Pack Rats and how to deal

[Nixie]

Thank you, Marie Veronica, for your support. Yes, my husband was a 1929 depression baby and in fact at age 5 was placed in a Catholic “school” for “destitute and abandoned children”, as were all his 5 siblings, until age 18.

So it is not surprising that he hoards everything and can’t bear to part with his possessions. He even rinses out and keeps glass jars.

I too am a neat freak and something of a minimalist. That’s why I’m upset at his new addiction to garage sales and the junk that he keeps bringing home.

My favorite fantasy is where I rent a dumpster and throw all the clutter from the garage and his room into it.

I had to laugh at the woman who, in her post, said that when they had to evacuate because of wild fires she half hoped the house would burn down together with all his stuff. I’m not there yet!

Apart from this we don’t have any problems so I should count my blessings.

Nixie.

 

[mercygate]

Thank you, Marie Veronica, for your support. Yes, my husband was a 1929 depression baby and in fact at age 5 was placed in a Catholic “school” for “destitute and abandoned children”, as were all his 5 siblings, until age 18.

So it is not surprising that he hoards everything and can’t bear to part with his possessions. He even rinses out and keeps glass jars.

I too am a neat freak and something of a minimalist. That’s why I’m upset at his new addiction to garage sales and the junk that he keeps bringing home.

My favorite fantasy is where I rent a dumpster and throw all the clutter from the garage and his room into it.

I had to laugh at the woman who, in her post, said that when they had to evacuate because of wild fires she half hoped the house would burn down together with all his stuff. I’m not there yet!

Apart from this we don’t have any problems so I should count my blessings.

Nixie.

Hah. DH gave me a diamond and platinum necklace for my birthday/Valentine’s gift this year. About the 15th such extravagance he has given me. And I had BEGGED him for a dumpster!

 

[Anne1964]

My husband was a terrible packrat when we first married. Several things I have tried that worked…

1. I offered to take his 30 year collection of PC Magazines to the dump while he was out of town so he wouldn’t see them carted away. I was also prepared to answer his questions about selling them on Ebay and proving that they were basically worthless.
2. Every six months I go through his half of the dresser drawers and chest of drawers and remove half of his t-shirts (he must have over 100 of the darn things) and place them in a large plastic storage box, which then goes into the closet. At the end of six months if he hasn’t missed any of the shirts I have packed away I bag them up and take them to the thrift store.

When we moved, even though it was to a larger house, we had a huge pile of stuff left over. Much to my surprise, my husband agreed to get rid of most of it.

There is always the line “I don’t know what happened to your collection of popsicle sticks, honey. They must have gotten lost during the move.”