Having a hard time simplifying....

penelope · **Having a hard time simplifying....**

I am try to weed out all the stuff in the house that is taking up too much room, but it is so hard.
Now, normally my husband is not a horder. I am the packrat, he is neat and clean. BUT, he has so many clothes hanging up in his closet, that there aren't enough hangers to go around! And he doesn't really have that much to wear. A lot of the stuff hanging up in the closet is worn out construction worker clothes. I would throw some stuff away, but I don't know where to start. And there are the clothes we have that I know I could sell some, and give away alot, but man, to sort them out, I really have no where to put them. If I offered them on freecycle I would have to devide them into mens, womens and childrens, and I just want to bag them all up and get them out of here. But that would mean using the truck to drop them off somewhere( it is pretty hard to do when I don't have a car to use during the day, and no time to do it at night) instead of someone coming here to pick it up.
A couple of weeks ago I thought I would make some room buy giving a lady on freecycle some of our vhs tapes. Hubby didn't want to give up hardly any of his movies! I did get rid of a whole box, and she was very grateful, but we still have tons of tapes. I missed a box when I was going through them.
My room is a mess, and I just want to wave a magic wand and be done with it!

melsb · 11-30-2007, 12:02 PM

I think we're married to the same man! Except mine has suits instead of construction clothing. I had a devil of a time getting rid of the VHS tapes with him. He still has about 10 of them that I'm not allowed to even think of getting rid of ... I almost got them out of the house one day but he came home and found them in the back of the car. The thing with my husband is, if I get rid of it, he doesn't even know that it is gone, usually! That train of thought has gotten me in trouble a few times!

penelope · 11-30-2007, 12:21 PM

Well, mine likes to watch these movies when he gets bored. Which I can understand when we didn't have cable. But we have cable now! I want the space! Oh well, I only plan on keeping the cable for a year, so I supose the tapes may come in hand later.

SAHMto3boys · 11-30-2007, 03:48 PM

Well to get rid of the clothes you have a few options... First you can just tell dh to do it! (if he will) My dh will go in, pull out a TON of shirts and be done! Sometimes I put a few back, sometimes I pull out more... generally though he just wants to do it himself! Or you can tell him to block out half an hour or so to do it and pull EVERYTHING out and pile it on the bed - then go thru it all one by one! This method would work great for me (as long as I had time to put it all back) but would drive my dh insane! A third option would be to start putting things backwards on their hangers from now on when you do the laundry! How does the old saying go...?? 'most people wear 20% of their clothes 80% of the time!' After a few months you could tell just by looking which clothes he actually wears! OR, hey, just don't do laundry for a while - except maybe underwear and socks! When he starts to complain point out the multitude of clothes still hanging in the closet! At that point he'd probably say he doesn't want to wear them - tell him to box it up while you get working on the laundry!

As for movies..? I don't know what to tell you! I was getting ready for my last garage sale and was telling DH we needed to get rid of EVERYTHING we don't NEED! The only thing I actually had him look thru were the DVD (we got rid of most of our VHS a couple of years ago - since our VCR isn't even hooked up). SURPRISINGLY, DH pulled out about 8 or so DVDs and told me to sell the rest!! I was SO impressed!!!

Oh, and in our area they have people that will pick up donations and leave you a tax deduction form! Amvets here for sure, not sure about anyone else - they're the ones always calling me!

Anyway, Hope this helped! Let us know how the decluttering goes!!!