To wonder if anyone elses DHs play this game with their wives?

[2kidsintow]

I think the aim of the game is to see how much random crap he can bring into the house and leave in conspicuous and awkward places before my head starts spinning and I explode.

He's just seen that... he's now muttering about wellies, can't get into the house without falling over my wellies apparently.

I have 2 pairs .

That's just extravagant, shockers!

My OH's 8 rucksacks for his walking hobby, along with 4 pairs of walking boots and 3 pairs of walking poles is necessary, however. Apparently.

I bring home bits of nature all the time and leave them dotted about to go dry/mouldy - flowers, twigs, leaves, pine cones, nettles!! I don't mind them but people that come round always give me strange looks

DS1 loves wood too - do you think DH is training him up? When we were on holiday last year we had to bring his 3 favourite sticks all the way back home with us.

Haven't these blokes got SHEDS??? Thought that was where you were sposed to chuck all these random man-things. Random things, that is, rather than random men. Or that could work too.

Luckily dh isn't too bad, one (fairly big) bag of cables and stuff for tv's stereos etc. and a pile of National Geographic magazines.

My BIL otoh is another story, he has come home with a pub fruit machine and a massive fish tank amongst other random things. Fortunatley though he is a chippy so all the wood (what's with the wood thing?) he did make into a fantastic tree house for his dd.

DH loves to leave parts from farm machinery liberally all over the house which is fantastic with a 3 year old

Oh NorthernChinchilla you have a toilet roll cardboard tube hoarder too? I don't know why DH can't throw them away, is he proud of how many he has used or something?

I have managed to train him (took a while) to stop putting random things in the decorative bowl on the table. He wanted to know why have a bowl if you can't put things in it? For decorative effect you silly man. I particularly went nuts over this as my Dad also has the same habit and so will regularly leave a golf pencil, golf cap, coins, trolley key, elastic band, bit of wire, receipts and other odds and sods. Must be a man thing.

This is the very most distressing thread I have read in a long time :(

PLEASE let me come and tidy you all up and sort you out. I can't quite cope with reading too much more, it is making me twitchy.

I have NEVER had a house without a cellar. That is where random crap is supposed to live. Cellar or shed if necessary. Doors behind sofas!!! bedroom milk-bottle-a-torium!!!!! A pub FRUIT MACHINE!!! Scary, scary stuff.

One woman's crap is another man's treasure, I suppose, but eeeek

We had a new roof six years ago when we put a new storey on our bungalow. DH decided to keep the old roof to build a new shed as ours was falling down. It's still falling down and we STILL have a huge pile of wood under a tarpaulin in the garden. We could buy a shed, but no, he still wants to build the bloody thing. There's a lot of random crap instead, and lots more bits of wood. When something gets reused, there is a lot of "and YOU wanted me to throw that away" type gloating.

Mine's the oppposite. He 'tidies'. Great you might think, but it generally consists of just putting things away. Not necessarily where they should go, just 'away' so that you can't see them any more and I spend all day looking for the bloody things Often I will get ingredients out to cook, turn around and they have disappeared as he's put them back in the bloody cupboard already...

There is loose change all over our bedroom courtesy of DH, not to metion the receipts and the crumpled up tissue pile. If he gets something out of his pocket he scatters various bits of rubbish in the process. Naturally if I ask him to pick up the bits from the floor, he thinks I am being unreasonable.

THe money I just help myself to and spend. Some of it has been put into little piles recently - I think they must be the amount of his lunch or something, so I just take a bit from each pile to annoy him (yes, I know I'm being silly)!

My dh collects step-ladders (and the rest.....)

UsualSuspect, my dp does this with wood too!! and, rather oddly, leaves it in the bath for weeks until I find a new home for it.

NorksAreMessy ooh you'd be welcome at ours .

DH hoards for England. We have about a zillion copies of that film magazine Empire and has filled the garage and what will become a nursery with boxes of crap erm treasure

Vivian oh yeah, all wires and accessorybobs from all technology bits here too - but only for current devices. My dad meanwhile has worked in computing for over 40 years and has pretty much every sort of cabling ever invented and can barely squeeze in a chair to his study he's filled it with so much stuff!

Everton I howled with laughter at your post - showed it to DH who illustrated the point nicely "but bowls are to put things in" - erm noooo sometimes they are just there to look pretty!

ye gods yes, random bits of wood - why the obsession with bits of wood?

DH stores his random crap in his car, which is I think, why I never get to drive it. Random crap in the house gets thrown away after a respectable period of time. Magazines are allowed to get 4 months out of date, then they get moved to the garage with the old paper and if he chucks them into the recycling without noticing, that's his own fault.

Mine seems to be collecting boden catalogues.

Dh has a thing about wood too! Bless them.

Not in the house though. He knows bad bad things happen if he dares bring in through the front door

Maybe all this wood collecting is some sort of hunting and the wood is the prize

And he fills my spode china on the dresser with old receipts, change, drawing pins.

Computer wires. Boxes of em. Shoes for every activity. Receipts, drawers of em. Is it frustrated hunter-gathering? We both collect wood, but it's for the woodburner.

My dh collects toy cars. He likes to call them models, like that makes it better. They are everywhere.

He also specialises in moving my stuff. It's really Not On.

Mine's the opposite.

He's forever chucking stuff away.

me "Where's the X?"
him "I threw it away."
me "what, why?"
him "it hasn't been used for X time, it costs more to store it, if we need another one, we can always buy one"
me [speechless]

He won't keep anything. And he's trained me over the last 14 years to be equally ruthless I used to keep things like old birthday cards and other mementos, keep bits and bobs in case they came in handy.

Now, if it isn't being used or it isn't of significant sentimental value (eg we've got ornaments that belonged to my late grandparents) then in the bin it goes.

My house is very bare

Mine does both

He does the tidying and throwing away thing so that nothing is ever where I left it- he also cannot walk into a room without tidying something; but he also buys no end of crap on ebay or similar. I am currently plotting to "relocate" some simply hideous bowls which have appreared in our modern, minimalist dining room and a really naff picture.

Both drive me potty