Desperate Measures

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I'm there. I'm sitting here thinking of hiring a professional organizer and I'm not sure I can afford it. Has anyone here done this? Trying to get myself organized would be a lot easier if I could unload some of this junk and clutter but I am virtually paralyzed when I try to do it. It seems so simple, except that I can't. I think I've come to the point where I realize that I really cannot do this by myself. My Inattentive ADD has ruled my life and I'm tired of it!

I'm impressed by your resolve I think it is a worthwhile investment to have an emotionally detached outsider show you that you can live without certain things.
I am a hoarder by nature I have a terrible weakness for sparkly wrapping paper
My mom came in and threw away my collection a while ago. I was furious for about 2 hours and then realized that I was okay. Granted, if she had discarded something with more substance than paper, I would have flipped and thrown the holy mother of all tantrums. (but hopefully that was relevant and moderately helpful )

I finally talked a woman at work into coming to my house this weekend to help me clean. It took a few months and the results of that visit should be interesting.

gawd you should see my room right now. I dont like throwing things away cos i get worried that i might need them at some point, even daft stuff like ribbon from a present (what if i need to make something pretty someday?!) or a hideous ill-fitting top that someone bought me (what if i get fat and neon polkadots come into fashion?!) lol you get the idea. And i have a thing about keeping the boxes that electrical things came in. incase something goes wrong with them or i decide to sell them one day. this never happens but it's all about the what-ifs. I try to be ruthless and throw lots of stuff out but have to do it on the right day or i end up doing nothing more than rearranging things and nothing goes. Plus i get sentimental about objects so easily!

Maybe instead of getting a professional get a relative/friend to help you for free or a small amount?

btw i used to be called aimless on another forum and keep thinking you're me:S

OP, I've been facing a similar demon. It's a huge psychological battle that makes me start fretting to no end. My mom came to help me but somehow just slowed me down - but then she took tons and tons fo stuff with her and was very sympathetic.

I'm still working on it, but I will win if I have to drag it all outside and set fire to it. Good luck, you have my sympathies.

Are you near me? I loveeeeee to organize stuff! .....other people's stuff anyway. LOL

My mother has ADD and struggles with organization. She has asked for help from neater friends, which has worked very well.

Try to approach it little by little-that's what I do and it helps so you don't become overwhelmed. So, for instance, this weekend choose 1 drawer to completely clean out. My rule is to get rid of anything I haven't looked at or used in over a year (unless I absolutely can't live with out it-in that case a find a "place" for it to live). After you complete the one drawer you will have enthusiasm about the job completed and next week can tackle a whole closet and so on.
I constantly do this.

Organizers suck. One tried to tell my mother to sell the grand piano to free up space. Apparently, she didn't even consider that I'm using that.

Besides, seconding what's been said, I've repeatedly had my living space cleaned up by well-meaning people who think they can help. It only takes a couple of weeks and everything's back how it was. A one-time thing will not help.

I have an idea how you feel. Out here there is no rubbish collection (in the country) and I am not used to it, so I feel sort of paralysed about the rubbish. At my parents house there was a paper bin, recycling, and rubbish, and here there is the paper and recycling, compost, but no rubbish collection. I dont know what to do with plastic wrappers and it sort of paralysed me for a long time, I have only started to gather stuff up into bags...

I either get overwhelmed very quickly by the sheer amount of stuff I need to organise, or get stuck because I have to categorise things so that I know where to put them, but then I run into things that can be placed in multiple categories, or alternatively, I can't categorise.

In the end, I find myself with a large pile of stuff that gets jammed back into the cupboards from whence it came until the next time I try to sort it all out.

It's made worse by my habit of hanging onto things because I, or someone else, might be able to use them.

I finally threw out a shelf full of instruction manuals for *OLD* software a few weeks ago, plus the majority of my bible college course notes. Which I hadn't read or needed since I was doing the course - nearly a decade ago. Some of the notes in that box were from a course I did... 22 years ago.