Fecking hoarding by proxy. Anyone else have relatives who do this?

[TheQueenOfWands]

My mum just found an old, filthy, partially deflated football near my house.

It's now in my garden. The same garden which I've recently spent great time and expense tidying up and decorating.

Why? Well, I'll tell you why. Apparently a child will be 'overjoyed' to receive it once it's been cleaned up and reinflated. Also, there's too much stuff in landfill so it's obviously not on to simply throw it out.

Today is my only day off from work. I worked 72 hours last week and 50 this week. I have no interest in laundering footballs and don't have a clue how I'd reinflate it. I also don't know any children, let alone any who would be overjoyed to receive a vaguely scrubbed, badly inflated foot ball.

This isn't the first time she's done this. My parents do this quite a lot.

It's such a shame to throw something out so obviously I have to make use of it or DS would be thrilled with it.

Aaargh!!

Doesn't help that I've recently been decluttering (much love to Marie Kondo) and am happy doing so.

They know this. Yet are still determine to fill my house with crap or visibly recoil when they see me give/throw something away.

beautiful gifts and hobby supplies that are ‘too nice to use’ so instead rot, forgotten.

This is something which really got to me when I cleared out DMs house. We found nice tableclothes etc. which DGM had embroidered, put away as being 'too nice to use' and over the 40 plus years the moths or water damage had got to them. Instead of being brought out, giving twenty odd years of pleasure and use until they fell to bits.

DD is frankly disgusted that I have kept a little pot of her and DS's teeth. She has said she will never want them and thinks it's weird that I have them. I am now considering either burying them in the garden, or placing them into the garden pond. I think they will make a nice underwater ornament in a pile in the top of the water lily planter. No ?

Nailbrokemytooth you need one of these!

Apparently there are "sockets" into which you insert those precious baby gnashers! Room for a full set!

Well it’s not as though I actually wanted to sleep tonight

DM is always turning up with shite in a bag for my house. Since having DC, she's evolved to giving them all the tat and shite. Then has a face like a cat's arse and gives out that DC has loads of 'stuff' in a disapproving tone.

Yet she can't wait to get rid of everything out of her house. I've left a toothbrush there because I'd arrive at night time in a rural area and often forgot to pack one, yet the very next time I see her she's handing it back to me and I've unbrushed teeth the next time I visit. Lovely.

MIL goes one better though. She tries to give you stuff when you leave and even when you tell her it must belong to SIL or BIL and it absolutely does not belong to you, she still sneaks it into your bag before you leave. I often reached into my handbag and find a phone charger or a wet toothbrush not belonging to me in there.

GummyGoddess - you are making assumptions . It's not that I am unhappy things weren't saved for me. I had no things to save full stop.

Keeping the pram and cot wasn't a conscious decision and now I have it's just a case of if we still have them they will be offered to the children for their children. I'm sure they won't have become unsafe and if the dc don't want them, no problem.

Cots probably haven't changed a lot over the last 30 years, but as new grandparents we have found that nearly all other baby equipment has. They now have travel systems which go much more easily in the boot of the car, or car seats which detach - ours was fixed in position. As for the high chairs - the IKEA one we have just bought is so much more convenient and takes up much less space than the one we used to have for our own children. There is a very good chance that your DCs would find old baby equipment hopelessly inconvenient and has therefore been kept unnecessarily.

Our old pram went to a charity for a pram race.

Well it’s not as though I actually wanted to sleep tonight

I'm not that old and my kids aren't either!

My Sister has just left, again, without the contents of her boot . Her boot was full of shopping and the inside of her car filled with crap.

Who's Marie kondo ? I need help decluttering

Marie Kondo is a goddess.

She has a book. There's also many web pages about it and plenty of YouTube tutorials.

@YearOfYouRemember but by the time your DC are old enough to need prams/cots for their DC, the stuff you've got will be that old

@Birdsgottafly why not tell her it needs removing before 12noon Friday otherwise it is ALL going in the bin no sorters

I have already acknowledged that it may all go when we move anyway. I wasn't ready to get rid immediately my youngest didn't need them anymore and so they've stayed there. Our loft is huge. It's not causing an real issues with space.

My MIL does this. Her house is perfectly presented with a definite colour scheme in each room and every year or so she changes the colour scheme in one of her rooms. When she does this she insists on giving us the old accessories etc (including cutlery and crockery when she redecorates the kitchen). DH has tried pointing out that we have plenty and would like to choose our own colours when we replace them but she points to stuff we already have that does not match the decor (largely from her) as proof that he is just being mean.

She's also started craft classes in her retirement and brings everything she makes to us. Again, she would not dream of having it in her own house as it wouldn't match. The worst part is that when she visits she will frequently ask to use a specific item so DH is wary of throwing it all out after the tears when we threw out chipped mugs

We've started being firm about not wanting more stuff but wish we'd done it earlier as she's got used us accepting all her old tat.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/22318578-the-life-changing-magic-of-tidying-up

Marie Kondo is a Japanese tidier. Seriously.

She's fairly Marmite - one of those you love or loathe.

www.amazon.com/Clutters-Last-Stand-Time-junk/dp/1593373295?tag=mumsnetforum-21

I prefer Don Aslett - his books are available on Amazon.co.uk but I'm logged in and don't want to give my name away.

Aslett is very 'American' and may not be to your taste, but he's less batshit than Marie Kondo.

Seriously. Bowing to the house, showing respect and thanking each item before removing it from the house......

Aslett got into decluttering as an extension of his cleaning business.

He has a whole series of books about cleaning, streamlining household processes and life coaching.

There's a whole website dedicated to Unfuck Your Habitat, let alone a book

www.unfuckyourhabitat.com

And there's another collection of tidiers, cleaners and declutterers called Finally Loving Yourself.

You might see Flylady about the web.

www.flylady.net

There are cheap/free resources out there....

AjasLipstick Those are brilliant ! Love it. Just the right amount of grotesque. The DC would never be able to refuse those.

Aslett is very 'American' and may not be to your taste, but he's less batshit than Marie Kondo.

I'm with you on this Intelligent

Thanking your old knickers for their valiant service etc is just a step too far for me.

What it comes down to is - if you don't love it and don't use it - chuck it out.

Then fold everything that's left into three and stand it up in a drawer, sorted by shade (light to dark).

She's made a bliddy fortune from these simple precepts, and I only wish I had thought of them first!

Having said that, I am a "rounded" occidental wumman, not a dainty oriental blossom (more's the pity) and would probably not draw the adoring crowds.

Don Aslett works with the same basics (love it, use it or lose it) but also tells you how to keep it clean.

I think I may have a slight problem. When DH decided to clear out the large built-in cupboard on the landing, I tried to help but ended up standing in the bedroom, clenching my hands so digging my fingernails into my palms, breathing and telling myself not to go out there.

DH meanwhile was merrily lobbing stuff down the stairs. Old blankets, bed linen, towels, the kids' old computer games and dvds. None of it touched for years. I couldn't watch but I knew it needed to be done.

I trust DH, he doesn't throw out my stuff. I didn't miss any of the stuff that went.

Thanking your old knickers for their valiant service etc
hahaha I actually did this, not long ago. They had pretty stars on them and I was sorry they had to go.

Some people like the KonMarie method, though.

They need to acknowledge the 'thing', remember the good times and 'let it go'.

Horses for courses, of course....

Marie Kondo works for me by acknowledging the sentimental attachment I form with stuff. I have been known to thank my trainers for the miles I've run in them when they land in the general bin because they now ressemble sandals. I have learned hoarding tendencies from a master of it.

She fits the WW2 childhood profile, plus mean parents, periods of poverty and general life trauma. Life into middle and old age has been much more settled but the accumulation of stuff has had no cause to be disturbed by the likes of house moves. My dad's stuff still hangs undisturbed in his wardrobe 25+ years after his sudden death.

It's a large house so she has a reasonable amount of living space and publicly acceptable rooms. She also has rooms piled high in stuff. Clothes, magazines, newspapers... There's a school newletter from the early 90s hanging off a shelf. She will not let anything with her name and address out of the house because her identity will be stolen.

I was the last of the children in the household spanning 20+ years of child raising. My room contained the detritus of the rest of the family's childhoods. I didn't want half the grubby, tatty, worn stuff and it wasn't truely mine to get rid of and manage. Some things I did move and dispose of when I moved out. I went through the books, keeping the ones I loved and the ones that would look fresh for my children. I felt so guilty taking a load of battered ladybird books to be recycled, but neither my DCs to be nor collectors would want the ancient ancestoral doodlings or disintegrating spines.

I try to keep my tendencies in order, a box for magazines to be weeded and culled when full. I see the consequences when it has spiraled out of control. Rooms where you have to climb over the hoard to even reach the door handle to enter. Clinging on to redundant, broken furniture yet accruing more and more from charity shops and friends' deceased parents. It affects family life. She's miffed that no other family stays with her; there's no room in a huge house! There's no room for more than two people to watch TV as she won't accept that the 45+ yr old sofa has no structure left to actaully sit on even after the stuff has been cleared off it.

Even when the hoarding isn't accompanied by control issues like OP's situation, it is a destructive manifestation of mental difficulties. It's like comfort eating to a state of morbid obesity; except it's the remaining relatives that will have to do the weightloss (or clearance) at the end of it. Any attempt at dealing without full consent is damaging and can erode further progresd in purges as trust within the hoarders boundaries is so critical to them.

Back in the 70s I liked Shirley Conran's Superwoman, as she said, "Life's too short to stuff a mushroom." Been my moto for many years.