I need an “outsider”’s opinion here, me and my husband have reached a deadlock and we can’t seem to reach an agreement!
So my in laws give us things presents that we don’t really need. Every year they ask us what we want for birthdays and Christmas and every year my husband doesn’t care so I give them an Amazon list full of things we do actually need as a household, and every time we don’t get what we need but rather we get useless clutter. My parents always follow the list or send us money or a gift card which is much more useful that random cr*p! I know I sound ungrateful but why ask someone what they want and still give them something as useless as a book called “Beers of the world” which is just full of photos of beers from around the world!
Just in a side note, I have always hated clutter so I regularly get rid of things I haven’t used or things I don’t need. My husband is the opposite - he keeps hold of things “in case we need it”
Anyway, me and my husband will be moving into a smaller flat soon so we need to get rid of some our stuff. I have taken out all of the presents we got throughout the years from the in laws that are basically useless and we haven’t touched - boardgames, books, really ugly ornaments etc. My husband said we’re keeping them because we might need them! I explained that we haven’t touched these in years, some of them are still in the plastic, but he just refuses to get rid of them. Not to mention there will not be space for them in our new place! In my opinion there is nothing sentimental in a useless book called “Is your cat gay” or a useless glass ornament that looks like it came out of a charity shop’s “free” section, but he insists that “we might need them in the future”.
Please tell me, am I being unreasonable?! I want to downsize our stuff so it fits in the new flat but my husband just wants to keep everything. This is a trait his whole family has - his dad lives in a 5 bedroom house alone and 4 of the rooms are full of random useless stuff that he keeps “just in case”. How do I explain to my husband these things are useless and are just clutter? Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing against his family, I got rid of random stuff my family has given us so nothing to do with “my” family against “his” family.