Bargain hunter extraordinaire.....?

CORRECTION FOR LAST PARA ABOVE

I send husband food shopping if I can. He loves Aldi and Lidle as they have some really useful things. And they do not have food bargains 2 for the price of one. When he goes to Waitrose I get all sorts of things I've not planned for. If I don't know what I'm going to do with them I freeze them to give me time. Hence 2 marvellous pork chops out of the freezer one evening when we had nothing very appetizing on the menu.

DH is also good at getting rid of things at the tip were apparently the people on duty are helpful.

Katek I would encourage your husband to sell things on Ebay more often. I am just about to go to a 4 x 2hr session class over the next 5 weeks ( Feb half term no class) to learn to buy and sell on Ebay.

I tend to have too many things. When I was at work I had a large enough wardrobe not to run out of clothes if anything happened and to be able to go to interviews at a moment's notice, or to a funeral etc. Now I am consolidating and reducing and refocusing my wardrobe.

I have too many items in the kitchen where I am now focusing on lighter weight ware, that fits in the over two to a shelf. A friend with a family has taken some larger dishes.

However I still have stuff from work, mother's stuff, father's stuff - am going to family history course to help decide how to resolve this by creating legacy folders and maybe going on to write a memoir. I also have unwanted gifts which I used for raffle prizes etc.

I send husband food shopping if I can. He loves Aldi and Lidle as they have some really useful things. He is good at getting rid of things at the tip were apparently the people on duty are helpful. and they do not have food bargains 2 for the price of one. When he goes to Waitrose I get all sorts of things I've not planned for. If I don't know what I'm going to do with them I freeze them to give me time. Hence 2 marvellous pork chops out of the freezer one evening when we had nothing very appetizing on the menu.

I had an uncle like that queenmab99 - going to the dump was his passion! There wasn't anything he couldn't find at the dump - well that was his line to his wife, and that was his excuse for never ever buying anything new from a store. But honestly his house and garage was full to the rafters with odd looking junk and half completed projects that were always missing the crucial pieces! His wife, my Aunt, just couldn't talk any sense into him and this passion for bargain hunting at the dump became a complete obsession the older he got! He was really weird in the end.

My DH is a different type of hoarder. When he finds something after a difficult search he has to buy lots in case he can't find it again. This is bad enough for things without sell by dates but he does it with food. 20 packets of bulgar wheat as I had trouble finding it - I don't think we can eat it all before the sell by date. Another thing was a hot sauce he liked, it lasted so long that I ran out because I hadn't had to think about buying it for three years.

We also have a loft full of stuff that my DH won't contemplate throwing out. And in the garage and in his shed and in his study. He has collections of old video tapes, recordings of Shogun, all the Bond movies etc, etc and of course we don't have a player any more and no one wants them not even the charity shops or the tip. No one knows what to do with them and they can't be recycled. Boxes of books. Every time we have a sort out stuff just gets moved around. I like the previous idea of sneaking stuff down to the tip but I'd feel so guilty. It's not mine to throw out!

Can't say hubby is a hoarder but he is an excellent shopper!

Every time he goes to buy a loaf of bread he says they ' insisted ' I take home a ' free ' bottle of whisky again. Hmmmmm.

I love hearing about the things that have been useful, recycled (do I mean upcycled?) but this thread really hits home. We got together late in life ten years ago. I've moved house many times so have never had the opportunity to be a hoarder, only keeping a few special things each time. On the other hand.... let's just say that when OH finally sold the house he and his late wife had lived in for thirty five years it was a nightmare emptying the cupboards, loft, garage and greenhouse. Why keep your broken kettles in the loft? They will not be useful one day, that's why you bought a new one. I have banned him from putting things in the loft - the shed and garage are bursting at the seams. It wouldn't be so bad if it was tidy but it's just chucked in. When he wants something he can't find it so has to go out and buy it anyway. I can't stand it so just don't go in them. It's a pain as access from the front to the back of the house should be through the garage. I complained yesterday and was told 'Well, you just have to move the bikes, the ladder, a few boxes and you can get through' I don't think so. Rant over.

DH's family nickname is 'Steptoe'!
He's obsessed with things that may 'come in useful' at some point, and the shed is chock a block with 'stuff'!
However, he actually makes good choices in what he gathers, we have a 10ft x 20ft greenhouse which he got from a work colleague who was throwing it away. We took it down in pieces, labelled them, and rebuilt it in our garden, all for the price of a crate of strong ale!
Our water feature was another freebie, the base and workings again from a colleague, and the enormous piece of slate from a neighbour who was moving to a flat. The slate was a bit of a fiend to drill through, but it looks beautiful and it cost nothing!
I dread him taking anything to the local tip, as he almost always comes back with just as much as he took!
But.....we have a lovely drop leaf wooden table in the garden, made by DH from pallets he picked up at the tip, brackets to hang pots from the garden fence posts, again courtesy of the tip and a mosaic covered small table; he found the broken tiles at the tip and I designed the table to use them on!
Oh, I almost forgot the raised vegetable beds, again made with pallets from the tip!
Although the 'stuff' drives me to distraction, I keep quiet about it, because most of it turns out to be useful at some point!

Not only does my DH hoard things which will 'come in handy later' but when his father died over a decade ago and the DH went up north to oversee the house clearance he came home with 'handy things' (like pieces of wood!) his father hoarded 'for later' near the middle of the last century. Needless to say they are still festering in the garage waiting for that special day when a manky piece of aged wood is the only thing which will complete the invention to rival the internet.

I will not complain though. The DH has just had the OK from the doc's that the cancer biopsy has got the all clear. I would put up with any amount of old tat to keep the hoarder around for a bit longer.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

Was it an indicator of things to come Phoenix?

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???

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!