[QUOTE=Chimera]
Huge Betrayal. Relationship Ender.
That’s my personal opinion and attitude. If you throw away my stuff without my permission, you are destroying my property and disrespecting me in a big way.
You want it gone, make the effort to talk to me about it. At the very least, pick and chose what you want gone, discuss it and give me a chance to tell you why I don’t want it thrown. A box of old magazines may be nothing, or they could be my Dragon Magazines #30 through #100 (which I have), which would be worth well more than their collective cover prices if I sold them. A box of old records might appear to contain nothing but old utility and credit card bills, but at the bottom of it, you’d find the important papers from my divorce, which I might need if my psycho ex-wife decided to do something completely insane, then lie about things (as she’s done before) that I could easily prove a lie if I had those records.
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If those records are so important, what are they doing at the bottom of a box full of old utility and credit card bills? Seems to me that psycho ex of your could do a lot of damage before you figured out which box of old bills and other worthless papers contained the important stuff you needed to prove she’s lying. Put the important papers in a file where you can find them when you need them, and throw the old bills away!
If the magazines are worth so much, why are they packed away in a box? Sell them, or if you’re still interested in reading them, put them where they can be read!
I’m being harsh, but I could be a lot harsher. I know way too many packrats, and I think you have unwittingly named the motto for them all: “Give me a chance to tell you why I don’t want it thrown!” There’s always a reason. The guy I know with all the decades-old newspapers stacked all over his house, really does believe he’s going to go through and find the articles he intended to save - never mind that the papers are now a fire hazard, and he hasn’t even begun on the project, in his heart of hearts he knows he’s going to do it someday. The woman who, while planning a kitchen remodel, nearly decided to drop the dishwasher because she wasn’t sure she’d have enough room for her collection of empty margarine tubs and jam jars? She’s quite sure she’s being prudent by saving them all, because she’d hate to have to throw away perfectly good leftovers for lack of a suitable container. She now has more margarine tubs than could fit in her fridge, and most of the leftovers go to waste anyway… but the collection still grows.
These are real people I’m describing. So is the woman who had a stroke in a house so crowded with stacks of cardboard boxes that the ambulance crew had a hard time getting her out of it to take her to the hospital. She at least realized things were getting out of hand, and she was going to get to it - someday. She didn’t, of course, because the stroke intervened, and she’s now in a nursing home. Her family members had to clean out of her house, and most of it ended up in the landfill anyway. Perhaps you find that disrespectful. Maybe she had some Dragon Magazines, too. But her family members saw it as the only option.
The situation you describe, with the wife throwing away her husband’s guns and other hunting equipment, is entirely different. She threw away things he was using and enjoying, because she didn’t want him to use and enjoy them anymore. If you can’t see the difference between hobby equipment in regular use and piles of assorted clutter, well, that thar’s yer problem.
For the record, I am not generally in favor of throwing other people’s property away just because you find it inconvenient - but demanding that your partner continue to live with growing inconvenience simple because It’s My Stuff! is, um, disrespectful. Grow up, take responsibility for your stuff, and realize that just because you can find a place to stack it doesn’t mean you have to keep it.
