Trash folder not a directory, files only delete immediately Trash is not storing files any more. When I drag something to the trash it only presents the option to delete the item immediately and that I can't undo the change. I had a look at the folder in terminal:

$ ls -ld ~/.Trash
----------  1 Nic  staff  0 13 Aug 08:35 /User/Nic/.Trash


When I remove the Trash with:

$ rm -rf ~/.Trash


and restart the computer, it works for a few days, then it stops working again.
Your trash has been turned into a plain file with no permissions.

rm ~/.Trash
mkdir -m 700 ~/.Trash


and normality should be restored.