Is Living Apart a fair way to handle a hoarding spouse?
My wife has ADHD, anxiety, depression, and I'm sure some other things as well. She also has hoarding tendencies. She won't throw away trash, keeps glass food containers that she never uses, tries to save used ziplock bags (yuck), piles up recycling and trash together in heaps (so I have to go behind her and sort them), piles knick knacks where they don't belong, picks up new hobbies for about 5 minutes (just long enough to purchase all the tools and never touch them again), collected some cats (3) and dogs (2), just to name a few things. She also waits multiple weeks before doing her laundry (I do my own, plus our daughters most of the time), hardly ever vacuums or mops the floors (so I have to do all of it), doesn't change the litter box, doesn't tend to her garden, does not help with any yard work, doesn't consistently feed or water the animals. Basically if it involves some type of maintenance or cleaning, she rarely ever does it and I'm stuck holding the bag, and every single room in our house is severely cluttered. If there is a surface to put stuff on, she finds it and fills it up, even if it is on top of the freezer you need to access daily.
Well now we have a 7 month old daughter, who is beginning to crawl, and I can't keep the house clean enough or safe enough for me to feel comfortable with the little one exploring. Just yesterday the dogs got into one of her piles and ate a bunch of stuff they shouldn't have while we were at work, stuff that really shouldn't have been within their reach in the first place. One of these dogs has already had 2 foreign body surgeries for things he has eaten. And the bitter irony of it all is I asked her to clean up this specific pile this past weekend. She's worried about the dog now, but not worried enough to not make the pile in the first place.
All that said, I know it's a mental disorder and it's a monumental task for her to overcome it, but I just don't feel like she ever tries and at some point it's not my responsibility to manage her.
I am really considering buying another house (nearby) and moving out with our daughter. I'm not looking to get divorced, as much as I complain I still love my wife and want us to be together as a family, but I just don't think I can live like this and I don't think it is a safe environment to raise our daughter in. She owns the house we live in currently and she bought it before we met, so I have never been able to shake the feeling that this is her space and I'm intruding. I feel like if I have my own house and my own space, I can lay down the rules for its use, and I can keep it clean for our daughter. Is this something that is fair for me to do?