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Is anyone else having problems merging to 1 place?
So here's my brief story. We got engaged in June, I moved into his house shortly after. We got married on New Year's Day. I have never really gotten settled in. My bed and drawers are in the spare bedroom. My desk is in the office with his desk and piles and piles of paper. My husband has no organization system. To him any flat surface=a shelf to pile paper on to, ie ironing board, window sills. It makes me sick! He has a lot of rental properties and a business so that's his excuse why it has to be that way. I've moved my lap top downstairs because I can't stand the site of it.
I'm missing some of my important documents because I have no place to put my things and no way to organize and nowhere to put my things once they are organized. I almost feel like we need to move and start fresh so that we have space for both of us. We were so busy planning the wedding for the since I moved in. It has been bothering me for a while. I guess I thought once we were married it would all be fixed.
I've explained it to him several times. He keeps saying he will fix it and organize but then keeps cluttering up other parts of the house. For example, wants to recycle but doesn't take the recycles out, leaves them in on the counter. I take them out majority of the time and to the recycle place a mile down the road.
I know I need to get rid of some stuff and he needs to get rid of stuff and work up and organization system. I guess I just wanted to vent. I want the house to look nice like a married couple lives in it. Has anyone else felt this way?
Re: Is anyone else having problems merging to 1 place?
Honey, I hear you! I have been feeling this way for about 4 years since I moved in with DH. 90% of the furniture we use daily was his furniture and mine is still upstairs in extra bedrooms, even though mine is much nicer. I keep telling DH that some day while he is gone, I am going to call movers and have them switch the furniture around. We have done some redecorating and renovating, but not enough for me to feel like this is "our" home.
Even though DH owns his own office building and has large finished home office in the basement, he has turned our DR into his office.
I don't have the issue with important papers/documents, because I made sure I know where all that is.
We talk often about getting a new house that will feel more like "ours" but then we look around and say how much we love our house. Location, lots of space (over 3,500sf), great floor plan, huge yard and very private, neighors on only 1 side and convenient to everything.
Yeah. See, marriage has never fixed anything. For anyone. The officiant did not wave a magic wand of fairy dust over you that would change everything and make it perfect. I'm going out on a limb here and guess that his house always looked like this, so it really should come as no suprise to you.
That said, merging 2 households can be rough, especially when you're moving into one person's fully furnished, full-o-stuff, already lived-in home. My DH had lived in his house for 12 years, so it was a long slow process to get everything organized and figure out how to get rid of the duplicate stuff. It finally came to me breaking down in tears and telling him that I felt like he didn't want me there to get him to make room for my stuff in our closet (to this day he still owns more clothes than I do). Moving doesn't really solve it because you still have to make all the same decisions and he has to set up systems that will work for him. For now I would focus on minimizing clutter in public areas and getting your stuff into the proper places. It might help to empty a room and then just move back in the stuff that you both agree on, a la Clean Sweep.
We moved in together in July when I got a new job close to his condo. We got married in September and I am still trying to sell my house 80 miles away. His house is filled with his stuff and my one bureau. My house is still filled with my stuff although I keep geting rid of stuff through Craig's list and free cycle. On top of that our generous family gave us new things. So we have three sets of things..his, hers and ours.
Okay so that's bad. Now for the worse...My house was 1500 square feet with a fully finished basement, a six closets and a garage. His condo is 900 square feet in the city with two closets and no driveway. the stuff issue is miserable. We had three yard sales before the wedding. I am packing my house into a boxes to go into storage and praying for a sale. Right now we have his and her mortgages and we cannot afford a third. Two is bad enough.
You bet I feel cramped. It is not DH's fault. His stuff fits his place...my stuff is too large (some pieces won't fit through the door). Once we sell my place, we can hunt for something larger up here. Please let it sell soon.
Thank you, Mary! I know how you feel about wanting a house to be ours but still loving the way it is. I love our house and location of it. Our house is over 100 years old, used to be a 4 family but was remodeled into a 2 family loft style condo. Our neighbors are really cool. Very urban.
The downstairs is mostly mine, he just had 1 little couch which now our dog lays on. I feel better now. I just needed to vent. By the way, I just looked at your wedding site. Everything is so beautiful. Love the dress and the jewelry!!
Hi Jen,
We agreed we will clean and organize on Saturday. YAY! Thanks for your message.
Thanks for your message. We plan on selling some stuff on Craigs list. I'd never heard of freecycle. I just looked it up. That's a great idea.
Awe, that must be hard cramming having 2 places. I wish you the best with moving and getting settled. Good luck selling your house! Congrats on the new job!
Thank you!
I'm not sure if this will make you feel better - or worse!
I really didn't consider our household "merged" until about 2 years after we purchased our house, the hot water heater broke, and we had to throw out about 1/2 of the stuff in the basement. We literally got a big dumpster that took up the whole driveway, threw all of the ruined stuff, and then all of the things we were not using from our "old lives."
I would also add that I am a little cluttered, but DH's organizational system is like yours!
My advice - start the project on your own. If he's disorganized anyway, you're not going to ruin his 'filing' system - put things in boxes and label them ("top of your desk"). Clean up the office or whatever, get your own desk, and tell him if he puts any of his cr*p on your desk, you will burn it. Or just toss it into his mess.
You could also consider buying one of those "stationery" desks that fold up and look like a desk, then you take down the top and it's a mini-desk. I think ballard designs have some (not cheap, but you can get an idea and shop around).
hi
saw you on the STL board.
My situation was a little different, but DH's stuff drove me nuts and we had some 'power struggles' over areas of the house for a while. We bought our 1,010 sq ft house two months before our wedding, and he moved in immediately and I moved in after the wedding. He had a TON of stuff and furniture and very specific ideas on where everything should go. I had always lived with roommates and had very little stuff.
I had a minor freak-out at first because it seemed like he'd taken over all the best spots in the house- the bigger closet, the better parking spot, and had his ton of messy paperwork and junk in an area that I envisioned would be mine. There were huge DVD racks in the formal dining room, and he completely coated the basement floor in random disorganized junk and boxes. I think I ended up breaking down into tears about how I felt he was taking over the house. Of course, he's a guy, and he had absolutely no idea I felt that way. He felt really, really bad that I felt that way and that helped start the dialogue.
It was definitely a process. What really helped at first was taking some of our wedding money and buying a nice dining room set that we BOTH liked, and some additional pieces for the living room. That inspired us both to clean up and organize those rooms and make them look nice.... and finally the DVDs left the dining room.
It didn't happen all at once- we've been here a year and our second bedroom/office has just now stopped looking like a war zone. The basement looked terrible for six months, when I finally sorted and organized some of his junk, and he could start to see the potential of the basement as a 'man cave' if he would clean it up. I think those six months were important though, because it was easier for him to part with some of the stuff when he realized he didn't use it. It also helped that I assured him that I was NOT on a vendetta to throw away all his remnants of bachelorhood- I told him he could keep everything, as long as he could honestly say that it was still good, and anything he kept had to either find a home or I would box it up nicely. It also helped that be both made 'memory boxes'- basically just rubbermaid plastic trunks, where we could put all our sentimental knick-knacks (college t-shirts, fraternity stuff) that didn't really have a place in our house but we couldn't get rid of.
I finally got my spot a year later - the basement has one finished room in it, and with the junk finally out of it, I turned it into a book/DVD/game library and my girly room. I moved my desk down there, bought a cute rug and curtains, and decorated it with all my girly knick-knacks that he can't stand.
Anyway- make sure he knows that you're not happy with the house situation and you don't feel like you have a place. He's a guy, so unless you've explicitly stated this, he's likely clueless. Come up with one specific first step that would make you happy- like, organizing and redecorating the dining room so it looks nice for guests, or clearing out a section of a room to be your reading nook, or re-doing the bookshelves to fit your books and decor in. Let him know that you're not out to get rid of his stuff, you just want to feel like you have a place in the house too and want the decor to reflect both of your tastes.
It's definitely a process, but marriage is about compromise, and the house should be comfortable for both of you.
Oh no! The water heater broke!?! That sucks!
I like your idea of putting it in to boxes. I like the stationary desk idea.
Thanks , Sue!
I like what you say about it being a process. I guess I thought we'd move in, get married register for gifts and then magically it would all fall in to place. Naive I know.
I've been letting him know I'm not happy with it. I had a couple freakouts, but it's getting better. He's been working on a little each day. I work from home and I've noticed he gets more done when I leave in the middle of the day. Yesterday he cleaned the window sils. Today the office looks 75% better. YAY!
We need to do the memory boxes too. I like that idea.
Thank you very much for your imput and ideas.