Are you sure he didn’t eat your leftovers, and doesn’t want to admit it?

Get on board with mutual expectations. Everything is fair game to be thrown out after 4 days except for the My Precious box, where DH keeps his dank cheese and charcuterie for...it's going on years. It has a lid, and he keeps it shut. Yes we say it like LOTR
[IMG]https://hotwhitesnow.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/smeagol-my-precious-funny-shoes.jpg[\img]

My husband wants to keep junk, and sometimes I throw that junk away...he has never ever noticed. His stuff is usually just a disorganized jumble, and he won’t put anything away where it belongs, so things just get stacked on other things. I fantasize about living alone and not having to deal with his disorganization.

I'm the one who throws things away. My parents were hoarders. There's a really great group online: Adult CHildren of Hoarders.
http://childrenofhoarders.com/wordpress/

FOr me, I have an absolute fear of our lives and houses being swallowed by shit. I can't stand to have anything in our home that is in any way damaged because I'm convinced that it's a slippery slope where we'll eventually end up buried under a pile of moldy clothes. I will throw away mugs the moment they get a slight crack in them, etc.

We do a lot of "my space, your space" stuff. Seriously, we each have half of the garage. Mine has neatly stacked and labelled things in bins, and he has his piles o crap.

This has become a terrible angry issue between my husband and me. He goes through the refrigerator every day and throws away perfectly just cooked food. He throws out any bottle of spices or condiments that are less than half full. Today I found a bottle with bay leaves and apple cider vinegar in the trash because he says no one uses them. Well, I use them, I guess I am no one in his eyes. This is becoming more and more upsetting to me because it feels like he does these types of things just to irritate me.

My dh is a pack rat, I am not. I throw stuff out behind his back, if I didn’t we would be hoarders. He gets these free baseball hats from customers all the time and he actually wants to wear them. I keep a couple on the shelf but last summer I went around the house and collected a garbage bag of them. Thankfully he doesn’t realize how many he is missing. Poor guy has been looking for his childhood Star Wars blanket for 20 years.

Pick.Your.Battles.
Leftovers are shit anyway.

Can you both have separate territory?

For example, separate office are o4 where you store your stuffs. Clearly divided refrigerator shelves.

My husband is a hoarder. He like to horde his stuffs but throw my stuffs away to make room for his. ( I know he is a hoarder because in his parent’ s 4 bedroom house, his stuffs are in 3 bedrooms and a whole storage room, even he already moved out of the house for more than 10 year. — well he is the only child, so his parents are somewhat encouraging his behaviors)

I afraid our house would turn into storage for his hoarded stuff. He was using basement and one bedroom and a d8ning room fo4 his office alone when we start living together in a home I bought prior to marriage. Meanwhile, all I had was a space in our bedroom for office.

In our current, I made it cleathat each person have their own space and their stuffs should not exceed their territory. If anything gets overflow, that is a signals to start purging or donating staffs. This way , no one will throw another person stuffs away as long as things are in their own place.

Hope this helps.

Probably the only way to show him how important that this is to you is to go the passive/aggressive route.

He should get it when some of his things seem to get lost & he is then forced to hunt around for them.

Because you have already spoken to him, and it seems that things are just going through one ear + out the other.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I'm not a hoarder, but his mother was and I think this may be his reaction to growing up like that. He just likes to throw stuff out.

Have you explicitly talked about this in regard to his mom? It's not reasonable for him to take out his frustrations with his mom on you and your stuff. I know people get tired of all the suggestions about therapy, but this seems like a deep-seated issue for him, and if asking him to stop doesn't work, I'd try therapy--either for both of you or just for him.

Hoarding parent=needs therapy.

Anonymous wrote:
Hmm. My husband is a slob and a hoarder, and never ever cleans up anything. He's the type to let mail stack up for months and leave dirty plates and crumbs on his side of the table.

So I've been on the other side of this issue. He's been angry at me for daring to clean his things or throw away his food (expired or moldy food, I kid you not). We've had fights about this, which blows my mind because how can he justify himself???

But this seems like overkill from your spouse. What are his reasons? Is he on auto-pilot? Does he have some sort of tidying up OCD?

We should mix our spouses together and get back a normal spouse each

Yes, please! But seriously, yes, I do think it's some kind of OCD related quirk.

Hmm. My husband is a slob and a hoarder, and never ever cleans up anything. He's the type to let mail stack up for months and leave dirty plates and crumbs on his side of the table.

So I've been on the other side of this issue. He's been angry at me for daring to clean his things or throw away his food (expired or moldy food, I kid you not). We've had fights about this, which blows my mind because how can he justify himself???

But this seems like overkill from your spouse. What are his reasons? Is he on auto-pilot? Does he have some sort of tidying up OCD?

We should mix our spouses together and get back a normal spouse each

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I'm not a hoarder, but his mother was and I think this may be his reaction to growing up like that. He just likes to throw stuff out.

Have you explicitly talked about this in regard to his mom? It's not reasonable for him to take out his frustrations with his mom on you and your stuff. I know people get tired of all the suggestions about therapy, but this seems like a deep-seated issue for him, and if asking him to stop doesn't work, I'd try therapy--either for both of you or just for him.

Anonymous wrote:Stop leaving your shit everywhere

Yep. I have to throw out my wife's spoiled/expired food all the time, because once she puts leftovers (and half the food she buys) in the fridge, she'll NEVER think of them again. Same with things she sets down: once it leaves her hand, it is forgotten forever. Includes: grocery receipts left on counter, mail dropped here and there as she walks through the house, different shoes left by the front door every day, little candy wrappers left on the couch or in bed or in the car, catalogs scattered everywhere (hello: stores have websites these days). Maddening.

My husband has OCD and goes through my trash but I think you have it worse. Start hiding his crap or throw his stuff out.