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.

Gwenhwyfar giving the clothes to a charity shop would be letting the "asset" of these clothes leave the family, the money would be gone.

Whilst my mum likes to give stuff to me and other members of the family and will lend us money happily, she's not especially generous charity wise.

She grew up in real poverty. I think she holds a real fear that she will be poor again (unlikely) and also a sense of bitterness that she had that upbringing.

She once fished a dried up roll on deodorant out of my bin as a teenager and gave me a real lecture on how wasteful I was and insisted on using it herself.

Easily - I sort of get it - my DM wears our old school uniforms from over 30 years ago because they shouldn't go to waste, but I don't know to what extent you should be humouring her with this 'asset staying in the family thing'.
Would she find out if you just took them to the shop?

MIL is very much into family assets and nothing to charity. She asked me what I wanted for my birthday once and I was involved in a huge fundraiser for a charity at the time and said a donation to the charity would be fantastic. It didn't have to be money, we were selling things online, having a bake sale, doing loads of different things. She refused.

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.

There might also be a partner (me) fighting it. My husband hoards it is in his office, his bedroom (no space for me in there any more) a large shed that was specially built, 4 garages and loft.

The rule is the rest of the house is not hoarding space. It does creep out and then we have a row and it gets moved. I have no doubt the whole house would be the same without me constantly fighting it.

I've skipped to the end, but this is an interesting thread!

I have quite well off work colleagues who actually throw grown-out-of baby and toddler things in the bin, expensive JL stuff that is still perfectly OK just out-grown, because they can't be arsed to take it to a charity shop, and we all live no distance from areas where there are folk who really would be only to happy to buy the stuff from charity shops, like I used to when mine were small. One was slightly discombobulated when she casually asked if my DSs would like her older DS's 'old' T shirts (designer, note!) and I said Yes Please! My boys were genuinely delighted, especially as the shirts looked slightly worn in. I've received quite a few hand-me-downs for her as a result, Next hoodies and shorts etc. She's glad not to be binning it, I'm gla dto be not buying it!

However, that's different to a scruffy deflated football!

My IL used to do a slightly similar thing. FIL used to be a fruit and veg wholesaler, so when they came to visit us (frequently...) they'd call into the big fruit and veg barns en route and snap up bargains, like 6 cabbages or 10 kg of carrots etc; they'd keep what they wanted and present us (me and DH, no DC at the time) with the rest, thus I found myself with 5 cabbages to use up, and 8 kg of carrots etc.

Thanks, but....

Peach - I presume you agreed to the shed being built especially to keep shit in though?

Gwenhwyfar I did agree, it was on the basis that it was going to be part of him sorting things out, and he does want to, but he can't help himself. After over 30 years of trying to help him I've given up all hope of it being sorted and I don't go in the rooms, shed, garages, loft where it all is. If I think about it I could cry so I try not to think about it. I'm actually feeling quite overwhelmed just talking about it on here although it is comforting to know it isn't just me.

The other thing is that his stuff isn't all shit, there are some collections that are probably worth £10,000 or more each and that actually oppresses me even more. I always say if he dies before me it is all going in a skip but can I really just throw away £40 or £50k worth of stuff? Probably not so I will have to try and sort it and sell it and I feel like crying now.

" there are some collections that are probably worth £10,000 or more each"

You have to also think of the cost of having a house and shed big enough to keep all the stuff though.
Sorry you're so upset. I definitely see how you can't throw away things that are worth so much money.

My in laws are hoarders, MIL gets it from her parents who never throw anything away, even food, and MIL is the same way. Husband has hoarding tendancies, BIL's room looks like a rubbish tip. I once put something of mine in the small recycling bin under the stairs, and MIL fished it out and said she was keeping it as it might be useful. Of course, now I can't find it to get rid of it agsin as it's disappeared under all the other junk (now anything goes straight into the big one outside). I also went through my stuff and got rid of loads and she was shocked I was throwing away birthday cards from when I was 18! There was no point in me keeping them, I hadn't looked at them for years. I think the longer I live with them the more ruthless I'm getting, recently I've charity shopped a load of stuff I no longer want or need, it felt good. (I just don't tell anyone about it.)

My ex was a hoarder...i let him have the double garage but stuff kept creeping into the house...when we split i was delighted to get rid of the crap...and even now 4 years on im still decluttering.

Omg I was thinking of starting a thread asking if anyone else has to put up with this! My mil is a ridiculous hoarder to the point she has to rent a barn to store all her crap. And it really is old crap. She constantly brings stuff over for us and I don’t want any of it and take most of it to charity or chuck it tbh but I just can’t work up the courage to tell her we don’t want more stuff. Small house , too many people already, we just DONT WANT ANY MORE STUFF!!

Also I don't think it's just an old person thing.

There's a family nearish me where the parents just bought endless stuff at carboot sales and filled their house with it. Stuff was stored in the bath so the kids weren't bathed often, they sat on the stairs to eat dinner because they couldn't sit anywhere else. It was enough for the health visitor to tip off social services to intervene for the children's sake.

Each would you be able to ask a couple of friends to support you when the time comes. It will be so much easier for someone not involved to make judgement calls of what to do with stuff

Peach, the fact that you want to cry thinking about it and there are no-go areas in your own house just shows what a huge burden the hoarding is on you even though in theory you have been able to police your boundaries. That's extremely tough.

I do promise you that as and when you have to deal with the stuff, people would love to help you and will do it in a gentle way. But yes, it will be an emotional process and you should accept all the help you can manage. I can say that people like auctioneers are really lovely, they are used to dealing with this sort of thing and at least some of it will be much easier than you think.

There is one MNer who has several relatives that are determined to fill her house with crap to hoarding levels then complain about the state of it. They fill it faster than she can get rid, it's so extreme it's actually a form of abusive control.

As a single parent her and the DC don't deserve anything new or nice and she should be grateful for the literal rubbish they dump on her...

Make that two MNers Random! My DM and DSis throw out clothes all the time, but try to pass them on to me. DSis throws out newer, nicer stuff, sometimes still with tags, so that's ok. But DM often tries to give me old/unflattering/scratchy stuff then gets upset and offended if I say no thanks. So then I never wear it, I have two wardrobes that can't accommodate all my shit, of which I only wear a fraction, and when DM insists I have a clear out she gets offended again when she finds I'm keeping stuff of hers that I don't like and never wear, "Why didn't you just say no thanks?"
"I did, you got upset."
"Well, it was probably how you said it."
Sometimes she even takes stuff back home with her!!!

I'm trying to drop one bin bag per week at the charity shop. If she doesnt see the stuff again she won't remember what she did with it and I can pretend she never gave it to me.

This thread is

and to all.

My mum does things like this. Her partners mum still had a load of his old toys so she brought them round for my sons. I had 2 parts of a broken helicopter once, a rugby ball covered in pen. Various old cars. Once it was just as we were about to move house. She had a clear out. I said thanks mum but we are really short on space as it is and we need to have a clear out too

XH had a bit of a tendency to keep things. When we parted company and I was emptying the house, I had to get a skip (thank goodness I knew someone with a skip hire company!) to dump the shit from the loft. There were old computer games that would only play on DOS. All my LPs were there, but he had stacked them wrongly and they were all misshapen, so I couldn't even sell them. He had placed a bag of DM's Christmas decorations on the floor of the loft and then stepped on them (I was rarely up there, so know it wasn't me!) and they were in smithereens. There were a couple of Z beds that DM had loaned us and were never returned - the list goes on. There were three of us skipping it in a relay. I was in the loft and DD2 and a neighbour were trotting backwards and forwards dumping stuff.

My MIL does this. Another reallly frustrating things she does is insisting I return goods constantly. My daughter ripped her dress last week. She insisted that I return it to the shop despite being told 1. I have no receipt 2. It was in the same and 3. It was in perfect condition when bought. She basically ended up shouting at me to do it then in desperation said she would do it. I refused and hours later she phoned me to tell me to do it again

She told me to return balloons that deflated too quickly yesterday

My mum died last year and I had 28 days to clear the rubbish from her council place. Impossible as I live 150 miles away and am a carer for my disabled son.

I took as much stuff as I could manage - photos, childhood stuff and some brand new in box furniture (she was always buying stuff from catalogues she had no need for. At one point she had three dining table & chair sets - for 1 person!)

In the end I had to tell the council I couldn't do it. I'm having to pay them monthly instalments for the charge of them clearing it all out and decorating it (she was a heavy smoker so the walls and ceilings were yellow)

I was a bit of a hoarder too but I'm not going to do that to my kids, so I'm slowly decluttering.

The other thing is that his stuff isn't all shit, there are some collections that are probably worth £10,000 or more each ........ I always say if he dies before me it is all going in a skip but can I really just throw away £40 or £50k worth of stuff? Probably not so I will have to try and sort it and sell it and I feel like crying now.

Is that how much he's spent on it? Or is that what it's currently worth?

Spending huge amounts on stuff and then 'storing' it in a shed is almost guaranteed to lose thousands of £££££.

In reality, most hoarders gather stuff together, cram it all into whatever space is available and then let it all rot.

No thought is given to storage conditions (damp, dust, vermin, temperature etc), fragile items get crushed under the weight of old machine parts, fabric disintegrates, paper fades and yellows and even plastic disintegrates into shards over time.

It may have been worth thousands at one point, but it could be worth fuck all now.

Fads and fashions change, so some collectibles are only worth a lot during the fashionable 'phase' are worthless now and will never be wanted (and worth something) again.

Tell her to take anything else she brings to the charity shop! Not only will a child be thrilled with it, but a charity will benefit! It's a win win...win!

@NorbertTheDragon
In the end I had to tell the council I couldn't do it. I'm having to pay them monthly instalments for the charge of them clearing it all out and decorating it

How were you responsible for it? I don't understand.