Reply to Ugh my husband and his clutter!!!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Are you guys in a condo or apartment?  If so, do they have a little storage closet/area you can rent?  If so, for the short term, use that and tell him he needs to move all of the stuff he doesn't use frequently in there.  Then, when he doesn't use any of the moved stuff for a period of time, note that for him and ask if he can start removing things.  It might take many months / a year for this to sink in to him, but he kind of needs an "aha! moment."  My DH is a horrible clutter person but we actually made great progress when I made him box up stuff and put it in our unfinished basement (I'm talking music magazines that he may someday want to read again, etc.).  Once he didn't even open those boxes for a year, I convinced him to throw them all out PLUS much more of his stuff.  He is still programmed to keep random stuff, but now I just tell him I'm throwing things away and he doesn't protest unless it's something he really wants.

Once you have the baby, you are going to have SO MUCH MORE STUFF.  He is just going to have to purge stuff to make room for the baby stuff.  I would point out to him that the closet needs space for the three of you, that you've purged your stuff NOT to give him more space but to have space for the baby and tell him he either needs to find another place for the stuff (rental space like I mentioned) or get rid of some things.

Or you can win the lottery and have some massive storage facility :)[/quote]

This is all good right here.

Very practical advice: What finally "clicked" for DH was stumbling across a graphic called "Unf*** your closet."  Google it and send it to him. It goes step by step asking if you've worn the clothing in a year, if it needs a repair, are you going to repair it right now, etc to convince you that "no, really, you can get rid of that."  He generated two big moving boxes of clothes using that graphic.  A lot of it would apply to regular stuff too.

General advice: I have hoarders in my family, so I'm already pretty good about getting rid of clutter, despite having been programmed at some level to think everything has meaning and that getting rid of something someone (my hoarding relative) gave me means I'm essentially throwing away love.  It's tough stuff.  Does he have any of that going on in his family?  Or ADHD, anything like that?[/quote]

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