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.

Yanbu op. You need to learn to say no though.

Throw the football in the bin.

I think the locust farm wins the thread!!

Also sympathy. My parents are the same. They try to give me dummies they find on the floor in the park

Your problem is allowing yourself to get so upset by it, no point being so stressed about an old football (they are almost never re-inflatable by the way - I've tried!) Along with all my siblings we just accept the old stuff from our parents 'that might be useful' and dispose of as we see fit (sell on FB group, charity shop, bin etc). Different generation, different values - just humour them.

My MIL is a bit like this. If I mention I am looking at coffee tables or sofas or anything really she’ll tell me she has an old one I can have. The idea I might get pleasure from choosing something myself and actually want to have things that belong to me in my house doesn’t seem to occur to her. I have got a few bits from them and they have some nice old furniture which I appreciate, and it’s always great to get something for free, but I also want to have my own choice! It can be helpful though so I don’t get cross about it anymore and I’m more able to say “no I don’t need that/I’ve seen one I love so thanks but no”. Also curtains that were made up for different shaped windows to mine “oh get someone to alter them/lengthen them” etc... that would cost more then just getting my own curtains!

My dad has been doing this. He's been clearing his house/shed/garage etc so "it won't be a bother" when he dies he's fitter than I am but mainly this involves him bringing boxes of stuff around to my house so I can top them into the bin in front of him. He still manages to dump stuff off in the DC's rooms when I'm not looking - I've now got them playing hard ball and not letting him in He lives over the road from a charity shop, I'd have to drive to one; he gets weekly bin collections, I don't.

Last week DS1 cleared some stuff from his room and we took it round to Grandad's I thought you might want this. No, he says Well, you always give me your rubbish I think he's getting the message.

op stay firm , 'tis the only way

hibble....that is pure grot! ughh!

Teacup....eeeeuuuwww! ....that is all!

I feel obliged to keep all the clothes MIL gave our kids because SIL is much younger than us and if/when she has kids MIL will say 'Oh, do you still have that lovely outfit with the stripes I bought for DD?' etc (translation: 'I expect you still to have that outfit and know where it is')

I threw out/gave away a few before I realised this would happen, so I'll just have to pretend they got hopelessly stained or something. But for now I just keep them in what I call the 'Pain Of Death' bag.

Oh and I mentioned in passing once that I quite like Bengal cats and a week later she arrived at my house that she had picked off the street that was ‘lost’, it was obviously not lost and was quite clearly someone’s pet. The vets were closed so I had to have a random cat in my house overnight until I could take it straight to the vet to get it’s microchip scanned (we found the owners straight away).
I was beyond furious.
Especially as I had pet rats at the time and the cat spent all night wailing at the door to try and eat my babies.

@Teacuphiccup WTF :O

Yeah I kind of zone out of her madness to be honest because I love her, but every now and then Ill tell a story about her and I’ll notice the person I’m telling it to will be staring at me a ‘wtf?’ face.
She’s hard work but she’s not going to change.

peacheachpearplum I hate all the clutter and I know that ultimately my husband is overwhelmed by it. If I think of him dying, he is ten years old than me and in bad health so likely to be him first but of course I might just go under a bus, I can only think of having to clear it all up. I know it is awful and I should be sad at the thought of him being gone, the end of a long marriage etc but I can't see past the clutter.

That is so sad. Could you somehow express those sentiments (in a kind way) to your DH? Perhaps if he knew how you felt about that side of things it would give him something to think about?

One more and then I’ll stop derailing.

She moved out of our family home when I was 15 to go and live with her boyfriend leaving me, my sister and my sisters 6 week old baby in the house alone. We had a fire in the house that could have been avoided but the smoke alarm never went off, turns out that on one of her trips home to pick up some clothes she had taken the batteries out of the fire alarms and given them to the little boy across the street for his remote control car.

Sometimes people just choose to have and enjoy having a lot of possessions. Then there are problems caused by a mental health problem including, but not limited to, Diogenes syndrome and hoarding disorder. If they problems are caused by a mental health disorder this needs to be dealt with differently, appealing to a person's better nature will not work if they are ill. I know a fair amount about hoarding disorder, including the fact that typically sufferers have poor insight into the problem.

" But for now I just keep them in what I call the 'Pain Of Death' bag. "

Just give them back to MIL to store if she's the one who wants them storing in case they can be passed on!

My MIL was overwhelmed by a drive to -force things on me- give me things for the children. Clothes she brought round I'd have to wash as they stunk of smoke. She got offended once that I didn't undress dd and put her in the offerings she had brought. Never nice things, or not to our family's taste anyway.

The worst ever was the time she brought round a big toy for ds that had a vital part missing. 'Never mind', she said 'clever mummy can make a replacement.'

'Clever mummy' was overwhelmed at the time and really did not need this project. Despite the flattery. In the end dh had to tell her she could only come round if she came empty handed.

The worst of this story ... I turned into a hoarder too. Am battling to dispose of things now for the sake of my now grown dc.

Teacup I will join your 'wtf' faced friends - that's unbelievable about the smoke alarm!

I guess I'm just massively upset that someone sees my much laboured over garden as a public bin. But she doesn't see it as a public bin. She's giving you a football that only needs a bit of tarting up to make it into a treasured possession - no way would she be putting that into a public bin. Yes, it's unwanted behaviour, it's causing you more work, but try not to read messages that aren't there. This is your emotional response, not her opinion.

My team could have done with a football on Wednesday night.
Sadly, it looked like they didn't have a clue what to do with one!

(sorry, not really appropriate, but just meant to be lighthearted!).

I think older people haven't fully grasped consumerism. We really do live in a throw-away society (sadly) and back in the day, a football would have been quite an investment for a child.
She's right in as much as it's surprising how something as simple as a football can bring a lot of joy to a child, but times have changed. If you start trying to salvage something like that, you'll end up salvaging half the rubbish in the world!

It's lethal to say you bought anything to my mother, she will go out and clear the shelf and dump it in my house if I say I cooked chicken last night she will go and buy 8 packs. She is a shopaholic and an hoarder her bungalow is full and she is now buying loads of clutter and tries to fill my house with stuff she knows is not my taste. If I confront her she will become abusive and behaves in a bullying manner. I think that she likes to control and this is the only way to get to me. There is no reasoning or respect. My sister went no contact 20yrs ago when mum told everyone on her hen do it was good she found a man because she could never have a child., not true she got pregnant on her honeymoon and had 2 in 21 months. She is so upset because a tumble drier she has has been turned down by me because I already have one. She knows my kids only have home made cake and meals but has just called my husband to pick up 6 shopping bags of cakes and sweets as she knows we keep sweets for a rare treat to keep them special, and to prove that all4 boys went to the dentist last week and perfect no treatment needed. I am renovating my house Soon there will be a skip outside and anything I haven't bought will be in there. My husband has agreed to that and to refuse entry to anything she has got.

My dm is like this! I love a bargain and like a charity shop, but she is outrageous. She is 82 and it’s definitely a brought up during the war thing with her, and my late dad was too soft with her.
It took me weeks, and weeks to clear her house to renavatie it and she is now building up the crap again, although my cousins kindly keep a eye on her behaviour because I am 6000 miles away!

TheQueenOfWands I do sympathise. PIL were determined to turn our lovely garden into a plastic tat-riddled, knackered old furniture-filled shit hole.

Arrived home one summer's evening to discover two huge plastic squirrels had been attached to my ivy with massive sticky out cable ties. Oh the horror! The squirrels had once been a fluorescent pink and yellow but had faded over many, many years. The plastic was so old it crumbled as I desperately tried to remove the fuckers. Apparently, they were a lovely, decorative feature that FIL had got from the car boot.

They also generously offloaded a free from a catalogue coffee-coloured dinner service. The quality was shocking. I only have white plates etc. because I have a thing about eating off coloured crockery and we have open shelves so they are on display. A few weeks later they turned up more free shit from a catalogue - a wobbly-handled knife block and some very crap pans.

I made DH take it all to the tip which was a right ball ache round trip and waste of an afternoon. He was very firm with them after that.

Tell her you put it in the bin. Let her recoil.

BrendasUmbrella Again, there is a possibility this an issue caused by a mental health problem, so why would you want to make her recoil?

My dad was a truly dreadful hoarder. He hoarded not only his own rubbish but everyone else's as well. Mum used to beg us not to say we were getting rid of anything as he would want it, whatever it was.

Anything we threw out we had to make sure was well hidden under the stinky kitchen rubbish otherwise he would fetch it out and take it home with him.