Must be revenge for my nanner sandwich comment, but of course after reading this, I had to look.
Sheesh. OK, ok, nanner sandwiches are shudder not so bad.
I hate to break it to you, but even if the guy’s a total slob, you may still not be “safe.” You probably wouldn’t want to see my apartment right now; it would rock your perception of a gay man’s apartment to its foundations. Without going into too much detail, I’ll just say that apparently “prone to copious shedding” and “averse to vacuuming” seem to outweigh the “homo.”
Some of the messiest places I’ve been in have been those of single gay guys. Granted, they had curtains, but they were dirty curtains.
I didn’t get through the whole thread. Do they clear out a house full of crap inhabited by a hoarder/clutterer too? I have a friend whose house I refuse to go into ever again until something gets done about it. It can take hours just to make a simple meal because you can’t find what you need or have to move 200 things out of the way first. And the fridge hasn’t been cleared out in ages; it also has little containers of this and that because she does not want to waste anything, not even those little condiment packages.
She hasn’t slept in her bedroom in a few years; she was actually sleeping in her mom’s bed until her mom had to go to assisted living a few months ago. Said bedroom cannot be entered because there is stuff stacked up all over the floor. Since she can’t get to her closet, she hangs her clothes on hangers on the doorways and on cupboard knobs or doorknobs.
The bathroom counter is loaded with little mostly empty bottles that she can’t bear to throw out, while spiders make comfy homes along the dusty baseboards.
The living room/den also has stacks of magazines and whatnot on the floor and nothing can be vacuumed because there is no room to push a vacuum cleaner.
The front room has a very narrow path where you might attempt to walk. She still has Christmas gifts from years past all over the place.
Seriously, the woman needs professional help, but I wouldn’t dare suggest it. I just wish she’d seek it.
In the book Fast Food Nation, the author reveals that all beef inevitably has feces in it. He claims that the average meat-eating American’s kitchen sink has more fecal bacteria in it, than their toilet.
So be fair to the poor fecal-infested refrigerator. Your fridge is it’s (only slightly) more sanitary cousin.
“Hey, landlord! I gotta leak in my sink!”
“Well, if you must. But I gotta take it out of your cleaning deposit.”
I looked at that link and I’d say that my aforementioned pal is somewhere between Degrees One and Two of Squalor.
I’m still not going in there.
Oi, not all us single-ish, straight guys are slobs. Some of us have overcome the genetics that tell us not to clean up, it happens with a bit of practice, when we are a few years wiser and after getting knocked back for a few roots because we had to sweep the bed before getting in it
Some advice for singledom:
*If water ‘beads’ on your sheets…they are so greasy they’re waterproof. Wash em’.
*If your feet get so much hair stuck to them from walking on the tiles or carpet that you look like a yeti, vacuum.
*If you’ve ever chugged a beer and found a ciggie butt in the bottom, throw out the empties accumulated around the house and buy an ashtray or fashion one from one of your neighbours hubcaps.
*Don’t own pets…unless they can, feed, walk and cleanup after themselves and have an income.
*If you’ve got a cat/dog: Lift it’s tail and sniff it’s ass. If pet ass smells better than the clothes you’d put on tomorrow, wash your clothes more often. No pet? use your own ass.
*Shave outside the square you live in. eg. shave at work, your GF’s house, the service station toilets.
*Steal toilet paper and hide them as emergency bogscroll.
*If you got no food in you house or can’t cook, ask a nice girl out, take her shopping and then ‘help’ her to make dinner. Take notes on what she does. Pay for the food aswell, of course!
*Hide all of the ‘extra’ plates, cutlery and glasses so there is only one lot to wash. Have a spare set just in case you find a girl that actually will by you dinner and cook it for you also.
clears throat
How YOU doin’?
…though it is hard to see how! A few personal experiences:
-while house hunting a few years ago, we were shown a house occupied by an AIRFORCE pilot (captain, USAF, AF Academy graduate). The house was filthy! They had cats, which were infested with fleas! Arrgh!
-Another house hunting story: RE agent showed us a delapidated house in a very upscale suburb. The house had been occupied by a 75 year old man, who had lived there 40 years. The house was filthy, and the carpeting was BLACK with ground-in dirt! There was one bathroom, with fixtures that looked like they had been reclaimed from a dump…the toilet was of a style from 1910 or so. All filthy encrusted with dirt! The kitchen stove was black with congealed grease.
I was almost physically sick…I told the realtor I might buy such a house…if I could demolish it and build a new one.
Finally, I heard a similar story from Rhode island. A little boy had been sent home repeatedly from schol, beciase he was dirty. The health department of the town finall visited the home-it was a condominium in a WEALTHY development-the units started at $300,000 and went up! The condo was filled with trash and garbage…the fridge contained rotten food, dog and cat feces allover the place. They boy’s grandmother lived with the boy and his mother-she was covered with flea bites.
The condo was so filthy, they had to tear down the walls and replace the whole interior…gack! How do people rech such a level of degredation? I have seen street people cleaner than this!
See, this I don’t get. How can anyone live in squalor and not mind other people seeing it?
:eek: :eek:
They don’t equate dirt with shame the same way we do. Generations of their family may have lived this way. You’re only ashamed of what you’re taught to be ashamed of-- it’s not innate.
My grandmother was a landlord for years. These stories you’re telling don’t surprise me at all. Unfortunately, I had to help clean out houses like these.
We had one family who hid their not-allowed dogs in the basement for years. They never let them out. The basement looked like it had a dirt floor when we started cleaning: dog shit was a foot thick.
Then, there was the family who kept a chicken coop in their basement. I’m not joking.
One house I rented (i put in the contract that the place had to be cleaned before I moved in)
A group for 4 pakistani lads lived there, oddly they didn’t seem to have very many possensions, but the living room floor was covered in about an inch of cigerette ash, with mouldy food thrown into the corners. For some reason they weren’t using the beds, but just had the mattresses on the floor (no sheets). The kitchen was covered in mouldy food and plates. The stove was so bad that the landlady got it replaced because she couldn’t clean it. I really haven’t seen anything quite so disgusting. They’d smashed the burgler alarm off the wall, because they’d come home drunk one night and couldn’t remember the code. One wall also had another hole in it!
One house I looked at when renting didn’t have a fitted kitchen. I’ve never seen a house outside a museum that didn’t have a fitted kitchen!
Oh, yeah there is a programme here in the UK that cleans out peoples hordes of junk, but I can’t remember what it’s called at the moment.
Scarily enough, I knew a guy in high school whose house looked sort of like the link. Not as far gone, but trash everywhere.
Gah.
I feel a lot better about my housekeeping now. The floor gets swept twice a week, and I disinfect with bleach. I think I’ll mop and tidy my desk now. Reading about horrible slobs really does cause an overwhelming urge to clean.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. I have a clutter problem and I’m humiliated if someone just drops by. At least I realize I have an issue…
I had a couple of rooms in my house worthy of this thread.
I am in the process of getting a divorce right now, but for the last three or four years we were married, we “got along” by staying away from each other. I slept on a couch and shared a bathroom with the kids, he had the back bedroom and bathroom all to himself.
That’s three years of those rooms not being cleaned. The bathroom…how can I begin? There were bits of feces caked on the walls. There was so much scuzz on the countertops that the clutter was glued down. He had burned many candles in there rather than clean, so the walls and mirror were coated with smoke residue and there was melted wax everywhere. Mostly empty beer cans were stored in the cabinets.
In the bedroom were years worth of crossword puzzle mags, Sports Ilustrated, and newspapers. These had somehow gotten wet. Behind the bed was a snowdrift of dead skin he had peeled from his feet. I think you have the general idea.
Anyway, he’s gone and that bathroom has been completely remodeled. The bedroom has new carpet and any furniture from that room has been thrown away. Now for some nice electroshock therapy to erase the memories!
Well, from that site my mother is living in stage three squalor. I live 600 miles away from her, one of my sisters lives 1200 miles away and the other lives with her and is becoming just as bad. The sister who lives with my mom used to be tidy in her own room but now she doesn’t even do that. The other sister and I will never live near her because we can’t stand to see how she lives and how much it reduces the quality of her life. She hasn’t always been like that but for a long time she has. When we were little she tried to keep things neat. By the time we were school age it was stage two squalor and we couldn’t have friends over. Once I cleaned and cleaned and had a friend over and the “friend” told everyone in the school how dirty we were. By the time we were in high school it was stage three and we had to worry about smelling like cat poop all the time. She spent all the money on books and crap and we didn’t have any clothes to wear. The drier broke and we had to wear damp clothes all the time because we had to wash our school clothes every night and there wasn’t time for them to dry.
My father had a heart attack in an upstairs bedroom and it took the paramedics 1/2 hour to get him out of the house. He died. That night my mom just kept looking around the house saying “where did all this stuff come from”. When I was little I would go to sleep praying my parents would die so I could live with my aunt and uncle. Not only is my mom a slob she neglected and abused us. My dad was OK, but worked all the time. I wish social services would have intervened, but kids don’t know they can get help.
She is not only filthy, she buys videos and books compulsively. Her house is falling apart, her property taxes are unpaid and it would probably best if she lost the house, but she would trash an apartment. The sister who lives at home contrubutes nothing for bills or any household expense. I don’t blame her for not cleaning because with my mom there she couldn’t get anywhere. My mom will unwrap candy and just toss the wrapper on the floor. There are dirty dishes, garbage and clothes everywhere. My mom’s clothes are in a chair in the living room and she gets dressed out of the chair. There is compost in the corner of the edge of the floor and the counters in the kitchen. Of course no one can walk in the kitchen for all the full garbage bags and things on the floor.
The most bizzare thing is that from the waist up she has decorated. Pictures on the wall, knick knacks on the mantle. It is so ridiculous.
I’m making myself depressed talking about this. I think her problem is a combination of depression, OCD, laziness and her distain for 'normal" behavior. She always sneers at people who take care of possesions at all. She can’t see that there’s a happy medium between obsessive cleaning and maintaining and total slobbiness that wrecks your life.
Uh… my house doesn’t have a fitted kitchen, well not really. That doesn’t equate with squalor, though, it just means I don’t have neat little doors over everything, and the dishwasher looks like — gasp! — a dishwasher. I can live with that.
What is a “fitted kitchen”? It sounds like a kitchen with closed cabinets? Are open cabinets unusual in some areas?
Re the OP, I did see the episode where the family had numerous animals, including a snake whose pen was teeming with salmonella. The whole show was repulsive. An entire family - 5 or 6 people - and they all thought this was an acceptable way to live. Frankly I think it’s a mass mental illness going on in situations like this - “folie à poo” or something.
I’ve got a bit of a clutter problem myself but I keep the kitchen and bathrooms clean and I vacuum the rugs and wash the floors regularly. And I’m obsessive about making sure my house doesn’t smell like cat. How do those kids invite friends over?
…must…go…clean toilet…fold laundry…vaccuum…