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He got upset yesterday as I threw away a chocolate fish that was 6 years out of date but he wanted to keep it as a memento.

My father was like your partner OP, a huge garage and workshop full of thousands of tools and ‘stuff that might come in handy’ like broken kettles, lengths of electrical wire and hundreds of unopened packets of screw, nails etc.
When my parents moved nearly 70 years ago he brought with him 25 years worth of old magazines and papers - we had to clear three cupboards full of mouldering paper. It was grim.
My mother used to say that we would have fun sorting it all out. It was fun, easy or cheap when they died and the results of over 80 years of ‘collecting’ needed dumping.
Absolutely nothing of any value but a small fortune had been wasted buying it all.
My grandfather used to go to sales and auctions and buy job lots of anything going. He too must have squandered so much money too. Rarely was there anything of any use.

He doesn’t have so much trouble with that. It’s the things like an old theme park ticket or restaurant menu he visited.

What does he say when you press him on these and point out they should be thrown away?

Does he acknowledge there is absolutely no sense in keeping them?

Or does he give a 'reason' that justifies doing so in his mind?

I only ask to see if he would be remotely interested in seeking help for this.

Wasn’t fun, easy or cheap Ffs!

Can a hoarder not put memories in a memory box together. So tickets to days out that meant something is it not ok to go in the box along with say keyrings from holiday or other little keepsakes. I have a box I put things in I want to remember .Does everything need to be just put in a drawer and mixed up with bills and cables etc. I’m not saying the things that are his memories need to go. Is his brain a mess like the stuff?

A lot of his stuff is useful but it’s everywhere.

You must really love him. I hope your daughter has a refuge when all his crap will eventually take up all the space in her home. After all, she didn't have a say in him moving in.

Yeah I'm out too. OP still seems to think that if he moves in with a minimal amount of organised stuff then that'll be enough and everything will be fine. I pity yours kids OP. They're in for a tough time watching their home fill up with his crap.

@monsteramunch I haven’t asked him to throw away his actual memories. It’s the worn out shoes and that, and he has trouble with that because he thinks they still have life. Which if you lived in poverty and had one pair of shoes then yeah they’d cover your feet but he had over 20 worn out ones. I’ve said let’s go through drawer by drawer and put it all in piles so can store the memories and bin them rubbish. But he says they rubbish (in my eyes) still has use. It often does but we don’t need it or have duplicates.

Thanks @Elliania but that won’t happen. I’d rather dispose of it all and him in that instance. As I’ve said it won’t be coming. I’m quite happy to open the door and throw it out. Or take to his parents and say it’s your problem. I’ve made my mind up the stuff isn’t coming. My mum has taken another boot load this morning to the charity shop and he can accept it or leave.

And that's fine OP but what about the stuff he's going to accumulate in the future? What's your plan there? Are you going to stop him at the door everytime he comes home? Are you going to watch the shed, garage, drawers and everything else like a hawk to check there's no new stuff? Because that's what it'll take if he moves in. I couldn't live like that.

That's your answer then really OP I'm afraid.

He doesn't see this problem for what it is.

He doesn't want to change.

His lifestyle is simply not compatible with that of a non hoarder or a child, therefore he cannot live with you.

If you want to stay in a relationship with him then he needs to go home and live separately.

If you don't want to be in a relationship where you live separately, you need to end the relationship.

For your children's sake as he will not change, the hoard will only grow back if you do manage to periodically cull it, and they will have to live in an environment that is chaotic at best at dangerous at worst.

I do appreciate that due to your little one's age and the issues with sleep etc you're on your knees and probably too exhausted to face this.

If it was another issue with him I might say wait it out until you are less reliant on him for support with the sleep etc but the problem with his issue being hoarding is that every week that passes is another week the hoard potentially encroaches further on your space.

And if by some miracle he does clear his old place enough to rent it out, enough of the shit from that place will have moved to yours and the job of getting him out again will be even harder.

I really feel for you, you're in an incredibly tough spot. Hoarding is one of the most difficult addictive behaviours in a way as it's tempting for people without experience of it to think they can sensibly reason with a hoarder and make them see sense.

But it's like telling an alcoholic to just have two drinks and not more or telling a drug addict to only shoot up once a day and not more. Logic and reason don't work. He would need to go home, have some serious therapy and work on himself individually to address these behaviours.

But he won't I'm afraid

It’s not like his home is not there to move back to if anything like that happened. A lot of people couldn’t live with a person with chronic fatigue and an abusive ex who won’t go away either. No one is perfect. Yes I know about hoarding. I’m not saying he will be staying here.

I think people are trying to be supportive of you OP and it's maybe coming across as an attack on you when actually it's because they know that the longer he does stay with you, the more this becomes a problem directly impacting you.

You really need to stop the wheels turning on anything to do with renting / selling his place. He will need to go back there at some point because he won't change this behavior.

And he will just end up transferring loads of shit from there to yours. Even if he was to get rid of 70% of the shit, the remaining 30% will still be coming to yours with him and it will simply grow over time. He will fill whatever space is available.

A hoarder cannot put memories in a memory box in the same way that an alcoholic cannot have just one beer.

sorry @Onetwothree45 your partner has a compulsion to collect things. This is how he is. It is possible that with commitment and hard work (on his part) he might be able to control this behaviour. But you cannot manage him out of it; that’s the same as thinking you can cure heroin addiction by nagging someone.

If you want to stay with him, send him to live at home and make it a condition that he gets professional help. I’m not sure there is a prospect of him ever being well enough to be able to live with you. But with treatment and his own space to live in, he may be able to have a steady relationship with you all, without disrupting your home. Take some time to consider if this is what you want.

Hoarding is extremely difficult to treat even with professional help and this man is in a process of churning. OP has now got her mother involved in taking his stuff to charity shops; she should not have to be doing that at all.

You think there is no way out; there is always a way out but you cannot have a relationship with him and without his hoard; it is and will be ever present in his life. Its that important to him and furthermore he does not think his hoard as rubbish or tat.

Does he know some of his hoard has been carted off?

He had bought so much Lego for my daughter who doesn’t like Lego and she said she didn’t want it plus other things he’d bought she didn’t want so they have gone now. She wanted space in her toy area for her new birthday Toys. If I gave him a choice he would have garaged them.

I know I sound like a broken record but I’ve genuinely never experienced hoarding or realised the mental side of it.

Where does the problem lie? Is it not being able to throw away because everything has a use or the constant need to buy stuff that you don’t need. For example he buys stuff like the spa bubble thing for the bath and the window hoover which are absolutely pointless. Can he not walk past stuff and think I don’t want to buy that. I dread walking past peoples houses who have free to take because he almost always finds something he can use.

I understand the mental anxiety of keeping as they get attached but not the buying. What does keeping buying do?

Mind have some resources about hoarding:

https://www.mind.org.uk/media/12454/hoarding-2022.pdf

But the crux of the matter is that without intensive, ongoing therapy with a very willing participant, it's an all encompassing addiction like any other.

But in some ways even more difficult to deal with I guess as you can't be the equivalent of teetotal / sober / clean when it comes to owning things or buying things - you have to own or buy things periodically to function.

I really think that him moving back into his own home is the only way to stop his issue becoming your issue and even worse, your child's issue.

She will end up living in chaos with a mum incredibly stressed out by her stepdad and it is unfair to her completely

Hoarders giving stuff to people who didn’t request or want it is hoarding by proxy.

He tried to involve your daughter in his hoarding.

I couldn't live like that. I would personally be throwing things away and not telling him which probably would cause issues in itself.
Encourage him to seek help. His family depends on it.

@Onetwothree45 , you get a sense of security when buying/acquiring something. You then hang on to it because you thought it worth owning.

"I understand the mental anxiety of keeping as they get attached but not the buying. What does keeping buying do?" There's no 1 answer - everyone's reason for hoarding is different becuase everyone's experiences and mental health are different. It's not as easy as "If I fix this issue it'll go away." The reasons he likes acquiring Stuff are going to be unique to him. There's lots of possibilities - it's not really something anyone other than him can tell you. And he's too unwell to be that introspective about himself because he can't see it's a problem.

OP, many books have been written on the psychology of hoarding.
I can recommend STUFF by Randy O. Frost.

Hoarding is akin to addiction and is related to OCD.

It is nigh-on impossible to treat. Hoarders do not view possessions in the way that-non hoarders do.

You are trying desperately to apply logic to his actions. Your logic. You see old shoes, valueless. He sees an extension of himself. His logic is not yours.

It's like trying to persuade someone to have a limb amputated unnecessarily.
You will not succeed.

There's a book called DIRTY SECRET by Jessie Sholl. She describes her life, growing up with her hoarder mother. Her life, knowing that her mother will always choose the hoard over her daughter.

When you are doing the maths OP don't forget to take into account the sunk cost fallacy.