When animal dung is totally dry it makes a very fast hot fire.
When I was a kid it was my job to gather dry cow pies to start the camp fires with.
Decaying carcasses are used by rendering them down in a pot for use in making soap, glue, bone meal and candles.
But these things need to be used in a timely manner and not left to putrefy heaped all over the cave where they are just in the way, never being utilized, making life miserable for the woman.

O.K. so there really can be a use for just about everything on this planet.
Everything can be used for something.
But I am tired of living with EVERYTHING in my home. :(

I came back to read and saw the mention of early hunter gatherers as men's role and "excessive gathering". Yes, there is a function of men bringing home more meat than they need (to be dried and saved) or more nuts or seeds or roots (to be stored) and perhaps the ancient cave-woman would be grateful rather than annoyed at the piles and piles of food, wood for fire, and bedding materials. However if a cave-man had a mental illness that caused him to excessively gather, say, rotten carcasses (because the fur is still pretty) and leave them in piles in the cave, never getting around to skinning them, or perhaps fresh animal dung (because it is shiny and soft and maybe when it is dried enough, he will fins some use for it) which he strews on every cave surface so that Wife is stepping in it when she tries to cook, then this is no longer a "good" husband/hunter-gatherer. This is a hoarder who is making life very difficult. And yet when she complains about the smells and lack of space he believes she just cannot understand that these are his treasures.

Hi Dave :)
I was just curious if there is anything you do regularly using your plastic sacks?
I use between seven to fourteen of them every week.
See, my kitchen trash can is one of those lovey heavy plastic 27 pound "Tidy Cats" yellow kitty litter buckets, with handle.
The plastic sacks that I get free from the grocery store fit in it perfectly.
Since many of them come with holes, I often must resort to double bagging them.
Then I line the bottom of the sack with any junk mail that has come free in the mail, to soak up any wetness.
Every day I scoop out the litter boxes and put the scoops in there and then immediately take the sack out to the outside trash can.
Then I reline the bucket with another one or two plastic sacks and any junk mail.
Many times I don't get enough food at the grocery store to be given enough bags and I have been known to steal a few from his stash to get me through.
For me, plastic sacks come and plastic sacks go.

Anyways,
I was just wondering how many of them do you use on a regular basis?
Do you have a routine where they are a key part of the procedure?

There is a factory near here that takes those sacks and turns them into picnic tables, fencing, patio decks, benches and a whole lot of other outdoor things.
Maybe, some of your sacks would like to be reincarnated too. ;)

clear spaces: from"The Clear Space Clutterer"

I am starting to feel like the story book murderer who sees his victim's face in a mirror everytime I look at that shelf.

We have a bookcase that lost its spot due to some other moving. It has moved to the living room at the moment-in part of the space from the infamous box pile/BOX Canyon. Its top was clear and I could put a laundry basket on it when I brought it up from the basement. Mrs Dave has been working with her books. She brought a stack of my books and papers from a back room bookcase she is using to organize her books and other things. She put them in that clear space! I was upset! - but I wasn't sure I had the moral high ground to say anything- and didn't. I added two plastic containers of mine-potential storage for some hobby items-and Mrs Dave added a spray duster and dust cloth. The top was now well covered and I have "gritted my teeth" every time I've handled a laundry basket for the last 3 weeks or so.

This morning I went to hunt for a special envelope. I found some books in a box. I set them on the floor in front of the bookcase. I took all the books from the top of the bookcase and set them on the floor. I brought up a few books from downstairs and have that much empty space. Although it is a far cry from all the books I own, I will clap my hands over this stack and see if I can choose a few that bring me joy and part from the rest-maybe not until tomorrow now. I also hope tomorrow to take a little time in the morning and do something with the rest of the items on the top of the shelf-we'll see.

In the box with the envelopes and books I also found ..... more plastic sacks! At this time my norm is to take them to Plastic Sack Plaza but I am not sure that is wise for these. I am starting to be afraid of being pursued in my dreams by large, bulbous, black shapes while running by brown park benches and blue water fountains made of grocery chain plastic bags.

Clear spaces...
I very early on realized that any clear level space would become heaped high in an almost unreal, supernaturally short amount of time.
To counter this
I would position a dragon statue/fountain square in the center of the clear area and declare it to now be a
"NO CLUTTER ZONE".
Meaning that anything placed there would be immediately removed upon discovery.
I defend these areas daily and after many years he has finally learned to stop even trying to put stuff in them.

It is so nice now to have our one and only kitchen counter clean and clear and useable.
To be able to walk into the house and not have to fight your way through the obstacle course.
To be able to get to my dresser and get out a pair of socks any time I want without having to climb through a huge heap of "whatever".
To sleep all stretched out on the sofa hide-a-bed instead of curled up in the corner of the couch.
To be able to relax, read, do crafts, play because now there is space for it. :D

Is Mrs Dave giving love or receiving imposition?
Is Mrs Dave going to change Mr Dave's behavior?

Re boxes in room. Mrs Dave worked hard. She cleared a metal shelf and a file cabinet in the basement. Mr Dave got fired. Mr Dave had to clean out his office. He put the boxes on the clean shelf in the basement.
Mrs Dave worked hard. She made a space for a long table in the basement where she could lay out a quilt. Mr Dave had 13 feet of boxes in the living room. He would not throw everything away. Many boxes were moved to the basement table.

Yeah Dave :)
The same page of the same book. ;)

Re: Help. You can't unless ....

In reading the posts of wife, teecher and AJ, you observe a variety of relationship situations in which there is a man hunter-gatherer and a woman overwhelmed by "THE BOUNTY". :) :)

I am not widely read, so it would not surprise me if there are even earlier accounts of excessive gathering, but recordings of the issue go at least as far back as the discussions of gathering manna in the biblical book of Exodus. ( and in this case I think both men and women were involved, getting in trouble with the Boss.)

So, to flip the coin, and ungather together, there have to be some mindset changes so that both parties are on the same page.

Dr Emerson Eggerichs has written a book called Love and Respect. He bases his theories regarding love and respect in a relationship on Ephesians 5:33. Basically he says that women know about and value love and that men know about and value respect. Thus, women have a tendency to act in ways that feel unrespectful to a man, and men have a tendency to act in ways that feel unloving to a woman. These communication issues enhance and perpetuate relationship conflict.

So, you (ie AJ) cannot help fix the accumulation issue. You (ie the AJs; MsAJ + MrAJ) could work on it together. What I think I see in the posts of AJ, wife and teecher is that the Mr in the equation is still too ME focused to be willing to meet a first step that the Ms in the equation is attempting to make. Until the communication and relationship issues change from both sides, there is no way (in my opinion) that joint "ungathering" efforts can or will occur.

How can a spouse help reduce the pile of boxes to regain a room for living space? no bug or trash issue, just too many of a collection of media. how to help?

Hi Dave :)
We crossed posts. :D

It's a long ongoing story what I have done to reclaim the home.
First I had to decide what areas I was going to do.
Our living room, dining area and kitchen are one small combined area.
I started at the front door and slowly started boxing/bagging up all his stuff.
Labeled the bags/boxes as to the area they came from and then put them into the garage or his bedroom.
Worked my way around clearing and cleaning as I went.
As one area was cleared of clutter I made it a
"NO CLUTTER ZONE".
Anything dropped there was immediately removed and put in the garage or his bedroom.
He eventually stopped trying to drop stuff in these areas.
Then I emptied the pantry stuffed with all his long ago abandoned foods.
The "den" is a very, very tiny room. Not big enough for anything much.
My dresser was in the dining area and my clothes were all in stacked boxes.
He had the whole garage, bedroom and this little room all cluttered and all to himself.
I had no place.
Told him he had one month to empty out that "den"
because it was only fair that I have a special place just for me.
He drug his feet and procrastinated so five weeks later I finished moving the remaining stuff out to the carport and garage.
See, he has filled that garage floor to rafters full and all his stuff is now accumulating in the carport and all over the outside property.
Anyways, I plastered, patched, painted and carpeted that tiny room but still sleep on the couch because it's farther from his bedroom and he makes a lot of noise plus I need a lager bed than a single because the cats insist on sleeping with me.
He would have a large hoard of cats but I put an end to that because he doesn't take care of them, I do.

So, my advice is to make
"NO CLUTTER ZONES"
keep them clear and clean at all times.
Decide what areas you are willing to sacrifice to his stuff.
Have him move the den stuff there.
It's only fair that you have your own space too.

None of what I did and am doing is easy and it takes a long time, years and years to get to where I am.
I work slowly, trying to give him a chance to get used to the changes before I move on to another project.
He refuses to read self help material or get counseling so I am doing all I can think to do to make this place safer and in better living condition.

Hope I have answered your question alright and maybe even given you an idea how you can get what you need.

(I have no clue how to make links, so finding threads is a matter of hunting.)
In welcome to the new board, I bumped an old thread to the top. I posted references in that to several threads relating to hoarding family members, they are threads that I thought had a variety of useful answers.

In how to help a hoarder, I bumped one of the referenced threads to the top, It has an excellent overview comment from Tillie about her no clutter zone approach.

Tillie,

how did you do that, did you have him move all this junk from his den to some other room? Or did you take it out? I would love my office back but fear the hoard would then spread to the rest of the house. He does not even sleep with me anymore, he sleeps in his den hoard.

You're right it is a very sad way to live. :(

Hi Wife :)
I know exactly how you feel.
Only difference in our two stories is that I took his nasty squalorous den away from him and turned it into a pretty little room just for me.
My friends keep reassuring me that when he dies
they will be right over to help me toss all this hoard.
Sad, sad way to live. :(

Dave I do feel for you and I appreciate you talking with me here. My husband denies a problem. At least you are trying.

I have dreams and thoughts of how wonderful it will be to someday see all his things moving out of my house. And then I feel terrible guilt because that will probably be when he dies or we divorce and I should not feel happy about those things. I don't! I don't want him to die or divorce. But the hoard is so stifling I cannot stand it, and I will only be free of the hoard when I am free of him. That is a sad way to feel about someone you are married to and causes me a lot of guilt. I don't look forward to HIM being gone, but I do look forward to all that stuff being gone. It will be a really great day when I take those boxes to the dump.

For now I am just drawing a line and not letting the hoard spill into the rest of the house. He has to keep it in the garage, his storage room, and his den.

By the way let me tell a little story. Before I met him I desperately wanted a little room for myself, an office space where I could keep special things and have some peace and quiet. So I hired a company who added on a beautiful office just for me, with a big picture window facing my favorite tree in the yard. I hung pretty crystals in the window, put carpet in there, and had my desk and computer and all of my special ceramics in there. I LOVED my office. But after my husband and I were married a few years, he kept saying he needed a "den." So one day when he was out of town, I took all of my things out of my office, and made it into a den for him. I worked very hard. I put a nice soft cushy chair in there for him, a little lamp stand, a small dresser, a little book shelf, a file cabinet and a tv on a small stand. It was perfect, clean, roomy and a GREAT den that anyone would love, with space for his special things. I hung some pictures on the walls, and on the shelf I put a framed photo of our daughter and a framed piece of art she made for him. Well now I will tell you how angry and resentful I am that he has trashed that room that I loved and gave to him. It is full of trash. He has a tiny path from the door to the chair, with piles of old mail, papers, magazines, and garbage all around. He put a mattress on the floor and he sleeps on it and it is surrounded by trash and junk. You cannot even see the floor in most places. There is garbage and piles of hoard around and behind the chair, tv, cabinet, etc and all the shelves are stacked with junk. My beautiful picture window is filthy with junk piles up against it and a brown layer of thick dust over everything. There are spider webs and bugs in every corner. It is completely filthy.

This is just one reason I resent him. I GAVE him my pretty office and he ruined it and is STILL filling the garage and storage rooms and won't clean anything. Yeah, I am pretty mad about the whole situation. I won't be giving him anything else, you can count on that.

Dave I do feel for you and I appreciate you talking with me here. My husband denies a problem. At least you are trying.

I have dreams and thoughts of how wonderful it will be to someday see all his things moving out of my house. And then I feel terrible guilt because that will probably be when he dies or we divorce and I should not feel happy about those things. I don't! I don't want him to die or divorce. But the hoard is so stifling I cannot stand it, and I will only be free of the hoard when I am free of him. That is a sad way to feel about someone you are married to and causes me a lot of guilt. I don't look forward to HIM being gone, but I do look forward to all that stuff being gone. It will be a really great day when I take those boxes to the dump.

For now I am just drawing a line and not letting the hoard spill into the rest of the house. He has to keep it in the garage, his storage room, and his den.

By the way let me tell a little story. Before I met him I desperately wanted a little room for myself, an office space where I could keep special things and have some peace and quiet. So I hired a company who added on a beautiful office just for me, with a big picture window facing my favorite tree in the yard. I hung pretty crystals in the window, put carpet in there, and had my desk and computer and all of my special ceramics in there. I LOVED my office. But after my husband and I were married a few years, he kept saying he needed a "den." So one day when he was out of town, I took all of my things out of my office, and made it into a den for him. I worked very hard. I put a nice soft cushy chair in there for him, a little lamp stand, a small dresser, a little book shelf, a file cabinet and a tv on a small stand. It was perfect, clean, roomy and a GREAT den that anyone would love, with space for his special things. I hung some pictures on the walls, and on the shelf I put a framed photo of our daughter and a framed piece of art she made for him. Well now I will tell you how angry and resentful I am that he has trashed that room that I loved and gave to him. It is full of trash. He has a tiny path from the door to the chair, with piles of old mail, papers, magazines, and garbage all around. He put a mattress on the floor and he sleeps on it and it is surrounded by trash and junk. You cannot even see the floor in most places. There is garbage and piles of hoard around and behind the chair, tv, cabinet, etc and all the shelves are stacked with junk. My beautiful picture window is filthy with junk piles up against it and a brown layer of thick dust over everything. There are spider webs and bugs in every corner. It is completely filthy.

This is just one reason I resent him. I GAVE him my pretty office and he ruined it and is STILL filling the garage and storage rooms and won't clean anything. Yeah, I am pretty mad about the whole situation. I won't be giving him anything else, you can count on that.

I listened to my husband for years say that I was the hoarder and not him. OMG he saved everything. Well we had other problems and the marriage ended in a divorce. Now it's obvious who is the hoarder. My house, neat as a pin, his house.....hoarding everything. My life is calm and peaceful now. I couldn't live like that anymore!

Thank you for being willing to make another post to talk about what's going on. I am on the "cause of the problem" side of the equation so sympathy expressions from me are probably pretty hollow, but your post is definitely a reminder to me that I need to reexamine the way I think and act.

Not going very well. Every time I even suggest giving something away or donating it he says "There is nothing wrong with it!" It's like he HAS to keep anything there is nothing wrong with!

His sister has a very nice 3 story house. Her living areas are ok but messy. Her bedroom is stacked to the ceiling with boxes that look like they will fall on you and kill you. Her basement is full of boxes and animal poop from her dogs. So gross. She collects Beanie Babies and has huge tubs of them everywhere, most worth nothing. She has thousands of them. She also collects plates and has so many it is insane.

I don't think anyone else in his family collects or hoards. His brother seems pretty normal except he has 8 cats.

I wonder if hoarders realize that when they die, their loved ones are left having to go through all this stuff. It is sad because there is so much volume that we are going to probably just throw it all away without looking in the boxes. So if he does have anything valuable or special or from his childhood, or family heirlooms, we won't know what they are and they will probably get thrown away.

I came back because I had a dream last night that I went in the family room and he had gotten rid of the couch! I was so happy until I saw it in the back yard and he said it was just out there so he could clean it with the hose and then bring it back in.

I would rather live alone than deal with this anymore, but can't bring myself to break up the family. When our child is 16 I am finished with this whole thing and he can move out and take his hoard with him.

how are things going?

digging out is a book. You should be able to see listings on eBay and Amazon.

Over the past 4-5 years I have hauled box after box after box of my books out of the basement to find them mildewed. I have taken most of them to the recycle center. Books are frustrating because most used ones are not resellable and the ones that are bring very little money. Brooks Palmer, in his book Clutterbusting, Letting go of what's holding you back, has a couple of vignettes about clients that were holding on to books that I found helpful when I first wanted to reduce my quantity of books.

(And the Brooks Palmer book was most helpful to me personally too. I am a slow reader and have a poor memory. I looked at some other books before finding that one but I couldn't remember all the techniques I was to use and all the technical stuff about hoarding and hoarders made my eyes glaze over and I couldn't remember it either. Brooks takes a little different approach which I could relate to better. It helped me to make a couple of cycles through a number of different categories of things.)

I have also refused to go to counseling. Mrs Dave has gone to some counseling on her own. Every counselor she has gone to over a 20 year period-ranging from Social Worker to licensed Psychiatrist-has advised her to divorce me. I don't know how to advise you in your situation. I just know two things-there will not be a pain free solution and the longer the current situation continues the more permanent and resistant to change it will become. The rental truck influx sounds like a massive step increase in "stored stuff" and maybe you can come up with a way to force reversal of that increase in volume. From the perspective that just because his mother was inconsiderate enough to die and force him to deal with his stuff doesn't mean he should be allowed to force it on his wife and child.

Is "Digging Out" a book? I could not find any threads or files named that on this site.

Also, we went to marriage counseling at one point and he was SO rude and dismissive to the counselor. We got "homework" to do and he would not do it. Barely participated. I have suggested he go to therapy alone and he has told me I am the one who needs therapy (but, I am not the hoarder, and I actually have gone to therapy alone for awhile). He refuses to go, says there is nothing "wrong" with him. Which incidentally is the same thing he says when I try to get rid of anything... "there is nothing WRONG with it!" Once I threw away an old threadbare bed sheet. My son had had an accident and bled on the sheet also. I threw it out, and my husband dug in the trash and took it back out and saved it. I got so angry, because he has NO right to do that, it was MY sheet that I bought before I met him, I decided to throw it out and he "Stole" it from the trash. I was angry because the blood stains reminded me of the accident and made me upset to look at the sheet. I stole it back and threw it away in a place he could not find.

I am in the same condition as you are and have been doing whatever I can to get out of his mess.
Please read "Digging Out".
It's for people like us.
Click around on the links at the top of this page and read all that too.
I know it's not much but it is a start.

Unfortunately, without proper therapy he will never have the desire to change or will change a little and then revert right back.
"Digging Out" gave me some very good tools to use, like "harm reduction".

Dave thank you for the perspective. Also Tillie.

Before this "haul" came in he had a "hoard" but it did not take up the whole space. I have asked him for the ten years we have been married to please sort, say, one box a week. He has not sorted any boxes. The closest he came was saying he was going to install shelves on EVERY WALL in the family room to unpack his books and put them on these shelves. I did not say this (because I assumed he would never get around to it) but my brain was screaming NO. NO!! I do not want hundreds of old, mildewed, smelly, useless books taking up wall after wall of the family room, never being read and getting covered in dust that not he, but I will have to clean! I want ALL the books gone to donation. I would not have a problem if he kept a small bookshelf in his den (ok, he has one already in there piled with books) with some of his favorites but NO ONE is going to read his books!!

I am just so frustrated. I am not going to give an ultimatum, because 1) I bought this house before I met him, it is my home of 20 years and I am not moving out and leaving it for him to trash, and 2) we have a 9 year old child together who would be completely devastated if mean mommy kicked daddy out.

I already sold and gave away a lot of my own things trying to make space but he just fills it up with more of his stuff so I am done with that.

I have asked him to sell or get rid of some of the large items he has (a bench seat to a car he doesn't own anymore, a couple of bikes he cannot ride anymore due to his health, about 15 suitcases) but he won't. I want that stinking couch gone but instead of getting rid of it he went and bought a $150 steam cleaner to try and get it clean, so now we have that sitting here and the couch still stinks.

Pre-haul, he even had a storage unit full but he said it cost to much and moved it all into the garage.

Tell me, what is the best choice?

Wait until he goes out of town and get rid of half the stuff?

Nag him every day to sort his boxes? Bring one of the boxes into his den every day and say "here is your box to sort today" or one a week?

Give an ultimatum and have him ignore it and sit in his den and refuse to move out, causing a huge conflict as I try and evict him with our child crying?

Or live with the clutter until he either dies of old age (and I throw it all away) or our child turns 16 and I file for divorce?

I hate this.

You said that this all happened recently.
So, what we need to keep in mind is grief.
Grief over his Mother's death.
Grief over packing up and forever leaving a home he shared with her.
People do not grieve properly, they try to shake it off and get on with life and that causes a LOT of unresolved issues.
I recommend grief counseling to help him sort this all out in his head and heart.

Best to you both (((hugs)))

dave, I expect to be able to park my car in the garage within three months. If you do not have my half of the garage cleaned out so I can park in it in three months, I will be moving out. I like to sort things and I am good at it. I will be glad to help you with your boxes if you want my help.

dave, I live in this house too and need some space for my things too. I need (x area of the storage room) cleared out in one month. If it is not clear in one month, I will be boxing things up and moving them to the garage where you will have to deal with them within the three month period.

do not just give away your things with the expectation that will set an example which will be followed.

do not expect the problem to go away by itself.

do not expect to fix the situation without conflict and/or stress.

do not be surprised if husband places the things above your mental and emotional health.

I am absolutely, totally and completely paralyzed when I "look" in those boxes; unable to take any action; caught in the no mans land between--"broad view" I agree there is a lot of stuff in the garage and "narrow view" when I see each thing it evokes an emotion of the past or a potential of use that gives it value to me. After decades,some of those boxes did get discarded when they were damaged due to a broken water heater flood. Ones in the garage were moved into a driveway storage locker for termite treatment and then back into the garage. Paralysis from potential and past create a prison of stuff. The op's post could have been labelled "Mrs Dave's view after decades."

My husband recently went to his mother's home to sort through his things after she passed away. The basement was full of his things because he lived there, so he stayed for 3 weeks to sort through everything and get rid of whatever he didn't want to keep. Then he rented a large UHaul truck and drove 2200 miles with what was left. When he got home he unloaded it all into out storage room and our garage.

I recently started to wonder what was in all the boxes so I took a peek, since he said it was all things that were important to him.

Box 1: faded, worn, stained clothing, some with holes, from the 1970's. Mismatched socks, some with holes. Shirts with pineapples drawn on them. None of the clothing is large enough to fit my husband now.

Box 2: receipts from the 1970's and early 80's, just throw in there randomly. Stuff like a receipt for a candy bar at a gas station, or a gallon of milk at the grocery store. A few old, bent, dirty file folders, a bunch of old rubber bands, and a big bag of those plastic bread bag clips that come on a loaf of bread.

Box 3: about 40 prescription bottles filled with pennies. Some marbles, some popsicle sticks, old yellowed dog-eared blank notebook paper, pencils and pens.

Box 4: More mismatched/holey socks, a few old books, paper clips randomly throw in there, and some burned out old light bulbs wrapped in tissue paper. A few of those big, old floppy disks from the 80s.

He won't get rid of any of it. I assume the other 100 boxes are of similar. We paid hundreds of dollars to haul this stuff out here. It is taking up all the extra space and I have no where to put anything. He refuses to even open or sort a single box.

What am I supposed to do with all of this? Just let him hoard up the whole house for decades? He even brought an old, worn out sofa that is at least from 1975 and had dog hair and dog pee stains on it.