Cleaning a house with dogs in it is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos.
IMO there is something deeply defective about accepting living in disordered surroundings. That isn’t freedom.
It’s a prison of sloppiness and laziness. And a clear signal to all around you that not only do you not give a shit about the harm you’re doing to them, you don’t even give a shit about the harm you’re doing to yourself.
**Frylock **may indeed have an ineffective way of co-living with the others in the household. But she’s not the one with the defect.
Extremes of any sort are probably best to avoid.
I do think a house can be kept generally clean. But that’s going to involve one or more people doing a nightly clean-up sweep. Keeping a multi-person house in a state of generally static cleanliness isn’t going to happen. It’s just not how multi-person households work.
The house will get messy through the day, and then it can be made clean again. It’s fine.
No, **sattua **said that.
I don’t understand how people GET things Mom-clean to start with. (And yes my parents were total neat freaks, that’s how you raise a slob like me.) Like, how do you get a house to the point where the baseboards are clean in the first place so that every so often you just clean the baseboards again? I don’t understand how you’re supposed to do it.
(Er, so no. Our house is a shithole.)
I would think the key would be to instill good habits well before any bad ones take hold. Most kids have to be trained to be mindful of their messes; it’s like eating vegetables, brushing your teeth, and going to bed on time. These are practices you have to beat into them through repetition because they lack the maturity to see the value in them on their own.
I used to think I was naturally a pretty junky individual, but after living for years on my own, tidiness has become a way of life. The change probably came about after becoming more attuned to the stress that clutter and disorder causes inside of me.
As monstro pointed out, growing up our home was never really messy. Our bedrooms could get unruly, but common areas pretty much stayed presentable. Strewing books around the family room was not encouraged; you were expected to reshelf them after you were done reading. Littering the kitchen with toys and crafts was something we rarely did because we knew we’d be expected to haul all that crap back to our rooms by the end of the day. It also helped that our bedrooms were the main play areas to begin with; this kept a lot of kid stuff from creeping into other rooms in the house.
Both of our parents also modeled the same kind of tidy behaviors. Although our mother was the one who got on us the most about cleaning up, our father was pretty good about picking up after himself. He might slip up and leave a sock or two on the floor, but the sight of a dirty kitchen and overflowing trash put him in him motion.
If this is something you’re serious about changing in your home, I think you can. But you will have to embrace your inner drill sergeant and not be afraid to put your foot down. Also, you will have to suppress your impulse to clean up messes that don’t belong to you. The trick to making your family be mindful of their messiness is to punish them by forcing them to deal with their messiness.
My mother was pretty damned scary in many ways and cleaning was no exception. To this day, I’m a pretty neat person and glad that she trained me to be that way. BUT I would never recommend pulling out your inner Joan Crawford the way mom did (she was eventually diagnosed as bipolar and got properly medicated, though way after I had moved out). Her intentions were good and mostly effective, if not her methods. As far back as I can remember I was required to help in whatever way was appropriate for my ability. So setting the table and clearing my own plate and then helping with the dishes until I was big enough to do them myself (to this day other peoples’ dirty dishes sicken me), emptying all the household wastebaskets and then eventually taking out the trash, folding the “easy” laundry such as towels and socks and things until, once again, I was big / old enough to do all of it, feeding and walking the dog, etc. . . Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t always happy about it, though that was more because she was so mean. But cleanliness, along with many other things she [del] beat into[/del] instilled in me serve me to this day.
My brother on the other hand lives in a complete shit hole. A very expensive shit hole in a lovey neighborhood, but a shit hole nonetheless. I don’t think he’s a slob but his wife and two now early twenties sons are pigs and he has never been able to do anything about it. I love them, but I could really live with never setting foot in their house again.
If I’m working on a multi-day project, I’m sure as hell not going to take everything out and put everything away again every day until it’s done. It would take me 30 minutes every day just to do so. You can wait four days, and then it will be gone, and I will save myself an hour and a half in the meantime.
Anyway, I think what the mess is changes the approach. Food and dishes is something entirely different from homework or books, for example. Or scrubbing the toilet. They need different levels of attention and cleanliness.
Me too. My husband is more uptight than me about keeping everything clean, but I’ve picked up his habits and I’m a lot happier living in a clean house.
Actually, I can’t stand to clean with him, so when he goes out to run errands or walk the dog or whatever, I tear around and get the house shined up on my own. This makes it a lot easier, because it’s like a game, and also limits the time spent to a minimum.
Kids’ rooms are a different story, but at least we can shut the doors.
My brother and I both live alone at present, but tend to clash mildly when one is staying with the other: he’s a neat-freak, I’m very messy. He extols to me the benefits of keeping a tidy home, especially in respect of the sentence bolded by me, above – and, allied, finding things. “With my head”, I can indeed see the advantages of living that way; with my gut, though, I find maddening, the sterile and repetitious dance of “put it away, take it out again, put it away again…”. When just running my own show I prefer what is, for me, the lesser annoyance of frequent difficulty in finding wanted items.
My apartment is generally pretty messy. I dust only when it gets what most people would call ‘horrible’. I vacuum about every two weeks. I have piles of stuff around and I know exactly what is in each pile.
Yet my bathroom is generally cleaner than that of any of my friends, including the married couples. No, it’s not that I clean it a lot, it just appears to me that not one of these people ever cleans their bathrooms. Not at all, ever.
I don’t know if we keep things neat ALL day, but like someone mentioned upthread, my general standard is to keep things at the point where, if I had do, I could have the house looking neat and decent in about half an hour.
We have a small living space, which I think motivates me, because it’s not like we have a bunch of spare rooms where I can shove things. It’s also good for prompting me not to keep so much stuff in the first place. (So maybe move to a smaller house. 
)
My main motives in keeping a neat-ish house is that it makes me mental if 1. I can’t find something I need (especially if it is making me late or holding up some other plan) and 2. or it takes me longer to do something I want to do because I have to clean up first. I think there are SOME people who claim that even though their space is messy, they can instantly find whatever they are looking for. That could be true for some people. However, I’ve noticed some people who SAY that … yet don’t seem to realize that they delaying everyone else while it takes them 20 minutes to find their thing even though they claim to know “exactly” where it is.
My daughter is 4, when she wants to help with cleaning or other chores, I encourage that, and let her do the task to the degree that it’s age-appropriate so she feels accomplished and not discouraged. If I am doing chores, I’ll ask her to keep me company, put some fun music on, and chat with her while I’m working.
Her bedroom IS really small, and I don’t want her to feel like she doesn’t belong in the rest of the house … but, let me tell you, 4 year olds have a lot of toys with small parts. WTF Shopkins? Our approach for this is that she has a table in the living room where her “projects” can remain uninterrupted, but they have to stay on the table. If she wants to start a new project, she needs to clean up and put away whatever else was on the table to make room for herself … and we also keep it pretty clear that if we are having houseguests or something out of the routine, the table will need to be cleared regardless.
I think one thing that has helped me in terms of parenting is modelling the positive benefits more than harping on the negative impact. I try to show that doing a little quick work to tidy up is a pleasant thing, or part and parcel of a pleasant thing, as opposed to bemoaning and complaining that I have to do these awful, thankless, endless chores. (I do that part in my head.)
Our house is pretty clean. The youngest one’s got a messy room, and that’s the one exception. We have a very strong tidy-as-you-go policy. If the family room isn’t exactly the way it’s supposed to be when the kids are done with it, they are immediately ordered to rectify that situation.
I’ll be perfectly honest and admit this isn’t my influence. When I was a single dad my place was usually messy.
My home growing up was always clean. It still is always clean. Not generally clean, fully clean. My parents are tidy people. (…and then after them my time in the Army taught me whole new levels of clean!) I am a tidy person. My home now, with my own wife and kids is generally clean (aside from toys being scattered to the four winds) due largely to my efforts. My wife believes she’s a tidy person but isn’t, which can sometimes be maddening.
Another vote for “really depends on your definition of clean.”
My home is sanitary but I don’t think anyone could call it “clean.” Both my husband and I grew up in very clean households, only in my household, we were all responsible for cleaning. My husband had servants who put his stuff away for him and scrubbed the place at least twice per day. Since we don’t live with servants, he has trouble managing clutter and has no idea how to scrub. Usually I have to direct and after a while, directing is exhausting (I generally assume that if you look, see something out of place, you might put it away). So I have to allow a certain amount of leeway or kill myself trying to keep the place clean. Also, I refuse to pick his things up for him unless they’re in my way or he’s incapacitated.
It’d be interesting to have the OP return and tell us whether the issue is dust on the baseboards or 4-day old pizza boxes on the living room floor. And how old the kids are.
^ I agree that info would be helpful.
It’s fascinating how different people can be in their ability to see dirt and clutter. Everyone has their own definition of mess.
Here are 4 different images.
1.
“3” is what my house looks like most of the time: not spotless, but the clutter is well-contained. Of course, it’s only me, my husband, and my cat, so take this for what you will. I consider this tidy enough for regular living.
I would consider “1” inhospitably messy, and would probably go into a depression if that became my house (sorry if this offends anyone). If my place became “2”, this would be messy but not enough to cause me to go insane. You can rectify this situation in less than 15 min. The toys on the floor look like they were just put there; so there is little inertia in putting them away.
“4” would stress me out but mainly because of that overcluttered desk. Looking at it would fill me with hopeless dread. That’s the kind of stuff that builds up over time, due to laziness and inattentiveness. Fixing it takes time and concentration. The procrastinator in me would rather just ignore it. The stuff on the floor looks like a bunch of random accumulated debris as well. Not a lot in aggregate, but still enough little stuff to make feel like screaming.
So which state does your home keeping trending towards, Frylock?
There’s clean and there’s neat. My house is neat except for certain areas where a temporary pile-up is allowed (the table in the mudroom, my craft area).
Clean is a different story. I don’t have any pets and I’m generally careful about spills, etc., but there is definitely dust and lint, etc., around. That I can turn a blind eye to. Toilet and shower less so, but even there I don’t mind if it’s not perfect, as long as it’s just me.
Great example images!
Our downstairs is at 3 when we’re working on keeping it clean.
When we’re too busy for that, It’s between 2 and 4, constantly threatening to go full-on 4.
Our upstairs is probably constantly at 4, but this doesn’t bother me as much–the kids are mostly the ones up there and also a lot of it is just unorganized shit from when we moved into the house several months ago.
Image 1? Never. I don’t think it’s even a possibility.
Like I said in the OP, it’s more about mess than dirt (dirt I understand, I don’t get mad cleaning that, since it’s just what generally happens when there are people and animals around. It’s the mess that makes me mad when I clean it.)
And it’s almost never old pizza boxes, it’s generally just stuff people use and don’t put away. Not trash, generally.