My friend is complete slob - piles of sweaty clothes in the living room, moldy dishes, stacks and stacks of papers all over the house - and I’ve begun to wonder why?
I’ve heard of depressed people lacking the energy to clean, but this isn’t the case for my friend - he’s very active. Why do people choose to live in filth? Any amateur psychologists out there?
Me personally, I don’t clean because (a) pure unadulterated sloth, and (b) I don’t have to. No girlfriend, and few visitors.
Why do people choose to live in filth? Are you talking filth or clutter? My apt. is mostly clutter (I’m a pack rat) and dust (see the afore-mentioned sloth). I do wash my dishes and take out the trash, so the place isn’t a complete sty. At work I’m pretty neat and organized–my co-workers need it that way.
Don’t know if any of that answers your question though…
Perhaps they have different priorities - no one on their death bed ever said “Damn, I wish I had spent more time cleaning.” Perhaps they have a high tolerance for clutter. Perhaps they are lazy.
My bouts of clutter-accumulation correspond pretty closely with my deeper depressions. Beyond that, I don’t have much to offer.
It makes the place seem less empty.
I generally see it with “I’ll get around to it” syndrome. People think to themselves that they’re going to clean it later, but don’t. There’s something going on in the brain that makes the thought of picking it up confused with the action. They merely have to tell themselves “I’ll do that later” and they’re happy.
I’ve had so many people who needed to do something for some time and just tell me “don’t worry, I’m going to do that” and seem quite happy with themselves. They, of course, never do the task. In a few cases when I decide to point this out, they get real upset. They reiterate that they alread said they were going to do it.
A recently heard quote from who-knows-where originally:
“Hard work pays off, but procrastination pays off now.”
I think it can be a sickness. It just depends on the level of clutter or mess. Keeping things around that have sentimental value is one thing, but it gets to be a problem when you suddenly attach sentimental value or importance to everything you own. Harborwolf’s mother is like this. She has fabric and patterns that are 20 years old or more, and would never think of parting with them for one reason or another. I don’t think she actually believes she can accomplish what would have to be thousands of sewing projects either. She’s not as bad as my great-grandmother was though. I guess she used to save GARBAGE. My mother told me that as children they would visit her, and find drawers full of empty bologna packages.
I think it’s just general run of the mill crazy.
My MIL has a friend whose house stays so filthy that looking at a picture of it literally made me dry heave once. She’s a nice person but there’s gotta be something going on wrong upstairs. I’m no clean freak but there’s a point where you go from being messy to being downright friggin’ disgusting.
I’m not neat either. Before I was married, I would often let clothes and dishes pile up. I don’t think I’m crazy. I like it when it’s clean, but usually I find there’s something else I rather be doing than cleaning.
And then there’s Judith Scruggs.
How about real psychologists? Can we post too?
Sorry that was a bit sarcastic.
I teach psych at a small liberal arts college, and usually cycle into teaching marriage and family, or interviewing and counseling once a year. I will say this for those of the sloth persuesion out there. There are many reasons why some are slobs, ranging from depression, anxiety disorders, however those do not account for people with no mental ailements. These people who choose to be slobs either were allowed to be that way as a youth. Or Do not see anything wrong in their slobish behaviour, or have gotten used to someone picking up for them. In marriages, this can be a source of contention.
wife: “…I always pick up your dirty undies, cups laid all over the place, cereal bowls in the sink, etc…etc…”
This is a common occurance in household where this type of behaviour is allowed. And when allowed, it is usually reinforced with one partner continuing to pick things up.
However, my professional opionion on the whole matter: Laziness. 
Pure and unadulterated.
Laziness? What about efficiency? Some of you spend twenty minutes a day keeping your place spotless. I spend twenty minutes a week taking out the trash, one hour every two weeks doing the dishes, and one hour every year cleaning the bathroom.
You might not like how my place looks, but don’t bother bitching about it to me, 'cause I’ve gone fishing.
Some of you spend twenty minutes a day keeping your place spotless.
I WISH it took me only 20 minutes a day to keep my house spotless!
Well, that could be a generational thing. My grandmother has a compulsion to save anything which might someday be “useful.” (Scraps of plastic might be used to line flower pots, for example.)She was raised never to throw anything away which might conceivably be used again.
Unfortunately, our throw-away culture provides her with too many items of packaging which trigger that instinct. She has drawers full of plastic bread sacks, countless empty yogurt containers, bottles, etc. The speed with which she collects them outpaces her ability to use them. Which, in turn, leads to questions like, “Grandma, why do you have a dozen empty onion bags?”
My uncle’s wife brings home styrofoam take-out containers and washes them and reuses them.
Boy you hit a nerve here.
I would bet it to be a learned behavior. My wife of 1 year has no problems with having stuff scattered throughout the house. There is not a clear tabletop or surface anywhere.
I stay on top of keeping the kitchen and bathrooms clean because I refuse to live in that kind of filth.
I believe it is learned because visiting my inlaws their house is the same way, cluttered. I think she feels clutter makes a house “homey”.
We once had dinner at my old roomates house who keeps his home super clean. Afterwards I mentioned to her how nice he kept his home. She said she hated it and that it felt like a museum.
I’m one of those people who hangs on to things because I know as soon as I throw it out I’ll find a use for it or need it.
For most of the people I know, it is a combination of factors.
Lack of skills, including the mental skills involved, and lack of habit. Check out FlyLady.net if you want to know what kind of skills and habits.
Stress. People who lack the skills for housework often see housework in too-large chunks. They don’t (IME) put enough value on just doing a little, and only feel good if they did the whole thing. Which makes every blessed task a stressor.
Habit of mind (not seeing it). Once you let it go and let it go and let it go, it stops being something that you even notice. If you ever noticed in the first place…
No assigned places for things to go, so they land wherever.
Not wanting to have to be a grownup… there’s one area of rebellion that can really stick in a bad way. Looks like laziness, but it is more a pity party or tantrum version of selfishness (with a dose of la-la-la I’m not listening whenever anyone suggests a change of habit).
I had multiple factors - I associated a clean room with invasion of my space (protected my space by keeping it too messy to invade), I never learned the habits and skills, I am a perfectionist on housekeeping (recovered) which meant everything had to be perfect or wasn’t worth even starting, and I never broke the process down into small enough bits, every project was ‘make this whole room sparkle and shine’ not ‘pick up the socks’ and ‘dust the piano’ and ‘put the books back on the shelf’, etc. Bit off too much, mentally, so choked on it, and then learned never to start. Plus one bit of whiny not wanting to have to be the grownup ALL the time (partly because I became a grownup way too early, I think). Oh, and one big dose of crisis management reaction (I love to be able to completely clean the whole disaster in 3 hours, I feel GREAT about it… only that means it has to be a disaster first, and I have to freak out because someone important is coming over, and if I don’t have enough warning, it can really BE a disaster that I can’t manage…). Ugh.
I used FlyLady breifly, and it did teach me that I could do it, I had or could acquire the skills, I could break things into small bits and feel proud of even the slightest improvement because it actually WAS an improvement, and I learned to see even little stuff and be bothered by it… and I also discovered that I just don’t want to spend my time on it enough to make it worthwhile (long commute, kids, life), so we hired a housekeeper instead. We also invested in more storage, and I am learning to prune junk ASAP instead of waiting to get around to it ‘later’ (getting better at it all the time!). Oh, and I found I like small triumphs more often with more consistancy than I like big triumphs seldom with more disasters in between.
See, it can get better!
I think people are confusing slobs with hoarders. Slobs leave dirty dishes laying about, step over piles of laundry rather than pick them up, clean their toilets once a decade or so, etc. I think this tends to be more likely just a personality trait than a mental illness.
Hoarders are a whole 'nother breed. My ex had an aunt who was a hoarder. She filled up her house so much that her husband bought her an old school bus to keep her “treasures” in. When that filled up she went back to packing it into the house. Last time I was down there, the husband had bought a double-wide trailer to put in the yard so they’d have somewhere to actually live since the bus and house were both overflowing with stuff. At that time, she’d already gotten a pretty good start on filling up the trailer too. What can I say? She was a total headcase.
This is an interesting phenomenon. What exactly causes people to be slobs? My friend’s roomate is an interesting example of how it could be learned behavior like some have mentioned-
When my friend’s roomate lived with her parents, she blamed their messy house on her parents. She asserted that she was a clean and organized person, but she lived in a filthy household. You would think that would mean that all of her possessions/room would be immaculate, but it was just as disheveled as the rest of the house. Suspicious…:dubious:
She moved in with a friend of hers, with the same result- messy apartment. She blamed it on her friend. When she moved in with my friend when he was living with his parents (who are packrats and have a cluttered house) messes were conveniently blamed on his parents. When the two of them got an apartment, though, the same thing happened- messiness. It is painfully obvious to me that her growing up in a messy environment has contributed to her own slobbiness, but she would never admit it. Since she always lived with other people, she never had a shortage of scapegoats.