Combining two households is really hard.

climbingsingle

FI and I have both been on our own for a long time. Over the weekend, I moved out of my apartment and into his house. Holy jeez. It is a disaster area. We have at least 2 of everything, if not 3. Beds, mattresses, dishes, tables etc. Thankfully last night I sold his couches and one of my dressers through Craigslist to a young family. But there is still so much! It is daunting. 

KytchynWitche

I feel your pain.

When I moved in with FI, his sister was also living with him. We had a total of 6 beds, 3 desks, and 2 fridges between us - in a 2 bedroom apartment. Most of my stuff lived in the garage until his sister moved out and even then half of it stayed behind.

Right now we're living in one room of FI's parents house and ALL our stuff is in storage on a friend's farm. I had to get rid of all but one of my paintings (by which I mean my personal work, not paintings I had bought) when we moved because we couldn't fit them on the truck or in either car. I only thought of it several days later that I could have asked my mom to store them for me at her place... I'm pretty bummed about it.

itzMS

Lucky for me, most of my husband's things were bachelor style crap (he agreed) so our transition was pretty easy.

Thankfully you guys can make a little money on Craigslist!

climbingsingle

@urbaneca, that sucks! I'm lucky in that my FI has a house, but every freaking room is filled with his crap! 

@itzMS - very true! All of that money is going right into the wedding fund :-)

southernbelle0915

If you can't sell your stuff on craigslist, either donate it to your local salvation army (or equivalent) or see if there's a Habitat for Humanity near you. Sometimes they'll take household items and sell it at what's called a ReStore. Yay for tax write-offs!!

climbingsingle

I actually do have the Salvation Army truck coming at the end of the month! We're donating a ton of clothes. I'll probably give them the rest of the extra furniture if we can't sell it. 

kitty8403

It's exhausting, isn't it? We combined most of our stuff back in college, but now we need our own home and most of what we have is random crap from yard sales and thrift stores. I did a lot of purging this fall, and foresee a ton more after the wedding.

AprilH81

itzMS said:

Lucky for me, most of my husband's things were bachelor style crap (he agreed) so our transition was pretty easy. Thankfully you guys can make a little money on Craigslist!

This was our situation too but it was still hard to find places to display the stuff he wanted out.  I "gave" him one of the bedrooms for an office and that is where most of his stuff ended up.  

He donated/sold a lot of his kitchen stuff and furniture because my stuff was better quality and to get out of moving it across town.

We are bursting at the seams of our house, so after the wedding we plan to try to sell it and move into a bigger, more family friendly house and neighborhood.

climbingsingle

AprilH81 said:

itzMS said:

Lucky for me, most of my husband's things were bachelor style crap (he agreed) so our transition was pretty easy. Thankfully you guys can make a little money on Craigslist!

This was our situation too but it was still hard to find places to display the stuff he wanted out.  I "gave" him one of the bedrooms for an office and that is where most of his stuff ended up.  

He donated/sold a lot of his kitchen stuff and furniture because my stuff was better quality and to get out of moving it across town.

We are bursting at the seams of our house, so after the wedding we plan to try to sell it and move into a bigger, more family friendly house and neighborhood.

I'm dealing with this right now with our kitchen stuff. My dishes and silverware are much nicer, but I'm getting the feeling he wants to keep using his stuff. Grr. 

radleyboo

Yup.  H and I want to buy a little cottage on a lake in the next 7 years, so some of this stuff I'm storing to eventually use there-older bedding, kitchen stuff, etc.  I'm not sure how long this will last, though, because we are going to finish the basement at some point and I'll probably run out of storage room.  In the meantime, I keep thinking 'How many slotted spoons do we have??!?'

katieg520

Oh I feel this whole thread!!! I had my own house for four years prior to getting engaged. I bought this house for my daughter and I and filled it accordingly. It was so hard getting rid of things, but I did it to make room as much as we could for my fiance and his things. Well, I had no idea how much crap he had, lol. I've never seen so many CDs in my life.... But, we are planning to sell this house and build one of our own a few months after the wedding, so that works. It's mostly just closet space that we lack.

photokitty

ClimbingBrideNY said:

FI and I have both been on our own for a long time. Over the weekend, I moved out of my apartment and into his house. Holy jeez. It is a disaster area. We have at least 2 of everything, if not 3. Beds, mattresses, dishes, tables etc. Thankfully last night I sold his couches and one of my dressers through Craigslist to a young family. But there is still so much! It is daunting. 

We just had an auctioneer haul away an entire trailer full of stuff and I still can't get my car back in the garage! :sigh: one day...hopefully!!

We even had 2 lawnmowers, stoves, fridges, deep freezers, washers and dryers!!

APDSS22

Hubby and I lived in an apartment after we graduated college.  A one bedroom apartment.  Luckily, I had lived in the dorms all 4 years so I had no furniture but just moving in his couch and bed with all of our stuff was a nightmare.  We utilized every hiding place imaginable (and a few you probably wouldn't think of.)

AprilH81

ClimbingBrideNY said:

AprilH81 said:

itzMS said:

Lucky for me, most of my husband's things were bachelor style crap (he agreed) so our transition was pretty easy. Thankfully you guys can make a little money on Craigslist!

This was our situation too but it was still hard to find places to display the stuff he wanted out.  I "gave" him one of the bedrooms for an office and that is where most of his stuff ended up.  

He donated/sold a lot of his kitchen stuff and furniture because my stuff was better quality and to get out of moving it across town.

We are bursting at the seams of our house, so after the wedding we plan to try to sell it and move into a bigger, more family friendly house and neighborhood.

I'm dealing with this right now with our kitchen stuff. My dishes and silverware are much nicer, but I'm getting the feeling he wants to keep using his stuff. Grr. 

I will say that if you have a bit of extra space having multiples of somethings make life easier.  But the big stuff should be pared down...  I would keep whichever one is newer and/or better quality no matter who owned it first.  Sell/Donate the other.

chibiyui

kitty8403 said:

It's exhausting, isn't it? We combined most of our stuff back in college, but now we need our own home and most of what we have is random crap from yard sales and thrift stores. I did a lot of purging this fall, and foresee a ton more after the wedding.

Word. When I moved in with FI we had to purge his grandmothers stuff (we moved in to her old apartment, and his parents didn't move anything after her death) I removed 4 pressure cookers and 6 slow cookers from the kitchen. It was a disaster.

We'll be doing a second purge after the wedding as well.

APDSS22

chibiyui said:

It's exhausting, isn't it? We combined most of our stuff back in college, but now we need our own home and most of what we have is random crap from yard sales and thrift stores. I did a lot of purging this fall, and foresee a ton more after the wedding.

Word. When I moved in with FI we had to purge his grandmothers stuff (we moved in to her old apartment, and his parents didn't move anything after her death) I removed 4 pressure cookers and 6 slow cookers from the kitchen. It was a disaster. We'll be doing a second purge after the wedding as well.

Is it bad that I'm thinking how incredibly useful it would be to have 6 slow cookers (my favorite thing to cook with on days I have to work)?  I do NOT know where I'd keep them though...

chibiyui

TheFutureMrsRohlman22 said:

chibiyui said:

kitty8403 said:

It's exhausting, isn't it? We combined most of our stuff back in college, but now we need our own home and most of what we have is random crap from yard sales and thrift stores. I did a lot of purging this fall, and foresee a ton more after the wedding.

Word. When I moved in with FI we had to purge his grandmothers stuff (we moved in to her old apartment, and his parents didn't move anything after her death) I removed 4 pressure cookers and 6 slow cookers from the kitchen. It was a disaster.

We'll be doing a second purge after the wedding as well.

Is it bad that I'm thinking how incredibly useful it would be to have 6 slow cookers (my favorite thing to cook with on days I have to work)?  I do NOT know where I'd keep them though...


FI's family is crazy when it comes to kitchen/cooking. There are four (yes, FOUR) ovens in the house. Every one of them is in use on Thanksgiving. Multiple times. Tis craziness.

Aray82

If only you lived in New Mexico, I would totally but your other dresser! But then of course that would be one more thing we would have to move eventually...

Fortunately, since we've had to move twice in the two years we've lived together (his landlady passed away, then our new landlord sold the next place while we were on a month-to-month lease), we've bee forced to get rid of a lot of extra stuff. When we move again for jobs after graduation, hopefully we'll get rid of even more stuff! What's been the worst are the books. Boxes and boxes of heavy books. We're both grad students and our books are important for our teaching and research projects, so there's a limit to how much we can really get rid of, but at the same time we just don't have enough room to even place more bookshelves!

WinstonsGirl

DH and I did this.  We had both owned for 8+ years when we moved in together.  And we each had spare guest room.  4 bedroom sets, 2 kitchen sets, 2 BBQ's, 4 couch sets ( we both had finished basements).  And my Granny was moving from her condo to an assisted living place.  She wanted to give us half of her stuff rather than getting rid of it.  I told her no way, we already had to get rid of a ton of our stuff.  Garage sales, kijiji, and donations went a long way.  He still has some furniture at his old place which we're currently renting out.  

Doesntplaynice82

itzMS said:

Lucky for me, most of my husband's things were bachelor style crap (he agreed) so our transition was pretty easy. Thankfully you guys can make a little money on Craigslist!

Same here, I had just bought brand new furniture and all his stuff was stuff he got off of craigslist. We kept his mattresses and bought a new bed. I had sold my King bed for a twin when I was living in an apartment...and his bed was falling apart LOL

climbingsingle

The clothes between the two of us is ridiculous! We're doing a giant purge this weekend. 

But so far I've sold his couches, my dresser, my kitchen table and a coffee table. Woo hoo!

melbelleup

Oi! I'm so glad I don't have to deal with that. FI never lived on his own until our apartment. I lived on my own for college purposes but would move back with my parents during the summers. Luckily, most of our stuff now is left over kitchen stuff from his parents house, my college cooking stuff (cheap, but gets the job done), our dishes are both his parents starter set and my parents starter set and our silverware is from his grandma. LOL. Needless to say, we have a mix match everything. Ironically, the two starter plate sets actually match each other. We'll be giving everything back to them once our wedding is done and we have our plates, silverware and cookware that we want.  Everything else in our apartment we bought together so no duplicates anywhere