Throwing away your packrat SO's junk, behind their back

In My Humble Opinion
21

See, in a normal house I agree with that. The dilemma shows up when it’s not a normal house.

But what if you have talked about it honestly, you have expressed your need for a somewhat orderly home, and nothing has happened? Those credit card receipts from the past 15 years are still sitting there on the nightstand, because the SO has a serious problem that she won’t deal with?

Then, I think, the lack of respect is on the other side. If you’re forcing your SO to live in squalor because you refuse to deal with your problems, don’t be surprised when resentment, anger, and eventual breakup happens.

22

Obligatory link to self-help book that deals with this problem.
I have read that book. It suggests talking to your partner, rather then the stealth throw-way method. The way to go is to envision together what your life should look like, what activities you want to do and where to do them. Then, each room gets assigned a function. Then, all stuff that needs to be in a room to support that function gets to live there; everything that doesn’t, should go.
To make that easier, you have to distinguish between “lazy clutter” (old papers you never got around to throwing away) and sentimental clutter, like WhyNots husband’s ugly orange lamp, that is far harder to throw away.

It says a lot more then that, of course. Anyway, I recommend the book.

23

To clarify, my situation is far far far far removed from serious clutter. There are boxes full of crap that no one has gone through in years.

Anyway, here’s what I’m going this weekend. I’m going to go through all the stuff and sort it. The stuff I want to throw out, I’m going to put into a pile. “This is the stuff I think I junk. Go through it and see if there is anything you want to keep . Otherwise, I’m tossing.”

Fair enough?

I"m also being very generous. I think I know my SO well enough to know what’s important and what isn’t. I’m not touching the 1000s of pictures of people we don’t remember and places we can’t identify. :smiley:
But, I don’t see any need for copies of warranties for cars we don’t own any more. Instruction manuals for a hair drier. That’s the kind of garbage I’m getting rid of.

24

That’s probably a good idea - that you have to take your stuff OUT to keep it instead of just leaving it in. Try that and see how it works out.

And then come to my house and do it to my stuff.

25

SiL is very much into aesthetic things. She can spend a lot of money on decoration and clothes, she’s planning on redoing her son’s room completely about every six years (we’re talking not even keeping the closet or the shelves), she intends to do the same with her upcoming daughter; her mother wears clothes because people wear clothes and hasn’t changed the furniture in the house since her youngest became old enough to sleep in a bed; Bro wears clothes because when you work in construction it’s a good idea to have clothing on and reckons that furniture is that stuff you use to place your butt on when you’re tired.

For a time, whenever SiL wanted Bro to buy new clothes, Bro would make her select the clothes he had to throw away and an equivalent amount of her own clothes. Please note that we’re talking about someone who in at least three separate occasions has bought more than one dress for the same event; the first dress(es) that he bought, later finding one she liked better, never got worn. She’s been known to answer to “that blouse is new, isn’t it?” with “oh no, I’ve had it for a whole month!” (ok, a month isn’t exactly “last year’s clothes,” plus I see you once a week and I’d never seen it, so it’s new at least for me).

Her parents have been living with them for the last 2.5 years, though, and one of the good customs that ended was the custom of SiL having to throw clothes away. They have the equivalent of five closets filled with her clothes… some of which she’s never worn and will never wear. I don’t think Bro should go and throw it away, but I sure can understand his frustration about it! My whole wardrobe, summer and winter, officewear and factorywear, fits into about 1/3 what SiL’s does.

26

This sounds fair and loving to me, and is very different from actually throwing things away behind the SO’s back.

FWIW, I’m the one with the packrat tendency in our house. I do feel it’s borderline disrespectful of me, towards my husband, not to take better care of my own crap, to keep it reasonably organized and out of the way. I think he understands I don’t mean it to be disrespectful, but when he asks me to take care of something specific because it’s bugging him, I think I owe it to him to take care of it.

That said, it is incredibly difficult to give up some things. I left grad school (without a degree, and only partly by choice) ten years ago, and I think it was for the best. That doesn’t stop me from outright mourning when a box of my course books, which I haven’t touched in a decade and indeed don’t ever intend to open again, gets wet, goes moldy, and has to go to the dump. My husband understands this (I think) and is careful about what he asks for.

27

An Idea that would work for me, but might not work for others.

Set a date, mark it on the calendar, tell me about it a couple of times. Make it at least three weeks in the future. Other dates after that one can be about two weeks apart. Make sure we or I don’t have anything else planned that day, but hold me to that once the date is set.

“On Friday the 26th, we’re going to go through that desk in the basement and clean it out.” Just one small area, not an entire room.

That day comes. You drag my butt down to the basement desk with one hand, a garbage bag in the other hand. Start picking through things one at a time. If it’s obviously non-useful, like the manual for the car we no longer own, simply name it and toss it in the bag. Get me started doing the same thing. In a half hour, maximum, we’ll have cleaned the damned thing out.

Do not bitch, do not whine, do not make me feel guilty, or I’m going to be unhappy and not want to participate. In fact, I recommend that it be handled as a positive thing and celebrated, at least in a small way, after the fact. That’s positive reinforcement that makes the next time go smoother.

In fact, if you deal with it positively and get it done quickly, it would then be a fair deal to point out other, close by areas (say, the closet next to the desk) and say “Why don’t we hit that closet now, while we’re at it, then when we’re done, we can go out for a beer?”

Just don’t push it too far. If the packrat is getting tired or annoyed or making noises about being done already, leave it for the next scheduled day.

Hell, if your packrat can be bribed (sex, a night out), that might work just as well without the advanced scheduling. Especially during periods of boredom. I know that if I was wandering around the house and asked “What do you want to do today?” and my SO said “Why don’t we clean out the front closet, then have some fun?”, I’d be all over it. (Whereas getting overly ambitious, as in “Let’s clean out the basement” wouldn’t quite get the same response, because it’s TOO MUCH WORK.)
I also tend to think that going through things together is a lot better than telling me to look at it before you toss it, because that can come across as negative or guilting, and/or make me worried about what else might get tossed when I’m not looking.

28

But don’t you see that it’s not the books that you mind–it’s what they represent to you that you are grieving? I see it as you don’t want to let go of that dream you had or that aspect of you that still has that grad school potential. Guess what? You still have that potential. You can still do it. You still have that summer camp child and that goth rocker and that new parent somewhere inside you. Connect to them (this is starting to sound like Sybil) and celebrate them–don’t hold on to tokens from dead ends in your life. Work to have fewer dead ends. (it’s not easy, I know–I have my own).

Chimera: what you are describing is how I get my kids to help clean their rooms or the basement. For an adult, I do not feel I should have to hand hold. I am not about to barter sex for basic hygiene, ie a nonmoldy and silverfish-less basement. If I do, it will be once or twice only. “We need to clean out the basement” is neither a threat or a controlling statement. It’s a fact. Now, get a bag and throw out some of your stuff! :slight_smile:

29

Yup, I do it. I’m probably going to keep doing it.

I’ve told her, “you’re like a child at Christmas, always spreading your toys everywhere and letting mommy pick up after you. I’m going to start throwing your toys away.”

That gets her really pissed, and she’s learned to regularly check the garbage can and fish out her junk. She WILL NOT learn to stop spreading her toys all over the front yard, driveway, backyard, and all over the house.

Things disappear.

30

I have my wife’s stuff and her sister’s stuff in my basement. I occasionally make a box disappear. My motto is “If you can’t tell me what was in it, you don’t have the right to complain.”
A couple of years ago I dumped some of the grotty old baby stuff that was used for my teenaged nephew. It had stayed far too long.

Scanning in old stuff has become a pastime of mine over the past several months.

You see, there is a perfect scanner for the job out there: Fujitsu S510 ScanSnap

I use the Mac version. (It’s not cheap, however: around $400).

This scanner scans a sheet of paper in about 2 seconds, scanning both sides at once and converting it to PDF. It has a sheet feeder that accepts up to 50 pages.
Even if a document is 10 pages front and back, I just drop it in, hit a single button, and then less than 30 seconds later I have the whole thing in PDF.

The day after I got it I took some of my old Navy books and used a band saw to cut the spine off and fed them through. Today I have a few thousand documents in PDF format and a whole lot less paper in my life.

Think about it: utility bills, health insurance documents, receipts from auto repairs, etc. All of this gets scanned in and the original pitched. I have scanned in hundreds and hundreds of pages of old photocopied sheet music and pitched the sheets. When my wife needs a particular arrangement of a hymn she can search and then print it out.
Most of it is OCRd and indexed on my machine, so I can type a few words and instantly find the document I need.

The total amount of documents still fits on a single DVD (not a huge amount of space) and they are divided between a library of harmless stuff such as the sheet music and an encrypted disk image containing all of the personal documents. I back it all up regularly.

I love my scanner!

31

That sounds like the perfect solution.

32

The divorce that my wife and I are going through is largely due to her OCD related hoarding disorder. I got tired of moving through the house in paths through her accumulated, piled up items.

Back story - when we were married more than 10 yrs ago, I was an alhcoholic, I still am, but I don’t drink any more. As I regained my clarity, it dawned on me that I was living in a house litterally filled to the roof (some rooms have only a small path leading into them). Every room is full of boxes, bags and piles of her items.

Last christmas we had our first serious fight about that issue. She wanted to invite people over, and I looked around and said "Where will they stand? (The chairs in the living room were all piled with stuff, and the floor was about 2 ft deep.

She said she’d get counselling, but never did. One day I oppened thr fridge and her accumulated pile of papers, flyers, coupons, (about a bushel, at least) avalanced down, knocking some eggs out of my hand, which broke and mixed into the mess. When she came in to see what the noise was, I said “I guess we better go through this and see what needs throwing out.” She refused, and started yelling at me for being clumsey. We wound up going through the pile, and each item had to be examined to see if we could de egg it. Even expired coupons from businesses that were no longer in operation. Some of the items were more than 5 yrs old.

Anytime I mentioned cleaning out an area, it was a fight.

Early July, and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I asked for a divorce.

The odd thing is that we are still friends, but just don’t want to be married anymore. Despite her problem, she is a great, friendly and wonderful person.

Regards
FML

33

Maastricht, you just said something that I was thinking about a few days ago. My husband and I have far too much stuff crammed into far too small a house. We’ve been working fairly steadily at getting rid of stuff, but it’s still going a lot too slowly. The other day I was thinking about the problem while I was at work, and I had the idea to sit down with my husband so that we could identify the function of each room and where things belong. He’s fond of talking about “a place for everything and everything in its place,” but we’ve never really defined those places. I think we’ll do that tomorrow, and see what kind of progress we make afterward.

To the OP, I have, a few times, gotten rid of stuff that my husband was hoarding that made no sense to me (old hopelessly outdated computer monitors that were just piled in the music room), but his reaction taught me that I was wrong. Now I’ll get rid of my stuff, and anything of his that’s bugging me goes into a box for him to deal with. I don’t want him throwing out my belongings without letting me go through them, and I owe him the same courtesy.

34

It is sooooo very easy to decide that the other persons stuff is worthless packrat junk, but your stuff is treasured mementos.

You have to make it even:

“Ok, we’re moving, we each get X amount of personal stuff.” 20 boxes, 5 boxes, whatever.
Secretly throwing out his stuff because you don’t value it is morally wrong.

35

I need this, man. I need this like Cookie Monster needs the weekly delivery from Archway. Thanks.

36

Reforming packrat checking in. I was never too too bad, but when I was a kid I’d save everything that could have a memory attached. Movie ticket stubs, cans of Mt Dew with interesting pictures on them, playbills from every play I went to, including school plays. You name it, if it was of the vaguest of significance, I still had it.

I began to reform myself when I moved a few times. I began to look at what I saved, and why I saved it. For the vast majority of stuff, I realized that if the memory were truly important, I wouldn’t need the item. I still have a couple papers from really big events (HS diploma, etc), but by and large I don’t want anything anymore. If it’s something small but vaguely interesting (a weird cookie wrapper I got in Japan), I’ve taken to taping some things into my journal. But even there, not a ton of stuff.

I almost wish I could renounce materialism entirely, but I think that’s an extreme I don’t want to go to. I’ve found a compromise for myself, and to be honest, I’ve never really felt freer. It’s very liberating in a lot of ways. I guess I’m still bad about photos. I didn’t have a camera when I was little, so now I take tons of photos. They’re digital, of course, but they take up a bunch of room on my hard drive. I guess that’s the next part of my life I need to clean up, is my digital packratism. :slight_smile:

37

My BIL is a major packrat - to the point that he had 20 year old venison in the freezer that he didn’t want to toss because it held ‘sentimental value’. Sister is slowly (as in VERY slowly) starting to toss stuff (and the venison went pretty quickly).

38

In other words, treat you like a child? I’m assuming you’re an adult. If I go through the desk and take all of my things out that need to go, why do I need to bribe you to be a big boy/big girl and do the same?

In your previous post you talk about throwing things out as a lack of respect. Why on earth would someone that YOU respected need to remind you ahead of time several times and drag you to the basement to do what an adult is supposed to do? I’m assuming you’re capable of holding a trash bag yourself?

39

One big hangup I have is throwing away stuff that “could” be useful, but just not to me. I’ve been fairly poor my whole life, so throwing something of value away just seems so wrong. For example, just today I had to throw away about 5-6 CD and DVD computer drives. Now, unless my current one fails, I will never need one of those. And there isn’t much resale value on them because they aren’t burners, as can be had for pretty much the same price now-a-days. But the fact that they are in perfect working order and I am just junking them bothers me.

40

Theoretically, the packratting is along the lines of a psychological “problem,” for lack of a better word. You wouldn’t tell someone with agoraphobia who is being coaxed outside that they are being treated like a child. Obviously there’s a whole spectrum, and I’m not a shrink, but before you dismiss this as laziness or unwillingness to act maturely, maybe consider that there’s something deeper going on.