DH collections bringing me down.

Same 🙂

Oh god no! Don't let him go down the 'display' route....pointless bits of junk to then DUST!!

This sounds closer to hoarding than collecting. An organised hoarder is still a hoarder.

OP: 'He’s spent the last few weekends sorting out his collections, updating his excel document of what he’s got, and what he’s missing.'

He's never going to stop!

This doesn’t make any sense at all as an argument. I’m sure he understands what death means.

”If you die first, it will all go to the tip or auction” isn’t really much of a threat. Unless OP’s husband is planning on haunting her, what happens to these things when he dies isn’t really an issue for him.

A collector’s POV here to counterbalance the dismissive comments about “junk” and “tat” (and the assumption that any collecting translates into hoarding).

I honestly couldn’t live with a partner who didn’t understand how much my collection means to me. To dismiss it as mere “stuff” that’s cluttering up the house would be to dismiss me and my feelings. Someone who asked me to make the choice would not like the answer.

However, some very important caveats. One is that I accept my collection is something I want rather than need. Absolutely nothing wrong with having things you want - I find the idea that we must only have useful things so miserable - but it means that I understand the need to prioritise. I would never and have never spent money on collectibles when I’ve been struggling financially. That really would be the sign of a problem. I love them, but I have the common sense to not spend money I don’t have.

Two - I understand space is finite. I’m not going to get rid of things I actually need to create more space for my collection (although I was quite tempted by a friend’s recent suggestion that I convert the en suite - I don’t need two bathrooms, right? 😉)

OP - you talk about your husband acting like he’s done you a favour by having these things in the loft rather than on display. Your response is to feel annoyed that he has more loft space than you. Has it occurred to you that he’s actually made a sacrifice by not having things he really loves on display? He’s probably thinking “I’ve been banished to the loft, and she’s STILL not happy”.

From your later posts, it does sound like he cares about the collecting process more than the collectibles themselves, so I’m inclined to feel a bit more sympathetic towards you. Maybe that’s how you need to frame the conversation. Be understanding about the collections he genuinely loves, but explain your concern over him just keeping things for the sake of it when it’s not really a collection at all.

The problem is going to be that his collection won't stop growing. Then what?

It's good that it's in the loft and not your living room but where will it end?

Mine too!

Can you enforce a 1 in, 1 out rule? We have an extended family member who is a ‘collector’ ( hoarder ) and it has made life very uncomfortable for both his partner and the step children ( to the point where they cannot visit their mother as it involves climbing over boxes of collectibles ( junk ) to be able to get to bed on an evening.

good luck as it needs curbing now before it completely takes over every spare bit of space on your home.

My dad has collections, with the excel spreadsheets to match. It will never get better, only worse. I suggest you decide now whether you can put up with it forever or leave him because those are the two options.

Not only did we grow up with very organised piles and boxes of categorised stuff everywhere but we never had a nice holiday because there wasn’t the money because it all went on buying stuff, he still says “they’re only £1 each” bit of you buy 10,000 of something at £1 each that’s a lot of money!

Can you actually afford all this?! How much does it cost and what could you do with the money if it wasn’t spent on tat?
Also it’s obvious he’s addicted to the collecting rather than being a fan of a particular thing. The “absolutely must have everything” of particular theme is a give away. If he doesn’t rein it in it’s going to go into mental health territory.

I think that hoarders and some collectors externalise who they are into their amalgamations of ‘stuff’. In some sense, you are trying to make him remove or change part of who he is, or who he thinks he is. He doesn’t keep his memories, which help to make us who we are, in his head, he keeps them in boxes. And boxes, and boxes.

I’m not sure how you can change this, OP. Maybe you could persuade him to follow the one thing in, one thing out rule ? Could he be helped to start a ‘proper’ collection of objects which other people recognise as collectible and share what would be a limited and to some extent self -limiting set of objects (preferably small, like stamps🤭). There’s a glimmer of hope here in the desire to display/ share some of these items. You might have to take an active interest in this though, at least as a start. Then the regulated collection might render the randoms irrelevant.

You are going to have to address it though, because it won’t be self limiting.

@SoddingSoda how old did you say he was again??? 6???????? I would have had him topped long ago if he brought all the trash into my house! his mother must have been the same to have kept it all for him!

Can he use an external self-storage unit?

OP, please read about the distress being brought up in a hoarded home by hoarder parents causes children and how that can stay with them.

Someone's said here that their father loved his stuff more than he loved them, and the effect that had.

My honest thoughts would be - get this sorted before you even consider bringing another child into the world. He will get worse as he gets older if it is not stopped.

Guess how I know about living with a 70+ Y/o ND hoarder with family issues.

https://www.mumsnet.com/search#/?query=Ho&page=1

I would address the fact that he is a hoarder before it massively takes over your entire life. Filled 50% of the loft this year? It’ll be 100% next.

Yes.
❤️
Similar here, at present no viable choice.

How much is he spending on all this Tat?

I think the issue is that you have a baby and that you may want a second child. This means that there will be an increasing amount of clothes, toys, pieces of kit and room needs to be found for them. (Some of the stuff the baby has now will have to go to the loft and will need to be brought down again.) As children get bigger, so does the stuff they require - even if then items from infancy get chucked. There'll be the need for them to have the space to play in, and room for their friends.

So at the moment there's a tricky 50/50 split. 50% husband, 50% your stuff and shared stuff. (Not really fair). Logically the bigger the family grows the less the space there'll be for stuff that is exclusively his.

I think it's more about making room for the family and for family life. At the moment it does seem to be about him and his attachment to his own past. And the sheer quantity of these 'collections' seems to be important.

Unless he can acknowledge that he really needs to let stuff go - and get rid of a lot of it quite quickly and efficiently - I'd say the future is likely to be problematic.

He sounds more hoarder than collector. Be very careful OP.

It's a lot more than the actual collections though

It's the storage, as already mentioned

The trawling of sites/shows/collector fairs for more additions...... do you get dragged along op? Does he drone on about bloody toy car collections to everyone he meets?

The expense!?

The time he puts in away from family/chores

S as ll accommodated by you! Draining!

Take him up on his offer to sell it all, this is no way to live, he's showing so much disrespect.

And then set a strict rule for how much space he can have afterwards.

I suggest you both listen to the podcast A Slob Comes Clean.

I think you have to be pragmatic

enforcing 50% of a loft space (or 1/3 as others have suggested) would mean he’s able to argue for 1/3 of the house space. You can’t say to someone that all the stuff they love and cherish should be out of sight or confined to one room, and then limit that space too.

My partner has a lot of stuff I don’t like. If I were to force her to keep it all hidden and have no sign of it in the house that would be very controlling and she’d have no presence or personality in her own home. It sounds a bit like that’s what you want here

I think it is a big mistake to think that hoarders put a monetary value on their collections. Hoarding is a mental illness; the value to the collector is not money.