Pic of your rat's nest / battle-station plz!

[Eliza Thomason]

I can also confirm the hoarding tendencies of SLI’s. In the last few years of our marriage, my SLI ex would bring home boxes “to organize stuff”. These boxes without labels would get filled with random junk and would get stacked against the wall in the bedroom, the living room, and the dining room. Eventually, they covered every wall to the ceiling.

I tried to get her to stop bringing these home. To show her how space-inefficient they were, I opened one and its contents were an old magazine, a bank statement, and a brass bell on a ribbon. “She said, “Don’t touch my stuff.”

After boxes covered every wall to the ceiling, she started on a second layer. The goal seemed to be to make one single rat-track through the house. Thank god she moved out shortly after that. And took her boxes.

I still associate with my SLI son, although he lives with my ex-wife. I have a workshop in the garage, and one day I came home from a trip and discovered that he had decided that he could store there about a ton of old metal railroad signal boxes he was collecting. These things have lived outside for about 100 years, but according to him, they now need heated space and can’t be on shelves, but instead need to be placed centrally in doorways and where people walk, so there is no floor space visible anywhere.

Hoarding seems to be in the very nature of SLI’s.

Omigosh,this story. I bought my own collection of tools with me when I moved here, and also my Dad's me extensive one, carefully culled and packed, but there was no place for it but the basement, in boxes, (-and no room there, at first, as it was full of junk to the brim; I (with my husband's help) had to clean when I got here). SLI-husband is good at helping me clean and organize, but he cannot in initiate it or carry it out to the end on his own. But he willingly assists from beginning to end so in cleaning and organizing he is very much like he is a sous chef to me (and in both cases is quite pleased with the final results).

I can't say he actually helps me organize; in that he just stands by and does what I ask. Sweep. Haul. Move. Empty. Build this storage area. I have never really seen him organize stuff, that's always my domain. My SLI Dad had a pretty organized workshop, though, and did not leave his things around the house (we'd all hear it from my ESI Mom immediately if we left our things lying around, or a dish in the sink, and my parents were always on the same side). I think my SLI Dad not being disorganized like my SLI husband may comes from growing up with my Grandfather and step-Grandmother (he usually saw his Mom on weekends and some vacations), his step-Mom kept a super clean and organized house, and my grandfather had been commander of an air-craft carrier and kept that "ship-shape" discipline at home. So if it is a SLI tendency to be disorganized, there is always nurture overcoming nature.

My husband's tools were literally all over the house here, that he had worked on over the years. So finally we recently got them all out of the basement and front room where they had been stashed, and they filled the driveway. I have been at it morning to night for over a week now. There were more "misc." boxes than anything. I did a rough cull, and threw tons out becasue there were leftovers from every construction, electric or plumbing project he ever did on this house. Then I did a medium cull and now I am doing a final fine cull and I am 2/3's done with that, I hope. It is at least a lot less to cover over with big tarps at the end of the day now. (At first the neighbors little girl asked if we were moving). We have a small basement but it was packed. I am so proud to finally see it mostly empty again.

After the final tool-related pile is super culled and organized, it goes on the shelves I designed and my husband engineered and built, in the new shed my husband built and we designed, with that purpose in mind. When we started he said he did not "need" a workshop or workbench but I was firm on this and I know he is going to love it. He has made do all these years working on the ground or wherever he happens to be standing. He did not even have saw horses (which I promptly bought). The workshop space is small but better than anything he ever had, and I think he is going to love using it. I will take pictures when I get done but I am having to stop my obsessed drive to finish the organization, in the midst of my favorite part (the final small decisions), because I have a job to apply for that I have a good chance to get..

I am going to have to watch this workshop space because when I work hard to clean off an area and regain our dining room table or kitchen counter, he immediately sees it as a super-convenient place to put down and forget whatever thing he just had in his hand... so I have to defend my clean spaces! ("What is this doing here on this beautiful empty space I just spent all morning making nice?").

P.S. I like what you said about space-inefficiency. I am inspired by the extreme space efficiency you see on some tiny home shows. Our home is small, by what I have been used to in my life. 1200-1400 sq. feet? We debate this. So I watch those shows and think that if they can make do with so little I can make do with less, too. The only way to have roomy, comfortable, spaciousness is here to cull away even beautiful and useful things if they aren't being actually used for years, and to have the remainder of things highly organized and all the spaces very efficiently used, which I frequently work at. So, no excess junk, and a place for everything...