To just go ahead & sell all our stuff?

[justgoandgetalife]

My house is turning into a dump & my DH into a hoarder. He won't get rid of anything. The L room is full of music stuff - 2 drum kits (one is used regularly, the other he keeps 'in case we need it'). He's lent a bike to a friend who wants to buy it. For the last 15years it has been hung on the wall in the garage. But he won't sell it as he promised it to someone else a couple of years ago who has shown no interest in it since. The garage is full of empty boxes, packaging & 5 other bikes that 'the DSs might use' but have no jnterest in.

The landing upstairs is now being used to hold an old cupboard full of stuff we 'might need' but ever have.

All I can see is the amount of ££ we could make if we just sold it on eBay or boot sale'd it!

Can I just have a yard sale like they do in the US? I suspect if I tried that, some council official would turn up, complain I didn't have a sellers permit & claim that cars were causing an obstruction!

I do want to sell so much if it esp as we are constantly telling our kids we can't afford things - I'm worrying about our lack of savings, pension, uni fees, etc, when we're surrounded by so much stuff!!

Just stick it all on Gumtree, easier than a "yard sale" I'd imagine, especially if it starts raining!

However sorry to sound all text book but I think you needs to address the other issue here, your husbands hoarding. And how will he react if you sell his stuff?

I suppose your argument should be, to sell stuff you "might need", but hasn't been used in over a year. Put a percentage of the £ in savings and If in the future you do "need" it but have sold it, you can buy another from Gumtree / eBay.

Anything non sentimental that hasn't been used in a year gets taken to the charity shop or sold on Facebook in my house.

Dp hates it and goes into a panic every time he sees me with a binbag but I know that if I didn't we'd be living like you op and I couldn't bare it.

I'd never get rid if something that was loved but I'm not living with shit that we might need in five years time!

You can just do a yard sale,I used to do them alot with my Mum when I still lived at home,always made a good amount of money as well.

There's a few people that do them still where we live,with the cars if your not in a remote area then people just usually walk along(neighbors ect)and have a look.

We used to let our neighbors know we were doing a yard sale about a week in advance.If your husband is so bad for hoarding do you think you might had to hold the sale whilst he's out of the house?

If you watch the Hoarder-type programmes, one comment often made is that if the hoarder themselves don't agree to getting rid, they will just go out and replace all the stuff.

So you might need to give some thought to how you can deal with your DH before you start clearing out.

We operate by the 20/20 rule: if you could replace it for less than £20 within twenty minutes of home (includes delivered) then it doesn't fall under "just in case". We're getting better at being brutal ruthless.

I agree with pps that it won't work just dumping stuff. If he's anything like my DM he'll be loath to lose anything unless to a good home. EBay and Freecycle or even FTGH posts on Facebook can help here. I think you have to be strategic.

OP, is he a hoarder, or somebody who gets a bit too attached to stuff ?

If the latter I think you have a fairly good chance of pointing out that it's not just his home and he is impinging on everybody else's comfort and ability to feel relaxed in the place where they live. Not to mention that resentment can flurish where the many are required to live within economic limits dictated by one person's choices. Holding your ground and refusing to budge on a reduction, while not a walk in the park, might well be a reasonable, suitable and adequate solution for all concerned.

If he is the former, you may be faced with a rather more difficult choice. Him and his stuff, or neither.

I grew up with a mother who after a crisis went from being the former to the latter. As a consequence I would no more allow my child to live under the heavey yoke of a hoarder's uncontrollable urges than I would allow them to live with somebody who emotionally abused them right under my nose. It might not be the hoarder's fault that they have a condition that has symtoms of this nature. But that doesn't mean small people with no vote should have to live with, and in, the ramifications of the disorder.

If he is just attached to stuff then it's worth dealing with it sooner rather than later. Because none of us are immune from life's curve balls, and you never know who, when coming under intense stress, will react by stepping over the line into full blown hoarding.

If you think there is the possibility that having been worn down you may have lost sight of just how bad things have got, and an overstuffed home has become normalised, try googling degrees of squalor and clutter scales. It can give you an idea of how relatively easy, or difficult, requiring a scaling back of contents is going to be. I don't mean in the physical/effort sense of hauling stuff out and flogging it. I mean in terms of bringing the owner of the possessions around to the idea that their love of stuff cannot be a priority that comes at the expense of the choices, happiness, comfort and wellbeing of the people they love. The higher up the scale your home has become, the greater the chance that you will need outside and professional help to work on his emotional fall out when it comes to the idea of letting stuff go. And the extent to which you may need support in the face of voluble insistence that nothing leaves, and more still needs to come in.

With any luck you'll discover your home (and your husband's problem) are fairly low down on the scales and it is something that can be resolved to everybody's satisfaction relatively painlessly and in a short-ish time scale.