Throwing Things Away

COH & ACOA Joined: Jul 22, 2006 Posts: 1957 Location: Cabo

Throwing Things Away:
Were you allowed to throw things away in your house or did you get in trouble for it?
Did your hoarding parent ever pick through the trash to recover things, or never did?
What was their reaction when you got rid of something? Experiences/Thoughts/Feelings

Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 8:17 am Post subject:

I was allowed to throw my own things away, or rubbish.

No, they wouldn't have taken them out of the trash. Anything I would have actually thrown away would have been well and truly rubbish or no longer any good, as I have (and had even more strongly then) attachment issues to a lot of stuff too.

I wouldn't have thrown their things away.

I noticed something a few weeks back though... I was at my parents house and was going to put a heap of ice cream containers in the recycling and mum said not to throw them out as she wanted them to store things in... along with all the others she has to do that with! Ah well... I'm just getting a bit tougher on keeping piles of stuff that isn't needed as I'm fed up with having too much stuff. My mum has said the same kind of thing, but still she finds it hard to carry through.

COH Under 18 yrs. Joined: Feb 15, 2008 Posts: 94

She doesn't hoard actual trash yet, but there's the whole "you can't throw that away." thing. A few times I've thrown newspaper chunks (for lack of a better word to describe the wad I'll pull out of the middle of a pile) away once in a while. The first time I did I was really ticked and had never thrown her stuff away or broken the facade in my head yet. My parents were gone for something so i went out and lit a big one on fire on our grill. It didn't burn fast enough even with lighter fluid so I put it out and put it in the trash.

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 1:02 am Post subject:

I hadn't thought about it but, I don't remember anything being thrown away. But then, there wasn't so much STUFF when I lived there. Packaging was minimal. Styrofoam was for coolers. Shopping bags were paper.

Garbage went out in the field/compost. Paper was burned in a barrel. Cans were flattened and at some point taken to "someone's" or "the" dump.

I wonder what happened to the clothes we outgrew.... cut up and made into something else? rags? Maybe it's all still in their. We cleaned our rooms out when we left, and they have been filled with her "stuff".

A few years ago, I stopped buy on my way to the dump to see if she wanted to add anything.... She took something else (very heavy/awkward)out to keep. It is still sitting behind her house, and I will get to deal with it again.

She took dead limbs home from my house that I was about to burn... they were pretty... still rotting behind her house.

If I'm getting rid of something, she always suggests what "else" I could do with it. Aaahhh that creative flair!

Gee, I feel so wasteful. pulling my hair out

Active Member Joined: Mar 27, 2008 Posts: 53

My Dad has his own special brand of OCD- recycling. We were NOT allowed to throw away paper. Even tiny scraps. Envelopes and catalogs were kept in a box that he went through, cut out the film windows and staples, and then recycles.

Valued Member Joined: May 09, 2008 Posts: 3

Wow! Just joined...it's amazing reading about other's experiences similar to mine.

My mom never let me throw anything away. As a teenager I would try to go through my stuff and get rid of clutter in drawers or donate clothes I didn't wear anymore. She would go through the garbage bag and take everything out one by one and tell me why the item was still useful and then she'd put it back in my room. Broken crayons and tiny pencil stubs could still be used and be put in a drawer for use later, etc. It was so frustrating!

Even now as an adult, she tries to tell me I can't get rid of things in my own house!

An example: A couple of years ago I told her that since I am an adult and a homeowner now, that I would go to her house and get my stuffed animal and doll collection from my childhood off her hands. There were hundreds of dusty stuffed bears and bunnies and dolls--I think they filled four large black trash bags. She told me I should keep them for my children. (My son was a baby at the time.) I told her that since they're mine, I had a right to do with them what I pleased. I told her that we don't need to keep everything that may have memories for us--I want to live in house, not a museum. She kept bugging me about it and asking if I had thrown this doll or that stuffed animal away, and telling me you can't get rid of this one or that one, I gave that to you as a present, or that was one you especially loved as child, etc. (Well, you can probably guess that my mom probably gave me 95% of those stuffed animals. Did I mention she has a compulsive shopping habit?) I told her the truth: I was going to find a charity to donate them to since most of them by far were in like new condition except for the dust. And I did! I did a search online and found a charity that accepts donations of new or gently used stuffed animals. They sanitize them and then distribute them to hospitals and police officers to give to kids who are sick or have to ride in a police car. And they happened to be in my area, so I vacuumed the dust off all of them as well as I could and donated away. It felt so GOOD to rid of them!!!! I did keep a few very small ones for my son. And mostly to appease my mom, I kept the dolls (enough to fill a big moving box). Now, I have a baby daughter who might enjoy some of them when she's bigger, but I still want to get rid of most of them. I don't want to burden my daughter with the legacy of keeping dust-collecting things.

Now, my husband and I live back in same area where we grew up, about 20 minutes from my mom's house. We're trying to remodel/update our 15 year old house and in put new fixtures. Well, it turns out that every time we take a ceiling fan, bathroom faucet, or replace window blinds, my mom is there telling me she wants it for her house. Her house is 35 years old with original 1970s avocado green kitchen appliances--hardly anything has ever been updated or fixed in that house--so she wants to use my stuff that's still good. Don't get me wrong, I grew up thinking that everything should be recycled or reused if at all possible, but I know what's going to happen with this stuff. We already made the mistake of giving her 3 of our old brass ceiling fans and she carefully packed them up in boxes to put in at a "later date" (i.e. never). You can't even walk in the bedrooms, and she's not cleaning them up, so when will she get them installed????

COH & ACOA Joined: Jul 22, 2006 Posts: 1957 Location: Cabo

veggiemama!

Just a quick thought for you to take or leave of course...can you find an organization like "Habitat for Humanity" that builds homes for low-income people in your area and see if they accept donations of old fixtures, etc.?

Or, tell your mom you've promised "such and such" cast-off to them as a donation for the tax-credit so she won't ask for it? Even if that might be a white lie the large fixtures won't be around for her to trip over in her living areas???

Good luck with your remodel!!

Donna

Valued Member Joined: May 09, 2008 Posts: 3

Hi Donna,

Thanks for the welcome!

We actually have a Habitat Re-Store in our area now and that's exactly where the items were going to be donated. It was my mistake to mention this to her once and she asked if she could have it instead.

I already told her that my husband had thrown away the drain upon removal from the old bathroom faucet, rendering it useless. That actually happened to be true, but I'm going to have to be creative and come up with a few stories like that I guess.

COH Under 18 yrs. Joined: Oct 28, 2007 Posts: 25

atroyer wrote:

My Dad has his own special brand of OCD- recycling. We were NOT allowed to throw away paper. Even tiny scraps. Envelopes and catalogs were kept in a box that he went through, cut out the film windows and staples, and then recycles.

Yeah my mum uses recycling as one of her excuses for keeping stuff and sometimes she does eventually take things to the recycling dump but not nearly often enough for the amount of stuff - my mum does the exact same thing with envelopes and the little plastic window.
My mum checks through literally every single rubbish bin to make sure i havn't thrown away something useful - i wish she spent as much time clearing the house!
My mum keeps what everyone else would see as rubbish (like plastic containers from food - which she uses to feed our cats even though they have perfectly nice china dishes, paper, old toothbrushes i've thrown away - not to mention the toothpaste tube with nothing left in it, shes convinced theres more toothpaste in it).
She doesn't like my chucking my own stuff either because in her words "I bought it originally - so technically it's my stuff and i can do what i want with it".

Valued Member Joined: Aug 12, 2008 Posts: 7

I know where you are coming from! My sister has to clandestinely throw away her old stuff because when she gets rid of 2 bags' worth, she'll later find 1.5 bags' worth of that stuff on the stairs on their way up to the spare room (more like the storage room)!

Me, she doesn't get to do it because I have my own hoarding problems. I will go through my totally messy bedroom when I move out, and I expect her to do the same things with old toys/stuffed animals/documents. I really, really do NOT want to take hoarding to my and my husbands' future house.

My mother's obsession is with mostly paper/materials that could be recycled... but instead of recycling most of the time the stuff ends up still in the house Oh no no no

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 4:59 am Post subject:

Oh my, if I tried to clean up and throw things out my mother would be VERY ANGRY! She too uses the "reuse & recycle" excuse to save everything. I could not throw any thing out, she would go through the bags and haul out half of the stuff. In her mind, I was the cause of ALL of the junk 'n stuff, I was a convenient scape-goat. Eventually I just gave up and kept my own room clean & tidy. I moved out as soon as I could and haven't really looked back.

Sally-Sue