Heh. The roomba forces me to pick up, at least in the “public” areas of the house. 
EriK the Roomba can’t vaccuum with “crap” all over the floor.
What’s wrong with admitting that you need this kind of help? Instead of buying new furniture, spend several hundred dollars to have someone come in to 1) organize your clutter (you obviously won’t do it yourself); 2) clean your house from top to bottom (you obviously won’t do it yourself) and 3) hire an exterminator (so as not to rely on emotional blackmail and mutual resentment to pick a “ass-nasty dead roach” off the floor).
Perhaps if you invest the money in such an endeavor you will be less inclined to let things slide and blame “brain poison” for it. Also, such an investment might be the incentive your boyfriend needs to help out. I’ve found that if I spend good money on something, I will work hard to preserve it and make sure that it’s not covered in cockroach shit.
There’s a difference between clutter and filth. You and your SO need to learn that difference. Stubbornly stepping over roaches should be a clue.
The exterminator does not do dead roach disposal, by the way. In fact, you get a lot more dead roaches after he has visited. I used to have a bug man, but I quit scheduling him because the cats eat the roaches, which is great, and I almost never see one now, but I don’t want them to eat poison roaches.
ETA - and you know there’s a big difference between “somebody who will mop and pick up the occasional dead roach” and “somebody whose normal job is crime scene cleanup”. My house is not THAT gross.
That’s the whole point…clearly you need more than an occasional housekeeper. Dead roaches were once alive. An exterminator would rid you of any roaches. Look, if you want to step over roaches and have resentment in your relationship, cool. Before investing in pet-friendly furniture, clean the squalor you live in.
The pet friendly furniture is a reward for when we have a happy living environment. I don’t like to feel resentful because I ask for advice and get it… but I’m feeling kind of resentful here. Seriously, like I don’t get it that you shouldn’t have dead roaches hanging out in the swinging not-bachelor pad?
For the record, I didn’t mean to be offensive with my suggestion. I was just trying to say don’t let the fact that it is an unusually messy situation keep you from getting help with it because there are cleaning companies that have seen worse and will be able to handle the job.
I am not at all judgmental about messiness. Sometimes things just become too much for someone to handle on their own, and then it becomes a vicious cycle when the person is too ashamed of the mess to let other people in the house who could help clean up. Even if it seems drastic to get someone who normally cleans up crime scenes to help remove the mess, IF that is what it takes, it’s better than living with a mess that could keep getting worse. I don’t think anyone starts out with the plan to live in squalor. It’s something the gradually happens as the situation becomes more out of control.
Other people have offered good advice. Here’s what I’ve got: I’m a slob, although I’m pretty much a clean slob, in that I will take a bunch off stuff off the floor and throw it on the bed, then clean the floor. Then when the floor is dry I’ll throw it back on the floor and make the bed. Or maybe I’ll make the bed first…but you get the idea.
The thing is, this is my natural inclination. Now that I have a cleaning lady, I don’t do this. I put things away, otherwise I will have to wake up three hours early on the day she comes and have to deal with all of it–getting it out of her way so she can clean–so I do it or try to on a daily basis.
And this has reformed me.
I found my cleaning service via a flyer on the door. I had three people give estimates. One attested that their people would scrub my floors on their hands and knees, just the way I would. I’m not asking anyone to scrub floors on their hands and knees even if that is the way I would do it, ideally. If I did it. I mean, I know that’s the way it should be done. On the other hand, doing it with a mop is a good compromise, and the hands & knees people were way more expensive.
The service I has also offers a “clutter control” option and I talked about that with them. Basically, it involves having a place for everything and getting rid of stuff you don’t have places for. This is one of those things everybody knows, like they know that diet and exercise can keep you skinny, but is hard to put into practice. It’s easier when someone is coming every two weeks to clean the place. I don’t want to look like a slob to my cleaning person.
I have a 2300 s.f. house with three bathrooms and the cleaning service–which really is just a couple of people who mostly clean singly but sometimes do the team thing–charges me $75 for every two weeks. They would charge $90 for once a month, and something less–maybe $60–for every week. (Because there’s less to be done if it’s done regularly.)
I hate to say this but there ARE cleaning services that are judgmental. Some years ago I was trying to get some cleaning help for my father-in-law, who was (a) a slob, (b) a man with fairly low hygiene standards, and © somewhat deranged. At one time he had a cleaning service as part of his Old Age Pension, but he lost that when he got a settlement that tipped him over the OAP income level, and he wasn’t capable of the paperwork to get reinstated once the money was gone. For awhile my husband went over weekly with the vacuum cleaner, but this got burdensome. I had a cleaning service over to give me an estimate, and they thought I was playing some sort of practical joke the situation was so bad when they got there. They didn’t even get back to me–I had to call them, and then they said, “No way!”
I did not even consider this cleaning service when I got estimates for my house.
I note that Craigslist has people who do one-time cleaning, such as move-out. Those people probably have seen it all. Hire them to do a thorough one-time cleaning, then get your estimate from a different person. That way, the people who clean up the first giant mess are not the people you will be dealing with the rest of the time.
And whatever you do, don’t hire Merry Maids.
Then why don’t you just pick it up? I’m truly not being judgey but I honestly don’t get this. It takes ten seconds tops, a truly minimal effort especially compared to the ickiness of just leaving it there.
Well, I honestly don’t get educated people who can’t roughly calculate a tip in their head, but there are millions of 'em out there. My husband honestly doesn’t get how someone can’t hear and match the rhythm in a piece of music, but there are millions of us out there. Mental blocks never make sense to people who don’t share them.
I wish I could tell you, I do. I mean, it’s obviously partly that “why bother picking up the roach when there’s twenty cardboard boxes in the living room and the litter box hasn’t been scooped in a week”, but why can’t I, having achieved a clean room, keep the damned thing that way?
By the way, I worked my ass off yesterday and probably re-fucked up my ankle, but I got to vacuum. I love getting the floor clean enough to vacuum the rugs because it makes life so much nicer. 
The horizontal surfaces still need decluttering, but I de-trashed the place and got the floors clean, which has significantly increased our household happiness quotient. It actually wasn’t that bad - just two trash bags, which is unheard of for the living and dining rooms.