Keep them. You (or your kids / future grandkids) will regret it if you do.
Keep them. You (or your kids / future grandkids) will regret it if you do.[/quote]
Or get them scanned. Stacked photos don’t last in Taiwan’s climate - they just melt into each other. Photos sorted into albums will last longer.
Keep them. You (or your kids / future grandkids) will regret it if you do.[/quote]
Or get them scanned. Stacked photos don’t last in Taiwan’s climate - they just melt into each other. Photos sorted into albums will last longer.[/quote]
I am sorting them into albums.
My neighbor is an old lady, she hoards lots of junk in her apartment. She has a married daughter, her daughter has two kids, and this old lady has also a son who is dating a nice woman. The old lady has hoarded her grandkids’s baby clothes, cribs, bibs, strollers, all the junks that her daughter bought in those mall sales and doesn’t want anymore. She told me that she is keeping everything to give to her future daughter-in-law that she is going to train in order to save money. The future daughter-in-law should not buy anything new if possible. The old lady wants her son’s money invested in her own health care and elderly care. I told her to teach her daughter to not buy unnecessary things but the old woman is adamant that HER daughter deserves the best and new stuffs. I’m hoping to get some minutes to talk some sense to her son’s girlfriend in private.
[quote=“Pein_11”]How about proving her wrong?
Taking some of the things and putting them away, and see if she fails to notice, then break it out to her if she doesn’t notice, that she doesn’t quite need them?[/quote]
Logically this makes sense but logic doesn’t apply in relationships. This strategy is better than simply throwing stuff out but it will likely get the OP some sleep on the sofa. there’s just something about being proven wrong that people hate.
Instead do what I recommended before. Tell her that we need to organize everything so we can ‘find’ something when we need it and use the room. Tell her that she can keep her stuff but include a trash and giveaway pile during the project but don’t push her. I’m a borderline hoarder but I feel better when stuff is organized.
It would be interesting to know what exactly causes hoarding. I think there would be a significant relationship with growing up in poverty. Or at least the perception of poverty. It doesn’t surprise me that Taiwan in general has a problem with hoarding since a generation or two ago it was a pretty poor country.
In my case, I’m the one with hoarding tendencies. When my now wife (then fiance) moved in with me early last year, she pressured me to toss a lot of junk, and while it went a bit against the grain, I now thank her for it. Perhaps your wife will feel the same once you’ve persuaded her to clear stuff out.
To her credit, she didn’t toss any of my stuff without asking me first. I would have been pretty upset if she had.
[quote=“Abacus”][quote=“Pein_11”]
It would be interesting to know what exactly causes hoarding. I think there would be a significant relationship with growing up in poverty. Or at least the perception of poverty. It doesn’t surprise me that Taiwan in general has a problem with hoarding since a generation or two ago it was a pretty poor country.[/quote][/quote]
I wonder this too.
I grew up in poverty, yet I am the opposite of a hoarder, if I own something for say, more than 5 years it is a family heirloom. I cannot count the times I have just given up or abandoned all of my personal belongings, (literally) just move on. Sure I miss stuff, but I get over it pretty quick.
My wife’s mom is a hoarder, bad bad bad, her parents were even worse (wife’s grandparents) like insane. My wife was a tad bit hoardish when we got together, I remember when we moved in together and in our first apartment a single room was dedicated to all her knicknaks. Then we moved again and a few things got thrown out (but she still had a lot of useless crap…it took her FOREVER to go through, every little thing, every little piece of paper had to be individually inspected and its sentimental and/or monetary value estimated in her head).
But by the time we moved to taiwan, we had been together already like 5 years and I guess I rubbed off on her, since I actually had to encourage her to keep a few of her things in storage rather than getting rid of them when we came over.
[quote=“Abacus”]
It would be interesting to know what exactly causes hoarding. I think there would be a significant relationship with growing up in poverty. Or at least the perception of poverty. It doesn’t surprise me that Taiwan in general has a problem with hoarding since a generation or two ago it was a pretty poor country.[/quote]
I think you are onto something here.
My husband grew up in poverty in the UK and I see hoarder tendencies with him with having to have lots of food in the house. He has to have the (very large) fridge packed out with food as well as the freezer, an additional deep freezer, and cupboards with canned and non-perishable goods (there is just the two of us). I’m the type who will buy what I need for the week and then run out to the shop if I need something else, but our weekly shopping trips make it look like we have a family of 8 or else are preparing for Doomsday. It feels like an endless battle trying to get through all of the perishable goods before they go off, and sometimes I just end up washing and freezing stuff just so that it doesn’t go to waste. And it isn’t just food, it is also bottled water. He feels uneasy if we don’t have an entire closet filled with large and small bottles of water all of the time.
He would go along with doing things the way I like to, but the problem is that it makes him feel uncomfortable. I think it may stem from growing up in a house where there was never enough food to eat and where he oftentimes went hungry.
His little sister is the same exact way with food and also with toiletries. Her bathroom looks like a mini Lush shop!
Ouch, this tread addresses my current problem: getting rid of stuff is so hard. I thought it was bad until I compared it to my Mom’s.
One thing I really disliked growing up was that at my Mom’s, there would’d be anything when you needed it. The closest are, to this day, full of God knows what stuff, but the important stuff “disappears”. When I was growing up, it was “do not eat all the candy, do not eat all of this and that, cannot buy a new hair dryer until this one melts, same with the TV”. There would be a bag of nuts sitting around from a trip to the US… 5 years ago, but nothing to offer guests right now, because you couldn’t buy new stuff if the nuts were there, right. There was never enough toilet paper or napkins -do not use them! or cleaner. Last time I was home, I found a jacket that went with a dress I used for graduation from college. Where is the dress? I don’t know, says Mom. Where are my photo albums? Dunno she says. I try looking and there are boxes of junk mixed with garbage in the closet, cannot find a thing… Yet everyone compliments Mom on how clean her house is. True, it is impeccable and you can eat off the floors… just don’t open a cupboard or closet.
Mom often criticized my Dad’s place, yet, even though it had dirty floors from people coming in and out, it had stacks of basic daily needs. Cookies, candy, soda, rice, meat, whatever you need to fix a meal. And they do throw stuff away constantly regarding old clothes and no furniture lasts longer than it should.
So now I make sure I have enough of everything plus a spare, the 3/4 rule you know? And i change stuff frequently, when it begins to fail. I follow my dad’s arrangement, but due yto Mom’s influence, I do tend to stuff closets with junk. This New Year my goal is to clear up the old magazines, clear the back balcony and the storage room will become the exercise room. Ambitious, yes.
I am channeling my hording tendencies into collectibles, which at least have some resale value. Not that I see myself parting from them, but who knows. Anyone interested in a Michael Jackson clipping collection?
Although my “the wife is a hoarder” story has somewhat of a happy ending (for me), I’m somewhat disappointed that my persuasion over almost a decade was less effective than an afternoon seminar with her friends. Maybe that was a big part of it, that she had some kind of a support group and there was a little “peer pressure” to get rid of some stuff.
That is exactly the reason my wife gives me for hanging on to every piece of clothing. Being the youngest of four sisters, the best she ever had were clothes that were well worn three times before. I wasn’t a whole lot better off growing up either, but I don’t have a room full of clothes. I tend to buy a few things, wear them to rags, and replace them. I do admit to haording when it comes to my tools though, I have things people leaving the island have left behind, I don’t really know what the hell you would use them for, but I keep them.
You’re on the wrong forum. There are plenty of forums for OCD issues on the Internet. You want her on CBT and antidepressants.
OP, your wife is a hoarder. You can’t throw out her stuff and can’t tell her to. You have to guide her through it. You have to take a week-end and you have to help her throw stuff away. Or atleat pile them into ‘rubbish’, ‘need’, and ‘dunno’ piles and you have to do it regularly. Slowly the ‘dunno’ pile will recede.
What works usually for hoarders is if you tell them how such expensive real estate is being used for storing ten year old magazines when it can have art and other pretty stuff!!!
Surprising that someone with a background in education (seen from your other posts) would leap so offhandedly to assumptions about what is going on with an individual he has never met.
Yes, hoarding issues and OCD may be connected in some instances, so you make a worthwhile point in raising the possibility. But they are by no means always connected, and even if there were OCD issues, mild OCD can usually be treated effectively by methods including CBT, without requiring medication such as antidepressants.
Actually in the US that’s often the mode of action, medicate first!
I was thinking maybe the OP can tell her that those decade old magazines are a golden mine, she can sell those on the Internet. At least, she’ll get a few hundred dollars from recycling.
She can also make a scrapbook project out of the whole thing. It will take a lot less space and make information more accesible.
Letting her keep her stuff, but just getting it out of the house, may be a compromise you can both live with. I found some self-storage units online and posted the links here:
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtop … 8#p1497758 [For some reason, the first page of that thread gives me a malware warning, which I’ve notified the moderator about]
It’ll cost you, depending on how much stuff she has, but sometimes the price is worth peace in the family. And if she has to travel to the storage unit to access her stuff, she may eventually realize that it’s just not worth the time (nor monthly rental).
That sounds like a good idea. Putting a time-and-money value on storing useless crap might bring the point home.
to that one too. You’d be amazed what people manage to sell on eBay.
I think previous posters are right about the poverty thing. We were technically “poor” when I was a kid, although it didn’t feel like it: my mum was pretty good with money, and I learned that the best way to avoid being poor is not to spend money on stuff you don’t need. I got pretty adept at repairing and ‘repurposing’ things. Unfortunately, now I think about it, I did also turn into a bit of a hoarder; I had loads of stuff that I thought “might come in useful”, and I still have quite a bit of stuff in my office (obsolete electronic components that I know I’ll never use) that I can’t bear to throw away because I’m aware of their initial purchase price. I attempt to counter this tendency by (a) making sure I don’t buy things without a good reason and (b) having a scheduled, ruthless clearout. This keeps the level of trash (at home and elsewhere) to a manageable cubic meter, possibly less.
Oh, I know, I buy magazine clippings.
Dibs if she has anything on Kaneshiro.
EDIT:
And I come clean, I do have stuff on storage. Some is not even mine, some is my roomates, some from a dearly departed friend, most old English teaching materials I won’t use anymore…
My wife and I have some of that thing, we are both artsy guys, the thing that help us a lot was the fact we never owned a house, we were always renting, so we always tried to clean our act when moving. I take usually a weekend every couple of week to clean my work area but sometimes when I’m really busy every 2 months.
Like all problems the first step is acknowledging the problem. Then do something about it.
For me coming to Taiwan leaving everything behind is been a great incentive, starting over, hopefully things would improve.
Something I heard other people saying to me was take pictures of the place when everything is alright, then compare time to time and do something about it.
I would say that the idea of a home decorating course is pure genius. Especially if one part of the course is to check out the results at the other participants’ houses. Oh, and don’t spare money when buying the nice decoration that she absolutely needs to decorate.