Im terrible at writing I feel, so please bare with me as I go through what happened today.
I want to start off with I am home due to gallbladder surgery and tend to get bored. I look for things to be productive and today I decided to clean out the Junk cabinets we have in our kitchen. I say junk as in everything has been stuffed in it. Things from important paperwork, old mail, kids drawings, birthday and Christmas cards. It also had a bunch of literal junk, broke kids toys, old refrigerator handles, candles, broke picture frames. I spent two hours moving slowly going through each item, every peice of paper and anything else I touched. I knew that it was a possibility things needed to be saved. I did all of this without discussing it with my wife. Once finished I did inform her before she came home that I cleaned it. I was proud of the work I did.
Needless to say my wife came home and was pissed I cleaned the cabinets before consulting her or asking any questions. She just started to berate me that I would trow things away of hers that she needed. Admittedly I knew that was possible which is why I took such detail in my cleaning. Mind you when she got home I still had the trash bags inside. As she was yelling at me and pissed off I told her I would go through the trash with her to make sure nothing was missed. At that point she was even angrier at me. Told me to forget it complete and wanted to contuine to make me feel bad. I decided fine ill do it myself and pulled every last peice of paper out to reorganization it. I did throw a work item of hers away by accident from 2023 which and been chewed up by our dog, which I retrieved, my son’s school packet for e-learning days and old tax papers (We have digital copys of all our taxes on our home computer and with our tax professional). My issue is these things have been there for years. I have been cleaning these pockets in our home these last 6 months trying to get our house back in shape after we both went through dealing with mental health issues. AITA for not asking her before cleaning that space even though it was well overdue and been discussed in the past that it needed cleaned?
So you threw out things that belong to your wife without asking her? YTA.
Based on the way you both handled this, NTA.
You kept the bags in the house and separate so that they could be gone through again should it be needed. You said yourself there were things that were broken, chewed up, and had been in there for years – junk.
Is there something else going on in your life/marriage that would make her react this way? This was an extreme reaction on her part.
NTA. It sounds more like a control issue rather than you threw something important away.
INFO:
What exactly was in the trash bags? Only stuff from the drawers? Or was other trash in the same bags?
Only stuff from the drawers. I wanted to keep it separate incase I did make a mistake while cleaning.
NTA.
You placed the stuff into clean (well, as clean as drawers were) containers. She could have easily wrnt through it.
ESH. I was with you till you decided to pull every piece of paper out of the trash….why? To make a point?
Look, I don’t know whats really going on but I doubt its the junk drawer.
When I clean out things like that I do not throw anything away at all. I leave it all neatly laid out on a table so that everyone else in the house can look at it and retrieve anything that should not be thrown away. The only things I throw away otherwise is true trash. This is something I learned over the years. It just makes life simpler.
“True trash” would be a judgement call, in this case. For example, OP might throw away a broken handle, only to find that it was being kept so that Mrs. OP could use it to match a replacement.
OP did a great job – not actually throwing anything away, just bagging it up. Mrs. OP clearly overreacted.
ESH, but her way more than you. If you’d discussed it with her beforehand, that would have given her a chance to mention particular items she wanted saved or suggest you start with a certain area or just generally give input on the process. Because you didn’t give her a heads up, nothing should have been thrown away unless it was actively damaged, ie. the item that was chewed up by the dog, or solely yours, ie. stuff from your job or from before you were together. Even though you kept the garbage inside, you’d still have to root through it to find something that had been misplaced (not fun even if it’s only paper). Given that you didn’t touch base beforehand so she could mention items to keep, she may feel like she had to go through it to ensure nothing she valued or needed had been junked by mistake. Sorting stuff into categories that she could then go through when she got home would have been the best way to make sure nothing important got trashed.
However, she shouldn’t have yelled at you, and her distrust of your competence seems disproportionate, given that the only major “casualties” were an item damaged by a dog, copies of items you already possessed digitally, and your son’s packet, which hopefully could be reprinted since it’s e-learning. In summary: nothing was thrown away that was not either theoretically replaceable or literally chewed on. That’s a pretty good track record, IMO. This doesn’t read to me like weaponized incompetence. You were trying to help and did a solid job of it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but does your wife often respond disproportionately to things being done in a way she doesn’t like / doesn’t control? Is she often this dismissive of your competence at straightforward tasks? If so, it was still wrong not to tell her since some of this stuff is hers and she does have a say in what happens to it, but I understand why you decided not to alert her.
NTA. You probably could’ve made a pile of “to discuss items” but overall it sounds like her rectum might be tied to her mental health issues. It’s important for your kids to have a relatively tidy home to set them up for adulthood, make them feel confiable having friends over, etc
>I knew that it was a possibility things needed to be saved
>I would trow things away of hers that she needed. Admittedly I knew that was possible
Dude, the fact that you *knew* makes it worse – because you *still decided not to call her!*
You knew you might be throwing things out that she wanted to save, and you still made the decision to only call her after the fact.
I would be pissed too.
>Mind you when she got home I still had the trash bags inside.
Oh great. How thoughtful. Instead of calling her and letting her decide what she wants thrown out, you oh-so-lovingly saved bags of trash for her to go through.
This is a perfect case of ‘I mean well so even though I know there are problems, I’m going to do it anyway.’
YTA
I mean it depends on what (that wasn’t just yours) you threw out. Just because you deem ot trash doesn’t mean it is going with NTA