How Do You Nicely Say?

Make him watch Hoarders. It always makes me want to throw stuff out and clean everything. Very motivational!

Ask him if he would mind if you donated some of his old stuff. Ask him if you can just get rid of it or if he wants to approve of it first.

I am lucky in that I have never had to deal with this with my husband. I just go through stuff as I do the laundry and if something is getting threadbare or holes out it goes. I keep a box in the laundry area for just this reason. I fill it up and out it goes to goodwill. you might mention to him that the local homeless shelter is taking donations of clothing in good condition for the men there that are looking for jobs. and go thru stuff with him to donate.

I'm meaner than you are with stuff like this, J.. When I knew my kids would raise a ruckus if they knew I was giving away their old toys, I did it while they were out of the house. I just put their new ones out in a different configuration so that it just looked like I reorganized their room. They usually didn't notice.

When my husband's underwear gets grungy, I cut the underarms out of the t-shirts for rags and I throw away his undershorts. I don't talk about it with him. I just do it. If his shirts get ragged after being worn for too long, off they go to Goodwill. If I can't get stains out of his Polos, they go to Goodwill too. I actually do not organize his closet - he wants things put a certain way and I mess it up. That doesn't mean his closet looks like it has been organized (except that all the dress shirts are beside each other and all the pants are beside each other) but he knows what he has and the best way for him to find it to put it on is to put like-things together. Some things that I think go together are not what HE thinks goes together LOL!

It is nice that this is your husband's only negative, but may I say without sounding bad here, that it's a pretty big negative? If I were you, I'd go in quietly, stealthily, with a plan. Start with underwear LOL! (My personal favorite!) After all, if he had to go to the ER, he would want his cleanest, nicest undies on, right? (My mom taught me that!) Then it's time for one kind of shirt at a time, then the pants, etc. It will happen little at a time, and he won't know what he is missing!

Could some of them not fit anymore? Does he have different sizes? What if you put all the ones that are too small in a box for "later". Bigger sizes too.

Really and truly, you would be doing him a huge favor - it's a blessing in disguise that he does not yet understand - if you do this for him.

We give you permission, J.. Go forth and conquer!!

Smiles!
Dawn

Don't make it your problem, make it a financial problem you can solve together.

I'll explain. If you say he's keeping too much stuff, then it's you versus him. Your wants versus his.

However, if you start off on **his** side (let's keep everything), then the solution will be joint. I envision the conversation going something like this
:
J. - Closet collapsed again, but I have a solution. I know how important your collectable t-shirts and broken in undershirts are - AND I DO NOT WANT YOU TO GET RID OF THEM. However, we can't keep collapsing the closet. So I think if we move them to X, that will make room and save our closet. Of course, then we'll need to move the stuff from X - but I don't want you to get rid of that either. So I checked into some storage units, and they seem pretty reasonable. For only $125 per month, we can keep it all. :)

hmmm - let me get my calculator just to double check. Yep, that's only...oh my....hmph. Well, it's $1,500 per year. Honey, I love you and I know how important your stuff is - so it's your call. I'm ok with getting the storage unit, it's up to you.
(end scene)

My hope is that he is fairly frugal (as evidenced by keeping everything), and he will balk at the expense. And then on his own accord start getting rid of some things in order to avoid the cost of the storage unit.

Of course, if that doesn't work you could resort to bribery. For every 5 items of clothing he trashes, you'll remove one piece of clothing while you help.

Oh, and I noticed one other thing:

"We" have a big house...
"We" have a huge closet...

:)

HMMMMM I think we might have the same husband :) LOL My hubby keeps everything!!! He also is also creative with the stuff he collects. He is the cubmaster of my sons pack and uses a lot of the stuff in projects for the kids. If he finds cool uses for things please share! just like a previous poster, I also toss out things with out telling him. He kept art projects he did in Kindergarden for goodness sakes!!! I tossed one thing a week and if he missed it I lied and said I had no idea what happened to it. I take his warn out shirts and replace it with new shirts as needed. He thinks he buys the best shirts because they never get holes :) I figure that sometimes us wives have to do what we have to do! good luck!!

A garbage bag and Goodwill is your best friend.
If he has as much as you say he does--he probably won't miss stuff that is never or rarely worn, right?
(Of course you must undertake this when he is NOT around!)

Have him watch a few episodes of Hoarders, and then take him to a homeless shelter. See if he will put the dots together. :)

Otherwise, I'd have that candid conversation of ..."Honey, I know this is your only negative trait, but it's getting out of control. Can we do some sorting this weekend?"

I have the same problem you have!! In our closet, I have about 5 feet of rack space, and he has one whole double side, a shoe area full, and shelves up top all full. And a whole dresser to himself too. I have found, that if I say something like "hey, please clean up your clothes today" then he will hang up everything, and put away his clean clothes (I don't do that), so yesterday he ran out of empty hangers, and came downstairs and said, "hey, this weekend I'm getting rid of some things". He has clothes in there from the last 25 years!! Good luck to both of us!!!!!!

My husband has this issue with books... I say "do you really need that marketing book from college?" He doesn't work in marketing, everything is on the internet anyway he'd ever look for, the book is about 30 years old etc. So what I do is slowly take books that really are ridiculous and put them some place else. Then wait quite awhile. If he doesn't notice, I get rid of them. He never notices. If he does some day, we'll see what happens. I'll buy him a new one!! It'll be worth it for the 50 others I've gotten rid of. So if I were you, I would take some of the ridiculous clothes, put them in a bag, put that bag in the basement, garage, your office etc, wait 6 months and then toss. I doubt he'll ever notice. Or ask his permission to do it. He may not be able to bring himself to do it but if you do, it's painless for him.

Well... my husband is kind of like that, too, and I long ago opted for Stealth Mode. In other words, I wait until he is not at home, and then I throw away the holey undershirts one by one. He has never missed anything I've tossed - not once in 13 years!

Some people just have a really hard time with the idea of parting with their things, but they are not attached to the actual things, you know? So if someone else parts with their things for them, it's somehow okay. (Or it's just not something they ever think to do, so if you do it for them, it goes totally unnoticed?)

My grandfather was actually a hoarder, worse than the ones you see on the tv show. If your husband is like that, then you may want to see if the doctor can help him out - it's an actual illness (OCD) and a lot of those people can be helped with anti-depressants. Hopefully your husband isn't quite that bad, though.

Good luck!

I am a purger and can not live like that - I would go thru and make toss - keep - maybe piles (toss being LEAVES however it needs to). You need to help him start the process - show him how much money you will save monthly (no storage unit) if you were to go thru all of this and reduce. You also need to find out why he has an attachment to items - not healthy IMO. I am a purger by nature so I do not understand the need to keep things needlessly.

Gee, was he born during the Great Depression? Nah, he's probably not that old but he reminds me of my Grandmother. You never know when you will need that thingamajigger.......

I think this must be a guy thing because my husband is the same way. The t-shirts that are holey just seem to disappear from time to time. My husband seems to be a collector of clothes, well maybe a hoarder.

I ask him to go through his stuff twice a year. I will put stuff on the bed and ask him to make a pile of the clothes he really wants (I don't take out the stuff I see him wearing).

The only clothes of his I don't touch are his suits, I think he has well over 20k in business suits, shirts and ties. I leave those for him to go through, but since men’s suits stay in style for longer periods it is harder to get rid of them. I do bring up that he does work from home so he really doesn't need so many.
When we moved here to Florida I found 15 leather jackets of his in the closet and he wanted to keep them all. I had to remind him that he wouldn’t need that many, lol.

Good Luck :)

For some reason the closet can be overwhelming and if you never do it even more so! I just heard on tv ther other day to do your closet and drawers in doses, then you'll finish it and move on to the next. So, start with "work" clothes. Tell him, "Let's go through your work clothes so we could get rid of the old and replenish with some new." Then, do the active wear, the dress clothes, etc..... Maybe the positive approach will work.
Good Luck.....

My husband has trouble getting rid of a few old comfortable rags.
He literally wears his comfy stuff till it's ready to fall off him.
At that point it usually disintegrates in the washer/dryer.
When I was first dating him he was wearing a holey old tee shirt to do some chores around the house (we were teens and he was living at home) and I shocked his mother by ripping the shirt off his back.
It didn't take much effort at all!
On the one hand, he was a little miffed - it was his comfy shirt.
On the other hand, he was a bit flattered to have a woman ripping his clothes off.

Wow! I am so proud of you for seeking the nice way to broach a subject. Good for you!

I will offer two suggestions. One is to get him a Rubbermaid storage cabinet from the home improvement store. Tell him that is his and to put whatever he likes in it. However, if he outgrows it, things start going to Goodwill at your discretion. My husband and I separated out his sentimental shirts and I will do a crafty project with them down the road (when the kids are a little more self-sufficient and I have a place to set up my sewing machine.) In the meantime, they are in a storage box with cedar balls (for their protection.)

Second option is to print up business card "chits." For every ten items your husband ships out, he gets a chit. My husband and I used this method to trim down his DVD and paperback book collections. (They were out of control.) You decide what to put on the chits.

Good luck.

Maybe you could get some storage bins and you and he decide together what can go in a storage bin in the basement. That way he's not getting rid of stuff, but he is making room in the closet.

From my professional opinion, ;) It really sounds like hoarding. I'm not sure of the clinical definition but that sounds like it. The professionals on the t.v show describe it as the people sometimes holding on the item because to them it holds the memory, once they realize that throwing the item away doesn't throw away the memory a change can be made.
I feel for you and hope the two of you can find a middle ground.

How does he respond when the shelves collapse, and why isn't that a wake-up call?

I know that this issue is bigger than this, but do you have the option of tossing his old ratty T-shirts/undershirts? I do that with my husband's things.

I guess I don't know how to "nicely say" "All of this stuff is interfering with my closet space and my peace." Surely, he sees that...and still does nothing about it. That sounds like something deeper. Have you come right out and asked him, "What's the matter? Why do you think that you do this?"

Pack what he does not wear alot into a storage bin and store it for a season or two (at least he has the mindset they are not totally gone as yet). If he does not go back to that box for anything during that time, take them for him to goodwill.

It's his stuff, not yours. Pick a closet, any closet in the house and tell him that anything he puts in it is going straight to the trash can, it is your closet. Then do not ever under any circumstances open any other closet in the house.

It is his right as an adult to own whatever he wants, as it is yours to limit how much you own and get rid of. If you eliminate anything of his it is the same as stealing something of his. Seriously, it is his property not yours. Out of sight out of mind....have your large closet and let him have the rest.

I tend to be that way with my books. Books = knowledge and enjoyment. Anyone who threw one of mine out would be asking for a problem too big for them to handle LOL

However, I had this issue to a certain extent with my hubby when we first got married. What I did was things tended not to come back from the laundry room/mat :) This was for things that were completely falling apart. If the t-shirt was attached to the neck and arms by a thread ... it went bye bye.

I also went through my husbands clothes and anything that did not fit and wasn't of special meaning (I have a couple of small boxes that have special t-shirts in them, they will eventually be turned into a quilt when I have time and enough of them.) went in a box and got donated. I started out with a box at a time that way it wasn't super noticeable at first that his clothes were disappearing LOL

But try to get him on board to give SOME of the stuff away, maybe try a for every two items you keep you have to get rid of one. But especially work on items he CAN'T wear, start with those. One organizer had the rule of one size up one size down from what you're currently wearing (for those times you fluxuate in weight), everything else went. Maybe try that with him also. Might make him feel like you're not wanting him to get rid of 'everything' :)

Good luck :)

:))))
I just tried imagining how it'd be if my hubby was like yours. Mine likes to keep things neatly and well-organized, but sometimes he also gets lazy to buy new stuff, esp underwears and undershirts.
When I see holes or worn out stuff, I tell him I'd give him 2 weeks time. If he doesn't replace them, I'll throw them away. He usually goes and buys new pairs within a week! :)

I don't think you can change this part of him. And it isn't really so unmanageable. You just have to manage it differently. Rather than the system that YOU use (one in, one out) see if he will work with you using a different method. Maybe twice a year (May and November?) he and you can go through the closet together and sort out the things he is willing to part with.

I was tired of the socks that my husband accumulates. Socks and underwear. He is a runner, so he can accumulate some socks, let me tell you. The elastic gives out or whatever, but no holes, so he just keeps stuffing them in the sock drawer. Now, when I buy a new pack, I ask him to pull out the "old and worn" ones, and I put them in a plastic grocery bag that hangs over my laundry sink. They are my "new" dust clothes and cleaning rags. When they get used, I just toss them. No worries about any cleaners going into the washer. :)

But he needs to be prompted. Sounds like yours does too. So ask him if you can do it once or twice a year... and give him a USE for his old items. It makes it less "wasteful" for some of us. ;)

Well, we both are "clutterers". It wasn't bad until hubby had to stop work about 4 years ago and many items that were in the truck (big rig) had to be taken out and put in the garage. After which they migrated into the mainstream of the house. So now I have 3 houses in one. We were military and had to store a house to go overseas and created a second overseas which we were allowed to bring back full weight like 13,000 pounds added to the 5,400 pounds.

So now we have lived in the house 20 plus years and it is time to do a major PCS (permanent change of station) clean out where if you don't/have't used it, it has to go. Our front yard will probably look like a garage sale special when we start but it will be nice to get a car back in it again.

Sometimes life gets inthe way and you have to have the energy to pick yourself up and start again. So nicely and gently place items in an area and see if he uses them and if not after say 6 months. They are on the remove list.

Good luck to you.

The other S.

PS I will be doing this and my end goal is the end of June to have the house decluttered. We have some painting and carpeting to do this year and this is the beginning of a make over. After the cat goes, we will get new furniture for the living room.

Wives have a responsibility to go through their husbands things and toss all the ratty, torn, holey socks, underwear, shirts, stained items in the trash. Seriously, how my man looks in public is a reflection on me and if he looks bad, then people outside the house will assume that I am a lazy, dirty wife.

So, when your hubby is slaving at work all day, take a few minutes to go through his belongings and toss the ratty stuff. And since you say he has that much, he'll hardly notice anything is gone.