I want to just hide" or something very much like that. It was a long rant of a search and this place popped up and then I remembered looking at the SS site years ago. Went back there for a last look, came back here. This is the only place that's helped me with my depression. And that includes store bought therapist talk sessions and drugs.
Flylady just made me feel inadequate and crazy.
|
|
unbearablelightness
New Member
Formerly known as eaglesight or eaglesflight. Starting fresh!
Joined: December 2010
Posts: 78
|
Post by unbearablelightness on Aug 21, 2011 6:39:32 GMT -5
It was in 2003 that I found Flylady through a mom's message board I was on. When she started out, way at the very beginning, things were much more simple. She started out, if not as a squalorer, at least as a terrible clutterer, and she did change her habits and the method helped me a lot with daily maintenance. But I was still not very good with consistency, nor with keeping up on messes made by my toddlers or my 5 cats. I joined a couple of message boards for people who followed Flylady but most of the active membership were able to use her method to keep things spotlessly clean and I found it made me feel inadequate. At some point someone there started a thread being very critical of people who can't keep up on extreme messiness and it drove me away from participating.
Around that time, coincidentally, I was reading a trivia website called Einstein's Refrigerator and one of the pages there was about the Collyer brothers. I googled for more info on them (I obsessively googled back then - I would go 20-30 pages deep in the results to find facts that hadn't been mentioned elsewhere) and I found the page on Squalor Survivors about them. I read the entire site and started reading the message boards, but did not participate. I felt like joining would be admitting something - something that was true... but that I wasn't ready to admit. So I lurked there for a good long time. Over a year, I think.
I was also a member of the snopes message board and in October 2004, someone posted a link on the news discussion board to a news story about a woman (whose name I have forgotten) who was convicted of contributing to her son's suicide because of the way she kept house, or rather, the way she didn't keep house. Most of the comments were judgmental of her, so I posted a link to SS and explained that she was most likely suffering from mental health issues such as OCD or depression. But this news story also prompted me to join SS and I posted an intro that included a link to the news story and the snopes thread. Unfortunately my analytical manner led everyone to think I was bringing in a group of snopes people, essentially to troll them and were very upset. But myself and a couple of other members (neither of which continue to participate here, but who were helped by their time there) participated on SS for some time. I have suffered over the years with guilt over the way I introduced myself because it caused distress in people I had 'known' and liked for over a year because of my lurking. My user name at the time was eaglesight.
I have left a few times because I will blame my participation in the group on periods of stasis - it is a mental thing with myself, because I remain in stasis after I leave. I need to accept that I simply have periods of time that I feel I can't handle the mess and having support through those times will be better than not. I also have tendency to take things personally that are not meant for me - there were a couple members at the time who did not get along well and I took a post as a personal attack about my intro when it had nothing to do with me at all.
I was on one of my haituses when Lioness posted to the yahoo group about the SS forums closing. I was upset about it because I had been just about to rejoin the group. But it did help me to return in time to copy a few posts that were very important to me as records of how I had grown through my membership there. I joined here as eaglesflight. That was my new standard user name, as it referred more to action than simply observing. The basis of the eagle-based user names was Isaiah 40:31 - "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint."
I have changed to this user name as the old ones, I feel, hold me back and tie me to a time period in my life when I was more outwardly pious and less understanding.
|
|
|
|
Post by messiemandi on Aug 28, 2011 5:32:30 GMT -5
I was on a completely unrelated website, they had posted a picture from squalor survivors as a lark. Everyone, of course, took great joy in saying what a pig the person who's house it was, I was humiliated, because it looked like my house, and mad, because, goddammit, I'm not ***, and that person wasn't either, but I followed the link because I was curious, and ended up relieved, that people were willing to DISCUSS this, and that I wasn't such a freak after all.
I tend to lurk lots, on both sides of the fence, you guys help, I wish the naturally clean folks would feel the pain they inflict when they say crap like that.
(hugs to all of you)
|
|
|
|
Post by dellaa on Aug 29, 2011 17:46:16 GMT -5
I found this site thanks to a 20/20 or some show that did a piece on children of hoarders and some of the emotional impact affects them, scared the bejesus outa me I started to fill a bag with trash while I watched and when they were done with the segment they recommended the children of hoarders website which led me here. Only been a member for a month or two but wow I cant say how much this site and its members have helped me!
|
|
melly
New Member
Joined: October 2011
Posts: 23
|
Post by melly on Oct 2, 2011 20:53:41 GMT -5
I typed "my house is filthy" into google, and this popped up.
|
|
|
|
Post by Freedom on Oct 4, 2011 0:09:04 GMT -5
Was clicking around the links from discardia.com and this popped up (can't remember how I found discardia).
You guys are the best!!!
|
|
|
|
Post by gtdtogether on Oct 4, 2011 17:58:56 GMT -5
I found SOS when I was googling a few days ago for alternatives to the Getting Things Done method of getting things done!
I find it very useful and will continue to use parts of it but I was needing to be part of a community that spoke to each other and supported each other in getting out of chaos.
But I would be curious to know if anyone else here has read the book or joined the 'club' they have. I joined the 2 week free trial and have listened to as many webinars as I can manage to get my head round how it works. I'm someone who rarely likes package deals so I find my own ways which is a' little bit of this and a little bit of that' (including flylady ideas).
|
|
