Hey, I have an issue with Aela, she can't carry anything really, and it seems to be getting worse - I can't even give her something that weighs a measly 5! Anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks for your time

If your on the Pc, there is a command to see the of a companion/npc, it is: "openactorcontainer 1", don't know if hidden items will appear, as the bug with the hunting bow.

there is also this "removeallitems " WARNING= this will remove everything.

There is also "showinventory" that will list all the form id's plus how many are in the container (NPC)

Thanks for that information, I'll look into it!

This is a known problem with most followers where each time they follow you, a (hidden) hunting bow gets added to their inventory, taking up weight. You should be able to temporarily fix it with console commands (removeitem 0010e2dd 99) and there are mods that correct the problem entirely.

Thanks mate, if you could point me in the right direction to those mods, would be greatly appreciated!

If you're mainly interested in Aela as per your original post, then http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11450 might be of interest. If you want just a simple fix for the hunting bow/weight problem, http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9842 is a popular solution. There are also larger follower overhaul mods like http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=14037, http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12933, http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=14228, and http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=15524 that incorporate the hunting bow fix and many other changes for all followers.