Bargain hunter extraordinaire.....?

You have my sympathy, I have one of those. While I was visiting my DD he went out and bought a reading lamp. To give him his due, he does use it, but honestly, I have a loft full of collectables that have never been unpacked, and are still in the boxes. He won't sell them, as he says they will be worth something someday. They never will, you can pick them up on e-bay for as much, or less than he bought them for. GRR.

I'll join you in that 'grr' Hilda!

Perhaps we should have a buy and sell thread here!

We have this problem here with the exception that at least OH does not buy stuff, he just finds and/or keeps things ... hub cabs in ditches, bits of wood that may come in useful, old computer cables for machines that were obsolete 30 years ago.
He has a shed that is his alone and is so full of junk that I often feel like accidentally setting fire to it, but at least it is contained in one place and anything "collectable" I find lying around the house goes straight into that shed - no mercy !!!!

DH was worse when he was working than he is now - he used to go "shopping" in his lunch hour and come back with all sorts of "bargains". Since he retired he has throttled back a bit. He went to take some library books back just before Christmas and came home with an enormous stuffed tartan reindeer thing! "It'll look nice next to the fireplace". It didn't.?

DH collects things like your OH OlderNoWiser, the garage is filled with bits of wood, other DIY junk, doors that people are getting rid of, offucts of other people's new carpets, all kinds of things that other people are throwing out that just might 'come in useful one day'
No room in there for a car

But he is not a great shopper (thank goodness)!

or even offcuts!

Tsk, I'm the culprit in my family ... My DH prefers to do the weekly shop and it really does save pounds as he only buys what is on the list (boringggggg). If I go too he gets very grumpy as I am always on the look out for those 'bargains' that we don't need!

Unfortunately I also have the collection of 'useful' bits of wood, tools, left over worktop, cables, paint etc. I now refuse to go into the garage as it has become a Health & Safety issue!

Many years ago, when DS1 was about 11, I was putting washing away in his chest of drawers when I found a bucket handle

When I asked him about it, he said he thought it might be useful.

Well, yes, possibly, but why put it in with your socks???

Was it an indicator of things to come Phoenix?

My husband is one of those who will always take/buy something that someone else does not want, even though it is useless to us. This includes the odd shirt or jumper which is sometimes put on the 'for sale' rack at the bowls club - we seem to have more bowls clothes belonging to other folk than we do our own. I am now disposing of our record collection, because this again has been gathered over the years and we never play the things now. One or two I have had to keep "because they are good". I have looked them up on the web, they are no better than any others.

I remember the time when my six foot five father went out to fill the car with petrol, and came back with a small fiat sports car. My mother ( five foot two in all directions) was less than amused.

We have a pile of freebie CDs and DVDs that my DH collected from magazines and newspapers. 'We might want to watch that one day' or 'I used to love that band'.
I have quite a comprehensive collection of music on my iPad but if ever I try to play it when he's around he always says 'turn that down, it's so loud!' (it isn't, he just doesn't like music on). So why the heck does he want to keep all the CDs? As for films, we have the full Sky package with probably around 1000 films to choose from. Does he ever watch them? No. He watches Sport, Pointless, sport, Eggheads, sport, Homes under the Hammer, sport, The Chase. Oh and did I mention sport?
I'm throwing these freebies out, gradually. We're down to about 70 now. He doesn't notice them going, but if I tried to chuck them all at once he'd have a fit
Oh and there's also the pile of old VHS videos

I have one of those.
Mine collects other people's cast off computer stuff.

I have a strategy for smuggling things out of the house.
There were some old non USB keyboards in the bottom of his wardrobe. I took them away one at a time and put them in a bag in the loft for a couple of months to see if there were missed and then took them to the tip.

It was three years before he noticed that the broken Dyson vacuum cleaner was no longer in the garage.

My hoarder collects books, puts them in bags in the loft and rarely reads them 20yrs later. The same happens with CDs, so I have adopted the same strategy with them.
His latest was buying a 1.5kg pack of tired but good mushrooms at the market for a pound yesterday morning and then starting to make soup at about 9pm. He was still at it when I went to bed at midnight.

This bargain hunt business really seems to be largely a man thing.

My husband has a full set of Frosties packets complete with Frosties- from the Hologram series in the 1980's - Any one want to bid for them they're blocking up the loft!

Can I tell you about my genuine bargain? My daughter asked for good saucepans for her birthday. We found a lovely set reduced from £239 to £90 in our local department store. DH insisted we went to look a TKMax before buying them. Theirs were more expensive so we went back to the first shop. While we were away they had been reduced again to £60!! DH was full of himself as you can imagine.

Same here loads of old records, mostly bought as "bargains" years ago, managed to sell a few for more or less nothing, rest still hanging around. Still I can talk, I have a lot of china also bought as bargains which I now need to get rid of o'h dear.

Greydusteter yours is my favourite!! The thought of your face when presented with the stuffed tartan reindeer thing has made my day!

I had a box full of old china which i had hung onto when we moved even though i knew, deep down, it would never get used. GS and i were poking about in the garage one day in the summer looking for cricket stumps when he spotted the box and said "Nanny, do you need that?" When i said why, he said that the cubs were having a china smashing stall at their summer fair and would i like to give it to them? So i did - I even had a go at smashing it! Two goes for 50p. Great fun! I may give them some more this year!

The perfect solution to getting rid of all your hoarded stuff - downsize. I had a huge clear out a couple of years ago before moving. I made a fair bit on Ebay, the rest went on Freecycle or to the tip. Now in my lovely clutter free house I can honestly say I don't miss any of it.

DH seems to have all the above! If M & S have a 20% off he has to go and look even though he has more clothes than he could possibly wear. At least one DS does raid his cupboards occasionally. He won't go to the very nice shop down the road when it has a sale because it is too expensive but wears the things I talked him into from there all the time.

He doesn't seem to realise that things are cheap for a reason. Did he really think a ready made lasagne for £1 was going to be good? He makes a great one himself and the contrast was huge.

He loves Freegle, now I am trying to teach him that you can give things away as well! Do we really need a spare microwave glass turntable in case the other gets broken?

We had a collection of broken lawnmowers for years until I enlisted the helps of DSs who kept asking him why.

He even buys things for me which he is sure I will like. For Christmas he bought some face stuff because I told him I had run out of moisturiser and needed to get some next time we were in the city or airport. The clue was in 'run out' so he replaced something he found in the bin but thought it strange there was already one in the cupboard and said it wasn't as expensive as I claimed! No, it wasn't the same thing.

Oh dear. I'm afraid the hoarder in my household is me, not my DP.

Part of the problem for me is that nothing I've hoarded is worth anything and I am really loath to take it to a tip where it will just go into landfill and contribute to pollution for years and years.

To add to the junk we have various useless bits and pieces that have come via deceased relatives and stuff that the DC have 'stored' with us until they need it...

I don't buy much any more, though.

I used to dread my husband going to the tip, as he often came back with more than he took! he collected old pallets, 'good piece of wood, is that' he'd say, we do have a woodburning stove, so he would chainsaw it up to burn. Unfortunately he died last year, so I have a load of old wood, which I am not going to chainsaw! neither is my son as he would probably end up minus a limb or two, being very accident prone!