How can I get my husband to throw stuff out

[Littlemissdaredevil]

I’m currently on mat leave and I’m noticing how cluttered our tiny two bed box house is. I’m trying to sort through everything and de clutter for my own sanity and also I desperately want to move house and buy somewhere bigger when I go back to work.

Basically my husband won’t throw anything out ever. If I try to throw a pair of pants out he wants to cut it up to use as rags. We have cloths under the sink so we don’t need more rags.

Basically this has all come to a head as we now have a DD who’s cot is in our room and all her clothes are shoved into a box in the airing cupboard as the ‘spare’ room is full of DH’s shit.

I’m fed up as the cupboard under the stairs, the airing cupboard, the eight drawers on the tv cabinet and the spare room is full of his shit. He can’t even fit all his clothes in his drawers yet rufused to throw any out. He has drawers and drawers full of different wires and adaptors for stuff we don’t even own any more.

Whenever I try to get him to sort stuff out he always brings up we need to get rid of the sofa bed in the spare room (I am happy to do this but all his shit in the way) and I have a lot of shoes (I have about 10 pairs in the airing cupboard - whilst he has 3/4 large tents and other camping equipment). I do have quite a few books which are neatly on a bookcase (but DH has started taking up room there). Today I went sort out said book case and there is a whole section with DH’s payslip. There must be hundreds but he won’t let me throw them away. Whenever I bring decluttering up he mention the books and shoes and that I don’t throw them away (I’ve got rid of 50%) but he has 10 x the amount of stuff!

It’s getting to the stage where I fantasise about the house burning down just so all our belongings are gone and we can start again with a nice tidy house. It’s embarrassing as his parents keep buying us stuff which I have to decline as there is simply no where to put it in the house.

How can I get my DH to declutter and throw stuff away. Soon people will be buying or DD toys, etc and there won’t be anywhere for her to play with them or store them

Bin everything underneath the stairs, then when you've done that move onto the spare room and just start bagging stuff up in Black bin bags, when he can see you're serious he'll do something, the only thing I found got my DP's backside in to gear was to keep pushing him until cracked and then he just gave in, don't let him forget he's told you he sofa bed needs to go, remind him the only way to do this is by sorting the whole room! Don't give up!

This quote might help get through to your husband...

The truth is, if you don’t know where it is, can’t get to it because it’s buried somewhere, or have forgotten it altogether, it functionally doesn’t exist anymore. You’ve lost it. You lost it long ago. All you’re holding onto is a spacial and psychic burden.

Challenge him to either tell you what is in certain drawers to prove he hasn't already 'lost' the contents.
Or ask him to locate a certain item. Can't? It's 'lost'

Does he actually know the exact items he has?
The answer will be no. At leat 80% of it will probably be complete rubbish, and he won't be able to find the stuff that isn't. I don't now take any nonsense about "where's my xxxx". "You need to look after it" is my answer.

On one occasion when he was whining about the house being untidy, I walked us both round. "Whose stuff is that?" "And that". He got the message, but it didn't last long.

My DB had a fire recently in an outhouse - it burnt to the ground. It made him realise that he did not need to keep the suitcases with the broken zips, the stereo which no longer worked, his late FILs woodworking tools, which were 'too good to waste' but FIL had been dead for 20 years and no one had used them since. All burnt to a cinder, good stuff with crap.

The truth is, if you don’t know where it is, can’t get to it because it’s buried somewhere, or have forgotten it altogether, it functionally doesn’t exist anymore. You’ve lost it. You lost it long ago. All you’re holding onto is a spacial and psychic burden.

A good one - worth remembering.
It really does pain my DH to sort things out - it really causes him stress, but if only he would put things away the first time! Even DB's fire didn't make him want to tidy up.

Allocate the space you have. Equally. So 4 drawers each. 50% of the wardrobe. 50% of cupboards.

What doesnt fit is either thrown away/donated/sold or he pays for a storage unit out of his own personal money.

It's horrendous living like that. DP had loads of shit at our old house he refused to throw away. When we moved he ended up leaving it to me to sort out as he was booked in for an operation/work/yada yada yada.

I hired a skip and spent all day throwing shit away. The absolute cherry in the cake was when I came to the tent that had cluttered up my airing cupboard for 6 years. Asked what I should do with it as he was very attached to tent. He said to unpack it and check if the poles where in as he wasn't 100% sure if they were.

Everything went in the skip at that point. And he is banned from any family storage space at new house.

Paying for a storage unit? Done that. Money down the drain - it's paying to store rubbish, which should go to the tip, recycling, or the better stuff to charity shops/jumble sales/car boot sales.

I really don't think they see themselves as being selfish, but they are!

I think once we have done the initial shot clearing stage the next stage will be to label the drawers with either my name, his name or DD name so every has equal amount of communal space. Part of the problem is that he has too much personal shit e.g. wetsuits, he may use once a year so they need to go into the loft or he needs to ask a friend with a bigger house if he can keep them. However, things like his tool his sees as family stuff and won’t put them in the shed. I point out to him that all the kitchen stuff is in the kitchen and all the bathroom stuff is in the bathroom therefore items needs to go into the correct room as well.

I can totally sympathise and many times I thought of starting a thread like this.

My DH also buys stuff like there will be a nuclear war tomorrow. We have a large garage and store food there, I'm sure I could feed you all for months! The problem with this is that it does have a logic - you buy in bulk and save money, but it is really getting silly.
Plus now we cannot see all the other stuff that is stored behind it......

He does something similar with clothes - when he finds a shirt/shoes/etc that he likes he'll buy 3 of them 'in case they do not do them anymore later'....

This is definitely a compulsion for him (and not the only one) so I know that if I push too much it will backfire, but it really drives me nuts.

At least with food and clothes you may eventually get the use. But really what use are bags of old emails printed off in triplicate, stuffed in a bag and then stuffed in the garage for 16 years? Or piles of broken bike lights?

I agree Peregrina but the food/clothes is on top of all the other crap. He does not keep broken lights (as far as I know!), but he kept the printer that we had to replace last month, or all the old PC/laptops we ever had........

I totally feel your pain, my DP of 20 odd years is a horrendous hoarder
Over the years I have learnt coping techniques and I’m happy to share and hopefully gain some new strategies!!!
Anyone fancy a Facebook group on this issue ??? 😀
We live in a 3 bedroom smallish house now, we have lived in far bigger
Whatever space we have had, he has filled it with stuff and said things like - if I had more space I’d be able to sort it out, if I had more time etc ...
But when he hasn’t spare time he is more likely to spend it on eBay searching for things he wants rather than sorting out his stuff, no matter how much spac he has, it downstairs matter, it will be filled !!!!!
So I have learnt many strategies
I will share later, as I’m doing tea and it’ll take some time !
Speak later x

But who wants eg cereals or tea bags which have sat in the garage for several months. The food idea doesn’t really working.

I know how you feel. We have just moved to a bigger house and each have our own spare bedrooms rooms for our own stuff / hobbies etc. Im a gamer so in my room there is:

One unit housing several gaming consoles and games
One TV
One Gaming Chair
One beanbag for player 2 / foot rest
A Pile of regularly played board games in the corner
My Camera Bag (I also like photography) and camera tripod

In his room:
Boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes consisting of DVD's purchased but still in their wrappers, random cables / bits, nicknacks.
This weekend there was parcel delvery after parcel delivery. OK some of it was required, but other stuff was just because purchases. I think half of hoarding is also an addiction to purchasing stuff!

Every time I bring up all the tools (there are only so many screwdriver sizez we need), stuff never even used or purchased on a whim all I get in reply is you have three christmas trees. Well yes I do, however one of them is yours, from before we lived together, you didnt like my one so purchased a new one for us and et voila, thats why we have three.

We should start a mumsnet suffering with a hoarder support group

I think half of hoarding is also an addiction to purchasing stuff!

this ^^

I grew up with hoarders. Don't do that to your children.

It isn't about the stuff, it is about him having a mental health disorder. Bring it back to that. Don't push him to stop hoarding, push him to get help. Talk openly about the fact that he is a hoarder. Ask him to get help for his hoarding. It will be causing him anxiety.

I will never ever live with a hoarder. Remembering my childhood in the hoarding world gives me th shivers even now. You are not being unreasonable to have your own MH badly affected by living with a hoarder.

My dp is a little like this and clutter makes me sooooo stressed. So though it might be out of order, I throw stuff out when he's out/asleep. He's never any the wiser.

My husband goes to his shed, manroom, attic to declutter (as promised) and basically shifts everything around and maybe gets rid of one or two items. He's 67. Just redecorated manroom and he's spent afternoon doing this again. I've had enough. I've told him he has one week and then I am going in to dump stuff. He knows I mean it. You are much younger than me. Change things now. Thats my advice. Don't put up with it any longer.

And there's always a use for something I replace and want to throw out!! Not any more! ( assertiveness is good 😊)