DEAR ABBY: My husband and I have been married for a very long time and have a good marriage. However, he has one annoying habit that drives me crazy. We live in a small house, and he has stacks and piles of things lying around collecting dust and creating clutter.
When I ask him to put them away, he says just to leave them where they are so he will remember to look at them "someday." Abby, these are videos, magazines, books or paperwork. It could be anything, really, like some gadget he wants to check out.
A neat and tidy house is important to me. This is nothing new; it has been going on during our entire marriage. What can I say to him to get him to change his ways? -- ANTI-CLUTTER IN IOWA
DEAR ANTI-CLUTTER: Probably not much at this point. But I can offer this insight. The tendency to do what your husband is doing is a sign of OCD, an anxiety disorder. For your husband, letting go of things he "may" want to look at "sometime" can be emotionally upsetting. A doctor might be able to help your husband, but that would necessitate your husband admitting that what he has been doing is causing a problem.
Big box, dump everything in it, push it to his side of the bedroom.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
I think you either just have to create a space to pile it. Or, agree that if that stuff is still sitting there 2 weeks from now, that LW will go through and dispose of what she doesn't believe is important. He may just be too lazy or overwhelmed or whatever to deal with. However, sometimes things can pile up. Sometimes you have a stack of papers, that aren't something you want to throw away necessarily but they aren't tax returns so you don't really need to keep them forever, but it is is a reference.
My husband leaves things around because he doesn't know where they belong. And he has a tendency to hold on to things he might "need" in the future. I just go around and toss the trash and ask him if he's done with whatever it is and tell him I'm donating it. I noticed 6 books on his nightstand and finally asked him if he was reading them all at once. Nope, just the one on top. He read the the ones underneath. They are out on the porch for the donations truck today. He actually jumped on the bandwagon and started pulling books from the bookshelf in the bedroom that he had already read as well.
I tend to either throw it out or put it in a closet.
I always had one drawer that I put that stuff I didn't really know if I wanted to keep or not.
Raised the kids like that, too.
When the drawer is full, I go through it and toss what I've lost the connection to.
But my mom.
She will not get rid of anything.
Won't put things away.
The cards from their 50th anniversary are still on her coffee table.
Just a pile on the table.
Why?
Put them in a drawer.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
DH and I both tend to gather clutter. I have my junk pile and he has his.
We do purge more now. It is much easier to toss stuff now. We have tossed a lot over the last few weeks.
He fishes, I quilt. Lots of boxes for my material and he has a big area in the garage for fishing gear.
It's the grandkids toys and stuff that causes the real clutter in our house.
I think he (the husband) is what he is. She's lived with his clutter this long, time to stop nagging him or clean it herself.
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I drink coffee so I don't kill you.
I quilt so I don't kill you.
Do you see a theme?
Faith isn't something that keeps bad things from happening. Faith is what helps us get through bad things when they do happen.
A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
