JinJer 47: Sparking J-O-Y

[HereticHick]

At least Jake gets to go to the vet & get shots. I'm sure many fundy pets just roam outside, protected only by prayer* and essential oils.

*prayer not guaranteed to protect you from being run over by a Duggar sled.

[singsingsing]

Maybe Jeremy has read enough books to know that you can't pray away rabies.

[nokidsmom]

On 1/29/2019 at 2:23 AM, SweetJuly said:

 I am quite a minimalist and very tidy, my husband comes from a family of hoarders and tidying does not come naturally to him. One big memorable fight was when we moved into our first apartment together and the man insisted on taking with him a bag of old, moldy newspapers that he had received from a neighbour and that had been rotting away merrily in the basement for 2 years without so much as having been glimpsed at by my husband. The newspapers were eventually tossed, fortunately, but this fight stayed in my memory.

This sounds a lot like Mr. No.   He comes from a family of packrats with some hoarding tendencies though his sister's home has become a complete hoard.  He also had newspapers, piled up in his room that he was "going to go through" for what, I can't even remember anymore, but suffice it to say, I refused to let him move that stuff into our first apartment.   He already had tons of stuff as it is, requiring us to get an apartment with 2 bedrooms so one bedroom could be used to store the stuff. 

We didn't exactly fight about it, he tossed them when I pointed out that we simply didn't have all the space for everything.   But it stayed with me that if I allowed it, he could bring in everything.  I came from a home with limited space so I was used to regularly pitching what I didn't use.    One of the reasons why I dragged my feet on getting a house was because he might fill it up in no time. 

A few moves cured him of the need to keep everything and actually he's come a long way in giving up things, to focus on the things he really wants to keep and use.  I hadn't introduced him to the Marie Kondo thing because I don't want to spook him into thinking I want him to get rid of everything.   He still can get a little touchy when I push him.

[SamiKatz]

I had to leave my house for a month last year due to major kitchen repairs/renovations in my apartment, which necessitated me packing my entire kitchen away.  More than enough incentive for me to downsize!  Less packing for when I do move out.  

I recently changed from hard sided to soft sided cat carriers, and I was surprised by how (relatively) chill my cats were in the new ones with more visibility.  As part of the above mentioned move, I had to take long cab rides with them three or four times and they were pretty good every time.

 

[PennySycamore]

@SamiKatz, we used a soft-sided carrier for our cats and our late Maine Coon got too big for one.  I think I might have gotten the soft carrier out to bring Daisy home from the Petsmart Adoption Center last May, though.  She's a pretty big so she may not fit in a soft carrier when  I take her to the vet this spring.  

[SorenaJ]

Do the Duggars vaccinate their kids, or just their cats? 

[Howl]

2 hours ago, nokidsmom said:

One of the reasons why I dragged my feet on getting a house was because he might fill it up in no time. 

I watched one of those shows where a couple/family moves into a tiny house.  In this episode, it was an older couple with a large old house with a big basement, and it was fairly obvious that the only way for the wife to address her husband's hoarding was to move to a place so tiny there was barely room for a change of clothes.  She was definitely doing it for her sanity, although this was never explicitly addressed. 

[PennySycamore]

@Howl,  we would have to get rid of a bunch of stuff if we moved into a tiny house, but I have one daughter that already feels claustrophobic when she in our living room now with everyone here.  I think both my husband and I just need to get rid of LOTS of crap.  

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

54 minutes ago, SorenaJ said:

Do the Duggars vaccinate their kids, or just their cats? 

I think it was assumed they vaccinated their kids, since they had to have Josie get all kinds of them due to her prematureity. 

[church_of_dog]

On 1/29/2019 at 12:23 AM, SweetJuly said:

I have had ROWS (big rows) with my husband about stuff/personal possessions/crap. I am quite a minimalist and very tidy, my husband comes from a family of hoarders and tidying does not come naturally to him. One big memorable fight was when we moved into our first apartment together and the man insisted on taking with him a bag of old, moldy newspapers that he had received from a neighbour and that had been rotting away merrily in the basement for 2 years without so much as having been glimpsed at by my husband. The newspapers were eventually tossed, fortunately, but this fight stayed in my memory.

My husband does believe about improving himself, often by means of books, and one day he came home with Marie Kondo's book. I had a quick look at it, decided that the basic principles were by what I had been living my life anyway, and put it aside. My husband read the book, and I don't know what happened, but he suddenly went through all of his things and got rid of SO MUCH. By his own will and motivation, and happily. He agreed that he felt so much better afterwards. It was a miracle (bless Rufus!).

To be honest, I was a bit annoyed by the entire thing - for years I had been explaining, pleading, preaching the same ideas and methods as advocated by Marie Kondo, with no effect whatsoever. Then he reads the book, and it is as if a switch had been flipped in his mind! What the heck?!

So, TL;DR - Not sure what it is, but Marie Kondo's book (and perhaps the Netflix show some of you mentioned here) can change lives. It probably doesn't work for everyone, but if it works, BOY, DOES IT WORK!

I don't know if a bit of context might help, but from my reading on hoarding I've learned that hoarders are often VERY resistant to pressure from others to discard things.  I saw that dynamic live and in person when I would try to push my hoarder father to clean up before it all got put on me.  I also learned that it nearly always backfires when someone declutters a hoarder's stuff without their permission, thinking they won't notice (or will appreciate it).  NO JUST DON'T unless you are completely fine with a major fracture in the relationship.

But when someone gets internally motivated, they can often make a major turnaround, as it sounds like your hubby did.  I also saw instances where my dad wouldn't let go of something he didn't need/use, even if I offered to take it to the thrift store for him, but if I said that I could use whatever it was, he gave it to me happily.  Once it was even just "I know someone who's been looking for one of these" and he was content to give it to me, even though he didn't even know my friend who wanted it.  I think there's a strong psychology of not wanting something to be wasted, and if it's going to a good use then it's not being wasted, but it doesn't feel right to "throw it away" because that would be wasting.  Even if it's just going to sit unused in their house, at least it still has the POTENTIAL to be well-used.  Kind of like how I used to save sheets of paper I no longer needed if they were blank on one side, to be used for scrap paper.  A fine idea, but I didn't correlate it to the level of my actual need/use for scrap paper, which is rather low.  So now I still save paper for scrap, but only up to maybe a half-inch high stack, because that will last me months or years.  I had to learn it wasn't helpful to collect more than that, it just became a new problem of how to keep it at hand without becoming a mess, a bigger problem than it solves.

Wow, didn't mean to write a novel, sorry.

[purple_summer]

I love Marie Kondo but I have a really hard time getting rid of stuff. I know a lot of it is trauma but I'm trying to get better. 

[NotQuiteMotY]

5 hours ago, PennySycamore said:

@SamiKatz, we used a soft-sided carrier for our cats and our late Maine Coon got too big for one.  I think I might have gotten the soft carrier out to bring Daisy home from the Petsmart Adoption Center last May, though.  She's a pretty big so she may not fit in a soft carrier when  I take her to the vet this spring.  

I've never had luck with soft-sided carriers. We had a cat destroy one pretty quickly, and between that and the cat that broke a hard carrier... Yeah, we go for sturdy ones around here.

 Oh, notepads are bad for me. I somehow acquire them but use them very slowly! I've gotten a little better over the years about collecting/stashing stuff that I might use or keep for sentimental reasons. Moving a couple of times, trying to clear out a room in our house that had until then been a stuff repository... I'm not great, but I'm working on it.

[Bethella]

11 hours ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

I think it was assumed they vaccinated their kids, since they had to have Josie get all kinds of them due to her prematureity. 

We know that they didn't vaccinate for chicken pox because most of the kids got it around the time Josie came home from the hospital.

[PumaLover]

9 hours ago, church_of_dog said:

I don't know if a bit of context might help, but from my reading on hoarding I've learned that hoarders are often VERY resistant to pressure from others to discard things.  

SNIP

But when someone gets internally motivated, they can often make a major turnaround, as it sounds like your hubby did. 

I am a hoarder. I can admit it now and am OK with it. It's something I deal with every day. It wasn't until the A&E show in 2007-ish that I realized it. I don't keep garbage and I don't have rats running through my house but I definitely understand where the people on that show are coming from. My hypothesis is this-I grew up in a military family, moving around all the time, and my possessions were my only stability.

The other day I went through a box that I've had since about 1984, when I was 5. I still remember where I got each toy and how I would play with it. I actually collect a lot of 80s toys because they are comforting to me. My biggest collection is my Pound Puppies, many that I actually got as a kid, but most I ended up buying on eBay.

I think my dad is also a hoarder, or at least a collector or maybe just sentimental, since he encouraged me to keep everything.

I know that I've also hoarded animals, even though I thought I could rescue all of them. I was in over my head. We have sadly lost a few in the past couple years and my husband told me we shouldn't replace them. Initially I was mad but I think he has a point. The ones I have now have my attention and are cared for and it wouldn't be fair to bring in more.

In the last month or so, I've been coming out of my deep depression and trying to turn some stuff around. My husband has been asking me to go through about 20 boxes out in his shop for the last year and I just couldn't. One day I was just motivated (I was watching Hoarders) and threw out some stuff that I'd been saving for 20-30 years. My motivation for throwing it out was mostly that the shop flooded, this stuff was ruined, and I had to let it go. But I had to be in the right mindset for it or I would have kept those wet, moldy photos and papers forever.

That small window of time has closed and I haven't gone through any of the other stuff. I did get rid of a good amount of stuff, though, and donated whatever wasn't moldy. Depression and OCD can do crazy stuff to you, even though you think you're a mostly normal person. (Wow, didn't realize how long this was. I'm also a writer-can you tell?)

[church_of_dog]

@PumaLover, I can totally relate.  I can see various tendencies in myself that could easily turn into hoarding:  the tendency to start projects and then have their components laying out "because it's in progress" even if it doesn't get worked on for days, weeks, months, years.  The tendency to hold a high level of perfectionism in some situations where it's really not helpful and generally just adds to the delay in something being completed.  And of course hating the idea of something 'useful' going to waste.

The only even remotely helpful thing I can think of to offer you is this:  if you are aware of what kind of input motivates you, psychologically -- make use of that.  (competition with others?  reverse psychology, someone betting you that you can't?  Rewarding progress/setting up negative consequences for lack of progress?  etc)  Don't spend time and energy feeling bad that you can't control things as effortlessly or in the same way as others do (ie some folks are disgusted by clutter and that disgust is their motivation, others have other styles, some people just seem to keep things uncluttered naturally although I personally can't figure out how that works!)  

Anyway, for me, I have found two paths that work for me.  One is fairly simple but has had a profound impact on me, and that is to start thinking of myself as the sort of person who keeps up with things.  I ask myself "how would I behave if I were the sort of person who had an uncluttered house?"  After some time I now feel like I've become, in several areas, the "sort of person" who does things as I wish them done, rather than neglects them as I used to be inclined to do. 

The second thing I found that works for me is self-help-y books, blogs, etc.  Lots of people laugh at this idea, so I guess it doesn't hold much social status, but I don't care, because it works for me.  So if you know how your own psychology works well enough to know how to motivate yourself, use that to move you toward whatever goals you're ready to take on.  I can recommend some specific habit-setting books,  decluttering blogs, etc, if you (or anyone) wants specifics.  ?

[treehugger]

I am a very neat, minimalist person by nature. I don't get sentimentally attached to things, and I can't relax in clutter. So, of course, I enjoyed Marie Kondo's new show, and the concept behind her methods. But, there is enormous privilege in being a minimalist.

For about two years, my husband had very unstable and low paying work due to the oil field crash in Alberta.  So we were poor, and struggling just to keep our tiny house and survive.  And during those two years, I developed some hoarderish tendencies.  I was loathe to get rid of anything because we legitimately couldn't afford to replace it if we needed to. And, I collected things (vintage toys, silverware, dishes, and antiques) at thrift stores to resell on eBay, to supplement our shaky income.  

We moved across the country for my husband's new job, which really pared down on our clutter.  And we now have a steady income and are working on building up our savings again, and are living comfortably.  And I am so thankful. I've been slowly going through our stuff to get back down to my comfort level.  It is such a good feeling.

 But it is a privileged lifestyle to be able to just get rid of things.   Not everyone can afford the luxury. 

[QuiverDance]

8 hours ago, Bethella said:

We know that they didn't vaccinate for chicken pox because most of the kids got it around the time Josie came home from the hospital.

To be fair, a lot of people didn't vaccinate for varicella at that time, and IIRC it is not a "mandatory" vaccination (i.e. for school).  This isn't to say I think it is EVER a good idea to forego vaccination.  Just... I get it for chicken pox, specifically.  (I DID vaccinate for chicken pox.)

[AprilQuilt]

16 hours ago, church_of_dog said:

I don't know if a bit of context might help, but from my reading on hoarding I've learned that hoarders are often VERY resistant to pressure from others to discard things.  I saw that dynamic live and in person when I would try to push my hoarder father to clean up before it all got put on me.  I also learned that it nearly always backfires when someone declutters a hoarder's stuff without their permission, thinking they won't notice (or will appreciate it).  NO JUST DON'T unless you are completely fine with a major fracture in the relationship.

But when someone gets internally motivated, they can often make a major turnaround, as it sounds like your hubby did.  I also saw instances where my dad wouldn't let go of something he didn't need/use, even if I offered to take it to the thrift store for him, but if I said that I could use whatever it was, he gave it to me happily.  Once it was even just "I know someone who's been looking for one of these" and he was content to give it to me, even though he didn't even know my friend who wanted it.  I think there's a strong psychology of not wanting something to be wasted, and if it's going to a good use then it's not being wasted, but it doesn't feel right to "throw it away" because that would be wasting.  Even if it's just going to sit unused in their house, at least it still has the POTENTIAL to be well-used.  Kind of like how I used to save sheets of paper I no longer needed if they were blank on one side, to be used for scrap paper.  A fine idea, but I didn't correlate it to the level of my actual need/use for scrap paper, which is rather low.  So now I still save paper for scrap, but only up to maybe a half-inch high stack, because that will last me months or years.  I had to learn it wasn't helpful to collect more than that, it just became a new problem of how to keep it at hand without becoming a mess, a bigger problem than it solves.

Wow, didn't mean to write a novel, sorry.

This is a really good post. And interesting. My grandfather died last year and he was such a hoarder in this vein - he grew up during the war so I think he always had a bit of a thing about stocking up on things with the potential for usefulness, even if he already had three the same. You just don't know when times will be leaner, and then you'll be glad you had the thing. Unfortunately, he kept buying the SAME thing. He had a chest freezer full of ready meals and frozen veg going back probably to the millennium. And about seven identical tool boxes. Loads of pretty decent cameras. In the 80s and 90s he was really into playing the recorder for some reason, but he didn't have one recorder, he had about 20.

Everything he had was the sort of stuff that he'd genuinely use and either enjoy or benefit practically from, he just really did not need them in multiples. But he couldn't let go of them. Since he died, my partner has comfortably stocked up a full tool kit from his garage, with loads of equipment we couldn't have afforded ourselves, and it's helped immeasurably with the work we are doing on our new house. Every grandchild who wants one has been able to choose a camera and equipment; the recorders have gone to a local school; my dad took 14 (!) walking sticks to the charity shop and they were absolutely overjoyed because they never have enough and people always want them. I wish he'd been able to let go of it all while he was alive, because it's been so rewarding to split this stuff up among people who are so appreciative of it. I know that's what he would have wanted, and he felt trapped by all this stuff he owned,  and yet he just didn't know how to let go of it.

[SorenaJ]

23 minutes ago, QuiverDance said:

To be fair, a lot of people didn't vaccinate for varicella at that time, and IIRC it is not a "mandatory" vaccination (i.e. for school).  This isn't to say I think it is EVER a good idea to forego vaccination.  Just... I get it for chicken pox, specifically.  (I DID vaccinate for chicken pox.)

Is chicken pox covered under insurance in the US? If not, the Duggars might not have prioritised it, as getting chicken pox is not as serious as some of the other diseases. In the UK, chicken pox is not on the NHS, because, I would assume, it is not as serious, and having x amount of money, they prioritised the other vaccines. But I don't know how the vaccination system works in the US. 

[karen77]

12 minutes ago, SorenaJ said:

Is chicken pox covered under insurance in the US? If not, the Duggars might not have prioritised it, as getting chicken pox is not as serious as some of the other diseases. In the UK, chicken pox is not on the NHS, because, I would assume, it is not as serious, and having x amount of money, they prioritised the other vaccines. But I don't know how the vaccination system works in the US. 

yes, it's covered, both my kids have the vaccine. Wish it'd been around when I was younger, so wouldn't have to worry about shingles.

[Bethella]

54 minutes ago, QuiverDance said:

To be fair, a lot of people didn't vaccinate for varicella at that time, and IIRC it is not a "mandatory" vaccination (i.e. for school).  This isn't to say I think it is EVER a good idea to forego vaccination.  Just... I get it for chicken pox, specifically.  (I DID vaccinate for chicken pox.)

In Arkansas it’s been mandatory for school since 2000. http://www.immunize.org/laws/varicella.asp

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

14 minutes ago, QuiverDance said:

To be fair, a lot of people didn't vaccinate for varicella at that time, and IIRC it is not a "mandatory" vaccination (i.e. for school).  This isn't to say I think it is EVER a good idea to forego vaccination.  Just... I get it for chicken pox, specifically.  (I DID vaccinate for chicken pox.)

I waited quite a while for the Varicella vaccine, as I did for Gardasil.  The Varicella vaccine was approved for use in the US in 1995 and Gardasil came out in 2006.  I didn't want my kids to be guinea pigs for untested vaccines, or for the long term effects of what getting these vaccines would mean. the varicella vaccine didn't become mandatory for school until my kids were in upper elementary so that is when they got it, and Guardasil still isn't mandatory, so I'm letting my now adult children choose if/when they get it. 

I'm not anti vaccine at all, but I do think that they give too many vaccines to infants at once sometimes. DS got sick at his 4 month well child visit after being given several vaccines at once, so we spaced the rest of his out over more visits, and we just gave them to DD as a slower rate, to avoid a reaction.  I was home with my kids so I didn't have to follow a strict vaccine schedule,  They still had all their vaccines they were just about a year behind on getting them, and we had medical excuse for preschool and they were caught up by the time they started kindergarten so no big deal. 

[OyToTheVey]

9 hours ago, Bethella said:

We know that they didn't vaccinate for chicken pox because most of the kids got it around the time Josie came home from the hospital.

IIRC there were like 12 kids who had it at the same time. I gotta say that sounds like true torture.

[potato]

I've been vaccinated for chicken pox (as have my siblings) but my one sister and I still got chicken pox as children. 

And to clarify (because this is the internet): I'm not saying that this is what happened with the Duggars by any means, especially with their questionable medical history.  

[libgirl2]

I was never vaccinated for chicken pox and got them when I was 22 or 23! My son wasn't either and he came down with it when he was 6.