Dating : Married to a Hoarder

When my son was an infant, my husband lost his job. I refused to dip into savings when we had rooms and a garage packed with boxed collectibles purchased during our marriage. He chose which items to sell and every night, after work and putting my son to sleep, I took on my second job of selling his things online. That included the labeling, the packaging, and mailing as well. I tried to get my husband to do it but learning how to sell on eBay was like teaching him astrophysics.

We made roughly $1000 extra each month, enough to stop us from pulling out our savings. I didn’t sell that much; I lacked the emotional bandwidth after a full day of work and taking care of a special needs infant.

For a brief period, after the birth of our second child, he chilled out on the hoarding. Or more specifically, acquiring more things to hoard. He never got rid of things. My husband even stopped his monthly subscription to his comic books when he realized he had piles upon piles that he had yet to read.

As our kids got older, the hoarding came back. My young autistic son was obsessed with Pixar’s Cars. I mean, obsessed. If we drove by a jeep, we had to stop or pull back around so that he could look at it and then say, “Goodbye, Sarge!”. We sat for hours on the sidewalk so my son could hang out with our neighbor’s truck he called Mater. This fixation on it meant my husband bought him every Cars toy ever made. Fun fact: there are hundreds more vehicles made as toys than were ever in the movies. Mattel figured out if you slap eyeballs on a Hot Wheel, you can call it anything in the Pixar universe.

My kids don’t play with the Cars toys anymore. My husband agreed to sell them. And by “agreed to sell”, he means that he will audit each one to see which ones are worth more than others and then have me go through all the effort to sell and ship them. The first step of auditing has yet to happen. So they sit, occupying a chunk of the playroom which is now unusable.

We live in a 4000 sq. ft. house. Almost half of the second floor is a single giant room. We turned it into our kids’ playroom since their bedrooms are relatively small. The playroom is so full of toys, it’s unusable. I vacuum the carpets maybe once every four months after I’ve gotten angry enough to dedicate an entire day to organize toys that get strewn about an hour later.

While it sounds great for playdates, I’m embarrassed when newcomers tour my house. The reaction is always the same. “HOLY FUCK! BABE! BABE COME UPSTAIRS, YOU GOTTA SEE THIS!” they yell to their spouses. It’s a topic of conversation when we go to other people’s homes. They aren’t being rude; my reaction wouldn’t be any different.

At this point you, the reader, are thinking that surely we can clear out old kids’ toys. And with a huge playroom, their bedrooms must be empty of toys, right? (Nope, it’s a carryover of the playroom.) Plus, I really should just teach my kids how to organize toys and the value of donating toys to charity.

Kids lead by example. I am only half of an example. With my husband unable to keep his own crap organized and put away, I become the outlier killjoy who reminds them to clean up. Why would they donate to charity when my husband thinks it’s cruel to “make” the kids give up their toys? I’ve stopped pushing the issue ever since donated toys were replaced months later when my kids expressed remorse over their donations. Donating toys is double the cost as a result.

Fun fact: I once secretly packed 3 garbage bags to the brim with toys and donated them. No. One. Noticed. It was like taking a tablespoon of water out of the ocean.