His house, his rules.

I love my boyfriend dearly, but he's a pack rat who never throws anything out. I can totally see myself in this woman's situation in 20 years, and it scares me.

Hi Cate,

Maxwell gives some really excellent advice here. You really should explain to your husband that you want your home to be a place where you both feel comfortable and happy.

My advice would be to be truthful, while still trying to respect his need to hold on to certain things. I know that your first instinct and desire (as mine would be as well) would just be to throw it all out but I would suggest moving slowly at first so he does not get freaked out and think that one day he will come home and all of his "stuff" will be gone.

Wishing you a happy, clutter free home you both can love.

I really appreciate Maxwell's last point about taking baby steps and starting with one room. This will give you a chance to find out what your design aspirations are for a space as well.

Reg. family furniture - if the above goes over well, perhaps you can suggest a compromise where between two items, he can keep a piece if he lets go of another. And if selling/giving away is not an option - can you find siblings, cousins, other family who will take the piece? It will still be in the family, but at least not in your home.

"His house, his rules?"

Is that really what a marriage is all about?

I think the whole thing is really sad. If you don't care enough about your partner to compromise on some furniture - well, maybe you should just marry your stuff instead.

However, as a person who is living with my grandmother's remnants...and could NEVER get rid of them, I guess I can see how attached he could be to his family "junk." Junk is, after all, a very subjective term!

I think Maxwell had a great idea, start small and see how it goes. Maybe if your husband doesn't feel like you want to just discard all of his family heirlooms (to him, that is!) as junk in one fell swoop, he might become more open to changing other rooms/areas.

Honey, I think you answered all your own questions in your own letter.

I find it difficult to read and cook while at the same time hate sports. The effort put into actively disliking say, college football, tends to make it hard to hold both a whisk and my copy of War and Peace. I usually end up dropping the book into my bernaise sauce, or turning the pages with a messy hand and ending up with a stuck together book. Either that happens or I'm able to cook, read, and hate sports but suddenly I'm gay. And that's really troublesome to my wife when that happens.

This is a faintly rediculous letter. The issue here is not "getting the husband on board", it's actually having a discussion with a life partner about how two people are going to live. I think Cate is probably a few large discussions away from even thinking about major changes to the home.

I might be too young to handle this (33). I say get that apartment. If you have to ask permission in your own house, something is way off. I have also always found it most effective to ignore other people's protests and toss their crap. My brother is the only person who's ire lasted any amount of time. And his socks and underwear were positively ragged, so it was a ridiculous argument to begin with. Tossing someone's junk for them saves a soul.

My husband is a reformed pack rat. I pack up stuff he supposedly wants to keep, but never uses. If he doesn't want the stuff for one year, I give away. That worked really well for me.

I agree with Lady J about throwing stuff out without telling people you are going to do it. My husband's mom told me to do this with his stuff (as she does with her husband's excess stuff). My husband has NEVER noticed his missing things.

I agree Maxwell's advice is probably the best way to approach this. You don't mention how long you've been married and living there although you do mention children involved. If he was living there since he was 28 and is now 52 how much of that time was by himself? Does he see you as an intruder, which seems to be the way you feel? After that many years its understandable he may be resistant to changes, so better to make small steps and compromises. He hopefully will end up liking it.

Marital counseling may be your only other option.

Cate, you're living my ex-life. I was 25. Now-ex-husband was 50. The story of the stuffed formerly-alive owls has been told in another thread, so I won't repeat it here.

Maxwell's ideas are terrific. Whether they solve your problem depends on whether your husband is actually open to future opportunities. Good luck -- and I mean that absolutely seriously.

Advice

Start small. Reinforce the stuff you like (I like this sidebaord of your great uncles) and then say, (but I'd like to make functional by having it fixed)...

Don't push too hard. You are looking at a multi year campaign. Slow steady polite pressure, understanding of why he likes certain things, making small decisions step by step.

Show him pictures of where you'd like to go, and then how you'd like to integrate some of his stuff if at all possible.

How about a project to organize some of the stuff better, and perhaps as your going about it you'll have a chance to toss/donate/give to other relatives somethings with his blessing.

Start with one space, get agreement to do that to your taste, but make sure his taste isn't ignored, maybe once he sees what could be done he'll come around.

Finally, you might wish to try to enlist of other relatives of his in your quest, specifically males. No guy like to be nagged by (a cabal of) women, but if Uncle Jack takes you aside and tells you "your old lady has a point" , it might provide a little assistance.

Good luck.

Ten owls and a loon has got to be one of the most hilarious stories ever told on this site.

It certainly bears repeating.

excuse me Maxwell -- but she needs to get "permission" to work on a space?

please.

Without knowing anything about your relationship, I'd say show him that this is important to YOU and that you are willing to do most of the work (i.e. painting, etc) if he can be a little more open to change. After all, if he likes the bathroom the way it is you can't expect him to spend the weekend re-tiling it, right? The earlier advice about taking things slow is also golden. On the other hand, some people need to actually see the new layout/furniture/paint before they can realize that they do, in fact, like it. My fiance is that way -- he is usually resistant to all major house changes initially, but then comes to appreciate them later. (I should add that if he didn't like the change after a few days I would compromise.) The idea about the small boundaried space would be a good place to go with this. Maybe when he sees how great it looks he'll be excited to give you more space to work with.

Fixing/replacing the non-funtional furniture should be priority #1. Not everyone cares about having beautiful furniture, but most people do want their furniture to serve its purpose.

Good luck!

Cate, long-time lurker here. As it happens, my dear one is a pack rat, too. And I happen to specialize in behavioral psych. That is, my job is to "teach old dogs new tricks."

In addition to the great words of advice already given, I would also make sure that any cooperation from your hubby on this should be positively reinforced. Make sure you notice his cooperation and make sure he knows that you absolutely love it when he throws things away or whatever.

I realize this will seem about as phoney as a two-dollar bill at first, but it will work in time, especially if you start small. My dh now throws stuff away regularly (and makes sure to let me know, so he can be adored as the Household God he is.)

Janine, you sound like a saint. Kudos.

And, great advice.

Is it possible that your husband identifies himself with this stuff and feels that when you reject it you are, in some way, rejecting him? I know that sounds awfully like pscho-babble but, I had a similar issue with a large number of flower pots that I had, unwittingly turned into a collection. I really felt hurt that my husband considered it junk, when it seemed to represent my, somewhat thwarted, passion for gardening. It had to go, of course, because it WAS junk and not really the same thing as my love for plants. A plant only needs one pot after all, still it was difficult. We sold them at a tag sale and I was completely incapable of pricing them. I had to let my husband do it all and almost snatched a yellow glazed one, in the shape of a lotus, out of a womens hand as she contemplated paying $5 for it. I know it sounds absurd but, it might be helpful if you keep that in mind as you start with the baby-step plan outlined by Maxwell. Just make sure your husband realizes it's the junk, not his innermost soul, that you want to get rid of.

I feel for you. I really do.

I helped my Mom clean out her house last summer. In 20 years, she had 1 garage sale. The garage was wall to wall and the attic was stuffed. There was a little walk trail in one room because of the piles of crap. A mix of junk, accumulation, half-finished projects and family treasures.

It was a bloody battle to get her to clean out and host that garage sale. And she dragged her feet. We fought and I just started hauling crap to the curb. Papers, boxes, broken stuff, about 250 bottles of half-used whatever from under the sink...you name it. It was ugly. But after that first day she could see that it looked better and she was relieved. I even managed to get my teenage brother to clean out his rat's nest of a room and he shared in the sale profits. A couple hundred was enough to get him motivated.

You know what? After it was all done, she felt a lot better and she hasn't missed the crap. And she made a good amount of money selling that junk to other people. What I think turned her attitude was seeing that things could really be better and that all that junk laying around was just overwhelming and depressing. She was way beyond the 8 step cure. She needed clean-out tough love, drill sargeant style.

What also helped was to have a 3rd party there to keep her spirits up and help plan for the next phase -- the design and space plan part of the project. The "fun" part. Maybe it might be helpful to have a 3rd party consultant come in and start the conversation about what to do after all the junk is gone. People are sometimes willing to listen to someone who is not a family member or a loved one. So, if possible, now is the time to hire the non-threatening interior designer or space planner. My spouse helped her conceive how the space would be after the big clean out. It helped her keep her spirits up.

I think the strategy to start with one room is good. But I would actuallly start with my own stuff. Surely you have some stuff in the house too and why not start the non-threatening cleaning by cleaning out things that are your domain? Or your kids' stuff? Just starting a little storm under the sink, or in the laundry area or in the bathroom will help get the wheels rolling. And it will give you a great opportunity to get the conversation started about a garage sale and spring cleaning.

I read a great article recently about why men don't get rid of anything because it means getting rid of their "youth" or what they perceive their youth to be. It was even written by a man! I wish this woman nothing but the best. It's not a multi-year campaign as someone mentioned, it's a lifetime campaign. It sounds like she's dealing with one stubborn curmudgeon!

Cate, I think you're getting lots of good advice here (with the exception of the "his house, his rules" - which strikes me as a terse summary of the problem).

No one has mentioned one practical thing. This certainly won't work for the true junk, but things like the sideboard - could you persuade him that a better way to honour his family and his past would be to have it restored?

If there is a significant age difference between you (we all seem to have assumed that there is), you might also point out that it is much less painful to go through things with him now than to have to do it as a grieving widow. Hardball, sure, but I'm living the truth of this with my dad's stuff right now. I wish he had done some of this with me, explaining to me what was important about some of these things, rather than just abandoning me to the task.

If he is playing an environmentalist card ("it shouldn't go to landfill"), you could point out that things that are deteriorating are becoming landfill whether you like it or not. There is something deeply wrong with keeping things that others could use and that you do not use, while all the time they are slowly becoming true garbage.

All this assumes that you really want to try to build a home with him. I really wish you the best of luck.

There's no growing love where there's no freedom. Cate should claim a spot (a room, a wing) and make a clearing for herself, permission be damned. Declare it your FreeCateZone, and eject any item that does not give you joy. Make it available by invitation only. Seems likely that that space and comfort in your FCZ may inspire Junk Man to create his own Outbox.

Cate,

My husband is a sort of a pack rat. When I am in my decluttering mode - i ask hime to give me 5 reasons why i should keep the object. And I counter each one of them.

The trick is when the object is his and the house is ours he should have a say - Dialogue is the name of the game
The goal is the object should have multiple utility in the house or it should go to the traash can/give it away ASAP- NOW

I have lived with him for the past 8 years and we have managed to keep a decluttered house.

( At my husband's workplace. I have found neatly piled papers of JUNK. )

My husband has a disabled, wheeled "other woman" in the garage, too (a Porsche that's a sort of family heirloom). I do sympathise.

A few observations from a middle-aged woman who's been with the same man for more than 20 years (it hasn't been easy at times). I have had both feet out the door before. I know how that apartment beckons. This is about more than clutter.

Battles like this usually disguise deeper problems. You are obviously unhappy with something in your life with this man, or you wouldn't be talking about leaving(even if it's just hyperbole). This "stuff attack" is the way it's being expressed (redirected aggression). I strongly suggest you go away together without the kids and work on your relationship. Ask yourself whether you want to be in the marriage. Add up the good and the bad aspects of staying and going. Be honest with yourself...what do you want for your life?

Marriage is like the game Go. You get a little territory here (or area of influence), and the partner gets a little there. What one gains, the other concedes. Neither of you should feel that you have "won." Strive for balance.

Choose your battles. Some things are just off limits. The car thing, for instance. I don't get it, but I know my husband's hunk-o-junk means a lot to him. He lives here, too, after all. If I feel like giving his stuff away sometimes, I just paint one of the rooms to blow off steam. Decor is my (unchallenged) territory in our marriage.

My husband and I came from different socioeconomic levels. His family hangs on to junk for dear life, has garage sales if they need to get rid of something or puts ads in the paper to sell it (even though they can afford to give it away). My family calls the Salvation Army for the good stuff, and throws away the junk. It was a difficult idea for my husband at first, given his upbringing, but now we donate everything (even two cars, but not that hunk-o-junk!). Did I win? No. I changed his outlook, slowly. Made him see the value of it. And it is just so much easier to donate!

My husband's grandparents collected and traded junk (which they called antiques). When his grandmother sold her house, he was asked to choose something. He picked the most hideous table you could ever imagine. It lurks in a dark corner of our house now, like a troll. But I know better than to tell him to get it out of here. It would be bad politics - for him, for the family relations, and so on. I just know.

I am convinced that it is never a good thing for a woman to move into a man's house. I've seen these power struggles happen over and over. Can you buy a place together, where there is no "baggage"?

The suggestion that you offer the family treasures to others in the clan is a good one. You might also suggest that you store them in a rental locker for the children. The kids will probably not want them, and you will both get tired of paying the storage fees, but this trial separation might help the hubby part with his stuff.

Getting rid of smaller things behind your spouse's back is just mean spirited. Packing it up for a year is a good idea, though. It's sort of like what you do with kids' toys when they grow bored with them. See if he misses the stuff, then *ask* if you can get rid of it.

Be kind.

Be honest about your intentions. Be realistic about HIS intentions. It sounds to me like your husband is very controlling. There is a large gray area between being emotionally manipulative and emotionally abusive. I have a relative who had a controlling, emotionally abusive, possession-obsessed husband. He up and left her for someone else when she got to middle age. I am not implying anything here, just pointing out that it makes a huge difference whether your husband is being oblivious or purposefully obtuse.

I just love the story about the flower pots. Someone has to pick that up for a movie. Sort of like _When Harry Met Sally_, with the wagon wheel table.

"A room of ones own" is a marvelous thing, if you have the room. I had a lovely one in a previous home. It felt quite at peace in there. Do you work outside the home? If you don't have an office or other area of your own off-premises, perhaps you are in even greater need of a home office.

Do start small. The momentum builds. We've hired a waste container a few times and just gone on mad dashes looking for things to throw away. Try calling 1-800-GOT-JUNK...when you are ready.

Finally, the suggestions about behavior modification are spot-on. Positive reinforcement is all. The other side of that equation is "extinction." You can get rid of negative behaviors by ignoring them, rather than "marking" them with punitive comments or behavior. I do a lot of dog training. I've used these techniques on my husband. They work. Read _Don't Shoot the Dog_.

Sorry for rattling on. I've been there. Best of luck to both (all) of you.

"phoney as a two-dollar bill"

...um, there are two dollar bills. Really. Legal tender and everything.

I would start with a project that you two can do together. If decluttering scares him, start with fixing the sideboard, painting a room or getting your financial paperwork in order. Re-decorating may scare the bejesus out of him, so do baby steps and keep everything fun and light... If you really insist, it'll sound like nagging.

My ex-boyfriend was a total packrat. He could find an excuse to keep anything -- I gave up going through a box of useless clutter when he told me that he needed a five-year-old plane ticket because he might need to prove in court that he was in the country that day. I always felt trapped in his house -- I didn't get room for a desk when I first moved in, so I slid a bookcase in the three feet sliver between the bed and the wall and happily worked from there until the claustrophobia kicked in. Still, I had a few triumphs before I moved out -- we got rid of rickety furniture, his mother flew in from Japan and gave up on a box we'd stored for her, and I replaced the "theremin corner" with a closet organiser and laundry hamper.

It'll take a lot of patience to get him to change -- to him, the house is perfect the way it is. Think about the whole process as a glacier. It doesn't change so fast, but all those little pieces of junk will eventually float out of your life and melt away. Don't worry about it, because it'll slowly happen, inch by inch.

desk - can I email you my mother's address and can you go there and do the same thing? 50 yrs. of crap! It's gonna take a backhoe to get that stuff out of there!

Pat, you are brilliant. It's too late now, but this situation reminds me of how essential it is not to agree to move into someone else's space in the first place unless you have made it perfectly clear that it is YOUR home as well as his, and you will have equal say in how that home is decorated and run.

Sometimes the only thing that works is selling the old space, buying a new (baggage- and junk-free) one together, piling all your stuff together outside, and allowing inside only the items you BOTH love.

And if he refuses to even consider such an option, well, you have your answer: He loves his junk more than he loves you.

Unfortunately, I know whereof I speak.

Pat -- Wow. Brilliant. I think of the many thoughtful things you wrote, "Be kind" may very well be your best advice to Cate. Sounds as if maybe his things are what 'protects' him. This one sounds well beyond a design/decorating/ decluttering kind of issue... All the best to you, Cate.

Pat, great advice. I will copy your words and paste them into a document where I keep these bits of goodness that I read and want to remember. It's good stuff based on experience and heart, thank you for sharing. I'm going to share Cate's letter and all of these responses with my Mom--she's in a situation where the house is very much HIS and while they talk of building a new home and getting married....it's been years now and it's all still talk.

Cate, I hope that all of this great advice here helps and you know that you are not alone with this problem.

This puts the "therapy" in apartment therapy, I like it.

Oh, sorry Anne. I don't do this on commission. It's a very special opportunity to stare into your mother's eyes and ask, "Do you really need this goddamn electric wok that I have NEVER seen you use?!!!"

I would hate to deprive someone that very special moment.

If you need a backhoe - try hiring movers. I hired 2 big dudes to move stuff for a few hours the day of the yard sale. It was awesome.

Mary, you cracked me up. Guess I gave away that I'm Canadian. And I learned today that America still has two dollar bills. Legal tender, too! :)))

Thank you all (especially Wende and Pat) for the thoughtful advice. I stayed away from the site all day today because I was a little bit afraid of what I'd find, but Maxwell sent me a heads up just now and I'm sitting here digesting what you all have written. I will need to give it still more thought tomorrow.

A bit more background. We have two kids who are 8 and 10, and I am 42 to husband's 51. His family is fairly wealthy and conservative and proud of it. I am the child of upwardly striving liberals. (I am also an only child). And my dad died at 56 so I am uncomfortably aware of the possibilities here!

My undergrad degree is in psychology (ok, everyone laugh now) although I worked in IT and am now a stay at home mom, and husband is an engineer. His dad was an engineer. His brothers are engineers. We may be dealing with a little bit of Aspergers here. My kids will probably be engineers.

And that's really the root of the junk hoarding: it might be useful someday. My favorite story -- I had a cheap pair of Fiskars knock-off scissors from the dollar store. While using them one day, they broke at the hinge/rivet point. I went to show husband; sort of a "look how strong I am" thing and then went to throw them away. He seriously told me not to, because "you never know when you might need a sharp piece of metal." That sounds sort of Hannibal Lecter when I type it, but it's a weird sort of frugality. And those scissor bits live somewhere in the junk pile in the basement. Along with motor bits and wires and pieces of wood and dead appliances, etc.

The irony is that there is so much junk that whenever we need anything, we have to buy a new one because we can't find the stored backups! It doesn't make sense to find a new place, because we live in the great northeastern megalopolis. This house was purchased in 1979 - no way could we get anything nearly as nice as this and pay as little as we do now. Plus the lot is really cool. Interiors are cramped, but we do have some really fine gardens.

I talked to him calmly tonight, and we agreed that I'm going to price small dumpsters tomorrow. He will be in charge of pitching. We will have a series of garage sales. We are going to turn our dining room into a study for the kids with a round table (and no sideboard) so that the room works. The family heirlooms that don't work will go back to the family homestead in the midwest via U-haul. This includes the sofa (his grandmother's) that is so uncomfortable no one will sit in it. The Triumph is safe.

I hope this works. It's just so easy to wake up on the weekend and decide by default to float through the day when you could be doing something that makes life better. But he agreed with me that we aren't really living life at this point -- just coasting. And that's a waste.

Please -- keep the advice up and I will keep you posted. I do appreciate your opinions. You can't firm up your position without figuring out where you stand.

OMG, you're not living my ex-life, but my current one, circa 1999. The engineer who figures we might need broken things someday... oh my... our entire basement in Minneapolis... oh my... I do feel for you.

You can't do worse than some of the things I said when I convinced the husband that he really did not need to keep obsolete election campaign rules from the early 1980s. Sarcasm was used. It was a low point in marital relations.

The good news is that engineers are often amenable to change if they see a new problem to solve, where the old stuff will get in the way. Mine suddenly became capable of culling and decluttering within the last year or so -- a change of job changed his perspective on what he needed to hang onto.

Too funny Wende! When I achieved buy-in tonight was when I said "imagine you get a great job offer and we have to move. How much of this stuff would you want to pay to have someone carry?" That's when the dumpster gained a toe-hold.

There are always many ways to work on solutions for problems. First, though, I have to ask, did you see the "junk" as being a problem before buying the book?

Three stories, three solutions...
1. Car in the garage.
My first car was an MG Midget. I wasn't a mechanic. I couldn't fix it after it broke down. It ended up being sold to someone who was a mechanic, and could fix it. It went to a good home. Another car, big block Corvette. Still wasn't a mechanic. Got tired of spending a fortune. Sold it for a third less than I wanted to a mechanic who had already done a ground-up restoration of a big block Chevelle. It went to a good home.

2. Someone wanted car port plans on another board, because their three-car garage was full...of junk. FULL OF JUNK. And rather than going through it, sorting it, they would rather build on. Well, that is a solution. Build or buy bigger to make room for the crap.

3. My mum is getting ready to die. She keeps trying to get me to take things, like do I want the china? Do I want the French Provincial dining set with cane backs? Do I want the spoon collection? Uh...no, no, no. I'd break the china, the cat would make short work of the cane backed chairs as scratching posts, and I'd never polish the spoons. I'd rather have her sell them or GIVE THEM AWAY to a GOOD HOME where those items would be CHERISHED and APPRECIATED than to have them dashed to bits or shredded or collecting dust in my own home. I'd take the silverware only because I couldn't break it. Not that I'd ever polish it either, but at least it wouldn't be totally ruined in a day or two.

You probably have some kind of insurance on your home. And on the belongings in your home. What is all this stuff worth? Has it been appraised? Does the husband even know what's in the home?

So, that's my suggestion to add to the list. Call an appraiser for your homeowners or property insurance, and have everything appraised. It should be insured anyway, and you can't insure stuff if you don't know what it's worth.

This means that hubby has to go through everything. EVERYTHING. Everything will be photographed, with detailed comments, and items will be appraised and insured.

So the appraiser comes over and tells hubby 90 percent is junk and isn't worth insuring and is actually a fire hazard. Hah!

Or...maybe...it's worth quite a bit, and isn't replaceable, and would be costly to insure. Maybe there's a market for such items, and having them appraised would give you both a starting point to deciding what to keep, what to give away, what to use for kindling in the fireplace, what to have professionally restored or NOT have restored, and what to auction off.

I had to inventory a warehouse for a former employer, when he was getting ready to sell his business. I looked at the boxes stacked to the ceiling, and gagged. And then went to work. I found boxes of "foam L-shapes"...I don't know what they were. I don't know if he even knew what they were.

Each box was labelled with it's contents, and each box location and it's contents were noted on a list. This is another thing that could be done, prior to an appraiser coming by.

Then you can both stand staring at the box of foam L-shapes wondering what they are, where they came from, and if they have any use whatsoever.

The appraiser can give you both a lot of insight on what is there. Seriously. Ever watch those Antique Roadshow shows? They had a bit on Oprah too, looking over some items that people wanted to know about. Here's the link to that show:
http://tinyurl.com/zakrv

Well, that's not quite the one I remembered, but still has good tips and a smattering of values on various things. Would your opinion of the buffet that has the bottom fall out change dramatically if you found out it was worth $4,000? How about $40,000? Look at some of the values of items at the link, like the wind-up toy rabbit, $8,000. Yeah. Really.

This is the one I was thinking of:
http://tinyurl.com/o874v

The whiskey flask is shaped like a pig and the contents were consumed by drinking out of the pig's ass. I'm not kidding. $7,500 value. I'm not kidding about that either.

And here's another one of the "Hidden Treasures" things from Oprah, although this one won't show me the values like the other one did:
http://tinyurl.com/lp5ym

Cate, There's this thing that is essential to a relationship. It's called communication. Without that, it's not really a partnership. If you need to ask strangers on an online message board for advice on how to communicate with your husband, well... cleaning up clutter is the least of your problems.

This has very little to do with home decor advice, and more to do with (possibly erroneous) legal advice.

As the two of you are married, and have been for something like a decade at least, the house would probably not be considered 'his' anymore. When you marry someone (in most states, at least), your property becomes their property, your debts become their debts.

Unless it's a case of some kind of 'ancestral home', or there's a prenup stating otherwise, to my knowledge this is not "His House" at all. It belongs to both of you equally and thus you should have equal say in the interiors.

What about giving your husband the cost of storage units? Maybe when he sees the price he'll get rid of some of his stuff? Because let's face it, he's using your home as a storage facility. I think a marriage counselor wouldn't be a bad idea either. There are bigger issues here. Best of luck to you!

Cate, saw your post from last evening and glad to hear things seem more hopeful. Best of luck!

Cate, I have no input, although I will be taking away much of the advice that I've read here. Your good question really hit home with me. Thanks for asking it, and thank you to all who contributed some very thoughtful and sane advice.

Thank you, Cate, for the Fiskars story. I'm still laughing.

Hope that one comes up at Thanksgiving dinners, once you are comfortable enough with the subject to laugh about it (funny stories can be a weapon, too)! Another good scene for a movie.

Your success in opening up to your husband makes me think that he just wasn't aware how much this got to you. We should never just assume that our spouses know things. Men and women might as well be different species in some respects.

I am heartened that some of this reorganization is centered around the needs of the kids. You are definitely on the right track there. "It's not about me, it's about us."

Cate, I am not sure where you are, but you might want to think about rentable on-site storage units like PODS in addition to the Dumpster. That way you can move the larger items out and have some time to think about whether they should return to the house or be relocated, and you can do some deep cleaning and let the house breathe. Depending on where the ancestral homestead is you might be able to have the stuff shipped in the PODS too. I see them all over my town now when people are renovating as well as when they are moving.

sounds, like she wants to put her stamp on his house, so she can say she decorated it and now wants half in the divorce... Ive seen it too many times before.... n

Hi Cate,
I say start buying new stuff and redecorating away! I live with my boyfriend in his apartment and I hated all his furniture, so I said either put in storage or throw it out, because I simply can't bare to look at it, and on top of that he is color blind so he had every color in the rainbow going on. I thought I was in a circus! When you put your foot down and demand change then you can see if this person is really for you, if my bf said he prefers his furniture then I would never move in with him in the first place because I would not be able to live in that insane asylum. I am now in charge of everything that comes in and out of the apartment, and we both like it much better that way! Good luck to you!

First off, it sounds like Cate *is* conversing with her hubby and prognosis looks good. Yay!

I have some thoughts on the other half of the equation. See... I am a packrat.

I admit it. I'm the one who saves the rubber bands from the asparagus bundles. I cannot throw out a perfectly good mason jar. You get the picture. And of course, I am the child who gets the family "heirloom" furniture.

So here are a few things have helped me let go (thus improving cohabitant relations):

Craigslist. Most of the furniture I got from my family served a purpose and it was, after all, Grandmother's or Great Aunt's or whomever's. It wasn't particularly my style, but how could I throw out that claw-footed coffee table even though the veneer is peeling and it's quasi-stable? I could fix it someday, maybe get some glass for the top...It was a big point of contention between me & my sweetie. And so one day, with a heavy heart, I let him list it on craigslist. And the woman who came to pick it up *loved* it. She was an artist and had some great ideas for experimenting with the veneer, etc. She was much happier to get it than I ever was. And it was a real watershed moment-- it's not that I liked or even wanted the furniture, but I felt some kind of family obligation to it. And someone else really appreciated it. So if my uptight relatives were cursing me from beyond the grave for sending the furniture out of the family, at least it'd be balanced by good karma, right?

Tossing out magazines: I'd accumulated a lot of magazines and catalogues, and one day I managed to send a bag of them to recycling...And I realized that those magazines represented something I had to do-- go through them, read them, etc. Once they were gone, it was honestly like a weight off my shoulders.

Resources defined: for me, money is a limiting resource. So I save things that may come in handy later. What my sweetie has pointed out is that time and space are *also* resources, and generally even more strictly limited resources at that. So the monetary value of the item, the space it takes up, and the time it takes to find it in the first place all factor into its cost. He puts it in perspective: Would you pay someone to move it? Is it worth the cost of storing it? If you do need it again some day, would it be easier/cheaper to just get a new one then?

As y'all probably know, once you get started, it gets much easier. I just wanted to point out that not all packrats really *want* to get buried in our stuff, we just don't realize how much it weighs us down.

Bringing new stuff into the house is where I've *really* changed. DS has 3 questions I have to answer quickly: Do you need it? Where would it go? What purpose does it serve? Remarkably, this filter process works very well. I ask myself automatically now, and I turn around and ask him the same questions when appropriate.

So yes, if you love your packrat (assuming your packrat is an otherwise wonderful soul) please be kind and patient. And *definitely* praise them whenever they let something go.

oh, dear... sorry about the 2X - there was an error message. Perhaps the AT gods can kill the duplicate before I incur the wrath of the brevites?

aj: How wonderfully put! You're outlining a journey I myself need to take. Only I don't have a kind and patient soul along with me, to reassure me that life (and I) will still be full of interesting turns without all the "stuff" I've accumulated that recalls the paths I've traveled or might pursue (both literally, and in my imagination). It's hard to project one's self into the life one COULD be living without clutter, when the stuff seems so much more real and present. But I'm working on it. There! I've come out and confessed it ... I too am a woman who has way too much stuff and sees the value in it all, and is too attached to everything for her own good! Interestingly, so was my Dad, and I'm convinced a lot of it is genetic.

Cate,
Ever thought about repainting his old furniture with black or white lacquer, or even reupholstering some old peices? It might end up being more expensive than what the furniture is worth, but your husband wants to play hardball. So play.

AJ:

LOVED what you wrote. Adding on: Take magazines to local health/medical centers, especially those serving the general public (not ritzy private centers). I took in a couple of bags of old magazines to a local clinic. Laid them out with a "Free" sign. Went in and got my prescription. Came back out to find a lady with eyes shimmering like a child on Christmas morning whose found that all the presents under the tree were theirs.

I apologized because in some magazines, there would be a couple pages missing (for my folder of ideas). She was fine with that. And she cooks, and I really don't, so ALL the tasty recipes were intact.

Believe me, those magazines would be used, read, taken. If you've ever had to sit in a waiting room...uh...my record is 8 hours, magazines would be wonderful.

I'll be that woman who picked up the table is still thrilled. We can't do it all. We can't be an expert furniture refinisher, a scissor reattacher, a cabinet restorer, a rug reweaver and whatever else we have stockpiled.

Let that woman pass on the refinished item to her children. Let it be part of her family history. Or let it show up on Craig's again when her kids don't want it and your kids do.

There is another side to this that isn't being heard. I'm a man and went through a somewhat similar situation where my former girlfriend (yes it led to that) decided that my place didn't have enough 'charm'. I agreed to getting rid of most of my stuff thinking that since we were compatible in other ways we would we would be in decorating also.

I was wrong. I like contemporary clean lines and she likes country pine painted with chickens. I like glove soft leather and she likes country pine with canvas. I like anodized aluminum and she likes enamaled cast iron.

Perhaps it's not so much that he loves what he has but that he has seen the alternative. Had I any hint of her taste in furnishings I might have found a new love for my old stuff rather than saying honey I love you but I don't want to live on your grandma's farm.

This sounds SO familiar!! I can relate. My husband has a lot of his family's non-functional furniture, dishes and stuff from his first marriage, and the garage is full of junk he won't get rid of, and it's depressing. If I had the money I would put most of the "vintage" furniture and crap into STORAGE for "posterity", or for our son if he wants it in 15 - 20 years. That way all the "family" furniture would stay in the family, and my husband wouldn't feel like I was getting rid of it. He always says that I don't like any of his stuff! Geez, at least if it was *cool* retro furniture but it's not- it just looks and feels conservative and elderly. Some people believe that old furniture carries the vibrations of their former owners...

glacia00--

"country pine painted with chickens?!?"

AIIGH! I would not have dealt with that well at all. On the other hand, you've given me a new perspective on the orange couch that my sweetie fell in love with and is having delivered on Saturday. I'm not sure how I feel about it... but it's *so* much better than country pine painted with chickens... yow.

You're living with someone with a mental problem - seek professional help.

Ooh la love. Evidence stuff is not just stuff.

I blogged about you, but am trackback-challenged so I thought I'd drop you a line.

www.thisnext.com/blog/