Our husbands are secret hoarders – we battle COMPOST & old school notes – and that’s not weirdest thing we’ve found

TWO thirds of us declutter in January. But for some, getting rid of rubbish isn’t so simple.

Lynsey Clarke reports.

MY HOUSE IS ONE CHAOTIC ‘MAN DRAWER’

TANYA GOLD, 51, a writer from London, says:

I LOVE my husband Andrew, 49, but I do not love his stuff, which moves around the house like snowdrifts.

I hate it!

It is only when we bought a house together that it became unmanageable.

He drops things – Diet Coke cans, letters, shoes – where he is and can’t throw anything away.

There are hundreds of books that he has read lining the walls, and he still has every piece of clothing he has ever owned.

There’s a cupboard just for trousers with holes in them, another for what I think is fancy dress, gardening implements many of which don’t work, and DIY implements that are rusty.

He has three saws, none of which can actually cut anything.

Every tin of paint he has ever bought, most of which are empty. His childhood books and paintings.

Some random compost, which lives in the hall. A broken telescope. Tents.

Of course, he is holding on to something but I can’t gauge what because the stuff is speaking for him.

I would mind less if it were in the attic, but it is in cupboards and under beds, gathering dust or exploding out of drawers.

I have to fight with multiple drawers, most too full to close, to cook supper.

If I secretly throw away one can opener (we have three) another appears, like a spell designed to drive me mad.

Every house has a “man drawer”.

My whole house is a man drawer.

I have a friend whose husband is worse.

Both her living rooms are impassable due to stuff and are out of action, like murder scenes. I don’t know how she copes.

I wonder if she should get a skip and put her husband in it.

I find it overwhelming, because I want a house that works.

I want to be able to see my beautiful things like my sofa, rugs and, hell, even the walls, and be able to cook without engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a saucepan.

Our boy, who is 11, copies him by leaving a trail of boxing gloves, shoes, books and games behind him, and tells me, in a sing-song voice, that he loves a messy house.

But not me.

Sometimes I get up in the morning and want to cry.

Surviving it all is an act of will, I tell my family, who are aghast at all the clutter.

I have to make my peace with it daily. I am too scared to toss it all out and I tell myself that if all the clutter were gone, my family would go with it and I couldn’t bear that.

So I bear it. But I dream, daily, of the calm, uncluttered paradise of a hotel room.

HOGS WARDROBE BUT WEARS JUST 3 OUTFITS

JOURNALIST Mel Fallowfield, 51, lives in White City, West London. She says:

We are in a tiny flat where space is at a premium and there’s barely room to swing my (rather rotund) cat.

There certainly isn’t enough space for the insane number of things my husband Brian, 53, wants to hold on to “in case they come in handy one day”.

Probably the best illustration of what he thinks “might” be useful is his A-level economics file, which has come with us on two house moves and is guarded like the crown jewels.

I would be more forgiving if he worked in finance – but he works in property and has a good accountant.

When I ask him why he keeps it, he goes silent and scowls.

There’s more – cricketing paraphernalia, despite him not setting foot near a cricket ground for at least two decades, and our sons, aged 18 and 15, having zero interest in it – as well as an array of ancient mobile phones, holed trainers, clothes he can no longer fit into and books he’ll never read.

I have two shelves of clothes and that’s it.

Brian has a whole wardrobe – and half of mine – despite only ever wearing three pairs of trousers, and T-shirts on permanent rotation.

There’s dishes full of screws and old coins, boardgames with bits missing, and a mantelpiece covered in bits of paper and old plugs.

Once, he called me heartless after I binned some “artwork” the boys did at nursery.

But I have found a winning way to dispose of his stuff. I pack it in a box and, if he hasn’t noticed its absence within a couple of weeks, I chuck it.

I have zero sentimentality for anything that isn’t immediately useful, and find a good clearout cathartic.

I love reading, but the day I got my Kindle I took enormous pleasure in throwing away loads of books I’d once enjoyed.

We do joke about his hoarding, it isn’t relationship-destroying, but I do grit my teeth.

And if he goes before me, I’ll cremate that A-level economics file along with him!

HANG ON…WE CAN’T JUST BLAME THE BLOKES

WRITER Samantha Brick, 53, lives in Monpazier, France. She says:

The whole declutter phenomenon passed me by.

When Japanese professional organiser Marie Kondo first started telling everyone to keep only what “sparked joy”, I wanted to tell her to do one.

People in Japan live in tiny apartments, so no wonder she adopted such a ridiculous mantra.

My husband Pascal, a 63-year-old retired carpenter, would argue otherwise but I don’t consider myself a hoarder.

Yes, I have Aran jumpers older than my 17-year marriage, but so what?

Anyone knows that the true test of a relationship isn’t about meeting one another’s family.

It’s about how you merge your stuff together.

I suspect I maxed out my husband’s patience in 2007 when I moved to France to live with him.

His face was a picture when a lorry turned up with all my possessions including 30 sacks of organic dog food for my two Old English Sheepdogs, a four-figure Dolce & Gabbana dress which had its own padded box and three decades’ worth of Yoga Journal magazine.

When he said: “I want to be with you for ever”, he didn’t add on “and all your stuff, too.”

Even now, we are still at loggerheads over my desire to hold on to things.

Take the dozens of little hearts I have in every room.

Yes, they are unbelievably twee, hanging on door knobs or window latches.

But they have been sent to me over the decades by friends, a reminder of our friendship history.

Pascal loves a trip to the tip.

We have a trailer and when it is full of (his) rejects, off we go.

Unfortunately, I’m that woman who comes back with the trailer full again, having spotted vintage porcelain plates or a wooden garden table.

For his sins, Pascal threw out all my Nineties vinyl – Oasis, Blur, Stone Roses.

His argument: “You don’t play them any more.” I could have cried.

I don’t need a session with a psychologist to know that I hold on to sentimental items because they are a physical link to my home country and loved ones.

So, my first teddy bear isn’t going anywhere.