It's painful to know that all that stuff means more to the hoarder than you, your marraige and your child. I know, first hand, as I've been married to a hoarder for 18 years. His parents are similarly aflicted. I've been accused of being wasteful while they pride themselves on being frugal. My husband goes thru the trash to make sure I don't throw away anything he might need, like a used envelope. He can't leave the house to work, for fear that I might discard an old grocery store circular or one of seven dozen empty coffee cans. His father needed to constantly police the home in case his stuff was moved/misplaced/thrown out so he had to stop working in his 30s. His mother's hoarding led into stealing useless trinkets and things she had absolutely no use for. It wound up costing her her job. So for all their smug superiority about being thrifty, the burden of actually earning a living and paying the bills and keeping the households afloat is on someone else's shoulders. Mine.

Compulsive hoarding is extremely difficult and probably impossible to treat, and it's painful for everyone involved -- but whatever the symptoms (compulsive shopping, hoarding junk, hoarding animals, saving fingernail clippings, eggshells, grocery bags) the disease is depression. The site http://depressionfallout.org/ can be an incredible resource for you. I've also found solace in flylady's principles, and highly recommend her site, too. You are entitled to an oasis of calm in your home, and have the absolute right to claim spaces of it that she is not free to crap up with stuff such as your bedroom, your son's room, and the kitchen.

One last thought -- you say that you pulled yourself out of your depression, but I wonder if you sought or shunned professional treatment. It may be useful for you to have counseling either with your wife or on your own, if she won't go.

simply minorly messy and somewhat disorganized but getting better, but I do have some empathy for a hoarding mentality, mostly as a progressive person concerned about our environment.

I've started throwing out so much more now than I used to. But when you think about it, the amount of trash that we throw out, the amount of plastic, papers, etc. is simply astounding on a daily basis.

You might have a recycling program, but it takes time to sort through all the plastic packaging crap that we accumulate, that can be a project of itself...sorting through plastic stuff. (BTW...Why oh why are CDs stored in like 3 levels of plastic? Isn't the cover enough?)

Clothes are cheap now, thanks to Chinese labor, but it also means that they are not well-made. Seams rip after a few washes. Who knows how to sew anymore? Who has time to sew? Most women work outside the home. So it seems wasteful to just throw the clothing away, but who wants ripped clothing? So it goes out to some pile "to be dealt with later," and that is never a priority to be dealt with unless you have regular purges.

I feel pretty guilty about just throwing stuff out. I try to get to the Salvation Army on a regular basis, but more often than not, bags of "giveaway" stuff collect dust in the garage until I can get there.

Some stuff is just too heavy to put in your car to give away, so you save it for some "yard sale" that never happens, or store it away somewhere.

don't you ever get tired of being a helpful therapist who always tries to do everything the nice way? hey: dude, call a fucking mover and have them show up the minute she leaves for work. have them cart all the shit away and when she throws a tantrum about it...too goddam bad. stop being a pussy and take some fucking direct action. jesus...you wanna keep living in a fucking dump? and your kid to grow up thinking it's normal to live that way?

mike villers

I dated a hoarder once. The house was jammed full of crap: the garage, the attic, the spare rooms, bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, the side of the house. Cars that hadn't moved in 20 years were in the garage and the driveway. He didn't throw out coffee cans or any kind of glass jar that could be used again. If I threw something like that out, he would get it out of the trashcan. The house was literally falling down around him, rotting, yard growing out of control.

Every moment of every day was about him. What HE wanted, what HE thought of me, what HE wanted my life to be like, etc. He had finely tuned methods of doing little things like the dishes, or the way to set silverware on the counter so only the handle touched the surface. He would go apeshit if his methods were not emulated and any sign of agitation was met with, "I'm only trying to help and make you better."

My point: your wife's problem has already damaged your child and will continue to do so. You need to get out before his sense of self-worth and identity is damaged further. It is an extremely unhealthy, abnormal way of living. If your wife decides her stuff is more important than her child and your marriage, that's her problem. It's not YOUR job to make her better. It's your job to take care of you and your offspring. If she decides she wants to get better, fantastic. But you can't make someone change. I am personally a bit surprised that Cary is advocating such codependence.

Thanks, Callie, for that tip about the Institute for Living in Hartford. Yes, their program is described at their Web site.

http://www.instituteofliving.org/ADC/current_research_studies.htm#Hoarding

The LW might want to contact them; they apparently offer a nationwide network of resources and help for compulsive hoarding.

Their contact page is here:

http://www.instituteofliving.org/ADC/hoarding_info_request.asp