to want to cry that we are giving up storage space when my DH is a hoarder?

[MooncupandPizza]

I honestly could cry. Our playroom/office space is filling up with his crap and, though this is not its final resting place, it is depressing the hell out of me as it's never going to be able to be as out of sight as it was. (conversion of the store room to more living space)

We moved here about 8 months ago and I was just feeling like things were coming together and looking a bit organised - it's not anymore.

woe is me.

I feel for anyone in this situation as hoarders can't really help it. It is like an illness, but it must be hell to live with. I would probably want to surreptitiously get rid of stuff if possible without asking. Stuff that was obviously junk like old broken computers. (A friend's dh hoards stuff like that.) But I read that if you throw a hoarder's stuff out it feels to them like it would feel to us if someone came over and smashed all our belongings up. Did anyone see that programme about the hoarder who was having to tunnel through his home and they suggested throwing out an old broken kids umbrella and he couldn't bring himself to as he thought it might be useful.

DP is a hoarder of EPIC proportions. He was a single geek for 10 years before he met me and had a well paid job so all his spare money went on his hobbies. He has the whole top floor of the house dedicated to his hobbies and (I shit ye not) 1000 video tapes in the shed because 'some are rare imports'. We dont even have a VCR!
TBF, a lot of the stuff is valuable to the right collectors and selling some off last summer did raise a grand. But its taken over our house and is driving me mad.
Luckily its kept to his areas only and we have a policy of 'if its on the floor, it goes up the vaccum' and he's slowly getting around to selling the stuff off.

Anyone want 1000 various videos, mostly anime and a tub of imported japanese hentai?

Buy a machine that converts VHS tapes into DVDs or digital storage of the film. Then you can ditch the tapes! There's no excuse if you can have a digital copy of the same film. The same is true about CDs.

Once I showed my DP that even on Ebay, his beloved videos were not going to raise any money because nobody buys videos any more, they went in the wheelie bin.

My DH is a bit of a hoarder too. It really gets me down. I used to hoard myself but over the years I have been "worn down" to decluttering my hoarding in order to make room for DHs. If we both hoarded I dread to think of the state of the house.

I hate buying anything new for the home because even if the old item is broken and does not work DH wont chuck it out. At the moment we are having TV wars. Xmas (2010) the girls were given 2 flatscreen TVs by a relative for their bedrooms. These were to replace our old lounge TV one DD had - a large black box style TV and my old black square portable TV I had from my first flat in 1992. I suggested we bin them as I dont want a TV in anybroom downstairs other than the lounge and we already have a TV in our bedroom. But no we have to keep them. This is on top of the 2 other old TVs we have in the loft. There is absolutely no room for anytyhing else in our loft so since Xmas 2010 these 2 TVs have been moved around the house. Currently the large one is on the diningroom floorand the portable on the landing - both with a pile of his other hoarding crap growing ontop.

A few weeks ago I thought I had a little victory as the large TV went from the house. However, it was in the boot of DHs car but found its way back into the house when the car went for its MOT.

I am slowly going insane!!! Its not just TVs but this is the latest example of what I am up against.

But what is the point of keeping the TVs? They are never going to be useful again. He will find it impossible to justify keeping more than one "emergency tv". The TV on the landing is a safety hazard. The other one is probably preventing you from having a nice dining room to use for its proper purpose.

You need to get tough on this sort of thing. It isn't fair for the rest of the family to not be able to enjoy a nice house because one person won't chuck out old stuff that doesn't serve any purpose and doesn't even work. It's selfish behaviour.

I would probably take the tvs down the tip and deal with the fallout.

I hordes craft stuff and DH electrical junk and magazines.

Generally I'm relatively tolerant, but every now and again it is necessary to say,

"You haven't looked at those magazines/books for 2 years is the anything in them that is not on the Web?"
or "Are those discs or manuals for a computer/tv etc we still own?"

And DD2 needs to cull clothes at regular intervals, because DD1 declutters her room by passing stuff to younger sister.

As a kid my prize 'hoard' was about 300 American DC and Marvel comics (Superman, Batman etc) which my mum told me to sell off at 1p each. We had a rodent problem at the time and boxes of paper was just making the situation worst.

Not particularly rare but probably worth about £20 each today. 300 x £20 = shit loads. I've never let my mum forget this :o

I was so bad with this. We have a 3 bedroom house and there's only 2 of us so the third bedroom was a crap storage room, as were both my wardrobes and 2 sheds and behind a chair downstairs. My son has ASD and sleep problems and a psychologist suggested a separate room for toys and a bedroom just for sleep and calming sensory play. So the spare room was ruthlessly cleared. Once I did one there was no stopping me, both sheds, wardrobes and behind the chair all cleared. It took a full day to do the sheds. My friend helped me and asked if I was breeding lawnmowers and hoovers

I was suitable ashamed and will never ever let it happen again.

In my defence though it started before I could drive and instead of driving things to the tip I'd stash them somewhere.

I'm a bit of a hoarder, although I DO try and keep it under control.

PArt of it is raw materials for crafting - as I knit, sew and make cards. DD is into art too. And we have loads of books and toys.

But I also recognise the hoarding "gene" in me too. I try to keep things relatively clean and not build up crap-piles. But its a battle.

I tend to do "bulk shops" for groceries - so the space in the kitchen can be confined at times. But I DO try to use up one batch before heading off for another large shop. But I know I also buy certain things that we use when I see them on special, and that I have an in-built "need" to feel that there is plenty there (combination of large family and sometimes very low stocks when I grew up, occasional bad weather meaning we felt very tight, and also being a working mum who also likes to cook loads of different types of food and bake - dealing with last minute school cake sales, or "drat, working late so can't get to shops, need a storecupboard dinner option" panics, are all made possible becuase I have those stocks in).

We got a storage unit while we converted the attic, and retained it (2 years ago now) once the work was done. I have gotten rid of a fair amount that was originally there (lots either dumped or charity shopped, and I have various nieces and nephews who have used lots of DD's smaller clothes and younger toys too). We rotate things too - so as she grows out of things, they go in - while the next age batch of things heads off to a niece.

I have gotten rid of stacks of old papers in the past year. I burnt the receipts from the past 4 years a few weeks back. I have made space in the office/study to work there again in the past month.

But its an ongoing battle.

I have a hoarder DH. He has three types of crap - there is the electrical stuff that 'might come in handy one day', the pure rubbish that he can't be bothered to sort out and anything that we once paid for but he can't part with. This includes outgrown toys which he is sure he will find someone to take off our hands one day.

When we moved the last time I went through the shed-crap and there were boxes in the shed full of rubbish from previous cars, with receipts in them from the 1980s. One box full of coke cans and Mars wrappers (old-stylee)had receipts from 1983 in it, the year we were married. That meant that not only had that box of crap been carted between each of our previous homes, he had also brought it with him when he moved in with me

The garage is full to groaning with only a narrow pathway to the freezer. I dream of being able to park my car in there. The irony is that he always wanted a nice big garage to put his car in and now it just stores broken tellies and other assorted crap. Oh and he has a shed full too.

LauraS - he sounds exactly like my husband. Except in my husband's case it's not cars but bits of old bikes, which he is one day going to do up. Eventually I managed to freecycle one which had been lying around outside for about 15 years in a state of decrepitude. Someone took it to make an artwork out of it, so it had a fitting end, (well I thought so). What's happened? Another old broken bike has taken up residence in its place. Not to mention all the punctured inner tubes and bent wheels plus boxes of broken bike bits inside the garage. (Plus aforementioned old papers, notes, stuff.) I did ban him from soaking greasy chains in the kitchen, and regularly round up bits which stray into there.

For those who don't understand - it's hard work in time and energy sorting out someone else's treasures old tat. Why should we spend our lives having to do this or live with tottering piles of junk?

I am a hoarder and the suggestions of freecycling his things is awful! They probably have sentimental value....I suggest you rent storage space elsewhere.

They probably have sentimental value

But everything in the world has sentimental value, AwkwardMary. Except possibly dog poo. The sentimental value argument is one frequently used by hoarders as a inarguable right to keep all their treasures but there are limits. Broken tellies? Prehistoric sports socks?

I am also a hoarder - mainly books and crafty stuff - and I'm not advocating that we all live in sterile spaces but whilst things have sentimental value, the absence of things has its own value. Peace, and calm.

Dh and I Both have hoarding tendencies. Of course I think my stuff is precious and shouldn't be thrown out and his is crap that takes up valuable space, but I wouldn't dream of throwing anything of his out. Likewise he wouldn't throw anything of mine out without my say so. To those advocating getting rid of stuff without telling him, how would you like it if someone threw some of your things away?

I say this carefully so as not to upset the hoarders but tbh, the worst of the stuff that they keep hold of hasn't got any realistic value. It has a sentimental value because hoarders genuinely feel bereft at the idea of their precious things being disposed of. But as much as anything, this is because, somewhere along the line, they've lost the ability to tell the difference between useful objects that should be kept and the sort of rubbish that those of us who don't hoard would just chuck out.

Sometimes the only way to deal with the tide of stuff is discreet disposal. Admittedly DP has no issue throwing actual rubbish away but I've still had to train him out of storing ridiculous things like broken kettles in the garage. I don't have an issue with his doctoral thesis lurking around in the loft (with all its associated scribbled notes) but I'm not giving house room to the in-tray of stuff that came home from work sometime in the late 1980s and was marked "sort out this weekend" (clearly it wasn't!). So when we had major building work done, all sorts of paperwork found its way to the bottom of skips. He's never noticed the going of it which is not surprising given that he never got to the bottom of any of the (admittedly neat) piles of paperwork he couldn't bring himself to throw away.

So I'm afraid this is an area where cruelty can be kindness. Although I recognise that it is very much easier when you only have to deal with someone who has a tendency to hoard rather than being a full-on collector of the Mr Trebus variety.

I seem to remember on one of those programmes there was a man who hoarded his own wee in bottles or was it bits of poo?

They probably have sentimental value....I suggest you rent storage space elsewhere.

I certainly have no problem with keeping things of sentimental value, storing them properly, and enjoying them. Honestly though, how much sentimental value do old credit card receipts from twenty years ago, which have now faded into illegibility, have? It's that sort of stuff that I object to.

We tried renting storage space. When DH whinged that we would have to economise I pointed out that spending £xx pounds a month to store stuff that he hadn't looked at in 20 odd years was one economy he could make. He agreed, he cancelled the storage, sorted out the stuff and took the rubbish to the tip and returned the stuff, unsorted, to the garage.

The freecycled bike was done with his agreement - it was the only way of getting it out of the garden - either freecycle or the tip was the deal.

But since you are a self confessed hoarder, AwkwardMary - can you tell me why? Do you keep things neatly labelled in order and bring them out to look at or use and get pleasure from, or with broken stuff reuse, for e.g. art projects? I sew and keep offcuts of old material - but they are sorted into bags, of mainly blue, mainly red, and then stored in a cupboard - I haven't got heaps in a tangled mess that people have to walk round or fall over. Even then, I am quite happy to freecycle bags of materials when someone asks.

Thing is I myself tend towards hoarding. I now control it largely though.
I keep things I consider important - the kids' hospital tags from when they were born, scan photos, first pair of shoes.... but things like nursery work I condense down to the best possible examples otherwise I'd be swamped.

I'm being even more ruthless now the place we're moving to doesn't have a loft (town house)

DH is highly delighted that his shed will be bigger (rolls eyes) AND we're renting a garage. I predict we'll be hiring skips in 10 years or so to deal with the newspapers, cereal boxes, yoghurt pots etc.

Agree it must be frustrating to live with a hoarder particularly if you're not one yourself, but you must have known what they were like before you shacked up with them? I knew what dh was like and keep each other in check to a certain extent. We are both pretty untidy and I couldn't live with someone who was a total neat freak and they probably couldn't put up with me. Opened the boot of the car this morning and found a couple of bags of "stuff" that dh had been given by a friend last night. I laughed and said "well tht's how he keeps his house so tidy, he gets rid of stuff he doesn't need"

Dh did get rid of a lot of old computer parts that he'd been hoarding for years. But he still has a lot of other stuff. I'm terrible for keeping nerly everything thy the dds have made.

They probably have sentimental value....I suggest you rent storage space elsewhere.

You see, I have collections of things - I like old crockery, expensive glassware and books. And I am a bit of a crafter so I have yarn and fabric stashes.

The difference between mine and DH's hoarding is that mine is sorted. All my books live neatly in the bookcase, my crafty bits in the beautiful antique chest of drawers, my glass is on display in a cabinet and my crockery bits live in my Great Grandmother's sideboard in the hall.

Dh's stuff is piled high, much of it filthy and useless. He stores old computers for example, but when our PC broke down recently, he had to take it to PC World as none of the crappy old computer bits were compatible. Same with tellies, radios, old broken tools... He can never find anything amongst his hoarded crap anyway.

He would never pay for storage anyway - not while we have a garage and a shed plus other hideyholes for him to squirrel stuff away.

how would you like it if someone threw some of your things away?

I wouldn't, but for things I value they are bagged up and stored in order in cupboards, and I know what is where. Even then I have regular sort outs.

If I left stuff lying around then it would be fair game if it was thrown out - it's obviously not something I value. That used to happen at home - my Dad wasn't a hoarder either and his motto was you either use it and put it away when you have finished with it or if you leave it lying around to get broken then it must be rubbish and don't complain if it gets thrown out.

Compulsive hoarders don't throw things away. I have put my own stuff out for the recycling and found that it has been retrieved because 'You can't throw that away'. Why, oh why?

It's so tricky...as someone who has managed to escape their hoarding tendencies to a large extent, the situations described on here actually make me feel panicky and ill. The idea of all that stuff building up around me, having to argue with someone stubbornly clinging on to bags of rubbish, makes me breathless. But that person used to be me, so I can totally see that while one is in the grip of hoardmania the thought of someone else chucking stuff out without your say-so is horrifying.

When I look back now at my hoardiest days, I like to think that I would have secretly appreciated a loved one killing it with kindness by throwing it out. I can now see that I didn't have the strength or peace of mind to do it for myself. But back then...I would have been terribly hurt and it would have lingered on for years in my mind as an example of deliberate cruelty.

Massive sympathies to all those living with hoarders.

When my mother died, my father asked us to clear out the cupboards in the house. OMG! we found bags of receipts and bills going back 25 years! They had bits of dinner services and mismatched tea cups, bags of rolled plastic bags, and all manner of crap. We got rid of everything and replaced the kitchenware with a simple set of white plates and cups. Father was so delighted with his decluttered home; said it felt like a huge weight had been lifted.

Also have a friend who is a hoarder (or her DH is). They have piles of stuff everywhere, in every room, conservatory, bedrooms. To enter the downstairs loo you have to slip sideways through a narrow gap - the door won't open properly because of all the stuff behind it. It is such a depressing place to be. They seem to have lost the energy to clean, are always late for everything, their poor kids can never lay their hands on things like bits of PE kit, school shoes etc, which get lost in the mountains of stuff. I have offered to help them have a clear out for the charity shops (more like skip actually) but they don't have the time. Not sure what to do, I am certain that they are both depressed by the situation but the job of clearing it out is so big they end up doing nothing.