Don't even get me started on clutter.......

(just don't)

There is just no way it would work for me, cringing here.
I would say he could build a shed out back and go to town.

I'm a big believer that you can't change people, and you probably don't really want to as he means a lot to you. The only thing you can do is ask him what he finds of value about his living space (meaning what he would like his living space to be for him) and hopefully there will be some points on which you can both agree.

Like if he has trouble finding things sometimes, than maybe you can agree on keeping his stuff, but organizing it so it is easier for him to find and easier for you to look at.

My husband likes to write things down on random receipts and junk mail envelopes. Sometimes when I find them, I e-mail him the info (in case he needs it) and throw it away.

Actually I'm kind of fascinated by pack rats. Can we do a documentary type episode with you two (from negotiations...to the dreaded it clean up or organization?) :)

(If you live in or near L.A. California or Seattle)

My daughter has some seriously (disgusting) pack rat habits. I go through her room on an every two weeks rotation and I'm still appalled by the sheer volume of stuff that has accumulated.

It's really problematic. She's nine, so she should be able to deal with this stuff, but she appears to be incapable of understanding the expectation for "stuff."

I've got a fair amount of clutter, but if I left her room to its (or rather her) own devices, I'm sure undomesticated animals would take up residence.

Every month we have a lesson on room cleanliness, but so far, not a one has taken.

I lived with a full-on hoarder. He had a great, cheap apartment that he had been using for storage while he mainly crashed at my place. Then I lost my job, so we decided to turn his place into a liveable space. Ugh. I threw out dumpsters full of newspapers (he saved the NY Times) and the place was still filled to the brim with crap. The building's super was so happy when I moved in, thinking I could put an end to the giant fire hazard. Um, nope. He even saved those clear, flimsy plastic bags you put vegetables in at the supermarket. And twist ties. And every piece of mail he ever received EVER. Ugh. I wish I could've kept the apartment (it was a cheap penthouse) and lost him and his stuff.

I'm a minimalist and my boyfriend is a collector. Our relationship would never have survived without a large, rented storage unit. He can collect whatever he wants, and our home is still (reasonably) uncluttered -- only the things we BOTH love are on display.

I don't date hoarders.

I admit I'm more of the pack rat in my relationship, and it drives my husband nuts. What's really helped, especially since we got our new apartment and don't have a separate storage area in the building, is watching episodes of "Clean House." It's become one of my favorite shows, and has helped me realize that once things are gone, I don't actually miss them. There are things that have real sentimental value (like my grandma's jewelry) and there are things I hold onto because they *might* have sentimental value or be useful someday (like an old printer or the only test I got an A on in college). Stuff that falls in the latter category is generally not worth keeping. Also, I found a consignment shop nearby to take clothes to, and it's much more fun to use store credit there to get new stuff than to hang onto clothes I'll probably never wear. It's all about changing your frame of mind and being willing to trade your "stuff" for a less cluttered home -- and it's definitely worth the trade.

Watch "Hoarders" on A&E.

How did I deal living with a pack rat? Not well - my ex wanted to keep EVERY little random interesting thing he came across. As an example, a thermometer broke one day and he scooped up the little blobs of mercury from inside into an empty prescription bottle. He thought it was "cool" and absolutely refused to throw it away, which led to probably our biggest fight over the issue of keeping stuff. It drove me crazy that he kept absolutely useless things like that, and we now had to find places for them and move them around with us if we moved.

That relationship has ended, thank goodness.

I think this is an interesting post.

seabird04107- I think the two of you will be together for a really long long time. That was exactly what I was talking about, let them have their own person space. I get my throw out and keep things to minimal to a fault from my mother. Where my day was a collector of random and sometime hideous things. He had his garage which was his domain, they were married for over 35 yrs. until my mom passed away.

I tried watching "Hoarders" and ended up erasing the episodes that I TIVO'd. It was just too heartbreaking. That said, I lived with a packrat. Every closet was full of his "stuff", and I had no space to put my clothing. It was the worst.

I went to a party last week that was filled to the brim with designers/decorators. Everyone wanted to talk about A&E's Hoarders...

I'm the more pack-rat prone one in my relationship. But I'm really not bad at all. My boyfriend is just a compulsive thrower-awayer. If anything goes a month without being used, he wants to throw it out or give it to Goodwill. He can't understand that a few times a year, I bake a cake, so I need the cake pan because I don't want to have to buy a disposable one twice a year. He doesn't understand why, even though we don't play Trivial Pursuit on a regular basis, I think it is worthwhile to keep the game--so that we can play it when we get the urge--again, without having to go out and spend another $30 on a new game. He has actually tried to convice me to throw out spices from the kitchen because I hadn't used them in a few weeks. I think our problem is the opposite of hoarding. He wants to throw away functional stuff mainly because HE doesn't use it or understand what I use it for. And now my rant is finished.

I notice lots of people are saying, "I dated" and "I lived with"...all past tense.

I don't think messy people and neat people can really, peacefully co-exist. Different world views. Different priorities.

I maintain that messy people are just selfish. They think stuff is more important than anything or anyone. And, it's too much trouble to get rid of the stuff, even to appease the neater partner. Who can live with that? And, don't tell me that the neater partner needs to learn to live with the mess. It's unnatural.

My favorite is the simple, "I don't date hoarders" post. You got that absolutely right.

Whenever I visit my parents' house I share a room with my sister, who lives there all the time. She does have slight pack rat tendencies (especially with clothes and paper) but she also MUST be able to see everything she owns whenever she walks in the room... this translates into empty crates and storage bins with loads of junk on top of them and 3-foot-high piles of clothes everywhere, while the closet and drawers are nearly empty. I don't get it.

I throw things out when the other half is gone. Yes, I know. But it must be done. And the other half generally doesn't even know it is gone.

A hoarder friend of mine built a new house next to his old one. He keeps EVERYTHING in the old house, and his wife, very much an editor, has control over the new house. They live in the new house. I am one of very few people who have actually been in the old house; it is quite a trip. But the very existence of the old house and all the stuff contributed to a nervous breakdown on the wife's part.

I have to admit I'm fascinated by this topic. A&E's "Hoarders" and "Clean House" -- I can't get enough of it. Though I think my own very real OCD tendencies are just the opposite (I don't keep anything).

There is a new novel about the Collyer Brothers ("Homer & Langley"), who both died in 1947 amidst 100 tons of "trash" in their NY brownstone/mansion. Link to NYT book review here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/books/01kakutani.html

And here's another interesting item to check out... a very cool artist's studio. I suppose he would be considered outside the norm, but the space is pretty stunning:

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2009/08/clare-graham.html

My dad used to have a policy: Either I clean my room, or he will. If he cleaned it, it meant that he threw away all of my stuff, which was my greatest fear.

I'm still a packrat to some degree, but I have also used this rule with my husband, who is much, much worse.

Sometimes I just take all the receipts and scraps of paper he has left everywhere and dump them in a pile on his pillow. He gets the message.

One of the main problems with hoarding/OCD is that society tends not to see it as a valid medically-based problem, like manic-depression. There's a fine line between packrat and hoarder, and i think the bar is lower than most people realize.

I am constantly appalled by "throwers" and anal compulsive neat niks who believe that their minimalist way of life is the "right" way and constantly try to get everyone else to conform to their lifestyle. Pack rats don't try and get other folks to change.

I do agree that anal compulsive pack rats are a problem but really what is wrong with allowing people who are comfortable in their environments to live that way?

Please, please leave the "messy" people alone (as long as they don't endanger anyone).

My boyfriend and I both have this problem. I bet when other people see our place, they think we are crazy, but we both love it. I don't get some of the things he keeps, but overall to me it makes sense. No matter how much or how little space we have, we will fill it with STUFF.

We are both pack rats. But I have to agree that keeping things is not just about sentimental value. There is definitely a degree of laziness or lack of time (it is important to assign time to sorting and chucking things out).

The mess created by our hoarding drives us both crazy. I am trying to reform and slowly I am pushing things out of the house (give aways, rubbish, etc.). The more I do, the more I like it. The clearer things get, the clearer I want them. The more room I have in closets, the more space I have to put things away that I want to keep but don't necessarily want to see out all the time.

Rehabilitation is possible and it is worthwhile!

My husband and I both used to hang onto ridiculous stuff. Marrying each other was the cure. Nothing like pointing out the pointlessness of someone else's junk to make you realize the pointlessness of your own junk.

We eventually came up with an idea with call "the flow." As in, there are hundreds of millions of interesting little objects in the world, and you can like lots and lots of them-- have emotional connections to them, whatever-- but that doesn't mean you have to keep them. You can just enjoy them and then put them back in the the flow. Sometimes you can just enjoy them while they are in the flow-- i.e., you don't bring them home.

The love of my life was a packrat.

My room mate is a packrat and it is something we are working on. Why change him? Because it is a shared space, and I am reasonable about what can be where but his personal accumulation of useless crap shouldn't exist in shared spaces. It starts with a box of this and then just explodes. He never throws out clothing. He has bags of clothing that no longer fit him or that isn't wearable that he keeps just in case. He complains about not having enough storage and it is just ridiculous.

He recognizes it is a problem. We both think it probably has to do with his family, which poor growing up and hung on to everything because there was a money incentive. The thing is he is single, earns three times what they ever did, and lives in an apartment. That combination of small space and a large income to blow means shit accumulates fast.

I sympathize a lot. I used to have a problem with holding on to things "just in case" but moving 4 times in a year solved that problem pretty fast.

I live with a packrat and he keeps everything - everything... it got better once we had kids and he had to control it or lose it to destructive fingers!!! Some of our kids are packrats too - and I understand them better because of him!!! I am a complete minimalist, why would you need more than a toothbrush to survive. We live in a very small house and everyone has a limited space so when there space is full and they NEED to keep something else then they need to choose and discard. We will not be buying anymore furniture, storage or bookcases... there just isn't enough room. I am a ruthless discarder and have a shelf of boxes in one cupboard of where I keep boxes in various stages of "transition" out of the house... if they don't get asked for over a period of time they get passed on to people who need them. Luckily we live in a part of the world (Cape Town) where there is enough poverty around to not be able to justify keeping stuff you never use...

My boyfriend is a bit of packrat, though not nearly a hoarder. Whenever I'd go over to his house [more often than he to mine; we're both young enough to live with our parents and still abide by their rules], his room would be a mess, stuff everything, old school papers in the corners, magazines he forgot he had stuffed here and there, a 'Where's Waldo' book from when he was 4 [He'd moved twice since then].

I'll cut him some slack, his room was kinda... Weird. One of those furnished-room-above-garage things. A good 1/3rd of it was inaccessible while standing, he had a super deep, super short closet [three feet tall and about five feet deep...!], bad lighting all around, all sorts of weird stuff.

So all the inaccessible areas got filled with STUFF. And he's a nerd so its hard to get him to get rid of old towers and leds and spare parts. Naturally... the whole place was cleaned out and sorted the night before he left for college [THE night before]. I'm not a neat freak, but his room got to me, I even insisted on cleaning it for him once.

"I maintain that messy people are just selfish."

Oh, mrspea. What about all the neatniks who'd dump someone just for being less than pristine? That's not selfish?

Sorry, I meant "Ms. Pea."

Funny - I could throw away just about anything I own with little regret, but I have a hard time staying tidy so I look a little like a pack rat. My husband IS a pack rat, but is so tidy you'd never know. I have a hard time convincing him to throw things away when I'm the one that's usually making the messes...!

I'm the pack rat in our relationship, but it's manageable. I keep mostly research papers and clothes that I haven't worn since high school.

The papers go into no more than two small plastic storage boxes that go in the closet. Three times a year I go through them and purge anything that I haven't studied since the last purge.

As far as the clothes, my best friend helped me find the fine line between unwearable and reusable so I have turned some of my favorite t-shirts into t-skirts that I wear frequently.

I also horde fabric, but I haven't gotten that under control yet. I'm not sure I really want to! haha

My husband is a minimalist, but his few possessions never get put back where they belong. He's not a pack rat, he's just messy.

I've lived with a pack rat for almost 32 years! I should be eligible for sainthood! On the rare occasions he's gone, I manage to dispose of some things. I more or less manage to keep most of his stuff out of the house where I don't have to deal with it on a daily basis (except for junk mail which he NEVER seems able to toss). You don't even want to see the garage, the storage shed or HIS car.
You have NO idea how many times I've considered moving out just to get away from his stuff. If we go any where, I'm much happier when we take my vehicle. You don't have to unload it before you can leave!

There is having too much stuff for one's current living space and then there is crazy nutty hoarding. They aren't the same. I live in an apartment in an urban area and I'm constantly trying to get rid of things so that my home isn't cluttered, but it IS an apartment, and sometimes I just have too much stuff in it.

However, the stuff isn't a lifetime of TV Guides, the used wrappers from a year's worth of butter, or all the hair the cat ever shed (a kid on A&E's Hoarders couldn't bring himself to discard his dog's shed hair. Ewwww, that's when I stopped watching the show).

Moving internationally two times so far has cured me of pack rat tendencies. I don't like lugging 'stuff' around any more... my husband is on a similar scale to me thankfully.

I don't think either type is selfish, so long as they're trying to control their tendencies when it affects others. Doesn't the book refer to it as Warm people and Cool people?
My boyfriend doesn't like to have a lot of possessions around, but admits that being able to keep them in family storage helps with that. My "storage" is a six hour drive away so my apartment looks more cluttered than his. I also have a lovely cat who believes it is his personal mission to destroy any attempts at organization. I do have a giant box of stuff to give away now--computer pieces, clothes, books, but even that took days because of the memories stirred up by even an old t-shirt that doesn't fit or a book given to me that I read once and didn't like. Regular cleaning, understanding, and some wine are the best ways to deal with a packrat like me.

Just looking at the photos make me break out in a cold sweat. But - live and let live.
My husband saves everything and can find none of the things he needs when needed. I am organized and can not handle clutter, it's chaos to me.
I have learned to overlook his "habit". He has the big walk in closet with sliding doors so for me it's out of sight, out of mind.
Partnerships take compromise and require a sense of humor. As time goes by you realize you can't change a person and it is almost rude to try. Who can say which one of us has it exactly right.
Just remember you can't take it with you so consider your loved ones who have to weed through your stuff when you are gone...

I also disagree with the edict that "messy people are just selfish", as it's a narrow-minded generalisation that shows little depth or insight. Messy people who live alone aren't necessarily selfish. And as I've seen from many comments on the subject of organising, there is a *vast* difference in opinion on what's considered messy or not.

watching hoarders right now
its insane

Our house has three bedrooms - Master bedroom, his room, and my room. I don't have to deal with his computers, he doesn't have to deal with my sewing projects. It works very well for us.

I'm so pissed mine right now. He promised that when he got a picnic table to put in the little apt. to do some model thing that he wouldn't horde his crap. A year and a half later and it's so piled up. And he's touched his model about 3-4 times. It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't pay over $70 month for offsite storage, and the shed that came with the apt. I have a sewing machine, a headboard and some stuffed animals. The rest is his crap and no one has looked at a damn thing in over 6 years. I wish I had some answers. And if anyone has any that your man (or woman) hasn't made you cry by considering your feelings worthless, please let me know. I am in desperate need of some help in getting him to understand or in need of a kind person to give up a nice size house so I can have one room that is crap free.