My opinion only, but It’s not so much the poverty as too many people per square foot of space. When you’ve got too many people in one house or apartment, stuff just piles up and everyone thinks the mess is someone else’s mess.
A certain lack of poverty helps when buying cleansers and tools. Holy crap, but other than no-name bleach and baking soda, that stuff is expensive!
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Why doesn’t everyone in the SC boonies just shoot themselves? It’s not like they’re worth a shit to anyone.
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Why do I keep seeing this sentiment on these boards? I’ve lived in SC, although not really in the boonies, and the people there just seemed like pretty normal people. Were they all hiding something from me? What is it about living in SC that means the residents should shoot themselves more than say, the residents of Mississippi?
And I’d think meth-heads would have cleaner houses than the average person- after all, they don’t sleep, and they have to have something to do in the middle of the night.
Devil’s Grandmother: Here’s the thing, though: in the long run, keeping things clean does pay off. Better to spend fifty bucks at one go on cleaning products, and use them and keep the worst mess at bay, than to let crud accumulate and have to pay me fifty bucks per four hours, for who knows how many sessions.
There’s a line from the film Malcolm X that I think applies in a lot of situations. “You’ll grovel and crawl for sin, but not to save your soul?” “Sin” and “save your soul” can be switched out for a lot of other things. “You’ll spend two hours playing an X-Box game, but you can’t spare half an hour to do the elliptical?” “You’ll scarf down a bag of Doritos at break, and then at lunch you’re ‘too full’ for cantaloupe?” And in this case, “You’ll spend money on more clothes/toys/ornaments to clutter up your house, but you have to watch every penny on products to clean it up?”
Well, if we’re going to have residents of Mississippi shoot themselves, I have a list here. :: waves long sheet of paper ::
I saw a documentary on meth last weekend, and I thought of that. But part of the family’s problem in the documentary that I saw was lack of money–the water got shut off at one point. Mr. Accident said that the family had lots of money, so I thought maybe it wasn’t drugs…
I certainly know the less money I have, the more depressed I am about my life in general, and the worse my house gets.
As for the OP, I’ve certainly seen a few interiors when campaigning. I remember a few scenes: the little gingerbread kitchen with the fancy teapots and the tea the lady served me on a cold day; the bookcase with the (replica? I hope) machine gun on top (as Gary Larson said, “How nature says ‘do not touch’”); and the awful rooming house that was divided equally between people who said they were going to vote for us because of affordable housing issues “and my God I am not going to spend my whole life in here” and the ones who bellowed drunken threats at us through the door.
I’ve actually discussed the poverty/cleanliness thing with my husband before; my family was fairly poor growing up (we aspired to “working poor” but we weren’t destitute), but the house and yard were always clean and in good repair. If something needed painting, we got the cheapest, ugliest paint available, but it still got painted (I’m flashing on my parents’ pepto bismol pink bathroom!). My parents were raised to look after their things, and they raised us to look after our things; I think lower income people who live in filth just weren’t raised any better.
ETA: I forgot my caveat that my father actually was a construction dude, so he did all the house fixing himself.
That seems unnecessarily judgmental. Perhaps they simply have different values. When you are poor, something has to give. For some people it may be better to let housekeeping go as opposed to education or whatever.
What I mean is that they weren’t raised to value a clean, well-repaired house; if you’re raised by someone who never looks after their home, I can see how you can live in a dirty, falling down house without realizing that there’s a better way to live.
Why doesn’t everyone in the SC boonies just shoot themselves? It’s not like they’re worth a shit to anyone.
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Why do I keep seeing this sentiment on these boards? I’ve lived in SC, although not really in the boonies, and the people there just seemed like pretty normal people. Were they all hiding something from me? What is it about living in SC that means the residents should shoot themselves more than say, the residents of Mississippi?
And I’d think meth-heads would have cleaner houses than the average person- after all, they don’t sleep, and they have to have something to do in the middle of the night.
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Let me make this clearer. I was born and raised in South Carolina. I have family in the “boonies.” I don’t mean to insinuate that everyone in the boonies is backwards and lives in dilapidated shacks (and shoots themselves*). Now, I have spent a lot of time wandering BFE, SC and there are a lot of places that one would expect to find some of the kinds of horror stories we’re seeing here. Yet, it’s become apparent to me that even the places you would least expect it hide some pretty awful stuff.
- I actually don’t understand that reference. Unless it’s just a general reference to South Carolinians attachment to the 2nd amendment, which there’s certainly plenty of truth to.
Back to the OP’s question…
Over the past three years I’ve been working for a landlord, painting peoples’ homes, mowing lawns, and getting some general construction/rehab work. So I see more insides of homes than most.
I haven’t encountered anything quite as bad as Mr. Accident’s tale - yet.
I have encountered some bad situations.
Let me first mention my own situations - I am not the world’s best housekeeper. I have some pack-rat tendencies myself, so right now I have too much stuff (which I am whittling away at - both Goodwill and the local library have been getting donations from me) and I have clutter. I understand how this happens. That said - the dishes get washed, the bathroom/kitchen get cleaned, the laundry done (though not always put away) and the trash removed from the home. Cluttered and dusty - yes. Nasty, filthy, unsanitary- no.
I helped clean up after local flooding two years ago. No matter how well kept your home it’s going to look like hell after a flood. However, some of these places clearly were cesspits prior to the water rising.
Even aside from flooded properties, I have encountered every color of mold, fungus, and rot imaginable. Dead rodents. Dead insects. Dead but unidentifiable mammal skeletons in a garage once (a garage, I might add, that was being used daily). Trash and filth under furniture. Look, dust under furniture is one thing, but garbage? Decaying food? Can’t you SMELL that? Oh, right - you have a dozen air fresheners in every room. Here’s a hint: Glade won’t kill the odor of month old pizza and dead rat.
Bathrooms - oh, lord. It helps if the shower/tub is cleaner than you are prior to stepping into it, you know? Mold, mildew, rotting clothes, underwear with skid marks… look, that ain’t right.
Sex toys… bad enough when they’re left out, worse when they haven’t been cleaned, but you should NOT be able to guess which orifice they were most recently in by what is encrusted on them, m’kay? 'Nuff said.
MOST people aren’t that bad. Most people are doing about as well as I am: food and trash thrown out, bathroom/kitchen cleaned, laundry done, but with clutter and dust. If you have pets I understand accidents happen but there’s an epic difference between the cat missed the litterbox this morning, but the litterbox obviously gets regular attention, and a foot high mound in the litterbox and the poor cat going elsewhere because the mound of crap is bigger than the cat.
Old and disabled people will tend to have more clutter and sometime filth because they can’t physically keep up with the cleaning.
I’m rather appalled at the number of people who just don’t care - not just about cleaning, but about themselves. Who come to the door completely disheveled and half naked. Yes, there are women who come to the door half-naked hoping to trade sex for repairs (or whatever - and BOY are they disappointed to see me!) but those tend to be “naughty” half-naked (or all naked) and their bodies are clean and usually their hair brushed. No, I’m talking about people who show up half naked 'cause they can’t be bothered to put evena robe on and you can figure out where they slept last night by matching the crust on their bodies to the crusts on the various couches and chairs about the place.
The worst case in recent memory was a woman who had been keeping it together for years. Then she was laid off and could not find new work. Her home went from neater than my home (somewhat cluttered but always dusted, kitchen and bathroom clean, things put away mostly, etc.) to a filthy hellhole. A couple of times the landlord and I walked in to find her half-dazed, probably higher than a kite, barely dressed, lying on the living room floor in filth with insects crawling on her and with rodents chowing down in the kitchen. When the floods of '08 hit her home it was the last straw. She spent her remaining weeks in the house sobbing, drinking, and probably drugging herself into a stupor. Her good-for-nothing ex-con felon son was actually more together than she was - I dunno, maybe jail had taught him how clean things up and the advantages of same. His room was the cleanest in the place. Wouldn’t call it neat, but it was clutter, not filth. He did try to keep up with the bathroom, and mentioned once having to clean his mother up when she soiled herself. Damn hard for one person to try to keep up with things when another household member is doing worse than nothing. It’s a pretty bad situation when the kid with the ankle-braclet and the probation officer is the most functional adult in the house.
I have no idea what happened to her after she left (eviction actions were proceeding against her, but she left before the sheriff showed up to put her out on the street).
Anyhow, anyone who enters peoples’ home will have horror stories. I make it a point not to discuss such things with most clients, and if I do relate a tale I make sure the people in question can’t be identified in the telling. Even filthy slobs have some right to privacy.
Oh - forgot to add this. In my bag o’ tools I have FOUR different kinds of gloves - a heavy leather pair for heavy jobs, a light pair of canvas gloves, elbow length heavy plastic/vinyl gloves, and thin nitrile gloves like medical exam gloves. People have sometimes asked why so many types.
Well, the leather and canvas are to protect my hands when carry things like drywall and joists or clearing brush and small trees. OK, most people say, that makes sense.
The elbow-length green ones are for protection when using chemicals/solvents/cleaners. OK, that makes sense…
The exam gloves? The same reason docs and nurses and EMT’s use 'em - to protect me from biohazards. Yes, I will remove shit from the floor for money, but I won’t do it barehanded, m’kay?
It was an ironic response to the OP’s bigoted screed.
Obivously, boonies has a political connotation I’m not aware of. If you’ll forgive me my bigotry, Contrapuntal, I’ll gladly forgive your hyperbole. 
Besides, doesn’t a “screed” denote more than a sentence?
You selected a group of people (those who live in the boonies of SC) and attributed to them a derogatory characteristic. Bigotry 101. And if you had said it about, say, inner city Detroit dwellers, you would have been roundly criticized. South Carolina crackers are pretty much fair game, apparently.
- The boonies definitely not a uniquely “cracker” area. I’ve spent plenty of time in very non-cracker parts of rural South Carolina. I’m pretty sure the latter makes up a large part of SC’s rural population. So, let’s be fair. If I’m being a bigot, I’m at least applying it evenly among races who live there.
- It was more a reference to my presumption that most people would readily assume that people in rural South Carolina, compared to Charleston (or Columbia or Greenville), would be more likely to live in the conditions mentioned in the OP, given the awful economic state of most of South Carolina.* As we’ve seen noted in this thread, though, that’s an incorrect assumption. When you peak inside some rich homes, you can still find squalid conditions.
- It was a subtle poke at what I know is many South Carolinians’ annoyance at how highly Charlestonians view themselves.
In any case, you’re welcome. I have apparently given you something to interpret as worthy of your righteous outrage. This week’s obligatory sanctimony fulfilled.
*Before you get too excited, that doesn’t mean poorer people (white, black or purple) are helpless, backwards, and incapable of cleaning their kitchens. It’s more a reference to the fact that in many cases the upkeep of a house requires time (and some money) and if you’re working two jobs just to make sure you can put food on the table and keep the lights on, you’re not as likely to put in the time or money as you would if you were better off.
Oh, we can rag on Charleston all you want. I’m A-OK with that. 
Sorry, I only let burglars into my apartment. I’m not opening my door for any encyclopedia salesmen.
I don’t go into other people’s houses on the regular, but two stick out at me. During the census I was in the doorway of a home where crap was stacked waist high all throughout the house. It was disgusting, but not dangerous to the kids - except to the infant, of course. The piles could have smothered her, and she was next to a leaning one. The house had a rusted out trailer bed in the yard, along with various toys. Classic redneck trash. Odd thing was, they had a perfectly mowed and useful backyard that was empty. Could have put their toys and crap there out of sight.
Earlier this summer I bought a fan on Craigslist. Since I had to see if it worked, I had to go into the person’s house to turn it on. It was a grungy place overall - most people live like slobs - but nothing troublesome. She had ferrets running around the whole place and didn’t tell me. I was wearing flipflops and took a slow step back…I felt the fur and immediately pulled my leg up. It ran squealing away. But I nearly killed her frickin’ rat, and definitely would have had I been wearing shoes. Disgusting that she let them run around. I’m sure she would have tried to sue me for damages for it too.
I’m am insurance adjuster and am in peoples homes all the time. From the dregs to the McMansions to the hoity-toitys. In my experience, the majority of people are what I consider “normal”, but I may have a broad range of normal.
The Good: Just last week I was in a McMansion that was 4 years old and it looked like you could eat off the floor. I don’t know how these people, even with maid service, can keep their house so clean. I have clean envy.
The Bad: The people who are mentally ill…the hoarders. I’ve been in houses where literally there was an 18" path to navigate from room to room. Everything else was stacked from floor to ceiling with stuff. Sometimes nasty moldy stuff, sometimes collectible stuff, but mostly just stuff.
The Ugly: The most interesting to me are the ones like the OP where the landlords try to claim vandalism. Unfortunately, a tenant slob is not a vandal.
Drug houses are pretty cool too. The last one had several 30-gal cylinders like you would use on the BBQ grill (supposedly to steal anhydrous ammonia), used needles, lots and lots of nails in the walls for trying a particular herb, and lights hung above the remnants of soil indicating a growing operation.
I just can’t imagine the landlord who rents these houses and then never, ever goes back to check as long as the damn rent check comes on time.