No kidding. Is there anything more depressing than coming home from a trip to your filthy house? Drove from Pittsburgh to Columbia, opened the door, nearly cried. At least the cats were glad to have me back.
People who are saying “peer pressure” and “girls” were obviously not messy teenagers. Now that I’m an adult, I’m hideously ashamed of my house. As a teenager, hell no. I believe I may have taken a perverse pride in it. In fact, I’d almost say that short of constant warfare there may be nothing you can do at this point.
I have the exact same issues with my son. He just turned 15, and seems to think the world is his trash can. He never throws anything away unless I harp at him. Several times. He has a laundry hamper and a trash can. He has to walk through the laundry room and past the the large trash can to get to the kitchen or down to his room. How hard is it to take that empty Dr Pepper bottle or pizza box to the trash on his way to the kitchen? Apparently it is the most difficult thing in the world.
I have told him if he doesn’t bring his dirty clothes to the laundry room, I won’t wash them. But, disgustingly enough, he doesn’t mind wearing the same jeans two or three times before handing them over. He’s not a complete slob, so his clothes don’t ever really look dirty, but ewww.
He also hates taking a shower. That’s a daily fight. I recall my mom having the same problem with my brothers, so maybe it’s a boy thing. He also hates to shave, and had to start shaving before he turned 13. Naturally, he looks like Wolverine most of the time.
Boys are difficult.
Mind, my daughter’s teen years weren’t all hearts and flowers, but at least her room didn’t look like a frat house.
For those of us who are Tidiness Challenged, the instruction “make this room clean” is an almost insurmountable obstacle. Spending a whole hour cleaning or tidying is an albatross round the neck which may make him hate the whole process even more than he currently does.
I’d divide the room into zones (eg, floor left of bed, floor right of bed, desk, bedside table, top of chest of drawers) with the aim of getting everything that doesn’t belong there (which for the floor means “everything that isn’t an item of furniture”) off that space when you’re doing that zone. Then simply assign a zone a night and away you go.
Yes, this may mean that the same pile of clean-but-wrinkled-and-stepped-on t-shirts get moved from the left to the right side of the room eight times. That’s OK. On the ninth time he’ll probably put them away probably because he’s sick of schlepping them about. And this way doing a little bit of tidying each day becomes a habit. I don’t think anything really becomes a habit if you only do it once a week. Especially if his schedule ever changes so that a different day of the week is his “free time”
Good luck! There’s plenty of us grown-ups have problems with this, but it’s a great skill to learn.
I don’t guerilla clean by time, but by chore - I set out one or two things to get done each day, and after they’re done, I’m off the hook for the rest of the day! Yay!
Arden Ranger, if you’re just wearing them normally (not mucking out pigs or something), jeans can get worn more than once before getting washed. I wash one pair of my husband’s jeans every week, and he wears them every day. I don’t notice him looking or smelling dirty in them.
Oh, well, now… He used to share his room with #2 son, who is 6 years younger. Recognizing that we had the room, and that the gap for the sibs was formidable, we converted a room in the basement into his bedroom. He picked out his furniture (Ikea), the paint and the carpet. He has picked out the posters on the wall. But that was a great idea!
Dogville–that is a very good idea. I will offer him the option of the 10 minutes a day, instead of an hour. I have no idea if what I want will TAKE him an hour…
Arden-- #1 son showers etc. But when he was in middle school, good god. I tried being nice about it, but finally said, “hey, you stink.” And we went out that day and got him deodorant.
No walk of shame will move him. This has to come from him, ultimately. All I want to do is demonstrate by making him apply himself once a week, that consistent attention can make a difference.
I don’t want to drop him off in NE–I love the guy!
One reason why teens like to keep their room messy is that it is “marking their space.”
Buy him some nice big trash cans- not those tiny office ones, but a mid-sized round kitchen ones with big openings that you can toss stuff in from a distance. Get one for his desk and one for by his bed and maybe one for by the door. The idea is to make it easier to throw stuff away than to throw it on the floor. 99% of trash problems are because the nearest trashcan is full or too far away. You want him to always be in arm’s reach of a trashcan.
Then get him a shallow tub to keep by the door- this is for dishes and other stuff that needs to be returned to the main living spaces.
Finally, get him three big old totes to put in or near his closet- those huge plastic tubs people use to store their Christmas decorations ad stuff in. One for clean clothes, one for dirty clothes and one for clothes that are somewhere in between. I’m a reformed slob and my house is pretty neat, but I still can’t deal with my clothes in a fashion other than “shove them in a pile and hide it.” If the tubs are big enough that he can root around them he’ll keep his clothes in there instead of on the floor.
Actually, the one thing that did help my brothers keep their room just ever slightly more tidy was when Mom put a basketball hoop over the garbage can. Never explained it, just stuck it up there one day and walked out.
Apparently, a basketball hoop is an irresistible target, and garbage was the most convenient throwing item in their room.
Is it as bad as this place?, which was discussed in a recent thread: The most disgusting apartment ever! I think this type of behavior needs to be nipped in the bud before it gets that bad.
I feel the same, but I think my husband’s afraid to try. Matt’s mom lives nearby and provides him money and assistance with anything he asks; he also has a job and a car. We provide four walls, a roof, and maid service. So there’s nothing we can take away from him and if we exert too much pressure he simply goes to live with mom. When he’s over there, no one wakes him up for school, so he doesn’t go.
You know what? This is too fucked up a situation for this thread, so never mind it. I do have a twelve-year old slob we could talk about…With him, I help him clean the room, then remind him to spend a couple of minutes on it every night. After a couple of weeks, I forget to remind him and soon we’re back where we started. He doesn’t take food in there though.
I’ve had to clean out places like that ( much worse, actually.) personally and I can state with certainty that the person ( my late brother) was mentally unstable (paranoid/delusional to name a few.) and a life long slob. It’s vile.
My rule from day one since I’ve signed on a mortgage is: No food in Basement or bedrooms. Once ants get in you are fooked.
This made me recall that my cleaning lady refused to even go into my son’s room since she couldn’t find the floor to vacuum or the furniture surfaces to dust. So no, that didn’t work. Actually my son complained that she didn’t clean in his room so on occasion he would be so kind as to throw the clothing on the bed so she could at least run the vacuum.
Maybe that threat would work for a girl but I don’t know many boys that would really care about someone else going through his stuff.
My sister had this problem with her oldest son. The only thing that cured him was when he started dating his current girlfriend a few years ago. No, he didn’t decide to clean his room, to impress her, but rather, SHE cleans it when she visits!
UGH. I love this girl, but she already does way too much for my nephew. She even does his laundry, and has started cleaning for my sister, and doing all sorts of stuff around the whole house.
I am jealous. My house is a pit. And my son is only 5, so there is no hope of his bringing in a girlfriend/maid anytime soon.
Just an idle thought; as a sixteen-year-old teen living in my parents’ house, my motivation to keep the room clean was next to nil. When I went off to university and dorm life, I didn’t exactly become a neatnik, but I would routinely go through cleaning periods without any nagging of any sort from my parents. That never happened when I lived with them.
I think the difference was, the room I had at my parents’ house? It never felt like my room. It was “the room my parents give me, that they’re allowed to walk in on anytime they want.” There was something about the privilege of having something that wasn’t simply, well, “a room in their house” that made me feel more proud of it, and therefore more motivated to keep it in good condition.
You seem like you’ve managed the issue with your son very well already, and I haven’t got much else to say on that. I’m just trying to give you some hope for the future, lest you fear he’ll turn into an absolutely dismal slob once he’s out of your place.
Just a thought (I have no kids, so I’m far from being an expert)… what if instead of shutting the door on the problem you took the door off the hinges and told him he could have it back when the room gets clean? That would definitely have worked with me, as I’m a very private person.
