Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:His behavior is unkind and I think you need to address that directly. These are not appropriate ways to express his frustration with the clutter.
However, as the person in my marriage who is much more bothered by clutter/mess than my spouse, I can offer some insight into what might be going on in his head and ways you might be able to meet him halfway.
Now, in my house I do most of the cleaning and organizing, so I think it's different. But like your DH, I am very mentally impacted by lots of clutter and mess -- it's not just that it causes anxiety, it's that it can create a snowball of effects that really impact my mental wellness. Like lots of clutter can make it hard to find things I need, or that the kids need. It can make it harder to accomplish basic tasks (like clutter on kitchen counters makes it hard to cook, or clutter on the dining table adds a task to what has to be done before we eat dinner). When the house is cluttered, I find myself fielding lots of requests from my spouse and from kids about being unable to find things, and because I am the person who is more organized and therefore does a better job of keeping track of where I last saw things and where they might be. This is disruptive for me -- I'll have to pause one task to go help find an item, then by the time I turn back to my task, someone else can't find something. Clutter also increases the likelihood of "a big f**kup" like misplacing the gift we bought for a birthday party, a child being completely unable to find their ballet shoes before class, etc. It's just stress on stress.
For me, I can tolerate some controlled clutter up to a point, but we can't just... let it go. We have to be maintaining some sense of order. I'm big on certain surfaces being regularly cleared (kitchen counters, dining table, coffee table -- all places used by all family members and used regularly, and also places that tend to attract random items that people didn't feel like finding a better place for). Other clutter, in bedrooms especially, I can deal with much easier. Sometimes my DD's room is a total wreck, but I can walk away from that and say "we'll deal with it once the holidays are over" and it doesn't put me on edge. But piles of crap all over the dining table, especially if it was recently cleared off for last night's dinner and these piles appeared over a course of hours? No, I would like some help from the family in finding better places for those items, or at least organizing them into stacks or bins or something so it's not just a mess of random items.
I also ask for help from my family in being willing to purge things that are not being used for long periods of time. This is probably the biggest thing my DH has changed over the years to accommodate me, and I really appreciate it. It is his tendency to hold onto things even when they are broken or unusable, "just in case." I meet him halfway by allowing that if something is in good condition and he says he will use it again, we will find a way to store it even if I am skeptical that this will happen. I'm not trying to get him to get rid of all his stuff. But we have a rule in the house that broken or heavily worn items that have not been used within the last year, I can get rid of them without even asking. This pushes him to get stuff fixed if he really wants to keep it, or to use it. But we can't just have these little graveyards of broken consumer items all over the house because that is space we genuinely need for stuff we use, or as areas to play in or work in or prepare food, etc.
So while I do think you need to discuss with him HOW he expresses his frustration about the clutter, and he has to learn to deal with the stress/anxiety it causes in more productive ways, I also think that taking the position "whatever, families have clutter, it's fine and he needs to get used to it" is not going to have the desired result for you. He is acting out of a place of stress and anxiety and he knows that if you can reduce the clutter in your life, you could reduce the stress and anxiety. That is worth trying to meet him halfway on at least the biggest pressure points, whatever those are.
All of this. Clutter makes my life harder. It makes every task more difficult. It makes the children and my DH pester me more, asking me where things are, and doing things in the wrong places because the right places are too messy. I hate it so much, and I hate that nobody else cares or helps me. My work spaces become everyone else's dumping grounds and I feel totally disrespected.
Tell your DH that you understand it is stressing him out, and propose a step by step approach to reducing your possessions and developing storage solutions. One micro-zone at a time.
IME the only thing that works is getting rid of a lot of stuff.
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