I’m a little confused with how most people here seem to think that being messy is some kind of learned and/or wrong-way “defect” of the mind or personality like anorexia or hyper aggressivness. I’m pretty sure that being neat or geometrically organized (everything in it’s place straight and even) with respect to one’s personal surroundings is more unatural than being messy.
Lining up saucers in the cupboard, not letting anything that touched food go unsanitized (and dried and reorganized) for more than 15 minutes, and the daily removal of 10 micron layers of dust on objects nobody even looks at is what has to be learned - I doubt that would come naturally to very many people if they weren’t taught how and why it should be done.
I’m pretty sure that most anyone who’s been in the military got a rather rude awakening when some stranger barged into their room with a ruler to measure the folds in their sheets and looking for dust behind the toilet with a Q-tip. The army sure believes that people have to be taught how to be neat (though their motivation for doing so probably doesn’t have much to do with cleanliness).
In college I had a little dorm room and kept it nice and clean/organized since I didn’t have any extra stuff to cause clutter. Thought I was pretty cultured until I saw one of the female japanese exchange student’s rooms. Absolutely immaculate and sterile. I swear she had like one sheet of paper and a pillow, yet she’d been there for years. My place was a pig stye in comparison. That kind of house keeping takes some training.
So, as a couple have pointed out, I think being a slob comes more from not being trained otherwise and acting natural. I really doubt there’s some kind of personality disorder that causes a hairless ape which instinctivly scrubs flat surfaces with soapy water to crack and start leaving socks on the bedroom floor.
I think we’re on to something with these comments, hedra.
My friend is rather childish at 31 years old. I never thought of it as a form of rebellion, but my friend can be passive-aggressive at times. He knows we hate it, but he rarely seems ashamed.
Using it as a barrier to keep people out is an interesting idea. He’s lived in his new apartment for a year and I’ve yet to see it. Does a slob need an intensely private space that only they can (stand to) inhabit or decipher in order to feel safe or protected? Is it like the ultimate definition of home - you’re comfortable and nobody else wants to come near?
I was also thinking about the hoarding issue. He can’t claim to be a child of the depression waiting to reuse things - he just can’t let go of anything. (Made fun of him once when I found a 1998 calender lying around - in the year 2000! The epitome of obsolete and useless.) A fear of abandonment, perhaps? A fear of moving forward in life? The past never leaves - it’s old magazines lying in a pile on the coffee table. Any of this sound plausible?
And mmmiiikkkeee, I didn’t mean to imply that living that way is wrong, but it does differ from the societal norm. It’s a choice that can be costly (ever try to bring a woman home to a house like that), so I think there must be strong reasons for choosing that lifestyle. We can talk about why anally clean people are insane in another thread!
What exactly is so wrong with having some crap on the floor? There’s a big difference between having rotting things in the kitchen and having a somewhat messy (in a non-contagious way) house, and I admit I’m a little insulted that you all think there must be something wrong with me and my upbringing because there’s some clothes on my floor and I never make my bed. I have a lot of clutter. I don’t mop a lot. I have better things to do with my time, and it does not bother me to see a few pairs of dirty underwear here and there. I think you neurotic cleaners have issues, not the other way around.
What exactly is so wrong with having some crap on the floor? There’s a big difference between having rotting things in the kitchen and having a somewhat messy (in a non-contagious way) house, and I admit I’m a little insulted that you all think there must be something wrong with me and my upbringing because there’s some clothes on my floor and I never make my bed. I have a lot of clutter. I don’t mop a lot. I have better things to do with my time, and it does not bother me to see a few pairs of dirty underwear here and there. I think you neurotic cleaners have issues, not the other way around.
Societal norm? Really? In what sense? What exactly is the “societal norm”? 50’s housewives? Frat boys? How many people in America are really how clean?
As in, most people like to have their close friends (in this case 20+ years) enter their homes once in a while.
Are you capable of washing your dishes in under 2 days time? Does your apartment stink up the entire hallway with the door closed? Do you have a huge walk-in closet (6’ X 6’ at least) that is impassible and piled 5 feet high with shit? Probably not. I’m not talking about messy here - I’m talking complete and utter slob. If you’re doing something that disgusts the vast majority of people, that’s outside the norm, right?
I’m a neatnik who grew up in a very messy household (which is now a neat one)
Why? I’m not sure.
Part of having a messy household was that, as a single mother, my mom just didn’t have time to maintain a neat house. A simple thing like laundry can take all day when you don’t have your own washing machine and have a kid to deal with. And a house with kids gets a lot messier than one without. Once a mess starts, it is a lot easier just not to bother with any subsequent messes than to clean them all up. Especially when you reach the point that cleaning up a mess means making an even bigger mess temporarily. Eventually you just get used to “mess” being the default. And yeah, it does feel a bit homey. It was always nice the once or twice a year our house was clean enough to have people over in. But at some point the daily dicipline it takes to keep a house clean slides and it all goes to hell.
When we moved, we got rid of a lot of stuff, bought furniture we could be proud of, and had a house large enough to entertain in. Oddly, the new house never gets all that messy. One thing is that it is larger, so it takes a lot longer to get messy and the messes “stick out” more. And having a dishwasher and washing machine does make a huge difference. But really it was just a radical change in habits. I can’t really explain what prompted it.
Now, in my own house, I have pretty impecable cleaning habits.
It’s called Attention Deficit Disorder. One of the main symptoms is being messy and disorganized. I recently got diagnosed and this was a major symptom I have struggled with for many years. I am 40 years old and just now figuring it out. Thankfully I am now medicated and my house is getting in order one day at a time. I am so thankful I have finally gotten help.
Pure procrastination in my case. If left to my own devices, trash will pile up in my room. Not because I’m fond of it or want to keep it, but because it’s not as fun as playing World of Warcraft.
My problem is just too much stuff. Stuff that I didn’t acquire, nor did I plan on keeping. Maybe at one time I wanted to keep my old toys as childhood memories, and I do use old computers for parts, but that’s it.
I do have a problem with just throwing something away, though. It seems to me that, if something is usable, I should at the very least donate it, and that’s assuming I can’t get money out of it. And because that takes more effort than just throwing something out, I wind up procrastinating.
That doesn’t mean I don’t throw away trash–I’m just talking about perfectly serviceable items I no longer use.
Then again, if you go by familial ties, I have two competing systems–dad’s side kept everything, while mom’s side was obsessively neat.
I was almost compulsive about cleaning when I began living alone five or six months ago. I think I wanted to prove I could do it. Lately I have been sort of slacking off. I do the dishes daily and the laundry weekly; dusting and cleaning floors happen when I notice they need it. But I have to say that I have noticed my sloppiness factor increases with increasing depression. If I fight against being depressed, my cleanliness factor kicks into overdrive. I’m trying to find a middle level.
Take a kid four or five years old. Tell them to clean their room. Don’t show them how, don’t help, don’t make any suggestions.
Then when they fail, yell at them until they cry. Tell them how worthless they are. An hour later when they have stopped crying and the room still isn’t clean, spank them.
Then clean the room when they are at school, and yell at them when they get home for not doing themselves. Then yell at them some more as soon as they leave anything out of place. Which they will, because they don’t know where you put anything. Be sure to keep mentioning how worthless they are.
This is how you end up with an adult that has full blown panic attacks when faced with cleaning.
I’m a messy person. I don’t like having food sitting around and you won’t find much of it, if any, in my room. I don’t have garbage sitting around, either, like used Kleenex or anything sticky etc. Everything else, though, is fair game. Bottlecaps, papers, receipts are on my desk and floor. Clothes and shoes are everywhere. Pens and makeup are strewn over my desk.
I have self-analyzed my messiness and I for me it’s like I just don’t register it until someone points it out to me, or I point it out to myself. I can look at my desk and floor and ask myself “is this mess?” and my answer will be yes. But as I’m going about my daily business, I don’t notice it at all and it doesn’t bother me. Then, as I’m cleaning, I’ll try to put something away and realize that I don’t know where I should put any of my stuff, so I kind of just saunter off. I have come to suspect that some people view every object as having a place where it belongs. I have made no such mental assignments.
Cleaning, for me, requires a lot of concentration. I’m always reminding myself “this can go on the shelf” or “this needs to be thrown away”. I can’t clean while thinking about other things. It’s just goes against the way my mind naturally works. And in regards to the OP, funnily enough, I have even sat through classes on learning disorders in college, and as the prof explained dyslexic people and their struggles with reading, thought to myself “that is pretty much how I feel about cleaning.”
I find my place is not as clean as I’d like it but then again, I never have visitors and I’m not lazy, I’m just doing something else.
I dust and I don’t leave food around to attract bugs, but I will throw a magazine on the floor and not pick it up till Saturday, when I go through the living room and swoop clean up.
My flat looks cluttered because, it is and it’s very small. If I had regular company or lived with someone I’d be a lot neater. My work place has always been organized and neat, but I don’t see the point to it at home.
I find the idea of a cleaning disorder very interesting and would subscribe to your newsletter. My current roommate gets mad at me (and my mom got mad at me prior to that) because I don’t tend to register clutter as problematic. To me it seems more like they are being overly-anal, of course.
Especially my roommate who will do “tests” on me and our other roommate and then get all pissy when we “fail,” instead of just fucking coming out and asking us to do something that’s bothering her (her passive-aggressivity is a tangential topic). Her latest test was to hand wash the dishes she used for a week and see how long it would take someone else to run the dishwasher, instead of asking one of us to run the dishwasher.
Well, I don’t use the dishwasher. EVER! In fact I hadn’t even dirtied a single dish in the past week (I ate out, used plasticware, or had frozen dinners which don’t require dishware). So after “we” “failed the test” she blew up in a very, very long email to me. And I had to clarify that it was our other roommate’s fault. I’d like to cause her some moderate, very localized brain damage (a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) so she stops perpetuating this bullshit but whatcanyado?
I swear to frog, I have never in my life started drama over cleaning. But it seems to haunt me regardless. It, like religion and politics, is just not an activity that interests me. I mean, pick your battles! What a waste of time. As someone else stated, nobody thinks on their deathbed “Boy I wish I had been a neater person.”
I once had a online-hookup with a lady for some sex, and she insisted on hosting. Bad mistake. Her place was so filthy that I nearly gagged when I entered.
Happened to me way before the internet on a blind date. Toilet hadn’t been flushed in forever or so it looked------feces by the pound. I left immediately and never went back.
In some cases it’s probably a learned thing. My FIL is both a hoarder and a slob. His parents were the same way.
He lives in an apartment, which smells because he never “gets around” to taking the garbage out. He reuses napkins over and over. He uses his dishes, glasses, and utensils over and over before washing them. He doesn’t get a bath because he “doesn’t do anything to get dirty”. Doesn’t shave because he “doesn’t have to”. The big thing is saving old newspapers, piles and piles of them, because there was always some “interesting article” he wanted to keep.
He wasn’t like this when he was still married to my MIL, because she did all the cleaning for him. This is a guy who used to be meticulously groomed and wore suits to work every day.
I believe in a lot of cases it’s because they’ve misplaced their brains.
Actually for me, though I’m not that bad, I tend to keep everything in one place and try and go through it, then just don’t. I also don’t need my table since I live alone. I have been getting better as I’ve been donating and throwing out a lot of stuff. However, my place is mostly clutter and not messy, my dishes are washed and my floors mostly clean.
You guys know this is a zombie thread, right? I wouldn’t care, except that I was reading, reading… hey, when did I respond to this? Whoa, I was touchy at 23!
This is why I have chosen to live in Colombia. Here, we can have a maid quite cheap and not have to worry about cleaning up the mess. The apartment is always inspection clean. We couldn’t do this at home
