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.

Hecate - I'm working up to that level of ruthlessness.. I still keep all birthday cards, but want to start throwing away anything that isn't needed.

DP is a horder though

My husband has this...compulsion...to obsessively hoard cardboard boxes that used to contain stuff. Every now and then I stage and intervention and we nearly get divorced. Personally I thought this was quite funny, but he didn't speak to me for about a week after I posted it.

Oh oh oh - and, also - if he can't find anything - anything at all - his immediate assumption is that I've thrown it away.

He doesn't even bother with the initial possibilities - "Maybe I left it at work", "Maybe it's in my other coat", "Maybe it's six inches to the left of where I thought I last saw it" - he just goes straight to what he clearly thinks is the most obvious answer - "Maybe Outrageous has thrown it away and is now refusing to admit it".

I love him. He's ace. He really is. But - damn...

I just walked down the side of the house which I don't normally do to find loads of wood dh has cut into logs

We don't even have a working fireplace!

Aww bless him

Outrageous, when I married DH he had a cellar FULL of empty cardboard boxes for exactly the same 'reasons' your DH gives ! I struck while love was still young and he still thought the sun shone out of my proverbial and threw them all into a skip.

Now love is not quite so blind, and he STILL yearns for all those cardboard boxes that sailed down the Thames all those years ago. So now he collects wood. But doesn't burn it, or make anything with it. I think he thinks that armegeddon really isn't far away and the world will be split between Those Who Have Wood and Those Without

OutrageousFlavourLikeFreesias

Don't hate me, please, but... I keep boxes, for reasons 1, 2, and 3. I recycled a VHS player box once, and then 4 years later I wanted to pass the VHS player on, and didn't have the box.

I learnt from that! But now the airing cupboard now has to be opened very carefully...

The cables, the cables. Always the cables.......

Also chargers, plastic 'things', coins.

Empty boxes and packaging.

hghtg3iy3h

8yjgjtioeogmbntjrorkjgbb nbkj

Sorry - that was my head banging the keyboard in frustration!

Ahh they are preparing for the end of the world with all this wood? Good to know!

Dh went through an awful "hunter and gatherer " stage by proudly bringing absolute tat back from charity shops.

He was so pleased with himself too.

Luckily he has learnt the error of his ways after much training.

well yes DP does this but so do I.

We are both skip monkeys. It's terrible. I know he likes to 'provide' but really, we do not have the space!

Going to have to get a bigger house I think...

I can't complain though, he does it with cables, and phones and lighting. I do it with sofas (we currently have five).

So he's always on the moral highground here

the woman next door was throwing out a load of soft toys (her daughters are in their teens now) and guess who intercepted her on the way to the bin? my DH.

I was just delighted to see two black bin bags full of manky old toys arrive.

I decluttered my DH's wardrobe when we first moved in together, and it included 8 pairs of 80s neon speedos and a pair of yellowing tennis shorts (age 15). He was 42 at the time.

Spook your post had me laughing out loud!

8 pairs of speedos?!

When I first met dh I spent 3 days cleaning his spare room out

I found 3 horse brushes in there

He has never owned a horse

The other random thing he used to do was lose a shoe but keep the other anyway.

Why, for the love of God, why?!

Am the only person this thread at all the lovely bits of wood and computer wires everyone has?

Probably, arimaa - and I would be very careful, otherwise you will be getting lorryloads of both couriered to you by desperate mumsnetters!

NorksAreMessy - can you add me to your tidying list - I don't have the problems that others on this thread have, but I am crap at sorting out and throwing away. And I have more books than I have space for.

Actually - most of my clutter problems would be solved if I got rid of the dses ..... [muses]

Check check check to everything on this thread.

And why was ebay ever invented?? I hate it with a passion-my other half has bought more useless crap on there in the last 2 years (laser pens, inverters, torches, tiny teeny chargers etc etc. Gadgets basically) than I ever thought possible. When I dare to complain he says "oh it was only two pounds...oh it was only six pounds...eight pounds"...etc etc.

Anyway that's nothing in the grand scheme of things I suppose. He
has recently been saving beer cans like some sort of deranged student.

He tells me this is because he intends, on the Twelfth of NEVER to make a SOLAR HEAT EXCHANGER, yes I'm shouting, by sticking the beer cans to a sheet of something or other, having painted them black, then other things vaguely technical are involved(but here I lost the will to live and blocked out his voice), because aluminium is such a good heat conductor blah blah blah.

I despair.

Is it any wonder I drink wine in industrial quantities?

Lol pepper!

Tell you want have some of my dh wine

He makes vats and vats of the stuff out of parsnips and weird crap

I believe he even made wine out of one his pieces of wood last week

Oh Starwisher....I was quite excited when I read the second line of your post.

Visions of you and me raiding his wine cellar and getting extremely pissed taking revenge for all those put upon women with DHs and DPs like ours.....

....Then I read the third and fourth lines.

Any chance of a nice cup of tea?

....... wood ?

Slight change of topic, but if you haven't seen the Michael McIntyre sketch on 'The Man Drawer' it is HILARIOUS! And this thread reminds me of it...

I have found the answer to this game.

1. Random ex colleague calls DH out of the blue and offers him a job in the Middle East
2. After discussion, we decide to give it a go.
3. DH has three whole days at home before leaving and i get a skip, force him into the cellar and tell him that if he doesn,t look through the stuff i will just mercilessly throw it. He actually allowed a BAG of cables to go.

4.DH leaves 3 weeks after initial phone call leaving me with three kids aged five and under and the dog and twelve weeks to pack up the house.

1. Inform DH from afar that as it will cost us a lot to either ship or store the junk then I'm going to be ruthless.
2. Four weeks in the house has never been this tidy and free of junk.

Ok, so it's a bit extreme but I'm rather excited about this!

One word. Boxes.

Arghhhhhhh!!

Found the link for the Michael McIntyre sketch and just had to watch it again!!

Enjoy!

Ohnoes, have I jinxed my family's chances of surviving the Zombiepocalypse by throwing away all the cardboard boxes?

I love the Man Drawer, though. We have a lot of Man Drawers in our house.

(I must never, ever, ever let my DH see this thread. He knows Zombie planning is my weak spot.)

You have to keep the boxes. Boxed things fetch a higher price second-hand!

Dp does car parts. Wheels ,engine parts, plastic trim etc under our bed. More engine parts, front bumper in spare room. Had a full set of wheels in the bath once. Half an engine block on the dining table. Car jack and various parts live in kitchen. Why not in the shed you ask ? Because its full of car parts !

My DP spent over a grand on a log-burning stove, in order to justify the existence of his wood collection. Now we have the fecking thing (which I have to sweep out and keep clean BTW) he's got even more of an excuse for collecting wood, and even pays good money for the bloody stuff!

Don't get me started on the boxes of cables and random electrical crap, or the failed homebrew experiments, the Screwfix catalogue collection, the two sheds filled with tools and DIY stuff, every bank statement from the past 20 years...