Don't touch it, I'll get to it...

[Jsinjin]

My stbxUOcPDw has a lot of the classic traits and I'm betting this one is out there.   I can give the general example then give three huge ones that are a primary reason why our home fills up with junk.   Something appears or shows up or has paperwork or is slightly complicated and needs to be dealt with.   My spouse says firmly, "don't do anything with that, I'm going to decide how to deal with it" and then it stays.

We receive a lot of mail and under no circumstances is anyone at all ever to throw away any mail at all.   My preference is to stand over the recycling bin in the garage and chunk 90 percent of it and convert all bills and statements to electronic payment.   She insists that much of it will be sorted and handled but only by her.   If I could post a picture you would see our kitchen table, two kitchen countertops and the serving area are completely covered with about 5 years of mail.   And no one can touch it!

My extended family had a tradition of a type of flower called an amaryllis at Christmas.   It's a bulb that blooms with a big flower.   In our part of the world they can live on afterwards in your flowerbeds and bloom every couple of years.   For 10 years running she has saved them and insisted she will plant them.  The one time I planted them myself in March or April she lost it in anger.   But they have piled up with pots and the bulbs in some cases as dried husks waiting for her to get to it.

Then there are the many half started seeing projects.   These get fabric and thread and stuff purchased, they get measured and cut partway then somehthing happens and the project is stopped.   So there are seeing projects laying out in places for Halloween costumes from things the kids would have worn 5-10 years ago and you can't touch them because she is going to get to them.

I think one reason why she has refused to work in a real job is that a boss could order her to get rid of somehting or clean something up that was no longer important.

Do you see this in any of your PD's?

[SparkStillLit]

Oh absolutely. "I'll do that. I'll take care of that." The half finished projects. The never finished projects.
The difference is, in my house, some of the stuff I do. Sure, he has a fit. "I was going to do that!!!!!!" Sometimes I contract the services of another. That really causes the fecal matter to hit the air moving device.
Other things I have been living with for years, or they get to the point that he is forced to do something or cause major damage (home repairs, taxes, those kinds of things.)
He never knows if I will do it, if another will come in and his nonsense will be revealed to the outside, or what, so it's kind of a fine line and a sketchy game to play with me. He still plays it, he's gotten good over the years at knowing my tipping point, but he's still gambling.

[Poison Ivy]

I would see this in my house, except that I'm divorced and so my ex does these things in his own home. We were divorced in 2016, and I've spent a considerable amount of time since then getting rid of junk that my ex accumulated. Probably my biggest accomplishment in this realm was disposing of old car tires. There were several in the garage, but I also found some buried in our backyard. (I'm serious.)

[Jsinjin]

I would see this in my house, except that I'm divorced and so my ex does these things in his own home. We were divorced in 2016, and I've spent a considerable amount of time since then getting rid of junk that my ex accumulated. Probably my biggest accomplishment in this realm was disposing of old car tires. There were several in the garage, but I also found some buried in our backyard. (I'm serious.)

Ok that's a weird one.   Mine does keep the stuff, especially things that haven't been finished but not bury them.   She just doesn't want to get rid of them.

[11JB68]

Yes! Not to that extreme...
There's a pile of ds old magazines that should have been recycled months ago but uocpdh put them aside to read them himself. They are in less in the living room. At least once I asked when he'll finish them.... Still there.
He starts big cleaning/organizing projects but seems to always leave some piece unfinished.
He complains about anything anyone else neglects to do or clean, yet leaves his own messy clutter...

[Poison Ivy]

I will clarify about the buried tires. At least some of them appeared to have been used or intended for use with outdoor projects. Others ended up covered in dirt because they were outside for so long. But I did not anticipate finding them in the brush that surrounds the yard. It was physically challenging for me, because I'm small and not strong, to roll them to the front of the house and load them into the car so that I could drive them to a place that takes tires for recycling.

There also was lots of chicken wire in the brush. I haven't been able to remove it all because plants have grown up around it and trapped it.

[SparkStillLit]

There's a lot of random scuzz outside. Piled up stuff from previous projects, jobs, whatever. The shed is a hideous disaster. Stuff does get covered with dirt/leaves/what have you. I recently uncovered tools and just kind of helplessly neatly piled them by the shed. I don't know what else to do with them. I don't even know if they are still useful or what they are even FOR.

[Jolie40]

PD parent keeps everything even used gift cards

two siblings are taking after PD parent on keeping stuff (don't know about others)
they keep junk mail & trash papers
one has hefty bags filled with junk mail-won't go thru junk mail yet keeps it!

[Free2Bme]

My updxh did not accumulate as your OCPD does (he was very neat and unsentimental about hanging onto anything). 

So, I cannot personally relate to your experience (mounds of mail, Amaryllis bulbs, and the vacuum bags with legos in the garage), I observed something that bears mentioning on this topic.  My updxh would take on a household project (big or small) only to abandon it at the 80% completion mark.  Initially, I attributed this to boredom and his need for fresh stimulus.  After many years of confusion and trying to understand, I now believe that it was primarily motivated by control, secondary to boredom. 

I observed that he would have projects in various states of completion, many of which we worked on together, (we did extensive home remodeling over many years).  The task would be one I would not be physically able to finish on my own and so it would fall upon him to finish it.   He would then view this as some sort of currency.   It went like this, if you are really a good girl Free2Bme, I will finish XYZ, if not you will wait YEARS for me to finish it.  At other times he would rename the project, "this is my gift to our children for Christmas", or "Free2Bme, this is your birthday gift" , although that was never the original plan for it to be a 'gift'.   In September we gut and remodel the guest bathroom......Boom!....it's now Christmas and he's calling it my Christmas gift...that was never completed.   

I think this was a way that he would keep himself at the center of the universe and me orbiting around him.  It's like a strange form of operant conditioning.  This doesn't seem like it would be a feature of OCPD, but probably falls under the cluster B umbrella.

[Jsinjin]

Wow, this opened up a lot of interesting wounds and showed a lot of challenges to people.   Free2Bme, you're right that your situation didnt sound quite like the typical OCPD since it's a center of attention.

[Poison Ivy]

I think that a few things contribute to my ex-husband's difficulty with stuff. He doesn't like making decisions, he is easily distracted, and he is frugal. So almost everything that might be thrown away presents to him the following. "What should I do with this? I can't throw it away. That would be wasting money. I might have to pay to have it recycled. Unh, I'll think about this later. [Forgets about it.]"

[Jsinjin]

I think that a few things contribute to my ex-husband's difficulty with stuff. He doesn't like making decisions, he is easily distracted, and he is frugal. So almost everything that might be thrown away presents to him the following. "What should I do with this? I can't throw it away. That would be wasting money. I might have to pay to have it recycled. Unh, I'll think about this later. [Forgets about it.]"

Mine is similar: She creates the null hypothesis of "can you prove it isn't valuable to someone" or "what if we might need it" or "it may be worth something and can be sold".   It's a strange behavior like the proverbial billionaire stopping to pick up pennies which is actually losing money to the billionaire if you factor in the dollars per hour he/she makes doing their job.

The weird stuff to me is the things that don't have value.   We have years of coupons that come in the mail.  We don't use coupons and haven't since we were poor grad students.   Yet there are piles of the fliers and out of date grocery circulars.   Years worth of.them.  when you ask if they can be disposed of the answer is always "I'm going to go through them".   Not sure why something from 2015 needs to be gone through.   She once told me she wanted to see if she could use the old stuff to help understand when things go on sale which is a stretch.

Oh well!

[blunk]

Yes, I definitely saw all of this. When my bpdxh moved out I had bins full of unopened mail. In his case, he didn't want to throw it out because he was paranoid about someone stealing his personal information. So I bought him a shredder...and it continued to pile up. Eventually I burned it in the backyard firepit, along with years of cards and photos that I had saved. Someone else mentioned that their spouse was not sentimental, he was the same, and would pick on me for keeping that stuff...it was literally one shoebox that I kept on a closet shelf.

Oh and the unfinished projects. From little projects, like him deciding he was going to hang a speed bag in the basement, cutting away the ceiling, discovering it wouldn't go in the way he wanted to to, and abandoning it...of course leaving the hole in the ceiling. The funny part is that it was designed to hang over a doorframe, none of that was necessary.

Then there were the big projects...the yard in the back of the house was a steep hill, so he decided to build a retaining wall. He worked for a builder who gave him 30 tons of granite from a blasting job, he just had to pay for gas for the delivery. The stone sat there for several years, eventually he listed it for free online and it was picked up little by little. After which he decided that he needed to go to the quarry and hand pick huge slabs of granite to build the retaining wall. He said that the project would keep him busy, since he wasn't working. He laid down maybe 1/3 of one row of the wall, and then decided to rent a jackhammer to break up the stone because it was too heavy. He worked on that for a day or so, and the rock wouldn't split. Again it sat for probably 2 years, until I hired someone to help after he had moved out.

And of course, there was the stone path from the front porch to the gate that he was going to build using the leftover stone from the wall...also known as the moat by the rest of the neighborhood. With 1 other person it was finished in less than a weekend. UGH! Sadly, I could go on.

[SparkStillLit]

There are patches on my walls that have been there for 3+ years. The overhead lights downstairs didn't work for about that long. If you can make something inconvenient or embarrassing to him, it will get taken care of. Otherwise, no.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Okay, this is hard for me to read. I am this person who gets projects done to 80% completion or whatever and then get distracted and start something else. We moved a year ago and I have both kids' bedrooms painted for a couple of months now, but then I didn't get around to figuring out curtains, etc. It's just stalled out. And I have almost nothing up on the walls at all just because I can't make up my mind where to put things and even though it's easy enough to change later... I bought the necessary bins etc. to organize the bathroom and they've been sitting for weeks in the box. I'm the sort of person who leaves holes puttied, sanded, and not painted for embarrassing lengths of time. Sometimes I stall out because I have to spend money, which is triggering. Other things I just don't start because it's overwhelming and then it's quite a simple fix when I finally psych myself up enough to tackle whatever it is.

I am working on telling myself that everything had to be done, perfectly, yesterday. The magazine crew came and left. However I don't know why I just don't finish house projects. Maybe if it's "in progress" I can't judge it as "not good enough"? Is this a flea or do I just have a lot of kids and a lot of responsibilities and something's gotta give?

DH is like this too, but he is also an ACON so I really can't trust him as a measuring stick, if you know what I mean.

[losingmyself]

Mine does that to an extent, his garage is a mess, I don't know how much we've spent on unfinished projects. I find things around that never got used all the time.
But my H is the worst with food. He buys things that he's going to make, and never does. If I assume that he just put it in the cart because he wanted me to make it, and I do, he gets all offended and yells and pouts. The other week I showed him a package of biscuits that had exploded in the fridge. I'm not supposed to make them, so there they sit. He'll buy like 6 tubes of them, too.
I have had to throw out an entire turkey because he said he was going to cook it, but it sat in the fridge until it went bad.

[Poison Ivy]

Cordelia, I think it's this (for you): do I just have a lot of kids and a lot of responsibilities and something's gotta give?

[Lauren17]

We receive a lot of mail and under no circumstances is anyone at all ever to throw away any mail at all.   My preference is to stand over the recycling bin in the garage and chunk 90 percent of it and convert all bills and statements to electronic payment.   She insists that much of it will be sorted and handled but only by her.   If I could post a picture you would see our kitchen table, two kitchen countertops and the serving area are completely covered with about 5 years of mail.   And no one can touch it!

We have this rule too! My H is not OCD, he is most likely covert narc. He stated years ago that no one was to touch the mail for fear that a bill might get lost. So the pile of junk mail grows. The more I want him to do something about, the more he dawdles. It's a power play.  It's also insulting. I'm a fairly intelligent person, I can tell the difference between the light bill and a flyer from the hardware store.  After a therapist said to me, "So what if he gets mad?" The mail was a rule I changed.  I didn't say anything about it, I just started standing  over the recycling bin, chucking the junk  when I bring the mail into the house. He's said *nothing* about it.
H also excels in 80% finished projects. Cordelia, I think we all have those. (I have a quilt that's been in work for years!) But like other PD traits, it's the severity and the mindset behind them. H doesn't have some projects at 80%, they are all unfinished. If it's something that impacts me, all the more narc supply for him. Years ago, he fenced the yard, several months later, he made a gate   Then he propped the gate up and called it good. He never painted the wood used in the fence or gate and never hung the gate. If I would mention it, his supply face would show and he would declare the fence "finished. "

[SparkStillLit]

LAUREN YES! The supply face!!! Things that affect me- no lights downstairs, the fact that I hate patch on the walls and porch in disrepair, ensures that they don't get done.
The lights finally got done. I expect if we ever have his family for guest, the porch and patch will be done. This stuff goes on for years. I have a whole list of if something ever happens, what I will have done.

[Free2Bme]

This is interesting that PD's have certain tendencies with 'Mail'. 

My updxh (covert style) was very possessive over the mail from day one of marriage.  It all belonged to him.  He would preempt me in gathering it and go through it, sort /toss and then squirrel away bills, etc. 

Occasionally, he would hand me the mail addressed to "Current Resident".  It was his way of reminding me that I had no say in matters and I was only the anonymous resident, lol.