Help! My husband is a pack rat.?

We have been married 8 months, both in our 40's. His mother passed away in March at the age of 93. He was an only child and has inherited the house that he grew up in. We are planning to move into it at the end of this month. It needs a lot of remodeling work done. but that's not the major problem. The problem is that his mother saved everything. Every drawer, closet, dresser and cabinet is full to the brim. The house is small anyway, but I can't get my husband to part with anything. At this point, we do not have room to move our house of stuff into that house.

I knew it would be difficult for him and I tried to help by going through some of the stuff, but he is afraid that I will throw away something important. She kept stuff, like bill receipts from the day she moved into the house 40 years ago. Of course we have found some treasures, like the hospital bill from when my husband was born, old family photos from the 1800's, mail addressed in 1928. But we have also found a lot of stuff that we have thrown away. (aluminum foil plates from TV dinners, plastic and glass food jars, etc) He has donated her clothing to charity. But the other stuff, he is putting into plastic totes that he is refusing to store in the basement or put into a storage unit. So now, we have totes stacked everywhere in a one-bedroom house. (Still no room to move "our" stuff in.)

I had a moving sale at the place we rent this past weekend to get rid of some of my old furniture and household goods. I planned it several weeks ago and told him that we could put some of her things in for sale if he wanted, but he brought nothing. When we started going through her bedroom, we found 4 rocking chairs under stuff that was piled on them. My husband also has 4 VCR's and several telephones there and won't get rid of even one of anything.

It's very overwelming. The house will be fun to remodel and fix up, if I could convince him to at least move her things to storage. I know we need to go through things carefully, because when we went through one closet, we found almost $1000 in cash that she had stashed away in old purses. But instead of going through things now, he is putting everything in the totes and says he will go through it later "when he has time". In the meantime, the house continues to be very crowded with all the totes, but he is upset with me because I won't move anything of ours in. NO ROOM! I'm thinking of moving anyway and when he sees how crowded everything really is, he will move things into storage. But it would be so much easier to move it now. Plus I will be embarrassed to have the people who are going to help us move, see the house in that condition. I've tried to be patient, because of his mother's passing and to give him some time. I even offered to stay in our rental a couple of more months and help with the clearing out. But he is insistent that we move now, so we won't have to waste any more money on rent.

Any advice?