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So back in March of 2020, literally days before the world shut down, I moved out of my apartment and into my boyfriends house after much deliberation over whether or not I should wait. This was a calculated decision that everyone in our lives seemed to be happy about and even though I was warned about his house, everyone thought it would be much better to move in and help him, as the money I normally spent on rent and other bills could be saved to make something out of a great gift he inherited from his family. I had never seen it for the whole first half of our relationship because he wasn't sure how I would react. I noticed it wasn't terrible, just old and needed some work, and he also explained the piles of junk as things that had been left when his uncle passed. I looked around and noticed how easy it would be to make room for my stuff, as there are two bedrooms, a kitchen, 2 living rooms and a sun room, if we just get down to business and spend a day or two tackling the junk. It wasn't until I learned that he had been here since 2012 after his uncle passed away that I became slightly concerned. He said he hasn't gone through anything because he had no reason to... so my concern was initially laziness, and the fact that a 47 year old man with a house and no mortgage and a great job had put not one penny or ounce of effort into fixing it up. I was able to make the living room and kitchen livable... he had spent the last 8 years living in his bedroom only. The kitchen was the easiest to clear out and fix up because he gave me full control over what stays and what goes. Then we got to the second bedroom which was non negotiable to clean out because my bedroom set costs 4 thousand dollars, brand new, and that's just my bedroom set alone, and I wasn't about to have this nice stuff sit and rot while some old unusable broken shit say in its place (especially considering I'm still financing it.) Here is when it became clear there was Some underlying mental problem at play. The bedroom still is not completely clear and my bedroom furniture is currently sitting in a pile, inaccessible, as I root through bags of clothes and use a makeshift vanity getting ready for work. I pay 150 dollars a month for a pile of furniture now. The rest of my stuff sits in a pile in the back room, over top of his uncles old junk. All of these are wonderful decorations, some of which cost hundreds of dollars a piece, thousands in total, many of them are beautiful hand crafted and personal, just sitting in a pile now, while broken old wall ornaments remain. Furniture for storage and things that could make our day to day lives much simpler are blocked by stuff that has not been used or touched in god knows how long. He constantly tells me we can work on getting stuff out anytime, and I've agreed to not go through the stuff without him, even though I've already done this to an extent. I reassured him I only threw away things that had been broken, such as a cracked telephone from the 1980s, amongst many other items that couldn't be given away if I tried. When I go through this stuff WITH him present, I noticed it merely gets moved to a different location, anywhere but the trash bag. All I get is typical justifications of "if it can be fixed I don't want to get rid of it." Or "we shouldn't throw it away if someone somewhere can use it." This is when I say okay, it hasn't been used in over 8 years at least, we obviously don't need it but someone somewhere does. Let's take it to goodwill, the Salvation Army, somewhere. This gets us nowhere.
Now here is my ultimate predicament, regardless of my inability to live like a normal human being and having to maneuver around old broken junk while my stuff is rendered useless, there is black mold on the bathroom ceiling,
A cringe worthy amount of it from when a pipe leaked and was never properly cleaned or ventilated. Even suggesting professionals come in and fix it is met with defensive measures on his part. He has homeowners insurance, he has money to fix it.. I've already offered to pay for it regardless but he is purposely creating obstacles to prevent this. I found out I am about 3 months pregnant, and I haven't told him. Living in the house is not only unfit at this point, it is potentially dangerous. I have avoided telling him about the pregnancy thus far, even though I know he would be thrilled, he is 47 and has no other family and he would be absolutely thrilled, but I am afraid of being faced with further defiance.
This would be worst case scenario, because half the house has already been made livable, and he has proven he can keep the clutter under some form of control once it's initially cleared out. Half the house is sanitary to my standards which are pretty high. However, if we do not finish these projects immediately, I will soon be physically unable to do things myself and once the baby is here, it will be ten times as hard of not impossible for a big project such as mold removal to be done.
I am hoping with all hope that the fact of a baby will kick his butt into gear, but what do I do if it doesn't? Do I seek help? Who can help me? Should I just do things behind his back? I've already done a lot without his knowledge and he hasn't noticed a LOT of what I've done. I feel frustrated because he took off of work four consecutive weeks in a row, around the same time I found out I was pregnant, and I haven't had so much as 2 or 3 days where he wasn't home to get things moving. Today is his last day, and tomorrow I am going to be up early to resume what I started. It is incredibly hard to do this alone as well, as the amount of dust and god knows what else could be dangerous.
Any advice at all would greatly be welcome. Even if we successfully get all my stuff set up and in use, his stuff will still make up over 80% of what's in this house. I'm just tired of things like, eating off portable end tables just to eat food when I have a nice dining table and chairs currently being used for junk storage. I'm tired of pulling clothes out of trash bags and laundry baskets when I have two giant dressers where everything would fit if I could get to it, as well as an entire closet that is just empty because of a 6 foot pile of shit in front of it. I'm tired of the yellowing, old, cracked and useless items taking up space when my things were supposed to help him quit living like a child in a fort. At this point, not having money is no longer an excuse for living in unsuitable conditions.
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