Good for you Pesky!
I have to do the same with my DH. He has a tendency to hang on to things too and a lot of it has got to go. He has at least 3x more clothes than I do and can't fit into 80% of them. And those are old and or out of style. I think as I attack the basement this fall I will just sort of toss a few things. He certainly won't notice.

I hope the dog house doesn't last for you!

Beth P.

Same problem here. It drives me crazy. I swear I could throw the whole garage away and he wouldn't miss any of it, but he will not get rid of anything in there. It will only happen when we sell the house. Grrr...

My DH is the same although I am slowly curing him of his "keeping things because he might use it one day" addiction. However, he comes by it honestly. His mother keeps EEverryyything. She's 83 and has lived in her 4000 sq. ft. for 55 years and the cr*p that she has in that house is mind-boggling. She thinks it is all valuable when in fact it is garbage. I have made it very clear to DH that when his mother passes on he can bring 1 sentimental thing into our house, and with my consultation, one piece of useful furniture.

I'm a little jealous, our basement is full of stuff DH thinks he'll eventually use "one day" and I've been wanting to clean it out for a couple of years now. If I had my druthers, I'd toss it all out in a heart beat but we do have an understanding that he never tosses my stuff and I never toss his. I do think it's time to watch some hoarding shows again though. Last time I did that, it set him off on a cleaning tangent and the results were fabulous! LOL

Dh was the same. We had a detached one car garage that was packed to the rafters. No room for a car. You literally had to maneuver around things to get to anything. And what was even worse ... my washer and dryer shared the space. I hated it! Relief finally came when we decided to do an addition to the house that included tearing down the garage. What an eye-opener for dh! He made two trips to the dump with his pickup up bed full of junk. We had a big yard sale and got rid of even more. What remained had to fit neatly into the new garden shed/workshop. He still fights the tendency to keep every little thing ... "just in case" ... but more often than not he now tosses it away.

Ruh-roh!

Sometimes the urge to purge is overwhelming. And it is so much easier to do it when it is someone else's stuff.

Yes -- another one here who has to deal with a "we-may-need-it" or "we-may-sell-it" DH. And he too comes this tendency honestly -- straight from the old gene pool! :)

Our garage is full of EBay items -- some listed at our store (which IS the source for our income) -- and some of it still waiting to be listed. Soooooooooo much stuff. sigh.

We JUST had a big clean-up here too (yay!) -- BUT there are still piles of EBay stuff (in the closet and on the sofa bed) in the home office. Sigh.

I have to be VERY firm (sometimes tempers do flare up!)about boundaries for the stashing and storage of Ebay items or they would gradually take over the whole house ....

and yes indeed -- I do spend time dealing with the aftermath too ...

I opened up the carport closet Friday to get out the trailer hitch. A dozen little flat pieces of wood fell out and skittered across the floor. What were they, one might ask? Well, they're the slats removed from two sets of window blinds that were too long. Seriously? What is he ever going to do with those? But I stacked them back up and propped them back in there. Oy.

Well, pesky at least the clutter in your house came from people your husband *knows*. I've got one that, literally, brings home junk he finds in piles outside people's houses because it is 'too good to throw away' or we 'may use this one day' or even 'because nobody should just toss someone's stuff out like that'. Well, maybe not but I simply can not convince this man that because an object exists in the universe, it belongs in our home or garage or backyard! I mean really, I can feel badly-in theory-for the elderly deceased person whose family evidently didn't want his trophies from the 1950s. Although, let's keep in mind that the elderly deceased person isn't using them either. That doesn't mean I can keep them at my house however.

But rest assured, just because he is salvaging strangers' possessions he is also quite capable of storing/rescuing trash from people he does know. Right now he has a motorcycle carrier in the garage. We don't own a motorcycle. We will never own a motorcycle. There is no possible utility for us in having a motorcycle carrier. However a work colleague was going to junk it and, all together now, "it's worth money, you can't just throw it away!". So.....it sat for months. Then he tried selling it on Ebay and nobody wanted it. Now I keep telling him to GET RID OF IT. Oops, did I raise my virtual voice!?!?

A few years ago a therapist I consulted for some other issues warned me that my husband has definite hoarding tendencies. In obscure corners and drawers, I sometimes find stuff like little stashes of bread ties, or the disposable bags that vegetables are put into at the market, etc etc. I quietly dispose of them. And yes he still has his 70s corduroy pants, and his cowboy boots he also hasn't worn since the 70s. And his check stubs for the past 20 years. And, and, and....

It's a tough one.

Ann

I am truly laughing out loud here. How is it that we are all married to the same man???

Well, I was married to that man but I divorced him. One of the first things I did after we split was to clean out the garage. I couldn't believe what he had squirreled away in there. The garage had become useless for anything practical. We had a Corvette in there and he had even piled stuff on top of that. Of course, he didn't want to take anything much with him. I cleaned out the basement, his desk (enormous and he never sat there) and his side of the closet. It was astounding what I uncovered and 90 percent was only good for the trash.

No one could sit in the back seat of his car for all the papers he had in there. I don't know what they were or why he felt he had to drive around with them.

However, his old leisure suit became one of the best Halloween costumes ever.

Later his mother died and he had to empty her house. I think he still has most of that stuff in an airplane hangar (yes, you read that correctly)that he rents, along with god knows what else..

Why do some people have an inability to part with obvious junk? I do get hung up on sentimental items, but I know junk and trash when I see it.

Pesky, I feel for you!

Is he still mad?

Boy, I didn't realize just how widespread this is!

Last night another of his friends dropped by a hideously ugly statue of a mountain lion (it's also weathered and badly chipped) and some virtually unrecognizable resin lawn figurine that was covered in moss and slime. We discovered these things this morning, and DH did throw out the slimy piece, but he actually took that fugly lion thing into the garage, muttering that he'd give it to his friend Molly. Then he muttered, "I bet people would buy these statues, maybe I can make a mold..." I just got in my truck and left to visit a girlfriend.

At least for the time being I am! I spent the day with a girlfriend and he spent his day cleaning the garage & shop. I think my purging yesterday got to him. It's not clean to my standards, but for him, it's an improvement. At least for the time being.