Here's the story:

Wife stays home. Rallies kid and grandma to clean "her Half" of the garage.

accidentally throws out the remains of one of my pets...

SJ comes home...deduces said remains are in the large pile of debris left for the recycle people...because Murphies law commands it to be so.

Waits till grandmother and child return and then tries to ask politely if they had seen a coffee can with some charred bones in it. She died in the winter and I cremated her but then lost the can before summer. That was why I wasnt cleaning that section.

So I tell my wife that basically the garage is the man's version of a purse and it really doesnt pay to go into it without asking.

All I wanted was that someone said "Hey Honey, we are going to take a stab at the garage. Anything I should know?"
( Sure dear. be on the lookout for a nondescript coffe can that has the boners and ashes of my favorite Abyssinian in the world. Other than that. Have at it! )

Am I wrong for this....cause I got my head bit off when I told her that.

Anyone else care to venture an opinion so I can figure out how normal this reaction is?

It is going to sound preachy, but it is only from someone who regularly touches that hot stove element.

Each time we are presented with a "situation", we have the choice to say something or not, and we should probably have a rationale for what we say. Yep, they crapped on your man turf, discarded something of meaning (in this case the remains of a dear friend), and did so without your consent. You probably also avoided that part of the garage both for the surface reason of not being able to find the can, but probably a fair amount of denial, not wanting to face the grief.

However, her perceived reality might be that you left the garage a mess too long after probably having it been told to you of her need to have it clean, but rather than badger you more about it, she marshalled forces to help you out, hoping for a thank you in return. Instead, she gets told how a dead cat is more important than her feelings or the kind gesture she made toward you, or her need for organization.

Bottom-line is we married folk really have few boundaries, and as men ... what is ours is hers and what is hers is hers.

And at least for me, I *try* to think more about what I want to positively reinforce rather than negatively. Would you really, honestly want different behavior from her? I mean, come on ... she encourages your regular obsessions, tolerates encounters with more steamier neighbor elements, AND cleans up your man messes?

And in the end, isn't really all she did was force you to look where you were avoiding?

(This from the guy who had brought home 5 boxes of "stuff" from his Dad's funeral, and put it smack dab in the middle of the garage, and wouldn't clean it for two years. Been there, and only did it a few months ago ... and got no help on the garage either. Some stuff is HARD to face, and harder when someone pushes it.)

Sounds like maybe you should be thanking her, not reprimanding her or putting fences out, but your mileage may vary.

I think your reaction was normal.

I think all relationships eventually have a "don't throw out my stuff" talk.

All in all I understand your frustration.

I don't think anyone should "clean up" or discard any one elses stuff with out first consulting the other person. Lessons learned I guesse

My wife and I have an understanding for house shopping. I will get the garage, and she'll get her basement back. (I've had to fight long and hard to get what space I have in the basement as mine, and there's RULES about what I can and can't have/do in there.)

I think there's a bit on both sides of this one myself... (I know we've had these discussions before, SJ.) Getting your head bitten off was probably more extreme than you deserved...

At least she didn't shovel EVERYTHING out of the garage...

Should have been some guidelines established by this time in your relationship. No - things should not be irreversably (or nearly so) thrown out in a disorderly fashion unless they're clearly in a trash receptacle. No - you shouldn't have gotten your head bitten off for expressing your thoughts. I wonder what your wife's version of this story would be? Two sides to every story y'know. Anything else gone missing? If not, may I come up and have a look through the discards? Might just be something in there I can use!

Well in the end it's all good. She did do a nice job and actually the majority of it was boxes of crap that were destined for other places. She has agreed that she will tell me when she is going to invade my space.

Actually Im thinking of continuing with her work and possibly building some shelves along the wall...

But I am really more interested in what the guys have to say about their places.

What is your place? Is it "yours"? Is it a refuge? Is it a place that people know not to disturb you in?
What kind of space is it?



BTW I have the only thing I really need from that area. She was correct in her perceptions. In her frame of view, she was doing the right thing at the right time in the right way. I think my response was off and there was no way she could have know about Ubi's ashes.

Guess I was just surprised.

The only time I have space of my own is when no one else is home or they're all asleep. Otherwise, anything goes.

If I want tranquility I take a walk in the woods and plunk down my arse wherever the mood strikes me. Hopefully NOT on a stinging/biting insect home.

"My space" is much of the basement. We're a family of 5 living in a 1000 sq ft 2 bdrm condo, so space really is at a premium. The basement also doubles as storage, triples as the kids' play area, and quadruples as the home theater, so whether I like it or not my space gets "invaded" on a regular basis. It also means that I can't leave half-finished projects lying around, lest the children decide to take it up, with the foreseeable consequences thereof.

We're house shopping... Well we will be when we get organised enough to do so.

One of the things that I'm looking for is either a garage, or a space that I can build a garage. I'm not sure which I'd preffer, but if there is already a garage, then it's a done thing. If I get to build the garage, then I get to build it so that it's good for what I want... Which is as much a workshop as a garage.

When that happens, the garage will be my space, trespassing upon which will not be tolerated.

It is highly unlikely that my wife's car will get garage space. It is highly unlikely that the car that I'll be using as a daily driver will get garage space. That's going to be used for project space. Possibly project car space, but definitely project space.

Of course, I can see how this is going to erode over time, but that's the current idea...

garage mine
house hers

We butt heads once about it, and only once. I was in ear shot of girl talk and they (they being the gaggle of hens that regularly flock together) where all talking of storing stuff in the garage, MY garage, and I made it known - women touch my garage and I move my 396 into the kitchen next to the coffee pot. The ladies laughed, all but my wife - cause she knew I was serious.

A man's home is his castle, in which his queen may live - ruling in comfort and peace. A man's garage is his keep, his fortress, the gathering place of warriors - sharing stories of the battle of life.

My wife is a neat-freak. She has the OCD that compels her to clean. If the house isnt spotless, then it must be cleaned (hey, fine with me). How-ever she has this "out of site, out of mind" approach to cleaning. If she cant see it, then it's been cleaned up. So I'll be working at my bench, pulling apart an LCD or an old laptop, carefully setting aside all screws and hardware, mentally documenting the locations of all parts so if reassembly is needed I can do so. I take grate pain in ensuring nothing is damaged, scratched, etc. I lay paper towels down to help give things a soft blanket to lay on. By this point it's no 11:00pm on a tuesday and bed is surely calling my name. I goto sleep to get up early to walk the dog, feed the child and be off to work. I get home and wish to continue my work on the previous nights project. I walk to my work bench (live in an apt, so it's actually a computer desk) and I arrive to a clean desk. No project in site. So I call up the wife, and ask "Um, honey..... where is all that stuff that I was working on last night?" Relies with "What suff?" Well low and behold she gathered it all up, and randomly dumped it into the mountain of bins in our storage unit. Found places were thing would fit. So now I have nearly a hundred little parts scattered between a dozen totes filled with miscellaneous odds and ends. So at which point, project has now ended, and all parts are lost (forget looking for them, it just wont happen).

Now I call her again, and calmly explain what she has just done. So I then ask her "Please say you filed away those very important papers I printed last night? and phone numbers of contacts I needed to call today. The papers that took me 3 hours to put together?" Replys "Oh, were those important? I threw them out" And now recalling I took out the trash that morning, so all my hard work is now miles away at the local landfill.

So please, to all women (possibly men too) who are reading this. Please, PLEASE, do not touch someone else's things. It may look like "junk" or a "filthy mess", but in fact the person who put it there, may need to rely on every little part still being right where they left it. Even days, weeks, possibly years later.

I think there is nothing that sums this up quite as well as this bit from Thomas Dolby...

"Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!"
I -
I don't believe it!
There she goes again!
She's tidied up, and I can't find anything!
All my tubes and wires
And careful notes
And antiquated notions"


Hehehehe...I love women.

My wife was a neat freak... 3 children cured her of that...

She still puts my stuff "somewhere safe" once in a while, which makes me crazy. Though I'll admit that my last audio amplifier building spree being on the kitchen table... Well, it maybe that I got what I deserved for that one.

LOL Well my wife was also. After one she was really good. With the second she slacked off. Now we just barley had number 3 (WE ARE DONE!) and it has all gone down hill