A Little announcement...

       Pssst...I have an announcement!

Did I ever mention that I have a shop on amazon.com?
Probably not, because I've kept it quiet- same thing with my eBay shop.  I also have an Etsy shop too.  I use the money to contribute to the $525 monthly payments to my school loan debt- free money, in a sense, for things I already have and need to get rid of.
I probably haven't "advertised" my shops because I don't want to hear how appalled people (who I know and care about) are about the "stuff" I've held onto and didn't get rid of when my good friends, Hoarders, visited.
If you are appalled, keep your mouth quiet, and buy something!  It will make you feel better because you contributed to my therapy of getting these treasures out of my house!

Now that the boyfriend and I have hit the 5 year mark, I'll share my amazon.com shop, which is now 6 years old. The boyfriend is not available for sharing, so sorry.

http://www.amazon.com/shops.fritzandlola


Soon I'll figure out how to link back to old posts...you can read about the Hoarders experience in the first post on this blog.
 

Handmade crafters label branding kit by Cathe Holden | Worldlabel Blog

Thought I'd share something fun that I stumbled upon while blog stalking. They're free and who doesn't love composition books?


Handmade crafters label branding kit by Cathe Holden | Worldlabel Blog

Dehoarding another Hoarder's Classroom

Over the past months, I've been cleaning out a classroom, while teaching a handful of 3rd graders.  This was a last minute move (yet, it was my choice) and I've suffered with my organization since.
I had the pleasure of cleaning out a classroom packed with 3 decades worth of unusable supplies and complete crap!  The twist to this whole move, was that I had 1 week to clean house, move my items in, organize, and plan! The retired teacher (37 years to her credit) took 6 weeks to go through her treasures, took off with 20 boxes, and left me months worth of cleaning. 

I've highlighted some of the gems that I threw out, recycled and donated!

The Vintage Cigar Box: This was an awesome find! Not only is it a cigar box, it had a price tag on it from BYU.  The cigars were only 25 cents a piece! I took a calligraphy class in college and it is not an easy art to master- especially with ink.  These particular calligraphy pens were the real deal- complete with metal nibs.  I had nightmares of what the classroom would look like after experimenting with these tools, India black ink and 8 year old students! It's messy enough with watercolors- but what in the hell was she thinking?

Powder Paint: We use pre-mixed tempera paint in the classroom these days.  I do remember the days that powder tempera paint was used.  I even thought the bubbles that were left behind gave my paintings character- this was 27 years ago.  These particular powder paint tins (yes tins) were from a family of 12.  They're made by Crayola when they had a plant in New York, NY...before zip codes were invented! Vintage- absolutely. Safe- probably not. Chance of getting lead poisoning- thought I'd avoid it.
Now that I think of it, I probably should have put them in a hazardous waste bag.

Ancient Gauze: The Red Cross is a super organization.  This was a super addition to my mom's collection of vintage first aid supplies and such.  There's nothing better than having gauze from the 1960's to soak up blood from a bloody nose or ripping out baby teeth from the kids!  Along with the gauze were 100+ wooden splints, 2 woolen army blankets, and a 25 year old pillow. I knew that she (the teacher) was a afraid of earthquakes, but to be frank, I'd be running like a mad woman with the kids under my arms if they needed a splint.  I'm on the second floor.  I did keep the splints for the kids to paint. If we don't get our craft on, they're gone this spring.

The Glue Factory: If I didn't know better, I would have thought that there were cows living in my cupboards and whenever the glue was out, a new bottle would pop out in an instant. This is only half of the glue hoard- no joke.  The more I dug into the cupboards, the more glue bottles I found. There was Glue All, School Glue, glue sticks, book binding glue, fabric glue, some kind of glue that had a price tag from the 1980's, and paste (I totally had a Billy Madison flashback with I saw the paste). I think I supplied an entire grade level with glue this school year.

 The Paper Forest: I couldn't get over how many reams of paper I came across.  I was blown away.  I felt guilty. I a big believer in kids using both sides of their paper, reusing paper from the printer and copier, and recycling. What was even worse was at the end of the school year, the teacher was ordering more paper. Apparently this paper didn't have the right kind of lines, or the colors weren't right, blah, blah.  I haven't ordered any paper for the kids.  I gave away 25 reams to other teachers in the building.  I had already bought notebooks (at least they were only ten cents a piece) and I gave those to an upper grade teacher.
A friend that I grew up with just got a job with Tree Utah- I think I need to contact him to see about planting some trees to make up for the excess of paper reams in the classroom.

In the next post I will sharing the vintage posters that I dug out.  We (the music teacher and my 3rd grade co-teachers) named a few of them.  A few of the posters came in Community series (police and firefighters).  The SLCPD and Sugarhood were featured in the 1960's- classic! 

Super Slacker...at posting that is.

I'm a posting slacker.  I visited a friend and her new baby. The boyfriend's brother came home to visit, BBQ on Saturday afternoon, movie Saturday night, family party Sunday evening for our state holiday- Pioneer Day!

I have kept up on getting an item out of the house each day.

$9.99 Bowl Set

Day 3:

[purchase info] Costco- 2009

[time in my possession] 2 years

[last used] June 2011- Popcorn party at the end of the school year. (First and only time used)

[difficulty level in getting rid of it] Easy.  I loved the color of the bowls, but didn't need them.

[destination] Good friend who recently got married.  They needed a set of matching bowls.

$1 can of paint was a bonus- they needed to paint their deck chairs. I'm a sucker for mistinted paint. This particular color didn't quite match.

 

  

 

 

Day #4

[purchase info] random buckets of mistinted paint and laminate/vinyl floor glue

 

[time in my possession] 6 months- 2 years

 

[last used] Never

 

[difficulty level in getting rid of it] Easy-Middle of the road:  Floor glue- super easy.  I didn't end up needing it with the type of flooring I used in the craft room.

Since the paint hadn't been used yet, I figured it wouldn't be used in the near future. The problem I had

was the "wasting money" part.  All were mistinted paint- so when I have to buy paint again, I'll get the actual paint color I really love.

 

[destination] Habitat for Humanity-ReStore. 1276 South 500 West, Salt Lake City, Utah  84101

 

Nuns, Shoes, and Savers...

Challenge Day #2

Today I did my first drop off at the new Millcreek Savers.  Big Brothers and Big Sisters benefit from the goods that you donate (they sell the items to Savers Thrift Store) and I get a tax donation form + a coupon.
This morning I gathered up some shoes that were piled up by my bedroom door, which meant the give away item of the day was a Pile O' Shoes!

Abbycat was very fond of these shoes- she enjoyed rubbing her chin on them. Coco buried her bones in them. I was tripping over them. They needed to go.

Minimizing Debt

Challenge Day #1

Today was my first official day to minimize and document.  From the moment I woke up I spotted items that will soon be heading out of my lovely abode. I also saw the piles of items that have been sitting for a month or more that have been ready to go to a new home (I know you’re thinking, “Why are they still sitting there?” I thought the same thing. I get distracted easily if I don’t take my Ritalin and then I forget or choose to step over it). I decided a pile counts as 1 item and anything that I've already grouped to send away.  Here are some other rules that are going around in my head: Do I have to go somewhere each day to get rid of something? What if I commit to one day/ week to drop everything off.  It will save time and gas- I'm trying to simply, right? Does listing items on amazon.com, etsy.com, or ebay.com count as getting rid of an item or is this in addition to? I'm thinking it should be in addition to since it hasn't left the house. I'm not giving this up. My shops are a secret to most of my friends, very few people know what my shops are called. I've had the ebay and amazon shops for 7 years, but just sold on ebay this past year.  Why have I kept this quiet- I don't have an good answer to this. I don't like copy cats? I was embarrassed that I had so much stuff (I was a closet hoarder)? It was a way to earn secret money that I could spend?

While I was thinking about the “rules” of the challenge I decided to take on the Credit Union.  They’ve been advertising a credit card for 7.99% all summer.  A few months back I had visited a financial planner to review my life and have had a goal to get a credit card that has a reasonable interest rate.  I had to rebuild my credit after a bankruptcy 10 years ago (yes, it was one of the hardest things I’ve been through) and I haven’t had the best relationship with credit card companies.  I didn’t have a choice in the early years in which cards I could get to establish new credit, and in the past 3 years, we’ve all had a hard time with credit cards limiting our credit because we were responsible users and paid off our debt.  There was nothing more exciting to me to get my limit slashed from $8000 to $1200 and an interest rate of 29.9% when I had a $0.00 balance.

I figured if I could qualify for this card, I could transfer the little debt that I do have, pay one bill a month at a lower interest.  It was a pipedream, but I bit the bullet, took a deep breath and went to the bank. To my surprise, I qualified and was thrilled to find out my credit rating had gone up 40 points over the past 2 months! This was one of those moments that I wanted to call my parents to tell them that I passed- but I am 32.  I called the boyfriend instead.

trashogram

While searching for a fantastic picture of Box Tops to use on my school weebly.com site, I stumbled across a very vivid and bright photo, which also included scissors (be still my teacher heart). The photo came from a site that included a little blurb, but what really caught my attention was the title:
box tops for education [trashogram]! I thought the word trashogram was fabulous and there was a word cloud/ side bar full of de-hoarding words.  I was sucked into reading more about this author's blog and her "no-retail shopping" challenge.  

She had a tidbit about Hoarders  and why she was doing the challenge, what was even more interesting to me and practical (at this point in my life) was her new challenge:

Still De-Hoarding You Ask? Why yes!

Boxes after Hoarders...

Boxes in sorting process

Hoarding can be a dangerous hobby.  De-hoarding the house can be is even more dangerous!  I had approximately one-hundred or so 8"x10" boxes that were left over from the Hoarders experience.  The second bedroom was filled with these boxes.  All of the boxes were labeled with general categories- see all the C's- that means crafts.  Over the summer, working with the personal organizer and my sister, we went through the left-over boxes, sorted and purged more "stuff".  Throughout the winter I've been working on the 50 boxes that were left from the personal organizer sort, to purge more of this super stuff and find a permanent home for it in the house. 
During this process I have injured myself cleaning! Yes, while cleaning.  (You're asking yourself if a hoarder really cleans, right? You should see my supply of cleaners and my Sargent Steamer!)

WARNING: Carrying multiple boxes of books up and down flights of stairs in one day will cause a shoulder injury- like an AC shoulder separation. It only took 7 weeks to heal.
 As I've been getting rid of my "stuff", I've been able to get rid of my weight, which is good, this is another on-going issue, and I've been walking more. Being more active is great.  Bending over and picking up items is great exercise too- it really works your abs.  You can even get in some lunges walking stuff to the trash.
Over the weekend, I just happened to squish a nerve that sends lightning hot pain down my right leg and ends at my knee.  No back pain, no numbness. Just dumb luck!
Boxes falling over/ on top of your head = short term pain.

I'm already out of my flex benefits money for the year- I'm crossing my fingers that nothing else attacks me!

Just for fun- have you seen this product before?  This Sewing Cabinet would be awesome in my craft room.  I just have to figure out how to add buttons to my blog so I can win this-ha!  One more thing to add to my list of "things to figure out"...

Embarrassing Moment #358

While out and about today I was approached by a woman who informed me that she saw me on the TV last night.   "That was you right? You had great stuff.  I have a shop at the swap meet up north on Saturdays. You're a movie star. You're famous."
 She continued to tell me that her husband thought my last name was Utah and that he wasn't going to believe that she met me.  She kept going back and forth asking me if I saw the show with the guy who had all the chickens who lived in his house and the lady with the cats.  I had to clarify that I WASN'T the lady with the cats, just to make sure she knew what she was talking about.  "I know who you are, you have the sweet boyfriend.  I've seen the show a few times.  It was just on again last night."
Yes, I have the sweet boyfriend, which we're going on 4 years at the beginning of February!
At this point I'm already feeling like I want to bolt, I can tell other people are listening, trying to figure out what show she's talking about, while "browsing" the book aisle. Damn shopping cart that I had with me was in the way.
She continues blabbering about wishing she had a book because she'd have me sign it so she could prove to her husband that she really met "Lisa Utah".  I'm just trying to think how politely cut her off and leave- I don't want to be an ungrateful "famous" person.
I continue to do my thing, search for old books for create artist trading cards (for an art workshop assignment) and as I turn around, she's back, with a book shoved in my face.  "Will you please sign this, with the network name you were on. You don't have to put your last name on it."
You got it- you couldn't pay me enough to put my last name on that 2001 journal (with a $1.00 price tag)- I couldn't put Dona, my grandmother, through that kind of embarrassment!
As she walks away, happy as a clam, she starts telling other people, she's famous, she was on a show.  Ask her about it. I felt like the biggest idiot- especially when people started asking what show it was.
Three minutes later I heard the familiar husky voice, asking me to turn around.  "Look, I brought my daughter back with me so she could see you.  She didn't believe me either."

 My hoard of books to make my cards

Did I mention I was at the D.I.? 

*I've added a link here so you can learn about Artist Trading Cards.*

Adult Readers

So, I have a lot of books.  Enough that I could open up a small bookstore- okay, I already have an online account where I sell my books.  It's surprising that I didn't major in library and media sciences- I really enjoy books- now that I can actually sit down and read them.  I have surrounded my students in books.  I have a huge collection of Children's books.  When I moved from one school to another I did get rid of some of the books, but held on to the hardback ones.  I also knew my niece would NEED books- so I didn't purge my library.  I even had a stamp made that said "This book belongs Lisa's Library" that I stamped in every book I bought for my students.

In addition to the hoard at my house, I kept my past 2nd grade classroom hoard in a storage unit.  I had over 20 boxes of books that I needed to go through to figure out what to bring into my 5th grade classroom.  The challenge was to keep the books that were already active on my seller account separate from the ones that were not listed, while organizing the books.  The ultimate solution was to delete my inventory and sort the books.  The personal organizer helped me with this, along with her assistant and my "assistant", the little sister.  All of the reading materials were organized, the organizers labeled the boxes and tubs the following: kids books, magazines, and adult books.  Yes, I now had an extensive collection of adult books. I was a bit floored myself. Maybe I'll be able to make some more money selling these newly categorized books.

Designer Mice

Did I mention I had a house mouse? It hoarded granola bars. It was a sneaky mouse. 

This is the one year anniversary of the discovery.

  

According to the lovely free on-line dictionary, Wikipedia, The house mouse is a small rodent, a mouse, one of the most numerous species of the genus Mus.
As a wild animal the house mouse mainly lives associated with humans, causing damage to crops and stored food. The house mouse has been domesticated as the pet or fancy mouse. 

Luckily for me, my fancy mouse liked to live alone behind the grate under my new LG fridge.  It made a nice home in between the compressor and the ice cube filter hose, after chewing through the power cord.

Flashback to 10/2009:
In a panic I called Kate asking her if she could drop by my house because my outlet was dead as I walked into worked with a reusable shopping bag full of food.  I had checked all of my breakers and it was the only thing that made sense.  When I checked in with her later on, she saved what she could and told she saw some granola bars that fell behind the fridge and some mouse poop.  Then she added that she had pulled out 21 granola bars from behind the metal grate.  Each of the granola bars had 1 bite out of them, with one corner torn off.

So much for going grocery shopping the night before and now I had to worry about vermin.

I know how to problem solve and the outlet wasn't dead.  Coco and the Abbycat were going nuts sniffing the fridge and the cubby where the fridge was.  I didn't see anymore mouse poop, I sprayed it down with another layer of Clorox, was armed with my Sargent Steamer, and had 4 mouse traps set.  The pets were also guarding the fridge and dishwasher. 

Two weeks passed and nothing happened- I even went to a specialized farmer/rancher store to get big mouse/rat traps.  I knew it wasn't a rat- the droppings were small that I had found.  The cat and the dog didn't change places either- they guarded the fridge as if it were full of gold! I didn't hear the mouse and didn't see the mouse.


Four weeks passed and I found Pink Panther insulation on the floor.  I didn't know if Coco had gotten into something of if the mouse was living under the dishwasher.  
TIP: When you can't pull out the dishwasher it's because a) it's jammed or b) the people who lived in your house before you tiled it in so you have to pull up the floor to get it out. 

It was 8:30pm on the following Thursday night when I arrived home from math class and heard a screeching, eeeeking, god-awful sound inside my house as I'm unlocking my door.  Mind you, I have no children living at my house.  As I walked inside, my hall light is burned out and the shrill sound was growing louder and as I feel around for the nearest light switch. I finally looked down stairs.  Abbycat was playing with the damn house mouse!

Good Kitty

 

 

The mystery was solved.

The house mouse was so massive, it didn't fit in the mouse traps which is why they were never set off.  The granola bar stash finally made sense and it was probably snacking on some dog food.  Due to the fact that I had sent Coco to my dad's house, there wasn't any dog food and the mouse was hungry and was going for the cat food down stairs.  Abby was having the time of her life, I was trying to find something to trap the mouse, when Abby looked up and the mouse took off.  I heard it scurry upstairs and I watched it high-tail it out the dog door and it was gone!  

I'm happy to report that we did NOT find any mummified mice during the cleaning process.  It was also 34 degrees in the house the following week- the thermal coupler in the furnace broke.

Yes, there is a Coco in my life

This is Coco.  She's my hand-me-down dog from my previous neighbor.  She has issues too. When we cleaned house we found her stash of bones in every corner of the rooms she could get in. Bones were under blankets, in between couch cushions, the stairs and in my mini-shag carpet (this is on the "to replace" list).  Coco was "absent" during the filming process because she's not so nice around men and needs boot camp to help her overcome her "naughty dog" habits. As soon as she set paw in the house she went crazy looking for her bones.  She raced through the house, circling round and round, sniffing the perimeter of my 1100 sq. ft. house.  She dug up my newly made bed looking for buried bones in the depths of my deep-pocketed sheets, nosed around under my bed, and sniffed down the cat over and over, as if she pocketed all of the milk bones we owned, and was holding them ransom.  Little did I know, Coco had a stash in the back yard. The combination of snow in the morning and sun in the afternoon made for a lovely mix of mud on the carpet, along with a perfectly seasoned knotted-rawhide bone that she was given the previous December.  Bones kept showing up day after day and she was putting in twice the amount of effort tucking them in the corners of the furniture and under my pillows.  There is nothing better than finding a freshly chewed up rawhide bone under the pillow while being growled at by your own dog.
Coco is now hoarding milk bones.  She saves them in a pile next to "her" chair and eats them when I get home from work.  She gets one bone in the morning when I leave and one when I get home.  Her latest trick was stealing bones from the cookie jar- she never even though of doing this before. She can't even drink out of the toilet, how was she getting to her jar? She misses her old stash of assorted flavors of bones.

Coco needs her rest- this is how I find her when I get home from work. 



One of Mira's favorite phrases to say as a 2 year old was "Coco Loco"- I couldn't agree more.  This is what you get when you mix a Dachshund and a Jack Russell Terrier. 

$$$ Consignment Cash $$$

One of my favorite places to consign my "goods" is at Emilie Jayne in Salt Lake City on the corner of 800 E. and 800 S. housed in an old grocery store.  I've been going here ever since Jayne opened the store years ago to shop and consign items.  Anyhow- when going through my collection of Pyrex, Glassbake, and Fireware milkglass (white baking pans, bowls, etc.) I had a difficult time letting it go and imagining it sitting in the 1-800-JUNK truck.  I held on to them for the summer and couldn't find a good way to display them and decided to consign them.  I kept 3 out of the 50 pieces and brought the rest to Jayne to sell at her store.  The majority of the pieces were vintage and were all in complete sets.  Being a hoarder, I had spent countless hours scouting second hand stores to complete these sets over a period of 5 years.  After a short mourning period, I parted with the dishes, along with 2 boxes of "stuff" on September 4th. 
All of my goods that I dropped off have sold in less than 2 months and I have a little over $200 to add to the bank account for the home improvement fund!  Yahoo!

Check out these links below to see what the store looks like and have written about Emilie Jayne .
Vintage Mixer
Your Heart Out

 

Ta-da...Transformation!

When I bought my house just over 3 years ago I had imagined a perfect art studio/craft room in the 2nd bedroom. As I moved in, switched jobs and started teaching at a public, year-round school, the "getting organized" part never took place. Three years later I couldn't even walk in the room. It was a disaster area, yet I knew what was in there, at times went crawling over the top of for the important things, and tried to ignore the mess (it's hard to do this when the door won't shut!). This was also when I knew I was hitting my all time low and luckily I was okay about going back to a therapist on my own before I was turned over to Hoarders!

A big part of my life has been art and crafting.  I've had supplies for this since pre-school- it's all I ever wanted for gifts throughout elementary.  I also have an undergraduate art degree.  I have a craft hoard- sure it's been thinned down, but I'm still working on this.  I'm going to be selling a bunch of these items (which are all new) on etsy when I get my shop up.  My first goal was to get this art studio/craft room in place.  I knew if I could get back to the "art part" of my life, I'd feel a bit like myself again, and recognize why I love creating.
Fast forward....after the room was emptied and bare, including the carpet, I went to work with Kate.

I had bought the paint 12 months prior thinking I would be able to get it done the summer before (I have such high expectations- though not always realistic). I even paid full price at Lowe's for this particular Waverly color rather than settling for the $5 oops gallons!  IKEA was the best choice for the type of desk and counter tops I needed (some were even in the "AS-IS" section) and the flooring is actually one 16'x11' piece of vinyl.  I had tried bamboo flooring, but soon found that the foundation was not level and the builders choose not to make it plumb when pouring the concrete.  This project kept my summer going, kept me happy, and is finally done!

Yes, everything is organized and has a home.

Since you were asking...

Yes, I am a hoarder.  More specifically a recovering hoarder. Yes it is embarrassing, expensive, and inconvenient.  Yes, I've had a lot of help to get to this place in my life where I can actually admit that I am a hoarder, but most importantly I was finally able to ask for help (with a lot of help from the little sister).  The "asking for help" part took me 10 years.  After Kate submitted the application to Hoarders, I was at a huge loss and knew I was in deep- I just thought I was a collector, rather than a Hoarder.  I didn't have garbage and crap all over my house- I just had a lot of stuff.  I was making money dropping this "stuff" at the consignment store and selling books on-line, yet it didn't look like anything was leaving the house. 
Five months later, a clean up crew of 20 people (a professional organizer, the local 1-800 Junk crew, my parents, sister, and Eric), and 400 small boxes my house was emptied out.  I donated 2 tons of new and gently used items to be resold and another 2 tons of stuff to be recycled, or thrown out (these items couldn't be donated because they were broken or were considered "garbage").
It's been ten months since the Hoarders experience began.  I go to therapy weekly, have spent around 40 hours working with a personal organizer, and have made a lot of progress.  I've had more good days than bad ones.  Have had set backs and have had to make a lot of changes.  I still think about my "stuff", hope that it has a good home, yet I don't miss it. It's amazing how much life those items took away from me.
The new goal is to re-purpose the things that I did hold onto and/or get rid of them, continue to stay in the recovering hoarder category, and bust out my craft and art supplies.  I finally finished the 2nd bedroom to create my studio.  It's been a 3 year "work in progress".