Clutterbugs: Dealing with a "Collector"
One thing I hear from a lot of the people I talk to is that they have a messy house, but it isn't their fault. They are fairly neat and organized themselves, but they live with someone who is a "collector" or maybe even someone with mild hoarding tendencies.
This can be a serious problem and can put a major strain on the relationship. Note that if you are dealing with a true hoarder personality, you probably need to get some professional help involved. We lived across the street from a serious hoarder for many years and I always felt so sorry for her. She spent nearly every waking moment arranging and rearranging her treasures, (which were really garage sale and thrift market finds). The sad part was that even though she was dealing with major consequences, in the form of notices from the city, complaints from neighbors, and major pressure from her family, it didn't seem to me that she ever got any pleasure from the things she had. I knew her for about 20-something years and I never saw her have a truly happy moment.
But in this case, we are dealing with a mild case of packrat-itis or someone who likes to collect large quantities of certain items. For my husband, it was train stuff. In our previous house, he had probably two 10 X 12 rooms completely devoted to his train collection, his enormous layout, and associated supplies. He also had train pictures and other memorabilia spread throughout the house. I wouldn't have minded so much, but his interest in it was pretty lukewarm, at best. He might get them out and actually do something with it like every other month, and that seemed like a LOT of space to devote to something that he wasn't spending time with at least every week or so.
So, how DO you deal with a situation like this? Well, part of it is just having some honest conversations about it. And by that, I DON'T mean fighting, or arguing about it, or criticizing him for his choices. Instead, you need to find a time when you can have a respectful conversation about his wants and needs, vs. your wants and needs. Most of the time people are pretty reasonable if you come to them with a ideas on how you can be fair to both of you.
In our case, my point was that I didn't feel it was fair that we were devoting about 20% of our available space to his hobby that he didn't use very often, while my stamping hobby which I did do all the time, only had about 5% of the available space. He agreed a little reluctantly, that it wasn't a very fair situation. I threw out another idea, that he really wanted a big screen TV. I didn't particularly want one and we didn't have the money for it, but if he was willing to sell a portion of his train collection, he was more than welcome to use it to buy his TV and put it in the place his layout had been.
The important points were that I didn't insist he give up his entire collection, I gave him an incentive of an item he really wanted, and I didn't get all huffy and demanding. Instead, I appealed to his sense of fairness and asked for him to work with me on creating a reasonable solution. We put the whole layout on Craigslist and in about a week, two guys with trucks showed up and carted it off, along with a sizable portion of the train collection. That one transaction netted him about 3/4 of the money for the TV, and I ran some Ebay auctions for him to get the rest of it.
Then when we were planning to move into the new house, we had some further negotiations on how to allocate our new space. I would have one entire spare bedroom for my stamp classes, but there would be no stamp stuff anywhere else in the house. And he would have an entire section of the basement for his memorabilia with large closets to hold his remaining train collection. He agreed that anything that didn't fit into his designated space would have to go.
I think that is a key point with a collector. You respect his (or her) desire to collect these items, but you get them to agree to reasonable limits. If they want to collect magazines, they can keep as many as will fit on this shelf. Or if it's frogs or pigs or whatever, they can have enough to fill up this display area. They may not turn the whole house into their little hog heaven. They have to respect the fact that non-frog lovers live in the house too, and that they deserve room to display items that reflect their own personality.
It's generally best to allow a collector to make those decisions for themselves. The one thing you should NEVER do is try to force them into a decision by packing their stuff up and removing it without their knowledge or permission. That is extremely disrespectful and damaging to the relationship. How would you like it if someone came in and threw out all the clothes you like best, or arbitrarily jettisoned half the food in your pantry? You would be furious and would probably waste no time (or money!) in replacing it.
However, if you do find your collector is dragging their feet on the weed-out process after you have already agreed to it, then you have some passive-aggressive behavior going on. The best way to deal with that kind of behavior is head on. You set a date (giving them a reasonable amount of time) and say that if they don't do what they agreed to do by then that you will pack up the items yourself and move them to a storage area like a garage or storage shed. You aren't getting rid of the items in a permanent way, but you are reclaiming the space that was agreed upon.
If the collector does request your help, be gentle. Don't wade into it wrinkling up your nose and making snide comments about "this old junk". Help them find the treasures by asking them to pick out their top 10 items that they value the most. Then set up a place of honor to display these items and they will be much more willing to get rid of some of the less treasured items. It's a process and you want to give them lots of credit for any positive steps they are taking to improve the situation.
Come back every Monday for a fresh dose of Clutterbugs. If you'd like to see past posts on the subject, click on the tag at the bottom of this post.
By TwitterButtons.com
This can be a serious problem and can put a major strain on the relationship. Note that if you are dealing with a true hoarder personality, you probably need to get some professional help involved. We lived across the street from a serious hoarder for many years and I always felt so sorry for her. She spent nearly every waking moment arranging and rearranging her treasures, (which were really garage sale and thrift market finds). The sad part was that even though she was dealing with major consequences, in the form of notices from the city, complaints from neighbors, and major pressure from her family, it didn't seem to me that she ever got any pleasure from the things she had. I knew her for about 20-something years and I never saw her have a truly happy moment.
But in this case, we are dealing with a mild case of packrat-itis or someone who likes to collect large quantities of certain items. For my husband, it was train stuff. In our previous house, he had probably two 10 X 12 rooms completely devoted to his train collection, his enormous layout, and associated supplies. He also had train pictures and other memorabilia spread throughout the house. I wouldn't have minded so much, but his interest in it was pretty lukewarm, at best. He might get them out and actually do something with it like every other month, and that seemed like a LOT of space to devote to something that he wasn't spending time with at least every week or so.
So, how DO you deal with a situation like this? Well, part of it is just having some honest conversations about it. And by that, I DON'T mean fighting, or arguing about it, or criticizing him for his choices. Instead, you need to find a time when you can have a respectful conversation about his wants and needs, vs. your wants and needs. Most of the time people are pretty reasonable if you come to them with a ideas on how you can be fair to both of you.
In our case, my point was that I didn't feel it was fair that we were devoting about 20% of our available space to his hobby that he didn't use very often, while my stamping hobby which I did do all the time, only had about 5% of the available space. He agreed a little reluctantly, that it wasn't a very fair situation. I threw out another idea, that he really wanted a big screen TV. I didn't particularly want one and we didn't have the money for it, but if he was willing to sell a portion of his train collection, he was more than welcome to use it to buy his TV and put it in the place his layout had been.
The important points were that I didn't insist he give up his entire collection, I gave him an incentive of an item he really wanted, and I didn't get all huffy and demanding. Instead, I appealed to his sense of fairness and asked for him to work with me on creating a reasonable solution. We put the whole layout on Craigslist and in about a week, two guys with trucks showed up and carted it off, along with a sizable portion of the train collection. That one transaction netted him about 3/4 of the money for the TV, and I ran some Ebay auctions for him to get the rest of it.
Then when we were planning to move into the new house, we had some further negotiations on how to allocate our new space. I would have one entire spare bedroom for my stamp classes, but there would be no stamp stuff anywhere else in the house. And he would have an entire section of the basement for his memorabilia with large closets to hold his remaining train collection. He agreed that anything that didn't fit into his designated space would have to go.
I think that is a key point with a collector. You respect his (or her) desire to collect these items, but you get them to agree to reasonable limits. If they want to collect magazines, they can keep as many as will fit on this shelf. Or if it's frogs or pigs or whatever, they can have enough to fill up this display area. They may not turn the whole house into their little hog heaven. They have to respect the fact that non-frog lovers live in the house too, and that they deserve room to display items that reflect their own personality.
It's generally best to allow a collector to make those decisions for themselves. The one thing you should NEVER do is try to force them into a decision by packing their stuff up and removing it without their knowledge or permission. That is extremely disrespectful and damaging to the relationship. How would you like it if someone came in and threw out all the clothes you like best, or arbitrarily jettisoned half the food in your pantry? You would be furious and would probably waste no time (or money!) in replacing it.
However, if you do find your collector is dragging their feet on the weed-out process after you have already agreed to it, then you have some passive-aggressive behavior going on. The best way to deal with that kind of behavior is head on. You set a date (giving them a reasonable amount of time) and say that if they don't do what they agreed to do by then that you will pack up the items yourself and move them to a storage area like a garage or storage shed. You aren't getting rid of the items in a permanent way, but you are reclaiming the space that was agreed upon.
If the collector does request your help, be gentle. Don't wade into it wrinkling up your nose and making snide comments about "this old junk". Help them find the treasures by asking them to pick out their top 10 items that they value the most. Then set up a place of honor to display these items and they will be much more willing to get rid of some of the less treasured items. It's a process and you want to give them lots of credit for any positive steps they are taking to improve the situation.
Come back every Monday for a fresh dose of Clutterbugs. If you'd like to see past posts on the subject, click on the tag at the bottom of this post.
By TwitterButtons.com 
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