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.

The clown pyjama holders, plastic squirrels and locust farm win hands down.

We moved - in part - to a house that could accommodate DH's retro collection of games, consoles, monitors etc. He's watched me throw out precioys baby clothes yet won't get rid of free cassette tapes from Select Magaxine 1991 etc.

I've learned to throw out useless household tat (old mismatched chipped plates) when he's not around, otherwise he thinks they'll come in handy at some point.

His DM and my aunt bring us house plants when they know I hate them. Trouble is then DH won't get rid, but he won't water them either. Gave one to my mom but then he saw it.....

My mum is a bit of a hoarder at home, keeps a lot of stuff I wouldn't give house room and has thousands of books, to a crazy extent. She has what I think is a related behaviour when it comes to food. She hates any kind of food waste - will eat the stalk of a raw brocoli, carrot peel rather than let me throw it away. And she cooks huge portions then puts a lot of pressure on people to eat them, and any leftovers - which there always are. I keep explaining to her that it's just as much of a waste if we overeat, as it is to throw food away. And suggesting she cooks smaller amounts! No joy though. To me it feels like the same psychological type of behaviour as described in this thread.

Stealth by 'trash' I just mean rip out all of my ivy and then leave it everywhere for me to clear up.

I love my ivy. She doesn't. Possibly because it's coming from the council's land, but I'm not sure.

She likes to 'prune' things but in reality she just kills them.

No she won’t.
That’s fine, I know she won’t, I’ve come to terms with her I love her how she is but she won’t ‘soon learn’ and it’s really irritating for people to say things like that about dealing with people you love who have mental health issues.
It’s like saying to someone with an autistic child that they just need discipline or a routine.

I'm so sorry, Teacup: I worded that really badly and didn't mean it to sound as if I knew better than you.

My mother is really manipulative and difficult--so much so that I haven't seen her for nearly five years, and the therapists I've seen have described her actions as "chilling". When I stopped engaging in her histrionics she ramped up her behaviours; that didn't work either; so she switched to other behaviours which were just as dysfunctional, but I kept on not engaging and she did eventually back down. She does still phone me every now and then, but perhaps four times a year rather than four times a day, so there has been an improvement.

It's difficult, it really is. I'm sorry I was so clumsy and offended you, I didn't mean to.

OP my mum does this. She realises she has a hoarding problem so she's trying to unclutter her house, but she can't actually bear to throw stuff out, so she gifts it to me. Quite often its brand new clothes that don't actually fit me, she gets irritated with me that they don't fit me, despite the fact that they were never originally bought with me in mind. I feel obligated to keep this useless stuff despite not having much space in my house.

She does similar to my brother although not clothes obviously, he has no qualms about ditching it as soon as he feels like it.

My brother and my husband completely cleared her double garage a year or two ago, giving up a weekend of their time and hiring a van. She has refilled it. My brother is furious.

Im moving house shortly, I've been told I don't need to buy any kitchen stuff or towels because she has stuff she wants to give me. It must sound ungrateful to some but actually it is quite a controlling behaviour.

My mum does this a bit in that se buys things from Charity shops that I might like and piles them on me, about a year ago I started saying thanks, but I've got so much of my own stuff to sort I can't really take that, she's calmed down a lot. She also offered once to buy DS a sun hat on holiday, instead of going to Primark or a cheap supermarket, she went to the charity shop and got 2, one was far too small and the other was very obviously a girls hat, she probably spent more money than buying a new one that fits!

I just spent a week with the worst hoarder I have seen in my life. She is lovely, but if she likes something she buys twice of it just in case it gets lost/broken, have had containers brought in from abroad with hand me downs from her family ranging from clothes, beauty products to innumerable old and sometimes broken furniture.

We spent the week in shock,she goes through life thanking god, the spirits, the universe for providing her with so much so, in “gratitude” she can receive more. She founds it absolutely shocking that I do not feel the need to do the same, can’t understand I want to have a more minimalist approach (my dream is to get a skip to finish putting all that crap that I no longer use, like or love out of the house). I think she is convinced I’m poor . Regardless of how much I insisted I didn’t want or need anything, I came back with a lot of stuff she kindly gave me but that I would have preferred not to take. I couldn’t refuse more without insulting her so I just thought I just needed to shut up and dispose of it on arrival.

I really don’t think that saying “just bin it or send it to the charity shop” is particularly useful advice. There is so much crap that is too big for the car or require a few months of regular trips to the charity shop to clear. My wheelie bin contents are only collected once every forthnight so I may need to do a trip to the tip myselt to get other people’s old stuff out of the house. In fact, there are pieces of luggage in my attic left by friends who moved away more than 15 years ago. Every now and then I take something to the tip, it never cease to amaze me the amount of crap people are interested in moving around with them.

So I can see why you are annoyed OP, all those hand me downs are giving you a lot of work to do, be it by fixing them or getting rid of. It is sometimes expensive to get rid of them be it on terms of time and money.

My parents do not bring or send me any crap anymore, after a very clear conversation where I said that If there was something missing in my house it was not due to lack of money but due to the fact I prefer to wait for something I really like rather than filling my house with crap stuff I hate.

My mother lives to the east of me, I take stuff she's given me to charity shops to the the west of my town. So she can't see it and buy it all back.

She can't bear the idea of waste. But the most expensive thing in my life is my massive mortgage because I live in an expensive area of the country. So I'm not wasting my money on having all my useful space filled up with junk.

Both my parents were hoarders. I have hoarding tendencies. DP has hoarding inclinations (mostly motorbikes that he is "going to fix and sell"). His father was the same, as is his brother. I'm starting to wonder if there's a genetic element!

My father's speciality was hoarding packaging. When I cleared their house out after they'd died, I could have opened a bubble wrap shop. There was also a huge stack of the clear plastic domes you get on trays of pears.

In a cardboard box, I found my father's payslips (mostly handwritten) going back to 1958 (this was in 2010). On the desk in the hall, I found the appointment card for my brother's driving test in 1982. This had actually moved to Milton Keynes with them in 1983!

My father had over 50 shirts, mostly Viyella check jobbies that were all astonishingly similar. They had 9 washing up bowls, and in the utility room was a big plastic laundry basket full to the brim with tea towels.

If I'd got air miles for all the trips to the tip I did, I could have got halfway round the world for free.

MIL once cleared out her kitchen cupboards and sent me what she didn't want.

Out of date spices and cake decorations
Loads of cleaning stuff
A muffin tin (she'd bought a new one)
A couple of nasty tea towels.

Apparently her own daughters (only females need this stuff btw) didn't want her crap so she parcelled it up and sent it to me.

It all went in the bin. DH had a word. She thought I "might like it" apparently. That's a lie. SHE felt wasteful throwing it out so got rid of her guilt by trying to put it in my kitchen instead.

They kicked up a huge stink and broke my back gate in an attempt to get in, kind of rammed it until the wood split rendering the bolt useless. Then threw stones at DS's window.

I wouldn't give a key to someone who acted like that. I'd call the police.

When DF died, I had to clear out his flat. I knew he rarely threw things out, but he wasn't a hoarder compared to some on this thread. However, in his spare bedroom, the twin beds both had drawers underneath and they were filled with the old blankets from our caravan (gone more than 20 years before) and the really attractive orange and yellow bri-nylon sheets, valances and pillowcases from the 70s. (what was DM thinking when she bought those!) He had several sets of those ghastly ornamental plates that he had bought through Franklin Mint or some such place that he assured me would be worth thousands. There was a set for me and one each for the DDs. They would love them, he assured me. I think the auctioneer managed to sell each set for £1!

I had to get a skip to clear the place. His furniture went to charity and I took what I wanted from his garden shed (built from old doors from the school he had worked in!) and cravenly left the rest for the buyer of his flat to deal with. There was only so much I could cope with (his only child) and the shed gave me the heebie-jeebies!

I am making an effort not to keep stuff that is just tat. I do, of course, have some, but every now and then I have a clear out and have even got rid of books, which is very hard for me to do, but I don't want the DC to have to deal with the mountains of shit that I had to.

LittleCandle my DF died recently. I'm an only child too and am currently clearing out his 3 bedroom house, which is rammed full. I'm on my second skip and have 20 bags of stuff for charity so far. I found the awning for the caravan in the wardrobe. Caravan went about 30 years ago. Have also found the orange nylon sheets etc . Yesterday I threw out all his pay slips for the 70's. It's made me determined to sort through my own stuff and have a declutter!

My mum and my inlaws do this too. i thank them and then dispose of the items when they leave. If I kept every bit of tat they have bought round over the last 30 years I would have to move into the garden shed.

On a related note, when DC were small my mum gave them each a very small chocolate egg in an egg cup for Easter. They were delighted with them and she now does it every year, one for each DC and one each for me and DH. So over the last 20 years or so she has given us over 100 egg cups! And for the last 19 years or so they have all gone straight to the charity shop.

" They are also the sort of people that take the sugar packets and spare serviettes home with them when they have a meal out."

I do that sometimes. If I buy a big pack of sugar for guests it just gets hard so the little sachets are quite useful. Nothing to do with hoarding.

"I have read that in severe cases hoarding can be considered a form of OCD- it is compulsive fear of not having enough or having strong inexplicable attachments to random-seeming junk Eveforever so yeah, I think you have a point."

Yes, it can be OCD and I don't think it has to be extreme for that either. It's ironic because people associate OCD with being clean and tidy, but hoarders are usually neither of those.

My mil does this all the time, every time they visit she brings a bag of things for us and the DC that nobody particularly wants so I've started asking the DC in front of them if they want to keep the stuff at home or let me take it so they have something at their house for them when we visit. The DC very rarely want the things at home to use.

"Getting rid of the clutter doesn't get rid of the problem if it's due to a mental health problem. "

It will take them some time to build up the hoard again though and in the mean time, the place will be less of a fire hazard.

"The mental health problem needs addressed or you could be doing more harm than good. "

Are these issues easy to solve though? It's not like there's a tablet you can take and then you'll be fine, or you talk to someone about why you hoard and then it's all over. Sometimes you have to treat the symptoms if you can't treat the cause though don't you.

I find hoarding fascinating and infuriating.
My GP hoard and frequently attempt to offload stuff my way. I just bin it. I used to refuse it but they give it to my sons instead and then I become anxious as I can’t then throw it away.
My sibling hoards to a lesser degree but is very defensive about it and also quite nasty to me as they are jealous of my clutter free home.

I grew up with this hoarding and am now ultra minimalist. I love to throw stuff out. I am sure this is a reaction to my upbringing.

It is almost a challenge to my GPS to get me to accept stuff. A neve4 ending ongoing cycle of control.

Sometimes you have to treat the symptoms if you can't treat the cause though don't you.

I really agree with this. There currently seems to be no effective treatment for hoarding, but that doesn't mean the hoarder should just be left in ever increasing squalor.

"There's hoarding - lots of bits and pieces and there's real hoarding.

If you've ever experienced real hoarding, you'll not mistake it. I am talking about homes where you literally cannot see the carpet, or open the door of some rooms, such is the level of hoarding."

It's all hoarding.
Piles and piles of old newspapers in a tidy room is still hoarding even if it's not as bas as the houses that we've seen on hoarding programmes on TV. The guy who lost weight because he couldn't get into his own kitchen is more extreme, but the person who keeps old empty packaging is also hoarding.

We were meeting up with MIL at a holiday home we had all rented for a week. She turned up with a dining table and four chairs in her car, I have no idea how she squeezed them in. She hadn't asked us if we wanted them , I refused to take them. DH really fretted we would offend her.

It's reasons like this I'm seen as very difficult by DH family. In unison they have a sort of hive mind and if you don't agree your very wrong.

"brand new clothes that don't actually fit me, she gets irritated with me that they don't fit me, despite the fact that they were never originally bought with me in mind. I feel obligated to keep this useless stuff despite not having much space in my house."

Why not give it to a charity shop for someone of the right size to enjoy. Wouldn't your DM want the clothes to be used?

"His father was the same, as is his brother. I'm starting to wonder if there's a genetic element!"

Learned behaviour rather than genetic surely.
I hate hoarding and though I was the opposite, but have been accused of keeping some stuff as well so maybe you're view of normal is skewed if you come from a hoarding family.

"In unison they have a sort of hive mind and if you don't agree your very wrong."

I think you have to be brave enough to be unpopular otherwise you will be forever doing what they tell you to do.
The poster above who couldn't say no to her DM because the DM would tell people she was horrible. Well, so what? Life is not a popularity contest.