House mice and DH

[HugeDeal]

Subject should read “House move and DH !”

We moved to a new house a few weeks ago. Have 3 DCs, all school age, and work full time including shifts and nights. Life is and has been crazy at the best of times. On top of that I am terrible at throwing things away that could still be useful to someone else perhaps. I have not been decluttering the previous home as childcare and life was always getting the better of me and I couldn’t find the energy to do it. Husband believes we could have done this move easier if we had thrown 90% of our things away. The problem is I like to know what gets thrown away, not do it blindly, so I have to go through years of accumulated clutter in a very short period of time. This creates friction and daily arguments with DH who Everything is still in boxes. I feel swamped by all the things that need sorting out in new house and trying each day to find by feet. I should really be taking at least 3 months off work but work won’t allow me. I am having thoughts that if DH bugs me to throw things away one more time, I might just explode and ask for divorce!

Any advice on tidying or tolerating a grumpy DH would be much appreciated.

Hahaha, “I can’t tidy up because of the refugees” is an Olympic-level stretch.

The reason your family throw down bags and shoes and coats and create mess is because of the hoarding. Hoarding is mess that can’t be contained, no matter how much “tidying” (rearranging the mess into new, equally messy configurations) you do. If you have a messy house, DC aren’t going to hang up coats because what difference does it make? Can they even access pegs and shoe cubbies or are they overflowing with too-small coats and obsolete bags that haven’t been disposed of?

You might not be responsible for each plastic toy over 12 years, but you and DH are responsible for not responsibly disposing of them along the way – it’s hard but it’s part of being a parent to regularly declutter to make room for new toys and activities as DC develop so they’re not drowning in mess; to do so in an environmentally responsible fashion, eg charity, eBay, Vinted, the right skip at the tip, so they’re not devastated by the climate impact, etc. If you really gave a hoot about “refugees and poverty”, you’d have been climate responsible about the clutter all along. Refugees isn’t a trump card to play to your DH to win at not decluttering, it’s offensive.

How are the refugees and people in poverty currently benefitting from all the stuff in your house OP?
I took 3 bags of clothes to the Air Ambulance clothes bank yesterday. The children went through their own wardrobes and took out everything that didn’t fit them. Less clutter for me, good quality (but too small for my kids) clothing for them. Win win.

OP you have my sympathy - this is also my life. When I lived by myself I just didn't buy unnecessary crap, and I didn't make mess, so I lived in a lovely calm, tidy home. Now I have kids + husband, they're creating chaos all the bloody time, at a much fast rate than I can tackle it.

Husband is grumpy that I have "corners of doom" full of stuff that needs sorting through. I'm grumpy that I never get a chance to think about that, because every waking minute is taken up by trying to undo the most recent chaos (a lot of which he creates! But if I point that out then I'm "nagging" - another AIBU for another time)

No solutions here. But I think expectations on women to suddenly become experts on this sort of bullshit just because we've birthed a few kids are ridiculous and unreasonable. I have a very difficult and demanding job which I'm very good at. If I were a man with a SAHW then I would be considered incredibly successful.

No expectations on women here to do it all, or to be an expert on it, it’s a joint effort. Kids sort their stuff, husband sorts his, I sort mine.

OP, I've got autistic kids at home too who walk past the coat stand to chuck coats and bags on the floor - i feel you. I also can't chuck stuff wily nily because they can have pretty strong attachments to stuff. And I totally understand about getting distracted by minutae when you're cleaning.

I really really recommend this thing called Tomm Rocks - it's a series of 30 mins walk through of what to do in real time. Totally stops you spending 20 minutes on the base boards or descaling the back of the taps. It was on Patreon.com but I do it on an app. I found some of those podcasts totally useless - it's just people talking about cleaning. Fucking boring - although I'm not a hoarder. I'm not a person who lives to clean either but I want a decent, nice, clean house - which is entirely the point of Tomm. Suits lots of NT people because it's just like a thing called body doubling which I think is v effective for esp people with adhd to keep on track.

Be really honest - are you still project manager, though? Do you think of, install and implement your storage etc? Or does your husband really do 50:50 of the thinking and planning,? Does he do 50:50 when it comes to supporting/encouraging the kids with sorting their stuff? Or does he sort out just his own crap?

No, I am not project manager. We both work full time, so we both take equal responsibility for the house (we split jobs due to skills and preference, eg he does most of the cooking and I do most of the laundry, but we do an equal amount). We both support the children with their decluttering, especially the autistic child, which is just a part of parenting in my eyes.

But also, it’s never really a massive onerous chore that needs project managing, as it just gets done as we go along.

You're getting short shrift here. But I think posters are doing it to try and help.

If your kids have 12 years of toys that were Christmas gifts, that are part of the problem, where are they now? Did the kids empty their packing boxes to get at them? Or are they in boxes still? Also, if those 12 years of toys are still knocking around, whose fault is it? And does it help to blames someone?

The coats and shoes thing. Is there a place coats and shoes are meant to be? Is it roomy enough to accommodate every coat and pair of shoes you all need? If this is the thing that really bothers you, how do you fix it?

I know that modern life does seem to equate to stuff. It's never ending. Kids grow out of shoes and clothes and toys. Part of the process is getting rid of stuff as well as accumulating stuff. You can't have one without the other because as you well know, you end up with too much stuff. So a different approach may be to stop allowing stuff in. With Christmas coming that is not easy. But lots of refugees would be super grateful if their local charity shop was full of toys they could buy cheaply for their children....

Solidarity op. I hope you find the solution.

If you want to help refugees, donate clothes etc to a charity that can raise money for them.
12 years of plastic toys.... surely your kids aren't playing with 12 year old toys from when they were actually babies/toddlers?

As for the kids coming in the house and dumping their things, we'll that's going to happen until you teach them that's not on and they have clear space to put things away properly.

We know it's over whelming but it can be done.

OP probably brought them with her in the hundreds of boxes of shite, to be fair.

Bet this house move was going to solve everything because there would finally be 'room to put everything away' and the only reason things ever got that bad was because the previous house was too small and inadequate for OP's hoarding dreams anybody to ever manage to keep things tidy.

Put it all in a skip.

Set fire to the skip.

I'm only partly joking.

I am like this but I am now on a major decluttering mission since my Mom died and I had to clear her things.
I suggest just doing a box a day and if you drive putting anything for donations in the boot so it's out of the house and you can drop them en route to somewhere.

The thing that's worked for me is to just declutter or sort anything that's easy rather than trying to do it in a logical order or I'd spend so much time 'doing it in the right order' or not doing it because I needed to finish something else before I could get to what I needed to! Starting randomly means you actually get stuff done.

You and your DH take a day off work together, kids at school so no need to deal with them. You each take a room and bin stuff you no longer need. This is the important part. It goes straight out of the house. No arguments, no checking, no wanting to decide later. You have to make quick decisions. No agonising over things.
Even if you can't deal with it all in one day you get a lot done. And don't buy anything on a whim. You need to know the item is something that is actually needed. Not something that might come in handy.

New house, new rules. Introduce housekeeping rules for everyone. Everything in its place and put a donate basket/box in a cupboard. When things are outgrown, no longer needed or used they go here. When basket is full donate or give away. Easier to manage than big clear outs and less storage space needed. Old habits left behind in the old house.

Best wishes for a fresh start in your new home and with clearing the stuff.

OP, I get the overwhelm!

I’m the same in that I was brought up not to be wasteful so only things that are broken beyond fixing get recycled, broken into recyclable components. If someone can use it, it doesn’t go in the bin!

I also try to encourage my DC to tidy by not doing it for them, but that just means it’s always cluttered. DH doesn’t tidy anything away and has no problem leaving his shoes in the middle of the hall. It’s infuriating.

I get a sort of paralysis trying to deal with it because I see the task as Tidy The House (which is impossible), rather than Tidy This Section of This Room. I then get in a fankle because it’s something else I have failed at doing (also a perfectionist 🙋🏻‍♀️) so go and do something I can achieve and get distracted.

What I’ve found works is having specific places to put things. When DCs get in from school they put their shoes in the drawer, hang their coats up on their pegs, packed lunch boxes go next to the sink and bag goes on peg. Every day, without fail. No screens etc until it’s done. Get baskets (something fancy!) to dump stuff in so it at least looks nice until it’s sorted. Everyone can have their own basket. DH has to stop adding to your list. Mine thinks nothing of leaving opened envelopes etc on the side rather than putting them in the bin as he sees it as “the kitchen is a mess so why should I put this in the bin, nobody else does?”. He’s a twat. Same with tumble drier fluff. Instead of thinking “I’ll do a little bit” he’s adding to the overwhelm. Your DH also has to live in the house with all the stuff that is driving him mad that you have effectively banned him from dealing with. Get him to help. Part of the process of de-cluttering is disposing of things so there will be some boxes you can whizz through that can just go. Tell him which ones and get him to take them to the dump/charity shop etc. Once he’s been shown which ones he can deal with, they are no longer your responsibility. If he doesn’t do it then that’s on him, it is no longer your problem.

Work out how you are going to get rid of things. Charity shop (you may have a larger, drive-up one you can take a car load to), clothes collection people (£/kg places), FB (give yourself a time limit before it gets taken to the tip), Vinted etc. Small batches of stuff at a time. There will be free stuff FB groups and someone always wants a picture frame/grater/set of mugs.

You are not responsible for solving poverty. The value of the contents of your house will not solve poverty. Stop keeping things to help other people. Put yourself first. Once your house is sorted then you can get back to worrying about them!

If you’ve just moved in, you can use it as a blank canvass to get all your organisation/specific places for specific items put in place from the start so you’ve got good foundations. It’s a continuous battle that you can stay on top of rather than conquer. You’ll never have an Insta tie house (those people aren’t real!) but you can have a nice house that doesn’t take too long to make it look lovely.

Ignore the “JUST THROW THINGS OUT!” Brigade. They don’t get it.

And they will always blame the children.

Will still be blaming the children when they're 50, too. Even when a significant proportion of any difficulty they may cause will be due to feeling disregulated due to the sheer volume of visual noise shrieking at them everywhere they look.

From personal experience, I fully believe that hoarding should be regarded as a type of abuse, coercion and control over others due to the psychological and physical harm it does them.

OP if you haven’t declutterred for 12-years that’s a sign there’s a problem.

OP do you have a very large house? I'm wondering how you have managed to keep 12 years worth of toys?

I think you should delegate, for example tell the children to put all the toys they don't play with in a box and give it to charity.

Small children normally grow out of their clothes every year. Do you also have all their clothes from all these years?

Just to add, many people don't deal with the hoard because there is always a reason not to. So, they will mend something, they will keep it just in case, they will at some point in the future sort it all, it has sentimental value despite being broken. They just won't get down to it and sort it today. My late husband was a hoarder, and it was always going to happen at some point in the future, but it didn't. And he kept buying stuff, even when it was unnecessary.

Your logic is quite tipsy turvy. Some of those refugees might actually benefit from good quality stuff that you don't need any more if you donated it but if you keep hold of it, it's not being useful to anyone.

So you actually packed all this crap up and moved with it?
That's insane; that was the time to get rid.

She hasn't said she can't get rid of things. She said she doesn't want to throw it away.

If Stacey Solomon is on Mumsnet - you’re needed 😁

Alot of hoarders who don't accept they are hoarders say this, but then always find an excuse not to sort it out.