A
female
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:Dear CupidI am married to my spouse for last 6 years and been together for 10 years. No pets and no kids. I love my husband dearly. We both work full time and share our house workloads. Everything is great, but he has been hoarding cars and computers for years. Sahd he wants to fix them but I never seen him work on it and won't stop buying more junk cars. And same goes of computers to play some old games which is not compatible with new softwares. My house is full of his stuff everywhere and I tried to clean and I have to give it up at some point, because there is no point. Hr keeps adding more, It became a running joke among his family and friends on how much cars he currently own. I tried reasoning with him and nothing works. He never fixed even one car fully, other than 1 car no other car works and he won't sell it either. He may be did 20 days out of 365 days a year on working on cars and nothing gets done. Even he says he will start a project but never finishes. Which is true, we have so many of his projects at home with nothing completely done or useful. We have a lot of work to be done in the house we own, he won't do it and he won't let me hire contractors to do it either. What should I do, I most of the time ignore and never go inside the garage, and follow out of sight out of mind policy. But one in a while it becomes too much. Don't know how to deal with this. Reply to this Question
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (2 February 2024): you need to explain to him (calmly and clearly) how much his hoarding is affecting your wellbeing and how much stress it is causing you. He needs to understand this properly first of all. Can you perhaps try and agree with him that he can have one room in the house where he can hoard his computers and play with them, but that they are not to encroach on the rest of the house. Similarly, he can have one area outside to put his car collection (ideally screened by a fence) and his cars are not to come beyond that line. Then, when the space runs out inside the designated area, he will have to decide which computers and cars to replace. You should also reach an agreement about how much time each week you will both designate to getting the house sorted. Then you both have to stick to this.
A
female
reader, mystiquek +, writes (31 January 2024):
 I think the best thing that you can do is to sit down and really have a heart to heart with your husband. If you have tried before you need to try again and make sure that he realizes how very much his hoarding is upsetting you. Maybe he truly doesn't understand how much it upsets you. I hope that you can get through to him.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (30 January 2024): This is how hoarders live, they get pleasure by having these things all around them and to them it is a necessity. Obviously they are procrastinators, all hoarders are. And you can hire people to work on your home if he does not, you don't need his permission. Hoarders are not helped by counselling, they need a precise form of therapy, and he won't go along with that because he is addicted to and gets pleasure from this and it would leave a huge empty void in his life if he did. No point to suggesting it. You need to decide what you will do, not try to change him, he will never change.
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A
male
reader, kenny  +, writes (29 January 2024):
 Sounds to me like you husband is a master of procrastination on top of being a serial hoarder.
Do you have a big house with lots of land and not to many neighbours?. I only ask this because i would not imagine its that nice for your neighbours either seeing all these broken cars scattered around your property.
He certainly has some issues that need addressing because to be perfectly honest you can't live under these conditions, and i think unless something is sorted out soon i can only envisage things getting worse.
Think communication is key here and you need to have a serious chat, even some counselling may help to address the issue. Maybe he could start getting rid of stuff bit by bit instead of all in one go.
I think that setting yourself a to-do list may help, and this often helps with procrastination as well as your more likely to try to achieve that goal.
but you must have that conversation with him first and tell him how much this is getting you down.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (29 January 2024): "My house is full of his stuff everywhere and I tried to clean and I have to give it up at some point, because there is no point. Hr keeps adding more..."Your husband needs therapy. The way he lives/functions is not a joke. Google hoarding disorder mixed with ADHD.When you google this, you'd find extreme examples. People who don't function, barely leave their houses that are full of all sorts of junk. It's not the only manifestation of this.You need to make a plan, maybe talk to a therapist, ask for advice, ask for a contact of another therapist for your hubby and ask your husband to go see them.This will NOT go away on its own. It will get worse with time. I've seen two pretty drastic cases.Some people have fear of a "finished product" because then, that's that. It's out there. So they dream about perfection and never really do anything, while still gathering necessary machines and material. ADHD can manifest in different ways and even men can sometimes have only "restless minds" and not "bodies" too.My husband is extremely tidy and organized. He has ADHD and dreams of being a carpenter one day. Our garage is his workshop. Over the years he has been gathering useful tools and materials for all sorts of projects. From time to time he will assemble a small table, make a tray... "due to the lack of time". However, he continues to go to garage sales and checks adds foe second hand tools. If he finds something thrown away in the the street, something he could "fix and use later", it'll find it's way into his organized depot.He wants to save money and he started painting the walls, but first he needed to "fix them". We have been living for over a year with walls "under construction", and neatly organized tools bellow our shelves. he says he's too tired. Th problem is I don't feel comfortable inviting people over.A bigger problem is that he says that eh hates hoarding. His uncle had a pretty bad case of it. And he always accuses ME of his problems.So do something now while it is still manageable.I cannot convince my husband to see someone about it.
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