Hoarding DH - At the end of my tether (Long)

[Eatriskier]

Before I launch into the bad stuff, I should say that DH is a generally a lovely and very honest man. He doesn't abuse me in any way, he would barely say boo to a goose and he is a wonderful father to our two young DC. But he has a hoarding issue.

Now, I have always known he has had a tendency towards this. Its always been an problem between us. When we bought our first home together he promised he wouldn't fill it with crap especially as its a small home and I was due our first DC. He agreed to an area he could fill and that it was all he had and he wouldn't encroach anywhere else - he promised to scale down and not buy more.

Unsurprisingly he has massively stuffed this, a large part of our living room, the garage, the loft and half our bedroom with crap. Crap is harsh, some of it is useful but for the main its not useful nor necessary. In massive rows he's promised to get rid but he just boxes stuff up, moves it to a storage locker (which is now pretty much full) and then slowly fills it all back up or buys a new piece of furniture/storage to absorb the stuff.

I can't move all the items of storage and junk to clean properly, my house is becoming filthy. I am ashamed of my own home, I won't invite anyone in. I cannot live like this anymore. I've told DH loads that I am at the point where the kids and I are going to have to leave. He still won't do anything.

He promised me that in a couple of weeks, as he has some time off work, he would sort it. We had a discussion where he promised not to buy more storage (he has hoard of empty storage boxes!!!!) and he would actually get rid, not just move. Then today a load of storage arrived. He said it was to move some of the stuff out.

I'm afraid I lost it and told him to take his stuff and GTFO, his young family aren't going to live like this anymore. His response? He's not leaving his house. Not that he didn't want his family apart, not that he didn't want our marriage to end, but that he wouldn't leave his house and things (which he still didn't say when I called him out on it).

So here I am, whilst he is driving off to storage squeezing more crap into it despite promising yet again he wasn't going to do that and knowing he won't fully empty the furniture so I can't get rid of it and he will refill it with crap again, knowing that the crap means more to him than his wife and kids.

What on earth do I do now? I don't really want to leave and take the kids, but I can't have them living like this, learning this or growing up mortified by their parents and home.

I feel for you, OP. I've sent you a PM, hope that's OK.

Several of my close family members are hoarders. One of them, who is self-aware enough about it to try to tackle the problem, had a kind of breakdown after getting rid of a lot of her stuff. She found it so terrifying -she said that it left her 'exposed', and said that the things she hoards protect/cushion her in some way. She regretted all of the 'special' treasures that were lost, it was as though she had discarded parts of herself . She now has as much stuff again. I'm just saying, I would not personally take it upon myself to get rid of a hoarder's things, but it must be so difficult to live with. Perhaps you could divide the home strictly into 'family house' and his space?

It sounds horrendous. No number of ultimatums will make any difference except to get him to move out stuff, thus creating space that he can fill with more stuff. He needs therapy.

Regardless of what he says, if you split up he can be made to move out.

If that happens he can either take his stuff with him or you can throw it out.

Hoarding is a symptom of mental health issues (sorry if that's been made clear already).
It did used to be classed as an OCD issue but more recent thinking has linked it to depression and personality disorder. Hey ho, it is what it is, whatever that may be.
The impact on the families however, is grossly underestimated and under-researched, as even the replies show. Constant gathering and collecting and storing is EXHAUSTING, by anyones standards.
Been there, and sadly worn the t shirt, on 2 sides of my family.
My tips?
I am ruthless.
You're depressed? Get help. Meanwhile, I'm clearing this shit. Wholesale. I've yet to find a Faberge egg, despite protestations.
I've burned, binned, skipped, scrubbed, dumped and cleared tonnes of rubbish. I've yet to find anything worth an Antiques Roadshow visit.
I still love you, but at least now we can have a cup of tea from a clean cup.
Most dastardly, me.

I should add, yy to the prowling and and looking for things, I am immune.
That keyring from 1978? WTF are you talking about? Seriously?
I'm still blamed in one house (relations) for screenwash that went missing after I filled a one tonne skip.
I laugh politely and delight in the minimalist and delightful kitchen that took the place of the previous hellhole one.

You might find this site useful, whatever you decide to do. It also offers help to families of hoarders.

www.helpforhoarders.co.uk/

If you remove his stuff without his permission, he will never forgive you. And will probably leave you. Or more likely, have you booted out of the house so he can move all his stuff back in.

To hoarders, possessions are more important than people. You've seen evidence of that already.

You'll have to like it or lump it. It's a mental health issue and no amount of therapy will permanently change him.

Database as in .... a database ?

Or is that just a metaphor ?

I used to hoard paperwork (not to this extent) - to me they were triggers for happy memories, so every time I tried to go through them, I just sat lost in the past, and decided to keep them.

Until I started a list of what I was throwing away, and then threw most of the actual stuff away.

As to magazines, I used to have a year's set of one of the gardening mags, and still have a year's set of BBC Food mag ( which I go through 'for ideas' sometimes). I no longer buy magazines, at my age I've read it all before...

Since the advent of the internet, and especially google (am old gimmer) I am fine but messy, as for me my stuff divided into memory joggers (to prove I was young once!) and information.

It takes empty space to sort stuff out - how on earth would he do it, when all the space is already filled?

My own case was mild and not pathological; I agree with other posters that without outside help he is unlikely to change even if he wants to. Living apart, as someone upthread says, sounds like one option if you want to remain partners.

I don't think throwing away all his stuff will solve anything except entrench his desire to hoard and cause more anxiety. He needs professional help, if he is not willing to see that his hoarding is seriously affecting his marriage and family then I think you should seperate for your own sanity. Also he is tuning you out as you have threatened seperation for so long he doesn't seriously believe you when you tell him things must change.

I think would be an absolute deal breaker for me. I can lead towards hoarding useful stuff as well, but ironically I also have a huge need for neatness and order and space, so my 'useful possessions' are regularly culled, catalogued, neatly re-boxed, labelled and organised. They have to be out of sight in a spare room, or a huge cupboard, loft, etc and the minute they started to encroach on my daily living space they would be out of the door like a shot. I'm a huge believer in the 'one thing in, one thing out' methodology. It must be unbelievably stressful for you to live like this, especially if you don't have the luxury of a big house.

You need to set him small targets, a room at a time. He probably feels completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. It's not just the physical task, it can be very hard for people emotionally/mentally to prioritise about what to let go.

Go through the things with him and get his to agree to cull 50% in each area. Or perhaps start doing it by stealth when he is not there - chances are he would not even notice, and by the time he did, he would not even be able to plae exactly what has gone, which will tell you all you need to know about how useful/valuable it was!

Then perhaps give him the loft, or the garage, perhaps spend some money on having it properly lined and boarded with a pull-down staircase, a racking system, whatever, lighting etc and he must agree to keep it tidy and organised or you will hire a skip one day while he is out.

Or could you build a dedicated storage room in the garden, but only on the strict condition that he removes EVERYTHING from the living areas of the house, and that the garage is reserved for strictly car/tools/garden type stuff?

I am not trying to enable him, BTW - if his problem is so serious that he is holding onto completely pointless crap then he needs a gentle but firm hand.

But if you can see a use/need/value for much of it then perhaps you could meet one another halfway but have a sort of contract in place that he knows he cannot breach. If he does, you walk.

Oh dear, sorry I've just re-read your OP and realised that he already regularly moves things back and forth from an off-site storage locker.

OK. forget what I said above. It's clearly too late for that.

Ultimatum time. Take photos of your house and garage etc and tell him you are going to post them on here and ask for people's opinions on whether they think it is an acceptable way to live, and the act of a rational, reasonable person. Start throwing stuff each and every time he is out. Remove it from the house completely so he cannot take it back in.
If he realises what you are doing and has an aggressive/defensive reaction to it then tell him you need him to leave immediately. Get the locks changed when he is out and enlist the help of friends/family to clear the house safely while he is gone.

Then tell him he is welcome to come home if he agrees to abide by your conditions, which are that he sticks to a well-organised loft OR garage OR storage unit, but not all three, and nothing AT ALL other than genuine essentials encroaching on the living space.

If he cannot comply then you are going to have to divorce him.

Yes, database as in database. So getting rid of just one book is a task of herculean proportions of his own making. He often expresses regret at wasting his money on stuff but keeping it does change matters.

Unsurprisingly I've come down this morning to find yes, he's emptied a lot of the books into boxes and boxes into storage but as I suspected he's arranged what is left to prevent the cupboards being removed, and therefore enable him to refill. This isn't going to happen. This house is going to be a family only house in the communal areas. It's a hard line for me to take especially as I adore books but he obviously can't cope with just some. He made a massive point about me keeping a box set of narnia in case the kids want it later. Because my one box set is the problem. And he didn't like it when I took it and just put it away in my wardrobe.

I don't think he will acknowledge anything until his parents withdraw that locker. And I can't see that happening anytime soon.

I confess to being untidy, but my parents are hoarders. They won't accept help from my sister or I (incidentally I think both my sisters are hoarders too, although one seems to be dealing with things lately) we are currently in the position that social services are stepping in to help my elderly parents.

Perhaps you could divide the home strictly into 'family house' and his space?

She did that already, he just ignored it. The thing is OP that you do not have to live like this. His needs do not trump yours just because he has a mental health illness.

You're depressed? Get help. Meanwhile, I'm clearing this shit.

I think that this might be the way to go until he agrees to talk about it with you. He is stonewalling you and treating you with massive disrespect.

At the moment he is not making any compromise and expects you to just put up with it. This means that you and your children cannot live a normal life, having friends over and arranging your home so the you can live in comfort. And everyone agrees it will just get worse.

It does sound as if his hoarding issues are perhaps being used to control you to an extent. His reaction to your boxed set of Narnia being a case in point. Why is his "stuff" more important than yours?

My XH was abusive on many levels and he was also a hoarder. When I finally had taken enough and insisted he move out, his "stuff" filled a lounge, breakfast room, 2 bedrooms, garage, 3 outbuildings and 2 container storage units - and I'm not counting the general detritus that had accumulated in hallways, on surfaces and things that just made everyday living sheer hell (having to clear space to clean the floor to enable the ironing to be done without the clothes becoming dirty, for example).

He delayed clearing his stuff for more than 3 months so i hired skips. 3 skips of "stuff" disposed of by me forced him to hire another storage unit for the remainder of his treasure before I sent it to landfill. A few months later when the cost of his containers began to bite, he disposed of all of it to save money. *All of it". Which made me re-assess the past 25 years of living with his crap in a new light.

I now believe that he did it because he could avoid consequences - I lived with it, made attempts to tidy and organise it and paid for it, thus enabling him. Once the responsibility for his "stuff" was entirely his, he decided it wasn't important after all. Go figure.

I'm still not convinced that he consciously used his hoarding as a means of abuse, but it impacted so devastatingly on our family life for so many years that it was undoubtedly selfishly abusive on his part towards the rest of us.

After that rant, I guess that my experience is that you cannot change hoarding. You have to decide whether you want to live your life the way you are currently, or if you deserve better. He may be a great husband in many ways but his hoarding is clearly impacting negatively on your quality of life and for whatever reason, he is unable or unwilling to change to improve your situation. Ultimatums are no good in these situations unless you are prepared to carry through - you know this already. I send my heartfelt sympathy to you and your children for the lifestyle inflicted on you.

Eat

I'm sorry to open old ground but I think that understanding your own part in this relationship is going to be important to you and the DCs. You said somewhere on the thread that you had an alcoholic ex: what did you get out of this current relationship when you entered into it?

You also mentioned, very briefly, something about your 3 year old acting up recently - if I recall. How are the children actually reacting among all of this?

As the child of a hoarding father who I now have no contact with I am posting to ask you please to give leaving more consideration.

Being treated as though useless crap is more important than you is very damaging to a child. I felt like we (the children) were gradually being erased and replaced with this crap and actually that is what happened. That is what my dad was doing, erasing everything but the crap from his life because he cared about the crap above anything else.

He was also angry and abusive and controlling. My mum let me have a cupboard to keep aromatherapy oils in when I was a young teenager. I had to have a good reason for being allowed any space which is ridiculous in itself - the reason was that she'd suggested I look into aromatherapy as a way of feeling better as was depressed and had been ill with glandular fever. He had agreed but only a few weeks later was angrily removing my things and shouting at me that I had never had permission to put things in his cupboards. He also gradually removed all our books from the room meant for them with much anger about us even having books and gradually removed our toys, eventually allowing us one small room in the damp, asbestos filled cellar of their 3 floor six bedroom detached Edwardian villa. We could not play with anything without him seeing our stuff as a threat to his and getting angry.

It's horrible, he won't change, if you stay you will have to constantly be throwing away his stuff for him and dealing with his rages about you doing that and your children will grow up feeling unloved.

I could never deal with how my mum didn't defend us against my dad. Please don't minimise the importance of what you've discovered - the stuff means more to him than his family.

I would clear it all out along with him once and for all tbh.

He broke my stuff when he removed it too. I had candles and stuff in there. I was so upset.

I am definitely considering leaving him. Not yet. I will give him another chance as he is doing something and I plan to totally rearrange our house so he has no cupboards. He can have the same amount of storage as me - namely a wardrobe, a small chest of drawers, an underbed storage box and a storage box in the loft. If it doesn't fit in then it will go. He has a fricking storage locker and I don't care if it's reaching capacity or not.

We rowed again this morning. He just blocked me with its all going today but no promises that he won't just fill it up again. We rowed because I looked in the cupboards and discovered that all those boxes he had removed had only cleared 2 shelves. I didn't realise there was that much in there, just how bad it had gotten. I'm so thankful I got annoyed before the cupboards collapsed.

He won't be allowed to do it again. If it makes him depressed or unhappy then he knows where the door is. My kids won't be put at risk.

A database, I really think he needs help, maybe it is too much for him to actually stop.

What kind of stuff does he hoard? Does it ever come in useful?

OP - I honestly don't think he will get better. If you watch the hoarders type programmes then you will see that the hoarders get worse not better and that they can only change if they really want to change. It is a mental health issue linked to OCD and if you throw his stuff out it could get really nasty. He has an emotional and anger/fear reaction to losing his stuff and will lash out (and then immediately replace it).

I think you have to assume that he will not change and act accordingly. Sorry.

btw my uncle would go through the bins pulling rubbish back out after we had tried to clear stuff and I cleared fifteen bin bags (no exaggeration, literal truth) from his medium sized bathroom when he was in hospital a few years ago.

I absolutely could not live with this, under any circumstances.

If I was in this position, I would allocate him 1 space, say a small room, study, garage, something like that (you say he already has an allocated space) and say to him that in two weeks time anything of his that is not in that room will be going in a skip.

and then carry out your threat.