Advice, empathy, anything is helpful. I don't have a specific trajectory for this post. I just need to put these feelings somewhere that isn't with my spouse. I can tell that every time I bring this up, it stresses her out more. I wish that it wasn't eating at both of us, but the powerless feeling is just increasing.

In-laws have been hoarders for decades at this point. I've been in the family for five years and am now embittered to the 'it's getting better!' cycle of improvement and decline, improvement and decline. But now it's really getting worse to the point where when my wife goes over to their house to drop off groceries or water plants, she needs like, a week of recovery time and we end up arguing more about the state of our own house -- which gets pushed to the wayside by us both as a result of our sapped energy.

Problems around this I could use feedback on:

- I made the mistake recently of exploring the hoard when we were alone, and found several items pertaining to my own Neurodivergent Special Interest (patent pending) and got enthusiastic about bringing them home -- this spiraled into a huge argument. My wife wants nothing from their house and feels like it is all potentially contaminated due to it being a hoard. I don't give a damn about the items; I have no control over what happens, and I am fully behind her decisions -- but I sense the initial enthusiasm really hurt her feelings. Was there any way I could have prevented it?

- When we were moving, we agreed to 'hold' several large items for MIL's 'guest room' that she said would be useful. At the time, they were in a 'better' cycle and I genuinely thought there would be room and a purpose for them. There very clearly is not, and will not be, and now these large items are taking up space in my home and garage. I want to get rid of them and have asked my wife for an approximate deadline -- this also causes us to argue. I also experience guilt about going back on my 'promise' to my MIL, even though I know that her reaction would be due to her mental illness and not my inability to hold up my end of the bargain.

- Finally, I am struggling with the sunk cost fallacy of all of this. I am angry with them in my own private way that is 100% due to my own experience with my own parents. My parents wasted a tremendous amount of money litigating each other in a nasty divorce. My in-laws spend a lot of time extolling the virtues of not wasting, but I am filled with dread every time I go to their house knowing that it will only get worse, that there will be tremendous effort to be expended when the responsibility of this eventually transfers to us, and that their ethos about not wasting is in actuality the most wasteful, useless, awful thing two people could do to their kids. I respect my spouse's strategy in how we handle this in our relationship, but I wish I could confront this directly and express my anger on our behalf. I know this isn't productive or helpful to them or my spouse, but it's where I'm at.

- I'm sad. I'm just sad. I'm sad that this has had such a tremendous psychological impact on my spouse. I'm sad that this will impact how we raise children around them. I'm sad that they experience this. I'm sad that my spouse has virtually nothing from childhood -- it's all buried and decaying and everyone just glosses over that hurt. I'm sad that the US treats this as a matter of personal autonomy until someone gets injured or worse. I'm sad that I don't have regular in-laws. I'm sad that they refuse help.

- I don't know where to go discussion-wise with my spouse. As you can see from the above, I have SO MANY thoughts on this, but I know virtually none of them are productive when someone is in a space of private crisis and upheaval from having trauma re-experienced. But everything from anxious to productive is unwanted, and these feelings then exist in a bubble. I'm a nervous do-er, and nobody wants my help -- I have told her that if needed, I will take FMLA to gut and clean the house, hold an estate sale or work with a company, and help sell the house when that time comes, and she hates that. I feel like she is stuck in a state of paralysis where I desperately want a game plan that isn't just 'spend time with them outside their house and pretend it isn't there because it's not in our control.'

- Finally, I am anxious about something I offered that will not likely occur for years, but that scares me all the same. We tossed around the idea of a small ADU on our property for my MIL (my FIL's health is bad enough that I believe he will predecease her). But all of the reading I've done about hoarding suggests that if I allow her to live with me, it will happen again in a smaller space, and if I deal with it once, I'm not dealing with it again. What is the best thing to do for people like this when they reach a point where they need to be in an assisted living arrangement, either at home or in a facility?

We're in couples' therapy, but our therapist -- perhaps rightfully so, I'm not sure -- prioritizes my spouse's feelings and desired actions over mine, as they aren't my parents. And I'm hurting. I'm just hurting badly and I want this off my mind so I can focus more on my own house and my own life.