Why put up with it? If it bothers you enough to write your post, then just get a new tenant (assuming you are the landlord).

Hello Phil :)

What I think he needs may be having a maid come in every week.
This way the trash and dirty dishes would not pile up.
Some people have a hard time with doing the necessary daily maintenance to keep their homes clean and free of garbage.
Since he does allow you to do the clean ups I think he may do very well with a weekly maid keeping his spaces livable.
But you would first need to clean the place up like you did before, a maid can't be expected to clear out a large accumulation before she can clean.

Good luck and best wishes

I have had a roommate for 12 years. Lives upstairs. Keeps the downstairs kitchen, bath, toilet, etc. immaculate. Very considerate, never bothers anyone. He rents 2 rooms upstairs. One was so full of boxes and junk you couldn't get into it, and the other room had 3 layers of trash on the floor (papers, clothes, books, food droppings, dirty tissue, etc.) on which he slept on. We hired a guy to clean out the main room, 30 full bags of garbage were thrown out, but he is starting the routine over again, with new trash accumulating on the floor, and now his door opens halfway from things beings stored near it. When he is downstairs, if he sees me drop water on the floor he will rush to clean it up. He soaks his dishes all day in bleach to make sure they are clean in the kitchen, but sleeps with dirty dishes half filled with rotten food is his upstairs room. He says I have to give him $200 for his shoes that he blames me for putting in the shoe cabinet where the became a little moldy, but sleeps with mold all around him upstairs. He keeps ordering books from Amazon, but has over a hundred in his 2 rooms that he never reads. He just bought a trampoline that he might have used for a good 5 minutes and then hoarded it upstairs. He has a table in a box upstairs that he bought 5 years ago and has never opened. He is single, and 65 years old, so I guess he will never change. But he did let us clean the room out once, and let me clean the second room out last year, which is now worse than before, so I think there is some hope. I had to be very careful what I threw away though. It seems he lives in 2 imaginary worlds, one downstairs where he is super clean and always says how dirty I am, and the garbage dump upstairs. He is the head editor for a magazine, and makes plenty of money, but is always broke and deep in credit card dept, with no family to support and only $650 in rent a month. The problem is now that since you can't even get into the second room I believe it is a safety hazard, and he will probably let me go in there and sort things out again, but I am sure as soon as I am out, it will be back to how it was in 6 months. What should I do?