Your home is supposed to be a comforting place where you can get away from some of your troubles and relax.

The home in this story doesn’t fill that bill. See why this man is concerned about his wife.

AITA for wanting my house taken care of my way vs her way?

My wife and I have been together for 12 years now. Her upbringing was much more difficult than mine, which I attest to why she is partially the way she is, plus she has unmanaged ADHD, anxiety and trauma.

His wife has had a tough life.

I grew up with a mostly clean house. My mom worked a lot so I was fine doing most of the housework. I had like 2 bad step fathers so nothing terrible in retrospect.

Wife grew up with her old (80) father barely getting around. Her mom and sisters were addicts her whole life until her mom died 2 years before we met.

Every time I was over at her dads, their laundry was on the floor in big piles. He smoked so everything was musty. Her room was the classic “teenager” look, stuff all over the floor, can’t tell the clean from dirty clothes without checking, constantly losing everything.

The biggest thing, her father was killed just as I was finishing uni, which left both of us without parental help (locally that is) and having to just survive with whatever jobs/money we could get.

She is quite dysfunctional.

I contribute to chores, but she is insistent on doing things her way and I don’t even get a real answer other than “I’m doing it wrong.” The laundry is only ever half done, like it’s brought upstairs then it just sits in 1 of 6 different baskets. Sometimes it’s overflowing to the floor and dogs lay on it.

I have to ask her and then it’s like pulling teeth, otherwise I’d just do it but then that causes a fight. She has an overwhelming amount of belongings. She uses 2 full dressers for clothes, 2 3-tote towers for makeup. The closet I get 1 side and half a standing dresser, and she has 2 more 5 drawer towers with nail polish, lotions, soaps, random odds and ends.

The basement, is full. I’ve had to make a single path through the totes and boxes to be able to get to the back where the furnace is. Most areas are about waist level from totes (I’m 5’9). The back most room of the basement is just entirely for clothes she had from high school that she hasn’t let go of and all over the floor that you can’t even fully open the door.

But he doesn’t know what to do.

The urge to clean up the giant mess that is our house eats away at me sometimes and she knows it. Recently, I was mowing and quickly cleaning the garage. I saw a random old mop, greenery from Joann’s, dollar store Halloween solar lights. All covered in cobb webs and I pitched it all. I’m tired of feeling like I live in a Goodwill.

Well, she saw it in the garbage can and we fought over it. Now she says she can’t trust me around the house. I just want the house to feel orderly. Like I want to be able to find things when I need it. Currently it’s a guessing game and sometimes she’ll straight up lose important things. Like she’s lost at least 10 debit cards and the car key twice.

From my understanding, this reads a lot like unmanaged ADHD. Doom piles, executive disfunction, no short term memory, can’t focus, She won’t go to a therapist for it or for her trauma.

AITA?

Here is what folks are talking about.

A lot of people said hoarding. She needs help.

Offer help, but if she won’t help herself you may have to leave.

Definitely. It’s normal to not be okay with this.

I like that he cares and supports her, but treating this as a normal thing doesn’t help her.

Very true. Or if one of you needs EMT care, you’ll probably die.

He sounds so caring. I hope he offers her help.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.