- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
March 2012 Moms
How to convince DH...
...to part with some of his clothes??
I have cleared about 3/4 of the clothes I own out of our lives. It was just time to do it, first of all - they have piled up during my time in college and my yo-yo weight for the past few years, which is now under control for the most part - but also, we need to make room for the baby.
My things now fit in four plastic Target drawers and about 2/3 of the closet.
My husband's things take up the other 1/3 of the closet, all six drawers of our dresser, and three plastic Target drawers. He insists there's nothing he can part with, but I did laundry the other day and folded 20 pairs of pants...one pair was mine. He's a bit of a hoarder. The man is 27 and still has clothes from high school! If the stuff from high school was, say, a nice coat or dress clothes, I'd understand because those last a while. But we're talking jeans and t-shirts.
Is there a magical way to explain to him that he can perhaps part with the t-shirts that are so faded they are illegible and the pants that are too ragged to be worn without ripping?
Warning
No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
This discussion has been closed.
Re: How to convince DH...
I think it depends on what your DH does for work/hobbies. If he has to look nice for work (ie no jeans or cargo pants) but he likes doing yard work or woodworking or plays some kind of sport, he might need the junkier clothes for that so he doesn't ruin his work clothes. My DH has more clothes than I do (and I have A LOT!) but just this morning, he parted with four long-sleeved button down shirts because he burned holes in them at work (he's a chemical technician). He keeps the junkier t-shirts (high school stuff, too!) for when he's doing stuff in the yard or when he rides his bike long distance.
All that being said, 20 pairs of pants still sounds excessive but if they are getting worn and not just sitting in a bureau, I don't see any way of proving they can get tossed!
This made me laugh so hard because OMG is my husband weird about his t-shirts.
I didn't mention: those 20 pairs of pants? Not even all the ones he owns.
Seriously.
Hoarder.
DH gets a free T-shirt for every lumberjack competition he is in. So they are a bit important to him. Then he has his work t-shirt pile and his good T-shirt pile. He almost never wears anything in the good pile so I've been phasing them into his work pile as his work shirts are falling apart.
And don't even get me started on pants. All he wears are Carhartt/Dickies and in the winter, flannel-lined jeans when it is very cold. So explain to me why he owns so many pairs of jeans. He has one pair that he wears for competitions. The rest need to go. Every day he wears Dickies (like the carpenter jeans made of Carhartt type material), a t-shirt, and a flannel shirt. Every day.
MrsM- Did you consign your cloths to get some money from them or did you just donate them? Cosigning can help bring in some extra money for you. You won't get it for a few months but it will help.
Married: 1/2008 ~ DD#1: 3/2012
TTC #2: Started 4/2014 BFP 7/30/15 MC 8/3/15 BFP 9/4/2015 EDD 5/16/2016
I've already told DH that if I do his laundry, I toss anything that is stained or has holes in it when it comes out of the wash. (That's not quite true. If it were a nicer article of clothing or one of his obvious favorites, and it was just a tear in a seam, I'd give him the opportunity to sew up the seam first.) But ANY stained/torn undies, socks, workout wear and jeans get tossed in the rag pile or trash without a second thought or mention to DH.
Every once in awhile, though, we have to unpack all of his t-shirts and start stacking them into various piles. Usually, once he sees how many t-shirts he has that he actually likes (but hasn't been able to find in weeks) and how many t-shirts he hasn't bothered to put on in a while, his argument that he absolutely HAS to have an extra 10 shirts "for painting and working out" falls short and he willingly parts with a bunch of clothes.
I finally gave him a stern talk (which is weird - we've never even had a real fight, so when one of us puts on the "stern voice", it's the oddest thing) and explained that since I was giving up a lot of my stuff to make room for our child, he can at least part with half of what he has. I told him if he gets rid of more than that, I'll make it a point to get him newer, nicer stuff for Christmas and birthday. He said he would at least try to get rid of enough stuff to clear the plastic drawers.
Progress!
You could always use my mom's solution for the stuff that has seen better days: Say 'Oops" while make the rips/holes even bigger when she is folding the laundry. Then just throw the items out.
Haha. I would feel SO bad if I did that. And I'm pretty much the worst liar on the planet :-/