How much did you depend on the person you lost?

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by Teacher Terry

Tally, wow he had much more stuff than my ex. I also threw tons of stuff away every time he went out of town. If I hadn’t done that it would have been much worse.

I dislike calling him a hoarder, but he was a stage one hoarder. As in, he saved stuff but not trash, and the place never got filthy. There was dust because there was no way to dust anything because in order to dust you had to dust the first layer and remove it to get to the second layer to get to the third layer. And certainly no dead animals. So not like what you see on TV. Those people are stage five hoarders.

As time goes on and from talking to other people I realize that well before his brain tumor there might’ve been something going on with his brain long before. He may have had the beginnings of dementia that I couldn’t see because I was so close to him. I say may because, if I am correct, it didn’t present normally. He was very hyperfocused on certain things that shouldn’t have mattered. He was absolutely incensed with politics and everything revolved around politics.

He also started bringing home tons and tons and tons of things. It was very common when someone moved out of one of the units they would just throw out everything. All their books, all the DVDs all their CDs. And instead of doing what he normally did which was go through and throw out like he should and if he thought I could sell bring it home which is what he used to do, he started bringing home everything. And rich people have a lot.

Some of it was advantageous to me. He brought him two Rolex watches. I love mine, it’s gorgeous. He brought home a jewelry box that was filled with crap jewelry and hidden in the junk was nice tiny little engagement ring, and a vintage pair of diamond earrings. Gorgeous. But, boxes and boxes of books and DVDs and CDs and he wanted to listen to them all before he sold them? He can’t do that, there’s not enough time.

He had told me that he couldn’t stand the thought of throwing these things away and for all this good stuff to go to the landfill. But there was no way that we could be a 2 Person Recycle Center it was multiple households of stuff.

He didn’t want to take them to half-price books. He wanted to try to sell them on eBay — at one point he had almost 600 items on eBay. He sold maybe 8 10 things a week. Not making a dent. And it was 40 hours of work, and then hours upon hours upon hours on the computer putting things on eBay.

I can now see that was screwy. But at the time he was explaining it away as he was enjoying it. it was fun, he liked looking for ‘merch’, he liked selling stuff… and then he’d get overwhelmed and stop for a while but he couldn’t stop bringing the stuff home.

He started bringing home pop cans. Bags and bags of pop cans every two weeks, I’d go to the metal recycling place and turn them in for money and I was getting 100 bucks. Add a dollar a pound that’s a lot of cans.

And he wouldn’t stop. I asked him to stop and he couldn’t stop. Keep in mind, we didn’t need the money. But every time I told him what we had and that we could retire now and live really well he couldn’t accept that. It wasn’t real to him he had to keep earning and selling and bring home pop cans because …I don’t know and he could never explain it.

[Teacher Terry]

It sounds like something was going on for your husband’s behavior to change so much. I allowed my ex’s junk in his spaces which were the garage, giant shed, partial basement and his office. But it really started to wear on me that no matter what I got rid of he brought more and my washer and dryer were in the garage. I tripped over crap many times. I would clear room and it would repeat. He would put junk on top of the washer and dryer even though I wanted that clear to fold laundry.

Then his side of the bedroom became a constant mess. He would start folding his laundry and leave it on the bed. He would put clothes he had worn on the end of the bed that he wanted to wear again and sleep with them. It was depressing looking at it and a waste of time to clean it up as within a few days he would mess everything up again. Plus if he couldn’t find something he left laying around he would get mad. He didn’t want to walk into a different room to get stuff.