Had a baby with a hoarder but I can’t cope anymore with him moving in.

[Onetwothree45]

We have been together 3 years and have a 6 month old. We lived in separate houses. His house was always a mess and full to the brim. I then got pregnant and he has moved into my house. His house is going to be rented.

I can’t cope anymore every drawer and cupboard is getting filled with things he has never used or did 15 years ago. He brings empty packages and rubbish. He won’t sort through and organise anything. I can’t put his clothes away as his drawers are full of crap like memorabilia or wires and old tablets etc. He has clothes from childhood in them when he’s 33 now. There is shit absolutely everywhere. He keeps going to charity shops and car boots and getting more when his house is probably only 30% empty. He gets quite angry when I put my foot down. We’ve got 5 bookshelves full of dvds now and several drawers. So nothing can be put in them.

I can’t cope anymore and have been crying all morning. He’s thrown a strop and filled up his car and taken a load back to his house. I can’t see this working. I’m really unhappy and don’t like being in my house. The baby will be crawling soon so it’s dangerous. Every time I speak to him he has an excuse or say Im just moaning again. It’s never going to end we will be surrounded by rubbish.

He got upset yesterday as I threw away a chocolate fish that was 6 years out of date but he wanted to keep it as a memento.

It’s miserable with only 10% and it’s not really that bad. I just don’t like mess. I could live with it but it’s the other 90% that’s worrying and the fact it grows. I can’t live with the stuff. It’s been on my mind a bit. It’s decided for me now that I’ll be so overwhelmed if it all came. I’ve tried to ignore it but I can’t. I hate mess. His parents have said I’m a bit snobbish. It’s not that it’s just a want a nice house I feel happy in and that the children are safe to play in. I’d be happy if it stayed in the shed but from reading what people have wrote it will make its way inside even if it got sorted. It’s the act of buying and finding cheap and free things he enjoys. I can see he gets a thrill from it. Then gets attached because he can think of a use. I bloody hate tat.

The Hoard will never get sorted and will never stop growing. You are correct that the acquisition of stuff gives him a high. See how he justifies it by finding a potential use for an item, but it will never be used. It is the having of stuff that is important, not the use.

Hoarding is far more complex than describing it as mess. He does not regard it as mess or rubbish and attaches a lot of importance to it. It has become an integral part of him.

If you can’t live with it you surely cannot want your children to be able to live with it either. You can’t fix him and being with him does not help you either. You’re actively being dragged down by him and I do not think you know him half as much as you think you do.

His primary relationship is with his hoard, it is not with you and it’s never been with you either. Would urge you now to put both yourself and your kids first and love your own self for a change. You’re also confusing love with codependency. The poster also who wrote about you being mired in the sink costs fallacy is also correct.

Hoarding is a full time job spent acquiring other people's junk, hauling it home then cramming it in.
Every part of daily living is a nightmare just to make a cuppa your stepping over and round the hoard which eventually will cut off entire rooms.
bathrooms become full so having a bath involves emptying it of junk then decanting endless toiletries before you can even start.
It's impossible to do maintenance or even get tradesmen in as no one will work in those conditions.
Rodents are almost inevitable due to hoarded food and safe runs where they are not disturbed by traps or poison as it can't be accessed.
It's definitely a mental illness and when hoarders are shown the 'scale of hoarding' photographs they generally scale down which number they think they are at.

The children don’t currently know what is stuffed in the garage or shed or in his drawers. It’s not in the spaces that they have access to being small. Apart from the spare back room, which they don’t go in as just dvds and a sofa bed and drawers (the stuffed ones) But I understand what you are saying once it spreads and the rest comes (which it won’t as I’ll loose my sanity).

It’s not as bad as people are talking about. There are no piles to the sky or full bathrooms or walk ways or rooms not being used or accessible etc. His bathroom was empty and kitchen. I appreciate it could get that way if left over more decades. He definitely has the potential.

Hoarding is a metal illness. Get him out. NOW.

It's good that's not taken over everything already but as long as the bring it in/ throw it out balance is skewed your working towards a hoard.
most of us naturally replace stuff we've thrown away
Hoarding also sneaks up on you in ways you hardly notice eg shelves and windowsills have a few treasured ornaments displayed easy to keep clean and nice to look at. Gradually more and more stuff builds up until it's crammed and toppling over because however much a hoarder has they're seeking out more.

You have witnessed his anger when you ask him to get rid of even one item.

Sorry, every video I have seen featuring hoarders, each and every hoarder has become angry when asked to reduce the hoard by even one thing.

An integral aspect of this very severe illness.

Anger, outrage, fury.
They do not like to throw anything out.
They do not like to be challenged.

You're still trying to rationalize things, OP.

“His parents have said I’m a bit snobbish”. No, you just don’t want your house to be taken over. To use the mumsnet jargon, they could be gaslighting you, it seems they are slyly trying to make you accept the unacceptable. Be wary of them.

I’’m no expert, so this could be way off the mark, but here goes anyway.

The reason it’s not as bad as people are saying is not that his hoarding isn’t that severe. It’s because he hasn’t yet had the time to fill every available space. Give him time, and he will. The hoard will grow to fill the available space, to the rafters, and beyond.

As a collector (hoarder in modern jargon) I don't think it is - its a problem if you are collecting bin liners of rubbish or old newspapers, but otherwise it's collecting, its only because many people have gone minimal that they don't like it. I love living in a house full of the interesting, all manner of designs and forms, variation on themes, examples of mans creativity. It's a visual feast - and interesting too.
The wife was truly amazed the other day, when after watching Chernobyl she said, well thats something you havn't got a part of in the loft - she was right, but only just, because I did get out a soviet dosimeter which was never deployed in the accident but part of the reserve stocks held in Kiev (as it then was), brilliant!!

Dear God, your house sounds terrifying. The visual noise would be overwhelming with all that shit screaming at people from every angle.

But the visual noise as you call it is the point, who wants plain, I need to be visually entertained, I don't really want pale walls and simple uninteresting furniture, lots of interesting stuff and victorian gothic furniture for me - If you want to see the wonder of one mans collection, visit the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford.

What's your wife's view on this?

@tonyatotter having interests, quirks and collections is fine. It’s the collecting of old worn out shoes, glass water bottles, newspapers, cans of spray paint, cider bottle tops, the ring pulls off cans, plastic packaging and egg boxes is really not so stimulating to look at. I get for example the collection of blue bottles as he was intending on building a wall using them but mostly it’s literally waste. I also can’t stand the trinkets from charity shops or the 500 ties for work.

A lot of his problem is that he gets bored of that particular collection and moved on so the collections are vast but not too big a lot of the time. It’s the sentimental stuff he has the most hard time sorting. Hell he has a hard time with everything. I don’t think he has a single item of anything in his home.

Luckily because I’m at home and he is at work he no longer is really dealing with the kitchen so he doesn’t save any of that kind of stuff anymore. We are safe with packaging now! It must be so stressful having to think you need to save it all. Whatever packaging I have I rip up so it’s of no use. He is also kept too busy on jobs in the garden to give him the brain time to worry about hoarding any household stuff. We’ve used all the cleaning and food hoard though he does tend to hoard in the freezer. He just can’t stop buying useless crap like a window vacuum or a spa for the bath. It’s gets shelved and that’s it!

You're still fixated on him sorting his hoard out.

He's not going to.

I’m just saying what’s been happening. Not going forward what will happen. I’m not sorting it, well I am I’m taking boot full back to his for him to deal with.

So you truly believe he'll sort it and throw things away?
Come off it.

Hoarding is now a diagnosable mental health condition. I think you need to take him out of the house away from the things and explain to him very factually that you understand that these things are important to him (because they are even if it's irrational) but that there is too much in the house now for it to be safe for dd. Then tell him that he needs to make a decision, he either lives elsewhere or he gets support from the gp and therapy. I'd recognise that it probably makes him feel very anxious and maybe even afraid to think of doing that and I'd say you want to be a support to him and you care about him, but you both have to put dds needs above your own right now because you're both her parents and she deserves to grow up in a house with room to play safely and that's not something that you as her parent can compromise on. Then I think he needs to make a decision.

Do you have any extended family or friends who could help you with childcare? Or could you move to a cheaper property that you can afford by yourself? Or would he be willing to pay towards dds childcare since he's still her parent regardless of where he's living?

Ultimately he has to accept he has a problem and be prepared to make a change which will likely be extremely out of his comfort zone. But you have to do what's right for you and your kids first and foremost, then you can think about supporting him just maybe from afar.

No he won’t but he’s going to have a hard choice. To be with his family or his possessions. To have to pay the mortgage and bills on both houses or sort it out. I guess we we see then just how big the problem is because it’s not coming here. I guess if it carries on too long what with my maternity leave coming to an end in August and not being able to work the shifts I have done I’ll have to tell him to live there so I can claim. I guess the best of a shit situation and not what I expected to happen.

If and a big If he does something about this (not just rent storage and move it) I don’t mind the stuff coming that is actually of use. Eg all the camping stuff, paddle board etc. But then like others have said he will most probably just re-hoard. Then we will end up in arguments because I do often Chuck what he brings in the bin. The other days I took a load to the charity shop and he hast noticed.

I don’t want years of the same argument and having to sneak around disposing stuff though. I’ll just loose it with him which I have nearly and that gets me nowhere but feeling crap myself as he just thinks I’m the shouting irrational one then.