Husband 'recycling/binning' my stuff

[MealDealDreamz]

If your husband were recycling your stuff without always checking with you first, would you be pissed off? I have too much stuff in his opinion. He will create bags of recycling and I'll ask to go through it first and find stuff that I really want but he doesn't know the value of / reason for keeping. He's taken books to charity before that had personal messages / sentimental value. He said he thought I wasn't bothered about them as I'd said one of them was crap. I bought them back at the charity shop. Now I'm off, he's talking about having a 'good clear out' and I'm feeling the pressure of using my time off to clear out stuff. While I accept that this needs to be done, and I have said I will do it, I feel this pressure to do things to his timetable. This morning I found he'd 'recycled' some of my herbs and spices as they 'were out of date' and you 'don't really use thyme'. He'd put a normal paprika to be recycled as he said we already have a paprika. (We don't. It was a hot and smoked one)
What do you think? Is he being controlling or am I a hoarder who needs taking in hand. I'm just so angry with him

This is the conversation you need to have with him. Get to the bones of it and remind him that very few of us want to turn into our parents and you feel triggered at being controlled like that because of your childhood.

Agreed. It's so wasteful to throw something with a long shelf life based on a fairly arbitrary best before date. Herbs and spices are dried precisely to enable them to be kept long term. Sure, if they lose flavour throw them away but ime this is often way way past the best before date. I'd go nuts if DH wasted food like this.

This ^

If I was clearing out kitchen cupboards I wouldn't check everything with my DP and I have thrown away really out of date herbs / spices before. There is always one you get to cook one dish and never use again.
What works for us with 'clutter' is that one person will do an initial clear out and create a pile of things they think can be donated to a charity shop. The other person can then review and has the right to keep anything they want to. It sounds as if 6 out of the 8 books weren't so important to you so this approach may help in future. I would hate it if my DP threw anything I valued away but I don't think it helps if you conflate those things with a bottle of paprika.

My late husband was a hoarder. He insisted he wasn't, everything and I mean everything was needed. He could not throw anything away. I actually became mentally ill from having to deal with his stuff and rooms full to the brim. If that's not you, then I apologize, but it is hell living with a person like that. Can you not work together? Agree what should be kept, where you keep personal things? I think you need a compromise of not keeping stuff, not letting your hone become like mine was, but not living in some minimalist desert as well.
Without actually seeing your home it's hard to say, and I'm not suggesting you post pictures, but there are self help organizations that provide guidance on whether you are hoarding or not. That might help both of you.

If you wasn't going to use your time off to get rid of the unwanted clothes, when were you going to do it?
I store seasonal clothes in suitcases in my loft. That's how I manage with one wardrobe. I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

100% this. I've just had this conversation with my husband, as he's not proactive at getting rid of stuff and the clutter is really starting to get to me. He's quite happy living in mess and seems to struggle to understand why it's such a big deal.

I don't agree with donating personal items like books etc without checking with your partner first.

I'd personally rip the band aid off and just get stuck in for a few hours at the start of your holiday, then you don't have it hanging over you. It's a boring but necessary job.

How long has the "excess of clothes" been there?

Both, in answer to your question. An ex of mine chucked my stuff for similar reasons and over 30 years later I deeply miss some items. But it sounds as though he has a point so perhaps direct his energy to what needs to be done.

You agree it needs doing but say you resent doing it on “his timetable”. Do you actually have an idea of when you are going to do it, or is it one of these jobs that will get done “when you feel like it” or “when I have time” ie could still be waiting to be done at Christmas?

If your husband is asking you to do it, it is probably because the level of “stuff” has an impact on his mental health. if everything was tidy and out of sight/out of the way, it wouldn’t have any impact on him.

You both sound a bit unreasonable. You say you have too much stuff, you don't want him to touch it but you resent being asked to sort it out during your time off.

I don't think it's fair to have it both ways - either let him have at it and you do a check through at the end to rescue anything you want or you sort your own stuff out in a timely fashion.

Living with too much stuff can be exhausting.

Throwing away perfectly good items isn’t “frugal”
YANBU
He can declutter his own stuff, or offer to help you, but he can’t chuck your stuff!

Sounds like you need to clear some of your stuff out. I would be furious if someone did it for me without my permission, but if he keeps asking and you aren't willing to do it I can kind of understand it. Living in a pile of someone else's junk isn't fun.

I missed the bit where the op tossed her books on her dhs lap and said TIDY THEM! how are these examples comparable??

the op doesn’t sound remotely hoardy, I get the vibe she says she has too much stuff because she has to live with a man who comes home every day, walks into a relatively tidy home with a normal level of stuff at most, and shouts I CANT LIVE WITH ALL OF YOUR SHIT IN THE HOUSE LIKE THIS, and she apologises and promises to keep it tidier and to sort things.

They absolutely do. More slowly if they are dried, but nothing organic lasts forever.

I get the vibe she says she has too much stuff because she has to live with a man who comes home every day, walks into a relatively tidy home with a normal level of stuff at most, and shouts I CANT LIVE WITH ALL OF YOUR SHIT IN THE HOUSE LIKE THIS, and she apologises and promises to keep it tidier and to sort things.

Wow, way to extrapolate wildly beyond anything that was actually said.

The OP is the one who has admitted “losing her shit” and “raging” at him for throwing out some books he didn’t think she wanted.

Why didn’t he think she wanted them? They were sitting neatly on a bookshelf. If my dh came home, chose some books from a shelf and binned them I’d be mad too. I think we all have a basic expectation that our neatly away things in the spot they belong will be there when we get home, they aren’t fair game.

I have no idea why he thought she didn’t want them but throwing out some books as a one-off (and apologising afterwards and not doing it again) is still a very long way from your fantasy of him screaming at her daily to throw her shit out.

I think when it’s throwing out out of date spices it indicates you’re a bigger issue than you think uou are. Why have you out of date spices, they last a long time. I mean listen to what you’re saying, you’re arguing about throwing out out of date spices that it needs to be on your time line.

If your husband were recycling your stuff without always checking with you first, would you be pissed off?

Of course. First time, just after we were married or started living together - or later if we'd only just started recycling - I'd accept that he made a mistake. But from then on, the rule would be that we both check everything before it goes to recycling. Should be easy; just create a routine. Unless of course he thinks that he knows better than you and his desires are more important than yours, in which case you have a different and much more serious problem.

She sounds like she is walking on eggshells- constantly apologising for having so much stuff but every example is actually a really moderate amount of stuff. She feels constantly pressured by having to clear out to his timetable or he will be unhappy. She describes him as like his controlling dad. I don’t actually think he comes home and screams every night, that would probably be more obvious to her as unacceptable. I do think she feels under constant pressure to cut back to reduce to get rid to take up less space even though she doesn’t actually have that much stuff.

To me it sounds more like incompatible personalities, he is more minimalist than she is and she is very sensitive to feeling controlled in any way and “sees red” easily, in her own words.

Exactly. They loose flavour, for one thing. Why would you risk ruining a meal for the sake of the price of a packet of spice?

They really don't. They might get slightly less strong but I had to chuck out a load of herbs some of which were a decade old when i moved to France and they were still incredibly potent.

Sorry but that's nonsense. Dried herbs and spices massively lose flavour way before their suggested expiry date - it's why so many serious cooks only buy, say, whole coriander, allspice or nutmeg and grate/crush in a mortar on the day. Similarly for herbs, unless they're frozen with ice cubes.

That said, rhe paprika story is ludicrous. And throwing out somebody else's books massively crosses the line.