It may be an innacurate stereotype, but as a single girl, many or most of the guys I have dated in the past, oh, 12 years, have been this way. Maybe not dirty-gross, but messy at least.
However, I feel like a hypocrite sometimes, because on the rare occassions I have encountered really anally clean guys, it was a turn-off. Like, alarms went off in my head saying, either this guy has OCD or he’s gay! :rolleyes: I know it’s stupid and irrational, but I can’t help think it a little!! 
I was a housecleaner for about six months last year. One house we “cleaned” was only a one time thing (the woman got a coupon of sorts for it at a local auction). Two of us worked on the place for two hours and only got the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen done. The reason? Huge amounts of DUST on everything in every room. Thick layers of dust. I would imagine that this woman hadn’t dusted once in a number of years. Very nasty. And the bathroom? UGH.
Then there was the woman whom we cleaned for once every two weeks. Her bedroom carpet floor was absolutely coated with dog hair. It was so nasty.
My house would’ve been a candidate for that show, I bet. It was an absolute disaster. I managed to keep the areas we actually used at least fairly filth-free, but it was still…horrible.
I look back, and I don’t know how it happened. As some have already said, you get used to the mess, and it creeps up on you. I was a bad housekeeper to start with (some people just are naturally neat, but not me, unfortunately). I was in a terribly chaotic marriage with a husband who refused to lift a finger and who, for almost two years, refused to pay for trash removal service. I had zero money to pay for any kind of help, no one I could ask for help, and family of six with no washer/dryer. Things–EVERYthing–just piled up.
I was completely overwhelmed, and keeping up was all I could manage–making progress was pretty much out of the question.
After I kicked out my now-ex, things got marginally better, but it was extremely slow going. If I’d had a year or two, I could have maybe gotten it back into some semblence of order.
As luck would have it, we moved instead. I got rid of literally 3/4 or more of my stuff, from collections to clothes to pantry items to furniture. This house is much smaller, and it’s been so much easier to keep clean.
For the first time in my life, my home is company-clean…not perfect, but clean enough that I’m not afraid someone will call the health department. Of course, todd33rpm helps with chores, but I’ve finally gotten kind of a handle on the skills I need.
And I will never, NEVER go through that again. Living that was is miserable, but it’s so overwhelming that there doesn’t seem to be a way out once you’re mired in it. It’s really hard to overcome when you’re at the bottom looking up, with some 3600 square feet of filth to deal with alone.
Oh, and any fleas get way worse after you move, when the new babies hatch and get hungry with no four-legged critters to chomp on.
At any rate, just a different take on the whole situation…
Best,
karol
My mom. She’s a shop-addict, AND she can’t throw anything out. Two examples.
A full length cabinet, stuffed to the brink with cosmetics. One of the gadzillion boxes and bottles piled inside topples, and blocks the opening mechanism of the door from the inside. The door wouldn’t open anymore. By the time I came over and wrenched the door open, the door had been stuck for two solid months.
How my mom had survived those two months? Simply. She had bought a spare of everything and stuffed every single box, bottle, bag and container between and on top of the gaqdzillion linnens in the other cabinet. :rolleyes:
Second example.
I used to clear out my moms refrigerator when I visted her. Usually, that meant I had to throw out packs of milk, yoghurt and OJ that had been open in the fridge for six months. The yoghurt would have become green and solid.
In my moms frindge were also jars of sauce that had been open in the fridge for well over a year. These weren’t mouldy, but at least six months past the expiration date (which applies only to closed jars, anyway). Obviously, I threw those out too.
The first time I cleared out the fridge, I put the jars (with overdue or just rotten contents) in a cardboard box, to take them to the recycle-point. Half an hour later, I caught my mother taking the jars out *and putting them back in her fridge. *
:eek:
Ever since, I just put the glass jars in a garbage bag and spill the green mouldy yoghurt on top. That deters even my mom from “recycling”. :dubious:
Gah! I don’t think it would be wise for me to watch the show. Just reading this thread makes me want to leave work, go home, and start cleaning.
There was a thread not to long ago with a link to a SA post with pictures of a man’s mother’s house. This took pack-rattery to a whole new level.
I can’t find it, though. Anyone know what I’m talking about?
I always see the title of this show as “How Clean is your Horse”. 
The one with the boxes. Yes. I posted the link elsewhere too, I’ll have to see if I can find it. (Although, in the meantime, I think it was Stuffy who posted it under something like “You thought YOU were crazy”)
Lest I look like even a worse housekeeper than I truly am, I should have added to my earlier post:
I did always keep my sink, stove, counters, tub, and toilet clean. That was about all I could manage, but I cooked a lot and needed a clean place to do it. I spent most of my time just keeping up with dishes, it seemed.
Since we’ve moved, we now have a dishwasher, a washer/dryer, and trash service. We aren’t surrounded by woods and dirt, either, so the floors stay cleaner, easier. I’m amazed at how much easier the housework is here.
Speaking of which, I’d better go run the dishwasher again…
I know what you mean. I’m not the best housekeeper in the world, but I’m getting the incredible urge to put the clothes I washed earlier on to dry (which I obviously have to do anyway) and wash the remaining dishes.
Since we have company almost every week, our house actually stays fairly clean. We’re still very cluttered (my desk is a disaster zone of precariously piled papers and books) but I consider it vital to clean the house if the only person coming over is an electrician.
And my shower doors always have soap scum on them. The doors are so old they never completely come clean no matter how much I scrub them. I plan to replace them very soon. After reading this thread, I may head to Home Depot as soon as my husband gets home. 
Here is your link, called “My Mother is insane.”
There’s a difference between pack-rat syndrome (like the guy who posted to Something Awful about his mom’s house) and just plain dirty grossness.
I am talking about the dirty grossness here. People who haven’t ever washed their bedsheets or towels. People who have cat turds everywhere. People who have never washed their toilet, tub, or sink. People who don’t vacuum, dust or mop. People whose refrigerators are really just big petri dishes. People who are too lazy to throw trash away, so they just throw it on the floor.
These people may not be pack rats or even messy, but they are DIRTY. Like, in the show “How Clean Is Your House,” they swan various surfaces and test them for bacteria. Most of the time, the tests come back with hundreds of times the safe level of contamination. And when they steam clean the rugs, they get scores of gallons of BLACK water.
That should say: “they swab various surfaces and test them for bacteria”
This thread has gotten me thinking of other gross examples!
My college boyfriend’s house was gross. He wasn’t the gross one, though, it was his roommate. That was the kind of house you were scared to walk barefoot in for fear of contracting a foot disease. I know him and his roommate always had foot funk and athletes foot, and it’s no wonder why. They bathtub was dark brown with gunk. When I came to visit, I brought cleaning supplies and disinfected it as much as I could so I could take a shower.
Here’s a clue: If you walk around your house in white socks, and they turn brown, it’s time to vacuum/steam clean/mop.
OK, check out this page and look at the picture show link. I foudn the page last time I went through a big decluttering crisis. This is the nastiest house I’ve ever seen (although I know there are worse ones out there) even tho’ I kinda understand the psychology behind it…
Oh, this is making me feel so much better about my little stacks of clutter. I’ll add a story.
My uncle used to buy up houses and apartments and rent them out, using the rent to pay for them. He still rents out, although he’s slowed down on the buying. He does his own maintenance and as long as people aren’t calling him in to fix things, and they’ve been there for a few years, he figures they can keep the place any way they want.
One set of folks were in the same house for 20 years, with no calls for maintenance. They had a bunch of cats and a pot bellied pig that used a dog flap. The pig got big. When they moved, he had to rent a chipper to chip the carpet up off of the floor before he could begin to clean. Shudder.
Hey! I posted that! Actually, originally the guy at SA posted it, and then it was posted here once before too, but I’m the one who posted it recently with THAT for a title. :mad:
Oh, and Thinks2Much, there’s a big difference between a messy single-guy, and these homes. Most of these homes are actually family places, not a single guy’s apartment.
I admit that I’m messy and cluttered, but that is a long cry away from letting animals crap and vomit everywhere and not clean it up. Only once has there been visible mold on my dishes, and that was because I made some stew one night, forgot to put the rest of the stew in the fridge, and when I did the dishes the next day some fuzz had grown in the pot. I was disgusted by even this small amount, and have vowed not to let it happen again.
My biggest problem is the ‘clutter.’ I was in my aparatment for almsot a month before I actually put most of my stuff away, it jsut stayed in boxes in the middle of the living room floor. Why move them? I don’t need naything in them, and if I do, it’s right there for me to grab. I can get from the kitchen to the couch, and from the couch to my desk, and that’s all I needed. it wasn’t in any way gross, it was just books, DVD’sm clothes, etc…it was just cluttered.
I’ve got a problem with how they do that, as it is a total scare tactic.
If you swabbed just about any household surface that hasn’t recently been dowsed in bleach you’d find trace amounts of lots of horrible things. But what’s important is the degree they exist on that surface, not the degree they exist once they’ve been taken away and carefully nurtured and multiplied on a petri dish, which is exactly what they do on this show.
Having said that, the people they have on this TV show have crossed the line into living in filth, but the quoted figures of contamination are misleading nonsense. People are paranoid enough about germs without this.
tremorviolet if I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, I’m calling you! :eek:
I did not need to see that! What do you mean, I didn’t have to look? Of course I had to look! I’m a doper! Of course, if there’s a possibility of gross TMI, I am honor bound to look!
Hey, hey, watch it, girl
I’m a straight, single guy (age 27) who lives with a straight, single girl (age 26) and I’m definitely the cleaner of the two of us. We were gone on vacation for a week and the cat lost her little catnip toy while we were out. Last night I tried to look for it and can only assume it’s the clutter-hole of her room because it’s not anywhere else in the relatively clean apartment.
This thread reminded me of a house I visited regarding a bathroom remodel. When the front door opened, an invisible hand of stink reached out and grabbed my shirt. Easily 20 degrees too warm, the stink was a combination of people, food, pets, and decay. They asked me if I wanted to sit down. :eek: They asked me if I’d like a drink. :eek: Mangy looking dogs with sores were on the furniture. The bathroom was last clean when Bill Levitt’s crew left the house circa 1955. The mildew had mildew. A long extant toilet leak had newspaper on all sides, soggy and stinky. The first level of newspaper carried Kennedy’s victory in 1960, no doubt.
“I’ll mail you a proposal,” was all I said while heading for the door.
I stripped and showered immediately after getting home-the clothes went into the washing machine. D-scusting.