Dh and his collections.

[Amiacoolorwarmcolour]

This is kind of lighthearted.
Brought on by my ongoing efforts to declutter the house and also save money.
We don’t have a big house and I’m quite glad in some ways.
So yesterday I tackled the down stairs storage cupboard. This had basically become a dumping ground.
I made good progress and am going to go to the tip.
Now here is my issue.
Dh collects certain things.
One being blu ray discs and dvds. He stores these in a cupboard in our very small spare bedroom and In boxes under the bed in both this room and the other spare bedroom. He also has them in boxes behind the sofa.
He also has a big collection of football shirts. Today he showed me the new football shirt which his team has brought out. It’s £75! My response was ‘ £75 for a piece of polyester made my children.’ Now he says he can get a replica for a lot less and due to postage it’s better to buy the away shirt too. But, he has so many old shirts that we have to store these under the bed in the spare bedroom too.
There is no room in his wardrobe for these and I’m running out of space!
I asked him if he will consider selling any o these shirts which he insists are worth something and he said no. His reasoning is that I have kept books and won’t throw them away.
To be clear I have one bookcase. Previously I had a book case in every bedroom but got rid of these when we downsized.
I am at the stage of secretly removing dvds and blu rays and taking them to the charity shop without his knowledge.
His mental health is very low recently so I don’t want to make it worse.
He also has a collection of other things- I won’t say what as I don’t want to be too outing
He keeps adding to this collection. I have told him I will not tolerate any more of this stuff taking up room. The living room is full of them all in new storage units we bought. He also claims this will be worth lots of money but what good is that unless he sells it?

Oh and I came across his daughter’s old laptop which is in the cupboard. Apparently it doesn’t work and he says one day he will fix it!
I have also stopped him from being crap from his mother’s house. At one point we had 3 useless vacuum cleaners from hers, none of which worked!
I have also thrown out a second pair of step ladders which to be fair came from my mums house.

I am not claiming to be the queen of minimalism by any stretch here.
Any tips or advice welcome.

If he really has a collection worth £thousands then it should be insured.

My suggestion is that you both have his collections valued for insurance purposes. I suspect you will find her has spent £thousands but they are worth very little.

Ahh he sounds just like my autistic son. The collections are vast and my garage is filled with bits of metal. Let’s not get started on the model trains, the little cars, the football cards, the train timetables, broken tools, drink cans, lego people. I could go on and on….😑

I forgot the chair phase. Collecting old chairs and putting them in the garage. He was about 8 at this point. He was so overjoyed with them that I just put up with it!

I don't know how people bear watching DVDs on modern TVs.

Blue Ray (HD) is the absolute minimum I would consider with 4K at the enthusiast level for the higher res (normally not that significant unless your telly is massive), HDR (normally the most significant) and extra audio formats.

DVDs make my eyes bleed, the quality on a big TV is appalling and the skip is the best place for them.

Well good for you. I don’t have a 4k TV. I do have a blu ray player and discs but I can’t see much difference

Well we have had a result today. Dh helped me get the roll of carpet out of the shed and we took that along with some other things to the tip.
There is still some way to go.
I have reduced all the clothes I put on Vinted. If they don’t sell this week then I will be taking them to the charity shop.
I’m not looking in the bedrooms where he keeps his dvds and football t-shirts I’m just ignoring that for now.
There is also a load of tat stuffed behind the shed which dh agrees needs to be thrown away. It will have to wait until I can face that.

Oh and there is also a huge pile of magazines which dh stuffed behind the other sofa!

“He also has a collection of other things- I won’t say what as I don’t want to be too outing”

OP, if the other collection is 12” tv/movie characters then you have my sympathies in spades.

Don’t make him get rid of the football shirts. They absolutely are collectible and I’d be gutted if I had to get rid of all mine. Just because you don’t understand why he likes them, that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be allowed to collect them.

The DVDs are probably worth nothing and never get watched and are unlikely to be collectible or get used; it won’t be long before DVD players aren’t even made any more. Charity shops are overflowing with DVDs. So if he’s going to get rid of anything, I’d focus on encouraging him to get rid of those. He might be able to sell them in batches with an app like Sell Your Books; they take DVDs.

I mean these might be collections but he is a hoarder. It sounds like it is starting to cause friction between you and restrict what you can own as well as potentially causes issues with home cleaning and maintenance.

If he really is keeping all of these things to give to his daughter or sell to raise money for her would he be amenable to giving her the money know. It would have time to benefit from compound growth if saved or even better invested. After all all gifts given away before death are IHT exempt.

Sorry I don't think you have mentioned ages but might be a way to explore what he is really thinking about the stuff.I mean is he feeding you a line so he can carry on accumulating?

How do you clean with that lot around?

Sorry- it’s Slivers!

Do you know, I’ve got a blind spot about that. I actually self corrected it to wrong! I do actually know, I just seem to revert to wrong 🤣

Unless of course, auto correct is doing me wrong…!

My ex was like this. Always reckoned things were worth loads and would get offended when he saw what they were actually worth?!!

You can't! That's why my first husband had to go 🤣

Bit drastic - did he go in the skip, charity shop or perhaps recycled?

We moved our 400-500 cd collection to DH parents attic as I couldn't bear to get rid of them (worth very little despite being in pristine condition) at the time. It's been 3 years now so I suppose it's time to give them to charity. I can listen to just about everything on Spotify.

OP: could you put all this stuff in a storage locker and revisit, say, in a year?

Not a cheap option. Perhaps if husband has to pay storage fees, he’ll get rid of stuff!

Recycled I'd say as he found himself a replacement and filled her house and garage with his crap!
She got sick of him too 😆 Not sure where he is now! Probably building himself another hoard somewhere.