The title of the post is completely unfair. It really should be “How My Husband Handles Living With a Clutter Freak Who Reorganizes His Stuff When He’s Out of Town and Melts Down About Piles of Paper.”
Because it’s a classic case of: “it’s not you, it’s me.”
I have a recurring nightmare that I am in a small room surrounded by…stuff. Piles of stuff. That stack up and stack up until they tip over on top of me. I find myself clawing out from under a mountain of crap and sometimes wake up feeling breathless.
I don’t know why I’m so freaked out by clutter, but it haunts me. The junk mail that lingers on the kitchen counter. The collection of knick-knacks that litter my bookshelves. The old magazines that seem to travel from room to room. I see that stuff and it makes me mental.
And when it comes to my marriage, we’re not exactly eye-to-eye. Don’t get me wrong — Lucas is not even a serious offender! Nor is he dirty…he’s a bigger clean freak than me, so it’s not that things are dirty or gross. He just keeps everything, from notes on scrap paper to two-year-old receipts to business cards. Old CDs and childhood toys and broken tools. He has his own system for organizing his stuff, but it makes sense only to him.
This weekend, I held a yard sale. I walked through the house and anything that could go, did go. Furniture. Books. Appliances. Crafts. If they didn’t have a purpose, I didn’t want them around. (Maybe a little early nesting?) It was a rush and somehow helped me tone down the voices in my head that wanted to scream about the amount of stuff two people have managed to accumulate.
Was the bookshelf worth more than $10? Sure, but the value of it PLUS the value of having it out of my house made the price right for me. I sold my quilting stuff for pennies on the dollar. My sofa table and end tables for peanuts. The money raised meant less to me than the freedom of having that space available.
Thank goodness I live with a patient guy, who not only tolerates my crazy…I think he gets a kick out of it. He’s been out of town for several days and when he comes home, he’ll find that I have gone to town in his/our office. That the kitchen has a few changes. That I have a plan for a super-organized nursery closet.
Do you and your s/o or roommates have the same “rules” for clutter and cleanliness or do you struggle to make it work?
About Katy
Oh, the bane of my existence! I HATE clutter. H.A.T.E.
My husband is the kind of clutter. My two boys, when they are home, take after their dad. Maybe the teen is even worse!
Coming up on my 25th wedding anniversary, I have learned to live with the mess. Most of the time. Not that I like it.
Mess begets mess. Clutter begets clutter.
But, sigh, compromise. Sigh. So I control what I can. Like my desk. My inbox. Yes, I even hate online clutter!
And every once in a while I blow. But mostly I put on blinders. And when we have company and the house actually gets picked up in anticipation, I enjoy the cleared off spaces for as long as I can. And on the rare occasions my husband is out of town, I love having just a bit of clutter-free living:)
Jason is an awful packrat. We have this dressed in the spare bedroom that is filled with random clothes. I mentioned throwing them (and the dresser) away and he freaked out. He hasn’t even opened the dresser in two years, but somehow he thinks he needs the clothes!!
Our house is the same. Clean (except for bunny fur) but CD, receipts, mail, etc EVERYWHERE. All Fabian’s. And there are separate piles in the kitchen (about 4 of them), on the couch, the coffee table, his desk, and all over his dresser. He also uses his side of the bed as a second closet. I put all his clothes on the floor in the hamper and he’s all, “NO! those are clean!”
I loved this post. I can so relate to this and it makes me feel better to know that others struggle with the same clutter problems. I pay all my bills automatically online, so all the paper bills that come in the mail tend to pile up – A LOT! My husband becomes annoyed with this almost daily, but then I remind him, “If you want it gone, then feel free to go ahead and organize it!”
This tends to be my answer for most things that he feels like are “my job” when in fact, they are both of ours and I like to remind him of this. It is nagging? Maybe, but it works! He usually quiets down after that, and of course, the pile continues to lie there.
Recently, instead of having a yard sale (because that’s a lot of work, too) I itemized all the items I wanted to donate and then I took them to Goodwill. You can access a guide for how much each item should be worth on the Goodwill website, and then itemize it on a worksheet. During tax season, you can turn in these worksheets and earn has much as $500 for donations! Here is the worksheet: http://www.clutterdiet.com/handouts/Itemized_Donations_Form.pdf
That sounds a lot like my husband and me. He wants things to be super clean, but little things out of place don’t bother him. I just want everything hidden away! I seriously get embarrassed when people come over and the newspaper is spread out on the table or there is {GASP} a dish on the counter. I just don’t like to do the deep cleaning like he does. I guess that makes us a good match in a way… who knows. I’m just thankful he puts up with me fussing over all the little stuff. He does the floors, the laundry… all the hard stuff. Gosh, I suck…
I live alone, which means I don’t have to argue with anyone about how clean my apartment should be…but which also means that when it’s not clean, I have nobody to blame but myself. Well, or my dog
I’m always picking up my BF’s socks, so no – we don’t have the same rules for clutter. I think guys in general have a higher tolerance for it.
I love this post! While our house is “clean” it’s also messy. We have a pile of mail Monday-Saturday night until I can go through it. And my hubby leaves his socks EVERYWHERE, while I have a pile of my shoes in the living room because I obviously cannot put them in the closet that is 5 feet away!
I have the same problem with my husband. He wants to save every single scrap of paper that ever once had writing on it and I want to throw away about half of our possessions. If we can eventually figure out a better middle ground, we’ll be good!
I think I gave you your clutterphobia…I’m a master pile maker. Sorry.
My husband and I are pretty similar regarding clutter unless we have company coming over. Then I want every last thing tucked away somewhere, and he will keep telling me that it’s OK if it looks like people live in our house.
Oh boy! We should talk. My husband is more than a clean freak is always telling me “You need to clean up your office” which I never use except to file away papers.
We had a yardsale too. Didn’t go as planned but once the stuff was out, it didn’t come back in. Thank god for goodwill.
Ahhh Katy just wait as you get older it becomes more of an issue and the differences about what is and is not clutter become bigger. My 50+ year old husband still has tshirts from high school. I on the other hand am forever purging stuff. Lost of stuff. I am jealous you got to have a yard sale last week. I hate the papers, receipts, business cards and stuff that accumulates. I wait for boy scout weekends to purge the stuff the men in my life collect.
Hang in there because little baby bug will produce stuff too.
Thank you Amber for the worksheet. I am going to use it too to get rid of stuff during the next boy scout thing.
My husband waits until the first of the month to pay all of the bills. This means there is always a stack of mail on his section of the kitchen counter. When he is done paying the bills, he adds these to a stack that is nearly taller than I am of all the bill and other paperwork from forever. The only thing that saves me from going completely nuts about this is that he keeps them in his office and I don’t have to see it. We have discussed this crazy pile of mail before and he agrees that we need a file cabinet so he can organize it. We have built filing systems at IKEA and look at them anytime we are in the vicinity of an office store but he can’t decide on one. It’s been years. He’s lucky I love him.
Luckily, my husband also hates clutter, but when I feel as though things are getting out of hand…I step in. For instance, it used to drive me crazy when my husband would leave the mail on the island in our kitchen. I ended up buying a basket to put by the entryway, so he can toss everything in there instead of on my counter.