My wife watches a lot of those shows like “Clean House” etc., where they take a disgusting mess of a home and fix it up by selling a lot of the junk and using the money to redecorate. Has anyone ever known someone who lived like that? I mean, these houses are beyond filthy with clutter as far as the eye can see. I’ve seen my own house at it’s worst and it never approached that level.
Do you think there are people who deliberately make the house worse when they apply to be on the show, knowing that they won’t get on TV for a moderately sloppy home? For example, someone would really like to get their living room redeocorated, so they get as much crap as possible into the room and then call Clean House or whoever, saying “I really need your help…look how disorganized I am!”.
Or am I reading too much into this, and there really are a lot of people with homes so ridiculously full of clutter that they can’t even walk around?
Well, there was one point doing my senior year when I (in the middle of a deep blue funk) and my roommate (an Architorture Major :D) made the room so messy that it probably could have qualified as a federal disaster area.
It’s amazing how disgusting a room can look once you stop picking stuff off the floor. (Well, all right, we still threw away the trash, but laundry and random papers just kind of went along with the flow of entropy, and eventually things kind of avalanched to epic proportions.)
I realize a lot of high school and college people live like unbelievable slobs…I know I did! But they never seem to be fixing up frat houses or the like. It’s usually a very nice home, and frequently has a very nice exterior, or at least one that is not indicative of just how bad things are indoors. Which also makes me wonder, how these people can find the time to make the outside tidy, but can’t be bothered pickingup a single thing inside.
One was my best friend’s house. Big house with a big family – 9 kids – all at home. Both parents worked, and mess could be expected. If my friend borrowed a blouse, I’d never see it again. She just couldn’t find it. There was always a baby or two in diapers, and the house smelled like pee. We slept outside a lot.
Another was a tiny old house where there just wasn’t any place to put things. No cupboards, no closets, no storage space at all. Two old ladies were raising two kids, and there were wars over tables. “Did you put that there?” “Move it! I need the room!”
My daughter says her ex’s mom’s house was like that – she saved everything, stuff piled to the ceiling, with narrow paths through all the junk.
I guess some people might fake it though. The Maury Show had a woman who was about to be married and she wanted a makeover. Her hair was a disaster and she was in tears about wanting to be a beautiful bride for the wonderful man who was marrying her. Pshaw.
Her hair was bushy (think Don King on a bad day) and stuck out a foot all around her head and hung over her face. I’ve never seen hair like that in my life, not even on street people. Totally faked. Maury gave her a makeover and if I remember right, paid for her honeymoon. As my mom would say, “Maury, you got took.”
More people than you would expect live like that. I’m pretty sloppy and at my worst, I’d definitely qualify for that show. Truthfully, I just don’t pay that much attention to my surroundings and tend to let stuff pile up. (my apt isn’t disgusting, just disorganized) I dont’ spend all that much time at home and when I’m there, I’m usually reading or studying. It’s really easy to stop even seeing the clutter and have it just become part of the room. Plus, when the clutter gets really bad, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and to not know where to start. And then there’s the weird guilt about throwing out stuff that maybe could be useful one day so you save it with the intention of donating it or selling it.
Every so often, I notice how bad I’ve let the apt get and go on a massive cleaning/organizing spree. I seem to cycle back and forth between horridly cluttered and organized (I need to figure out how to keep it organized before I get old and become one of those old women crushed by a stack of falling newspapers). But, outwardly, I’m a well-dressed and well-groomed professional. You really wouldn’t have a clue.
It’s a genuine psychological problem. I think some research shows it’s related to obsessive-compulsive disorder, but not consistently in all cases. A lot of people just get depressed and overwhelmed and end up living in squalor until it become normal. I grew up in first to second degree squalor because of my mother’s issues. She still lives this way. There is nothing I can do for her because she doesn’t see it as a problem, or more specifically, she knows it’s a problem but she is so incredibly defensive about it that the subject absolutely cannot be broached.
Actually, upon a review of the definitions of squalor at that website, I grew up in second degree squalor, with occasional forays into third degree squalor. It got beaten back to first degree squalor when I was old enough to start cleaning seriously as a young teenager.
We own an apartment complex, and we rent out houses.
Yes. People live like that. Its just… unimaginable what some people will live in, and not think twice about. I can understand the getting-slightly-senile older folks who save towers of newspapers… but the 24-year-old couple who never cleaned their shower or toilet in two years just… horrify me.
Is that you, Mom?
My ex’s mother was like that. Not so much with the saving and the narrow paths, but she collected all kinds of crap (dolls, plates, Precious Moments-type knickknacks) and just had stuff everywhere. She’d go to flea markets and buy whatever caught her eye, and bring it home and find a place for it, i.e. cram it in somewhere. Stuff everywhere.
The neighbors up the street are like that, but they’re not horders or collecters, but they just don’t clean up and have all kinds of crap sitting around. My daughter dog-sits for them sometimes (goes up and feeds him and walks him, not actually staying there), and the house is just filthy. Newspapers and magazines and books all over, videos and CDs and DVDs all over (out of their cases - completely disorganized), toys, tools, dirty laundry, piles of folded clothes, dirty dishes just freaking everywhere, unopened mail in little piles all over, boxes of who-knows-what laying around, and thick layers of dust on all of it. The house is a pigsty. Oh, and it smells. Bad. Obviously.
I’ve had an apartment that got close to as bad as some of the homes on some of these shows. I had storage in the basement and a small flood so everything got moved into two rooms.
Sorta tangential, that “Clean Sweep” show pisses me off when they do the yard sale contest. They take two things that the homeowners care about and in many cases have fought for and make them compete to keep them. That’s just messed up.
I prefer Life Laundry on BBCA to the TLC/HGTV shows.
Life Laundry actually seems about confronting the hidden issues that lead to squalor. I don’t like how the US shows are really just a different twist on a redecorating show.
I’m super-organized and tidy (FlyLady anyone?) in the house but last summer after 3 years living here, our garage was a complete disaster. Dead rat and all. We used the “empty it completely, sort into piles and donate/have a garage sale” system and it worked damn well.
I guess I’m just too cynical…or haven’t been in enough houses. I had no idea there were really that many people living that way. I guess what gets me is that they are usually neat looking people, with neat yards, etc. and they just have this one or two rooms in their houses that are so awful.
A neighbor in Seattle was like that. There was an extra bedroom in their house that was nothing but dirty clothes. Huge piles, five-six feet high, the whole room, filled with unwashed clothes and bedding. She shopped a lot. I figure she was scared by a box of Tide as a child.
I’m generally well organized and when I felt I needed a little help I did the flylady thing.
I had an illness that was diagnosed last June; treatment began in August and ended last week. Yeah! I pretty nearly lived in my bedroom and bath for the entire time. I refer to that area as the ‘crack den’ and it looks like some of those homes that “Cops” goes in to.
Nothing has been cleaned since the ordeal began and I’m definitely ashamed of the mess. No one has been allowed in either room since October and won’t be allowed in again until they’re clean.
There’s everything from stains on my carpet from when I vomited blackish blood to piles of New Yorkers that I’ll get to some day. There’s a printer on the chaise, piles of clean clothes that I haven’t been able to fold or hang and put away - washing and drying them were exhausting. Just counting now, there’s a total of 38 things on my dresser, everything from a Live Strong bracelet to a magnifying glass. The bathroom is disgusting - think 4 months with nothing cleaned. There are piles of Chistmas cards and presents on the floor.
The rest of the house looks fine but that’s because I throw everything into the crack den.
My mission now is to clean these rooms before I replace the carpeting and do some painting. I’ve already started and sometimes have to trick myself by saying, “I’ll get rid of 10 things today,” or “I’ll hang up 5 shirts.” I hope to have this licked by the end of March.
Evidently my normal habit is first degree squalor with periods of cleanliness, but if I get sick or something (it’s been a bad year, with funerals and colds) I’ll move on into second degree. I’m not quite to the “Clean Sweep” stage, but if I had kids I can see how it would happen. I wouldn’t need TV to come help me, though - I know what I need to do, it’s just, you know, the doing it part.
I’ll fess up. My wife and I are poster children for shows like that.
We are terrible pack rats, lack basic organizational skills, and if we didn’t have a maid, I would be deeply ashamed to have anyone in my house – as it is, I’d rather they not see my office or bedroom.
Even worse, we bought two large pre-fab sheds which are stuffed full. Anyone that wants to come over and take advantage of our junk quotient is welcome. We tried to have a yard sale, but did poorly (we are in a low visibility location).
I’ve made numerous trips to the Salvation Army, Goodwill, and other places, and I STILL am overcome by junk. Sadly, most of it was given to us – we don’t even buy much of anything.
