A little background: for the last several days, we have been working hard to clean up and paint his former house. This place has been allowed to go to ruin for more than 20 years, and is stufffed to the top with his "collections" of junk and garbage. He just can't stop buying/hoarding stuff. It's a sickness, I understand. So far it has not spread to my house, because I can't live like that. However, we want to buy the house I live in, and the landlord is giving us a very good price, and one year to fix up and sell DH's old house. Well, the year is up in February and he has been telling me that he has been working on it all year. Not true, apparently, because I got the shock of my life when he finally alllowed me to "help paint" last week. It's just a nightmare. So now we have lost most of the year we could have been really fixing it up and CA real estate values are melting like a popsicle in August. Plus he plans to move a lot of this complete junk to the new house and I just don't want it! I'm talking about a huge greasy 1950's stove, etc. It's so dirty you can't get the stuff off with a putty knife.

Anyway, I didn't say anything, I just worked scrubbing, scraping and painting as hard as I could. The place will probably be condemned, I think, and all the work we are doing will be for nothing.

Yesterday was New Years Eve, so we took off working on the house, I had bought some silly little Christmas plates and he wanted to buy more on sale. I said no, we had service for 8 and I do not NEED more. Please, DH, do not buy any more! Well, he came home with 12 more of these dumb plates, which I had NO room for and I just said I told you, I don't want to start stockpiling more and more stuff. Hence, I am now the ungrateful B-word and we are not speaking. Can this mess be saved? I am starting to wonder. We are going to mariage counseling, but I don't see much progress yet.

Your DH does have a problem.

But what to do, he has to admit to it, I guess, before things will change. Is there any way you can facilitate that ? Buy him a book, or take him to a counsellor. What sort of relationship do you have with him, doesn't sound very harmonious if he is calling you names. You don't deserve that, my dear girl.

I hate junk, and wastefulness, so I discard things all the time. I strive for the minimalist look !

Good luck.

Such language crosses a line for me, I'm sorry for you.

As for the junk, he's got some issues to work through that paint and relocation cannot solve - it's a control thing, he's feeling out of control so he collects to feel secure.

My DH has become a pack-rat as he approaches old age. I haven't been able to park my car in the garage in about 10 years. His office is so cluttered that I had to quit working as his secretary/bookkeeper. If any of his 'collections' creep into other areas of the house, I ask him to move it to 'his' room. If he doesn't, I throw it away. He knows it's a problem because he has a difficult time finding things when he needs them. He has tossed all of his junk many times over the years - usually after he has spent days searching for his keys or whatever. The downside is that he then spends a lot of money replacing all the junk he tossed.

Why the gradual change in my DH? I believe it is because his financial situation has improved - successful business plus no more alimony or child support means if one new drill is good, three new drills are better! But, I really don't know and I'm not a shrink. In couples therapy we negotiated the 'one room only and you do your own friggin' paperwork' deal, so we live in relative peace. He'll need one-on-one therapy if he decides to address his issue.

You can't change your DH. From reading your other thread it appears he was hoarding when you married him. You just have to figure out a way to deal with it -- or not. The fact that you are newlyweds and he's already calling you names is more problematic than the mess at his old house, imo. ymmv.

I think I decided to manage my own messes, and get rid of things when necessary, because I had to deal with a whole household of my parents "stuff", that went back for decades. It made me realize, how we should not burden our loved ones with such a task. Of coarse some clearing out is normal, but not piles of papers, going back decades, and thousands of plates, and christmas cards forever...I think you get my drift.

My daughter (20) is a horder, and today, I find myself trawling through her stuff, looking for her passport. She is going to Thailand, at the end of the month. She lives in the city, but her room is still in tact, at home, with stuff. So dear old mum is spending hours looking through it all the find her passport. As yet haven't found it !

Mother of horder.

Bunglogirl, what is Ymmv? I don't know that one.

Yes, this hoarding thing is getting to be an epidemic. Just about everybody I know either knows a hoarder or is one! Even TV shows talk about it. DH grew up in large, cash-strapped family, but none of his sibs is a hoarder as far as I know. Some say it is a form of OCD.

We passed New Years Eve and day in silence, finally he told me he was "just kidding" about the ungrateful B thing and where oh where is my sense of humor?

I know lots of couples say awful things to each other in anger, but we are usually pretty civilized during a tiff, no name calling, no throwing the china, etc. We are pretty good at keeping to the subject, even when really ticked off. I guess that is why it really hurt, he has never called me any names and vice versa. I'll survive.

Tell him that his name calling hurt you.

He needs to apologise, for things to move on.

That old resentment always lurks around when we try to gloss over things and move on.