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I'm trying to empty my trash but everytime I do it gets stuck.

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The only way to get it off the screen, even after hours is to force quit.

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are the some of the files you're trying to trash on a different drive/volume? – l'L'l Jul 20 '12 at 20:29
A reboot often does the trick. – james.garriss Jul 21 '12 at 1:31

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What's in the trash? Are you sure it's all stuff that can/should be deleted? If so...

Try right-clicking the trash icon, hold the option key, and then click Empty Trash. This should attempt to force-empty the trash.

If that doesn't work, open the Terminal and enter sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*. The command rm -rf is a dangerous one since it will immediately delete anything without worrying about what it is. In the case of emptying the trash, that's what you want. I suggest you use copy-and-paste to enter the command if you're not used to using it, just to make sure you don't instantly delete anything other than what's in the trash.

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Ran the command, entered password and have been waiting for 15 minutes. Maybe its just going to take a very very long time since there are 13,606 files some of which are very large. – PhilipK Jul 20 '12 at 19:37
It can sometimes take the Trash a long time to empty depending on what exactly is in there. In the mean time, try opening Console to see if any interesting errors appear, and Activity Monitor to make sure the process hasn't just silently failed for some reason; make sure it's using some CPU and your disk is still doing something. – iynque Jul 20 '12 at 20:00

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