I agree with chicken lady’s concerns. I go into the garage to empty the trash sometimes, but that’s my husbands area and I don’t seclutter his stuff. Just like I don’t declutter his clothing closet. That’s his stuff and it would be wrong. What if he gave away my clothing? I’d be pretty angry.
We are talking mail, receipts and broken stuff. Not clothes, etc.
You are making a value judgement, using your values on his stuff, without his knowledge or consent.
unless you know that he would agree that the stuff you are taking is worthless and should be disposed of - in which case, why not just tell him?
in my eyes, The fact that your values are the majority values, does not make that right. The only justification I can see for that would be that you consider the person truly incapable of making his own decisions - like a small child or a senile adult. Or, one could argue, due to mental illness. But if that is the tack you are taking on this, as someone who suffers from the same mental illness, you should be aware that the path you are taking has been shown to make this particular mental illness worse, and destroy relationships permanently.
i think I just realized that may be why these conversations bother me so much. If you are simply lying and sneaking around behind your partner’s back - well, that says something about you and I can feel sorry for him, but maybe he would just rather not know and continue as things are, people make all kinds of accommodations in relationships. But if you are actually trying to deal with some level of hoarding, you are not only risking damaging the relationship, but probably making the problem worse. And I worry for you both. And most of society will cheer you instead of warning you, so I feel like eventually I have to say something to help you understand.
so, having tried to do that, I will drop it again unless you want to discuss it further.
Some Marie Kondo acolyte donated her son's travel mug to charity this week--with $6500 cash tucked inside, the proceeds from the sale of his car. A clear lesson in keeping your hands off other people's stuff--no matter what you think about its value.
I can definitely see this from both sides. My bil is a hoarder, I guess you would call it, and his wife eventually moved out and bought another place, after he filled up her three flat. DH and I were talking about how much this has cost them as a marital unit over the years--I think it was about 400,000 in rent they could be charging on the three flat.
If I were she, I probably would have asked for a divorce, as he took over her house and her life and she can't retire, etc.
Or maybe she should have said, you get a storage unit, I am done being your storage unit.
I just don't know. I do know he has called my husband twice now and tried to store stuff in our barns and I have said no way, I will leave you if that happens.
We struggle with space issues in our marriage, as my husband has take over tendencies, and stores dumb ugly stuff, while I tend to get rid of nice things because you can only have so many things. Then my space contains his dumb ugly things, and my nice things are gone.
I don't know what the answer is. I guess if you want to stay married, you have to work out compromises.
He definitely has hoarding tendencies and his mom was bad. However, he enjoys living in a neat clean house. Since I do all the housework I set the cleanliness standard and he knew this when we first got together. He has trouble getting rid of stuff and is lazy when it comes to cleaning. Once in awhile he will dispose of stuff but it takes me pushing him and 10xs as long. His office, shed and garage are a mess but limited in space so some stuff must go out. Luckily he has not filled up the shed and it is still good. These debates never end up with anyone agreeing.
Hermann house. The entire basement. But I get the first floor. Two upstairs bedrooms will be negotiated. I have to work on garage rule, but I think it can be managed if I declare that space for car stuff and only car stuff.not computers from 1990.. no garden pots and hoses and extra wood and etc. we have two sheds for garden stuff.
He does not get to place huge ugly-but-sort-of-retro-cool bedroom dresser in front of a street facing bedroom window. We are not going to be one of those hoarder houses that has furniture blocking the window. This furniture is hideous large, and smaller pieces would work fine in that room.
IL, your husband is definitely worse than mine ). Thankfully when we got together I lived in a small condo. He rented a storage unit for 2 years. Finally his mom and I convinced him to give his furniture to charity and get rid of the payment. We do have a few small chairs from his mom that are in his office. I won’t get rid of nice stuff so he can have something ugly in the main areas.
Well, I fantasize about a living space where every foot isnt negotiated for ownership, where I dont have to block out sights (my ability to Not See things is pretty awesome!) And I will say that after 30 years in this city house, our first floor is nice. Nearly everything in the dirst floor is here because it is either useful or it is handsome. The rest of the house yeah nope. Our tiny houses, yeah, nope.
I looked at an absolutely perfect condo as a city place when we finally moved to Hermann. I may well want to escaoe to the city.
The bathroom had fabulous original Vitilite wall tile and original tile floor. The ugly vanity would have to go. The place had huge closets, one featured here. Kitchen was from the 80’s, old but functional.
there are always units for sale in this building, but this one was perfect.
He definitely has hoarding tendencies and his mom was bad. However, he enjoys living in a neat clean house. Since I do all the housework I set the cleanliness standard and he knew this when we first got together. He has trouble getting rid of stuff and is lazy when it comes to cleaning. Once in awhile he will dispose of stuff but it takes me pushing him and 10xs as long.
This sounds very similar to DH. He comes from a family of hoarders / pack rats and has a tendency to hold onto things "just in case". He's not messy, he's actually pretty organized but it eventually even organized clutter will become a hoard and I was bound and determined not to let our home become like his other family member's homes. Also since I was the one doing most of the housework, I mentioned (actually raised hell) how it was impacting cleaniness because I couldn't get to the area or I spent a good amount of time moving things around to do the cleaning.
He's gotten better at disposing of stuff but I still have to ride herd on him at times. Just last week, he mentioned he wants to get a new computer but still wants to hold onto the old one "just in case". I said no, we back up your old computer to an external hard drive which we got for that purpose and it goes bye bye. Still he's come a long way as he find he likes an uncluttered clean house but you get that way by not holding onto everything.
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