Have you "accidentally" gotten rid of or lost something your spouse owned?

[BlueEyedLady]

BEL said:

“Respect. Marriages stand on it and crumble when it’s gone.”

I would hesitate to throw away anything major (beside desperately worn out underwear, socks, shirts or pants) and in theory, I think we should respect each other’s stuff, but at the same time, there is an ongoing leaking away of respect that can happen when one’s husband totally unnecessarily insists on wearing frayed shirts, pants with three inches of strings hanging off the bottom to a white collar job or to church or social events if he knows that his wife doesn’t approve and he has newer, nicer clothes that he could wear just as well. Day in, day out, that also wears away at respect when a husband makes little effort to please (and it’s just a matter of wearing the shirt or pants his wife asks him to wear, rather than yard clothes). A woman who disposed of unsightly (but non-sentimental) items that her husband never missed (but would put up a big fight over if she asked) may well feel more warmly and more respectful toward her husband than a woman who is ashamed and embarrassed of how her husband chooses to present himself in public but feels qualms about disposing of worn items.

Read the OP. She’s talking about shirts that her husband loves, his old furniture, etc. These are not socks and underwear which are almost universally regarded as disposable.

Here’s the deal: You married the guy. He did not cease to be a person with his own thoughts, feelings, and preferences the day he took those vows. A wife does not gain the right to throw his stuff away behind his back so that he doesn’t embarrass her. I can only imagine the outrage if a man came on here asking if it was ok for him to throw out his wife’s clothing, lest he embarrass her in front of all the better-dressed wives in their circle.

That said, I agree with you that it is unhealthy for a marriage to have one or both partners wearing frayed clothing and not caring what they look like. But that is an issue that can and should be dealt with via communication, compromise, and all those other things that you signed up for the day you took your vows. Nothing good can be accomplished by treating your husband like a disenfranchised child who isn’t even allowed to keep clothing or furniture that his wife doesn’t like.

I’m not sure why this is being presented as a lose-lose dichotomy-either the man wears awful, disgusting clothing, or the wife goes through his stuff and determines what he is allowed to keep. I’m not sure why the man can’t keep his clothing and not wear it when he’s out with his wife or in his white collar office. Chores, lounging around the house, exercise, camping, etc all make great excuses to wear those embarrassingly tattered/stained clothing worry free.

And if your husband wants to have a discussion over every item of his that you want to throw out? So what? It is his stuff, and if he doesn’t want to part with it, he should be allowed to have that say when the item in question belongs to him and is being stored in his home.

 

[Joe_5859]

Reading through this thread is reminding me that I am overdo to go through the clothes in my closet…

I have traumatic childhood memories of my Mom throwing out things of mine when I was young (like my paper airplane collection ), so my wife is pretty understanding that it takes me awhile to get rid of certain things. I’m getting better, though!

I wouldn’t mind terribly if my wife got rid of some of my clothes. But the CDs, books, and video games are off-limits.

 

[MJJean]

If this is your system, and your husband knows it, why do you need to accidentally throw anything away? Wouldn’t he know that you would be tossing the item?

Theoretically. But things happening at some future date in theory =/= tossing out tattered clothes and replacing them with things that had to be gasp paid for with actual monies in the present.

Besides, I can have an hour of grumpy husband because I tossed some trash or I can have 3-4 days of off and on “discussion” about it and then have to do it anyways.

It might be different if the man did anything around the house, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even so much as pick his laundry off the floor and put it down the chute.

This week is going to be …interesting. I have to clean out the closet.

 

[mommamaree]

Theoretically. But things happening at some future date in theory =/= tossing out tattered clothes and replacing them with things that had to be gasp paid for with actual monies in the present.

Besides, I can have an hour of grumpy husband because I tossed some trash or I can have 3-4 days of off and on “discussion” about it and then have to do it anyways.

It might be different if the man did anything around the house, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even so much as pick his laundry off the floor and put it down the chute.

This week is going to be …interesting. I have to clean out the closet.

Good luck with that! My next weekend’s project is the same.

 

[Musician]

If I hadn’t got rid of some of my husband’s things, we’d be featured on an episode of “Hoarders”. LOL. I have never thrown away something special to him, though. But I do go through his clothes/stuff once a year and get rid of the useless stuff that he keeps around just in case we go through another Great Depression. He’s Scottish. Need I say more?

 

[Xantippe]

MJJean said:

“Things that are new are worn to family events and going out. Mid-grade things are worn around the house and yard. Poor things are worn to work. Dress things are few and only worn to church. Once new becomes mid-grade it is demoted. This demotion system goes all the way down to work clothes. Once an item has moved past work clothes condition it is in can’t even donate it shape. of course it needs to go! But will he throw it away? Nooo, because that means I will have to replace the item and he hates spending money on…well, anything.”

Yep. We have more or less the same system: church/social/office clothes → yard/garage clothes, with each occupying a completely different closet. Church/social/office clothes age into yard/garage clothes. By the time my husband’s clothes are done being yard or garage worthy, they can’t be donated and have to go in the trash.

I think the ladies who have husbands who are naturally good at keeping themselves tidy and respectable-looking, who are willing to throw out ragged clothing and to spend money on new clothes don’t know how the other half lives. On the other side of the tracks, so to speak, every pitiful sock or disreputable pair of briefs would get a public defender and multiple appeals. I would need to ask my husband, accept his defense of the item, encounter the sad item again the next time through the wash (a little worse this time), ask my husband, accept his defense of the item, and repeat the process until it finally totally disintegrated. That process wouldn’t do any good for my blood pressure, and it would be a terrible waste of my time, as well as setting a bad example for the kids. And honestly, he can’t tell one from the other.

 

[Xantippe]

BEL said:

“I can only imagine the outrage if a man came on here asking if it was ok for him to throw out his wife’s clothing, lest he embarrass her in front of all the better-dressed wives in their circle.”

If the disappearance of the old clothes were accompanied by permission to get several hundred dollars worth of pretty new clothes, I expect most of us would take the blow pretty well.

At this point, I don’t think I own any clothing item that I would genuinely miss, as long as I was able to pick out a functional equivalent to replace it.

“That said, I agree with you that it is unhealthy for a marriage to have one or both partners wearing frayed clothing and not caring what they look like. But that is an issue that can and should be dealt with via communication, compromise, and all those other things that you signed up for the day you took your vows. Nothing good can be accomplished by treating your husband like a disenfranchised child who isn’t even allowed to keep clothing or furniture that his wife doesn’t like.”

I think the communication will have to be, “Honey, I am going to throw away your socks with holes, stretched out, see-through underpants and ragged shirts and pants when I find them as I do the laundry. That’s part of doing the laundry. It’s not worth either of our time to spend five minutes debating the fate of a $1 sock.”

“I’m not sure why this is being presented as a lose-lose dichotomy-either the man wears awful, disgusting clothing, or the wife goes through his stuff and determines what he is allowed to keep. I’m not sure why the man can’t keep his clothing and not wear it when he’s out with his wife or in his white collar office. Chores, lounging around the house, exercise, camping, etc all make great excuses to wear those embarrassingly tattered/stained clothing worry free.”

We do that. But he also has a tendency to wear yard stuff to the office, parties or church because that happened to be the clothes he saw first and he didn’t want to bother to look for clothes in the correct closet and he doesn’t bother to change if I point out the problem. (His boss has mentioned certain clothing items, such as shoes, on occasion, so it’s not just me being oversensitive.) I’m afraid his credibility at work probably suffers a bit from the clothes and certain hygiene issues (he also has European standards of hygiene–I’m currently negotiating getting him to bathe twice a month and I only recently persuaded him not to shampoo with bar soap or dish soap), but I’m doing everything I can. It’s very frustrating. He’s a wonderful person in many, many ways, but I find him more lovable and easier to respect when he doesn’t look homeless, when he is respectably dressed, his hair has been cut in the last two months, and he’s bathed within the past two weeks. I don’t think I’m asking a lot. I have to manage his personal appearance and hygiene because he doesn’t, which is kind of a pain when we have three kids at home who also need management. Hence, I don’t want to allot what little time we have for conversation to discussing his socks, which are a no-brainer and don’t require the sort of cooperation that bathing or a haircut does.

I think you’re approaching this from the point of view of a DINK (double income, no kids) with a husband who does an OK job with clothes and hygiene and won’t come up with elaborate arguments as to why bar soap is just as good as shampoo for washing hair.

 

[maryjk]

Theoretically. But things happening at some future date in theory =/= tossing out tattered clothes and replacing them with things that had to be gasp paid for with actual monies in the present.

Besides, I can have an hour of grumpy husband because I tossed some trash or I can have 3-4 days of off and on “discussion” about it and then have to do it anyways.

It might be different if the man did anything around the house, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even so much as pick his laundry off the floor and put it down the chute.

This week is going to be …interesting. I have to clean out the closet.

I think you have bigger problems than whether or not to throw away old clothes.

 

[MJJean]

MJJean said:
Yep. We have more or less the same system: church/social/office clothes → yard/garage clothes, with each occupying a completely different closet. Church/social/office clothes age into yard/garage clothes. By the time my husband’s clothes are done being yard or garage worthy, they can’t be donated and have to go in the trash.

I think the ladies who have husbands who are naturally good at keeping themselves tidy and respectable-looking, who are willing to throw out ragged clothing and to spend money on new clothes don’t know how the other half lives. On the other side of the tracks, so to speak, every pitiful sock or disreputable pair of briefs would get a public defender and multiple appeals. I would need to ask my husband, accept his defense of the item, encounter the sad item again the next time through the wash (a little worse this time), ask my husband, accept his defense of the item, and repeat the process until it finally totally disintegrated. That process wouldn’t do any good for my blood pressure, and it would be a terrible waste of my time, as well as setting a bad example for the kids. And honestly, he can’t tell one from the other.

The bolded part made me snort ice water!

My DH was so bad when I met him he kept cards and letters etc. in his dresser. His clothes he kept in a single tall hamper. Which he would go through looking for clean clothes. If none were to be found, he would carry the hamper to the basement washer and just dump the whole thing in, set it to warm, and walk away. He also never wore a pair of matched socks the entire time we were dating other than ones that just came out of the package.

As for the other ladies, you’re probably very correct. Some men happily blend their lives with some lucky lady. Others need a woman in order not to revert to some previous state of evolution.

 

[Xantippe]

MJJean said:

“As for the other ladies, you’re probably very correct. Some men happily blend their lives with some lucky lady. Others need a woman in order not to revert to some previous state of evolution.”

My husband says that the thing he likes about going on business trips by himself is that he can spread out in his hotel room–all of the items from his suitcase can just be distributed in an even layer over every available horizontal surface.

I’m glad I don’t get to see that.

 

[MJJean]

I think you have bigger problems than whether or not to throw away old clothes.

Naw, he works 14 hour days, 6 days a week if he can get the 6th day. He also works out at the gym with me every night because he gained some weight, I gained some high blood pressure and a heart condition, and we both need to. In addition, there’s Mass plus drive on his one day off. I don’t mind taking care of everything else. I don’t even mind following him around picking up the laundry he drops. Besides, when it comes to fixing things/DIY projects/yard work, I am probably better at it.

 

[MJJean]

My husband says that the thing he likes about going on business trips by himself is that he can spread out in his hotel room–all of the items from his suitcase can just be distributed in an even layer over every available horizontal surface.

I’m glad I don’t get to see that.

It’d be one of those things that makes you question your choice of mate, that’s for sure. Turn a blind eye, civilized human, and let his inner caveman have a blast, rofl.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

The only thing of my wife’s that I ever “accidentally” got rid of were some of the male Facebook friends from her high school days. These were guys she didn’t think much of in high school, but she never turns down a friend request because she’s afraid it would offend someone. One guy was sending her extremely inappropriate private messages. Another was sending her messages asking if she still looked like she did in high school and if she could send him nude, semi-nude or topless pictures of herself. Yet another was a married guy who was openly cheating on his wife with another friend of hers. She was out of the house but had stayed logged into chat. At the time, I was using her account to communicate with her family about a few things. While doing this I got a chat message from this guy saying, “Hi, Sexy!” or something along those lines. It didn’t take long for him to go into graphic detail about what his intentions were. When I finally told him I was her husband, he claimed he knew that and was just joking. I blocked him right after. She had no issues with this when I told her.

The only other thing in the same league was when we were dating. She had a personalized necklace that a dirtbag ex had gotten her. It had her name on one side and something like, “LoveU4ever” and their initials on the other. She liked it because it was the nicest gift any guy had gotten her until that point. It became a point of contention, not so much because it was from an ex, but because of what it said on it and because of what a dirtbag the guy really was. I asked her to get rid of it a couple times but she refused. It led to a fight, after which she did throw it away. Had she kept it, though, I could see myself (at the time) “accidentally” throwing it away.

On the other hand, my wife has done this a few times over the years. It’s mostly been clothes I couldn’t wear anymore or that had migrated their way to the depths of a closet somewhere. I think the only time it ever upset me (at the time, at least) was a box of college mementos she threw away. It was mostly pictures, notebooks and a few cards. There was a book in it signed by a female and the message had the word love somewhere in it. Because of that, she thought the book and everything else in the box was from an ex-girlfriend. The book was actually an autographed copy of a book by an author who had guest-lectured one of my classes. She signed all the books with similar messages, then died a couple years later so it was truly irreplaceable. The rest of the stuff in the box was pictures, notes, etc. from a group of friends I was close to for a couple years (a couple of whom have since died), but nobody I was ever romantically involved with or interested in. They all just happened to be in the same box because when I moved out of my parents’ house they all got stuck in the same box. Ironically, my wife might have actually been the one who packed it. Had the book ended up with the rest of my books, it’s likely that none of that stuff would have been thrown away.

 

[MJJean]

I’d have thrown the necklace away just for the “text speak”. If the guy actually cared, he’d have spelled full words.

 

[on_the_hill]

No one mentioned “A Christmas Story?”

The father wins a lamp in a raffle, and it’s in the shape of a dancing girl’s leg, complete with high heel and fishnet stalking. The mother hates it, but the father insists on displaying it in the front window of the house. One day when the mother is vacuuming, the cord accidentally wraps around the lamp and pulls it over, shattering it.

 

[crenfro]

Hello.

When we were first dating, my husband-to-be had this dishcloth – used to clean dishes, not to dry – that was several years old. It looked like Cousin It. It was always damp, droopy and stringy. Sometimes I thought it might come alive and chase us.

So anyway, we had this huge fight over it – he chased me all over the place when I grabbed it to toss it – and we had long, hours-long discussions over it. They went on and on. I kid you not.

I even threw it away once and he went into the dumpster and rescued it. Finally, after one yet more long, long, impassioned discussion, he agreed to throw it away. I wondered for a while if we should have had a casket for it and a funeral service and pallbearers and everything.

Now I just let things disappear when it comes to stuff like that. I hide stuff for a while, and if he really misses an article I’ll let it reappear. But he’s got to miss it first. But if he doesn’t miss it, after about six months, it goes to doo-dad heaven.

 

[Kelfa28]

Ya know, I tried economizing by making use of leftovers. It was a huge fail. Just as described above. Now, I just buy exactly what we need for each meal. Sometimes I will buy a pack of chicken that is cooked and divided up in the fridge into other meals. For example, a 7 piece package of boneless skinless breast gets butterflied into 14 pieces. Some are grilled for a dinner of chicken caeser salad. Some are grilled at the same time to be used in lunch wraps, and the rest is put away raw to be oven cooked for a different nights dinner. But it all gets eaten within a 2-3 day period. Which is fine. But when you open the fridge and a leftover waves at you there is a problem!

I am jokingly referred to as The Anti-clutter among my friends. Any hints of hoarding type behavior set my mental sirens a blaring, too.

This post made me laugh because this is exactly how my husband and I are all the time.

I hate leftovers too and we do the exact same thing. I’ve been spending a little more money on ground beef that comes in these wonderful one pound packages. They freeze easy and when I cook up a meatloaf or make meatballs or hamburger, there is exactly enough for our little family to enjoy in it’s entirety with no leftovers.

I also divide up chicken and pot roast into individual freezer bags for dinner. They are used and eaten without leftovers.

We are SOOO anti-clutter in my house. The only things I don’t get rid of are toys but my babies are still really young. They are seriously organized though. Everything that could make a cluttered mess (puzzles, crayons, play kitchen items, dress up jewlery, dress up dolls) are all put in seperate plastic bags and kept in a huge bin in their play room.

It’s literally the only way I can cope with that crazy mess. It gets picked up after the kiddos go to bed every night so we can start fresh the next day.

My husband and I throw out anything and everything we don’t consistently use and is taking up space.

My friends and relatives were mildly horrified when I said I wasn’t sure if I had kept my daughter’s first outfits home from the hospital. I have a trunk with their baptism candles and other important Catholic items we’ve recieved and that’s about it when it comes to sentimentalism.

Hubby and I just don’t have much of an attachment to things in general. If we think it needs to go, chances are it will.

 

[Kelfa28]

I just wanted to add on in regards to hording behavior.

I don’t know where my anti-clutter metality came from. I may have gotten it from my grandmother (though not heredically because my mom is adopted, but through observation). She was seriously antir-clutter and always really organized about everything. My mom suspects she had a slight case of OCD because my grandmother would want her house and general environment to be clean and organized always. She’d cluch her disapproval at my mother’s so-called “mess” in her house…which was fairly clean and orderly for a working mother of two.

I start to feel anxious when I go into a house that, while not hoarding level, isn’t clean and has clutter everywhere.

My husband has grown up with family members who were hoarders and friends’ parents who were hoarders. So he went in the opposite direction and can’t stand too much clutter. It’s more of a coping mechanism for him.

 

[EasterJoy]

When I throw away ratty clothing (or use it for rags) it is not done in a sneaky fashion nor is it treating my husband like a child. I just wanted to clarify that in case my earlier posts were misunderstood. Every marriage works differently, and my husband and I trust each other to make these decisions. We know each other’s favorites, and we don’t hold onto things that are worn out. We “make” each other refresh our wardrobes periodically, just because we love each other and want each other to be happy. However, my husband would likely never do it on his own without prompting, or do it only rarely, because he is so busy taking care of us that he doesn’t always stop to consider his own appearance or needs.

I can see, based upon the other responses in this thread, that there is a myriad of ways to approach this question, but I definitely agree with several of the posters here who spoke of the need for respect to be the foundation of our actions toward our spouses.

This can fall into the category of buying the clothes in the first place. Some think it a great intrusion when anyone else presumes to buy them clothing. Others do not care. Others think it a great favor, a chore off of their to-do list, or perhaps a way to have nicer things than they would venture to do for themselves. Others see it as saving them from themselves and their awful choices. In the worst case, the person has sentiments in the first category, and decision-making skills that belong in the last!

 

[NFPWife]

You ladies are cracking me up! Especially this from Xantippe –

“I think the ladies who have husbands who are naturally good at keeping themselves tidy and respectable-looking, who are willing to throw out ragged clothing and to spend money on new clothes don’t know how the other half lives. On the other side of the tracks, so to speak, every pitiful sock or disreputable pair of briefs would get a public defender and multiple appeals. I would need to ask my husband, accept his defense of the item, encounter the sad item again the next time through the wash (a little worse this time), ask my husband, accept his defense of the item, and repeat the process until it finally totally disintegrated. That process wouldn’t do any good for my blood pressure, and it would be a terrible waste of my time, as well as setting a bad example for the kids. And honestly, he can’t tell one from the other.”

My husband can get into that “defense” of things – he has lifting pants from the '80s that MC Hammer wouldn’t currently wear! I let style issues go, especially if he’s not wearing the item with me, but I’ll make the full court press on ragged and raggedy. He’s gotten much better over the years.

I take full advantage of the Divine Mercy Novena and the requirement to do an act of mercy to get clothes cleaned out once a year. Clothing the naked is an act of mercy and I can get 1-3 bags of clothes out of the house. I also use, “It’s time to bless someone else with that,” to encourage him to donate things to St. Vincent DePaul.

To date, I’ve never “disappeared” anything as a matter of personal integrity. But the way you all frame the maintenance of the husband’s wardrobe as a wifely responsibility is intriguing. (And genius! )