Why do people live in messy apartments or homes?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Probubly spoken by a slob. :smiley:

My home is immaculate, hardley takes any time at all. Once it’s clean it only takes 10-15 minutes per day tops to keep it that way.

The feeling of comfort and pride when people just pop over and the house is clean just can’t be beat.

I have and advantage, being single and no kids or pets, I know. However, when I was married with 2 teenaged stepsons I still kept our house clean.

Funny thing, all my childhood and until my early thirties I was a real pig. Filthly carpets, dishes in the sink for days, dirty and clean clothes everywhere, papers/bills/junk buried every horizontal surface, the works.

62

I live in a cluttered house.

The truth is, I’ve never been a great housekeeper. Due to my allergies cleaning house is not a simple chore but rather requires me to “suit up” - wear long sleeves, rubber gloves, and even a respirator mask - in order to not feel sick after, say, scrubbing the bathroom or dusting the storage closet.

My husband is disabled. The help he can give me is quite limited.

Add onto that the past three years my husband nearly died, both my parents nearly died and I wound up living with them for two months while they recovered, I myself spent a week in the hospital… Look, when I’m having to deal with stuff like that the books stacked in a corner there and the winter clothes might not put away for months and piled over here, and… There is only so much time and energy.

It’s a matter of priorities:

  1. Take out the garbage (there is NEVER old food containers and rotting leftovers at my house)

  2. Keep the kitchen clean (maybe not operating room clean, but clean enough to eat off the counter safely)

  3. Do the laundry.

Despite all the chaos of the past few years I have managed all of the above on a regular basis. Note that there is a lot of stuff I didn’t mention, like regular vacuuming and mopping, washing windows, and so forth. Some sort of spill or whatever would get cleaned up, but the floors were often neglected, as were corners. Now that I’ve lost my job I am slowly catching up on 3-4 years of mess, the worst of which is just really, really dusty

My home will never be perfectly neat, I’m not that sort, but you won’t catch a disease sitting on my couch or eating off my plates. Sometimes stuff is even picked up. But when you let it slide for awhile catching up is hard to do.

63

This is exactly the way I look at it. If it’s a health hazard, choking hazard, could result in painful toe-stubbing or bugs or means a really annoying morning searching for underwear, I’ll take care of it and do it thoroughly and quickly without resentment. But if it’s a matter of scrubbing everything every day or constant tidying, I’ll do it far less frequently (usually when someone’s coming over). We’re not dirty people by any means, but the clutter is harmless. Plus, I don’t like being the sole person responsible for cleaning. It really goes against my grain, particularly since I usually work full time. However, in my family’s mind, the woman/wife is the only person responsible for a clean house, even if it’s someone else who’s been throwing crap everywhere. I hate that. My husband could toss his socks on the floor in front of me and my dad, and if I don’t rush to clean them up or nag him, my dad makes fun of me for “living like you’re in college.” It doesn’t matter that my husband’s an able-bodied adult capable of putting his own crap away. While I’ll do what needs to be done, I ain’t the maid. Grrr.

64

I have slob tendencies, but clutter really gets on my nerves, so I’m glad I married a neat freak. I can’t sit on my ass and relax while he tidies around me, so I do some too, and together we keep it pretty decent.

As for the kids, the girl-child does a little, the boy-child does only what he can’t weasel out of, and the other boy-child doesn’t do anything. Cue tension…

I don’t mind keeping things basically redd up, but the longer I clean, the more dirt I see and the more detail-oriented I get, till I wind up scrubbing grout behind the refrigerator with a toothbrush. Then I’m depressed because the house is dirty although I cleaned all day.

65

Oh me too. The feeling I get when I straighten up and put clean sheets on the bed is like an OCD orgasm. And I love the smell of scented bleach.

See, I am reading some of these responses - typically that if there are no bugs then you are OK - and I keep thinking to myself that 24 hours alone and we’d kill each other. Me from watching you make a mess, and you from watching me pick up. And neither is necessarily better than the other.

I do take exception, however, to the idea that my life is somehow wasted or that my priorities are not in order because after dinner I clean the kitchen instead of falling into a group hug with my family. I don’t miss school plays to mop the floor. I do miss TV shows to do it, though. It doesn’t make me any less dedicated to family time than your not seeing the mess does.

66

I clean apartments for my uncle (who is also my landlord), and I’m so disgusted with humanity after I finish one. The last one I did was probably the worst. The plastic shower in the bathroom was stained black, the fridge was covered in brown sludge (complete with rotting fruit in the crisper), and the walls streaked black when I took a new mop to them. I used nine gallons of water and Lysol and a half-gallon of bleach. It was awful.

I didn’t think I was a super clean person. I thought everyone was like me.

… I was so wrong. :eek:

67

I don’t find spotlessly clean houses comfortable or warm. When I go to my neat freak friends places I’m afraid to touch anything for fear of messing up their system. I could never live like that myself.

On the rare occasions I do a super clean up job to impress someone, you can bet that within minutes after they have gone, I’ve scattered something around to give the place some personality.

68

Believe me, I know that I’m not spending my time in a better or more productive fashion by not cleaning, I’m probably watching TV or playing on the computer. But it is true (again, for me) that watching TV in a messy room is more relaxing and enjoyable than cleaning the room. Watching TV in a clean room would be still better. If someone wanted to come over and pick up after me for free, that would be great, so long as they weren’t shooting me evil looks for not helping.

69

We go by spells. We’ll go on a cleaning spree For a Reason, which means guests, and then it’ll stay like that for a while, as long as at least one of us is keeping up on it. Then, when our schedules overlap such that we’re both busy and stressed out at the same time, the housecleaning train comes to a halt, we spend a week or two doing the bare minimum to keep things from getting unsanitary, and then the job seems too big. Then we spend a while with clutter everywhere, until we have another Reason To Clean.
The best way I’ve found for us to keep a handle on the clutter is to invite people over frequently, which has worked pretty well since we moved.

70

Okay, please share your secrets. 10-15 minutes per day? Honestly? Once it’s clean?

Because I easily spend more than an hour a day (and begrudge the hell out of it) just maintaining, and then three or more hours the night before the cleaning service comes.

(I guess part of the secret is not to have a spouse or kids. I’m working on that.)

71

Enjoy might be a bit of a stretch. It’s not like I wake up saying, “Oh, yay, I get to scrub the shower today!” It’s just that on the list of “mundane life things that must be done,” I find cleaning house more satisfying than grocery shopping or commuting to work. I completely get that vacuuming might not make it onto everyone’s list of “mundane life things that must be done,” and as long as we’re not roomies, that’s totally cool.

72

That would be a major part of it. On the occasions where my SO is out of town (it’s happened a couple of times) and I’m not, it takes very little effort to keep the house clean and presentable. I can clean up after my own messes pretty easily, but his are more challenging. When he’s around, stuff will get messy within an hour of him having gotten home. Clothes get discarded wherever he happens to be, “art projects” take up space in an otherwise clean room and expand gradually until the whole room is covered in the project stuff, and dishes and laundry don’t happen unless I do it, even if I’m not there for a few days. :frowning: It’s a full-time job to keep up with the random messes he leaves everywhere, and I’m afraid I may not be up to the job. He has, however, realized that his cleaning standards are not up to my cleaning standards*, and has kind of given up on the “trying to help with the cleaning” bit, as I often follow behind him and do it again the way I wanted it done. I just wish he’d learn where the laundry hampers were and just use them already. :mad:
[sub]*I am particular about how I like things clean, as I like the idea of cleaning things as thoroughly as possible when it does get cleaned so there’s less to clean next time. His idea of cleaning is a bit less thorough than mine, and sometime if I get annoyed at the job, my internal reaction is “it’s like he’s trying to prove that he’s too incompetent to do the job at all!” After a year in this house, it’s more or less been decided that I’m the one who gets to do the cleaning because I’m not satisfied with the job that he does when he does help. When I get busy, the house is a wreck.[/sub]

73

When insomnia hit, I used to clean because other than vacuuming, it’s a pretty quite activity. Now I play WoW. Actually I made a deal with myself to clean up something I’ve been avoiding and then play WoW.

I am with others when I wish I could ignore the clutter. It’s just not in my genes. I have a routine after dinner of picking up and putting away. If I don’t skip a day, then it might take me 45 mins to clean up the kitchen, family room, and front room. The boys can play with all the toys they want in their bedrooms and the upstairs den, but nothing goes back downstairs until after breakfast the next day. While I’m pretty strict about stuff laying about in the rest of the house, in their bedrooms, I don’t care. They aren’t required to make beds or pick up their rooms except on Sundays. While Friday nights can sometimes be like walking through a land mine field, I figure they can chose how they like their personal space. My oldest and youngest could care less how deep it is. The middle one gets frustrated (one too many foot impaled lego accidents) and cleans up (relative to a 9 year old) regularly.

I will miss the vacuuming my oldest has been doing when he goes off to bootcamp. He insists that the dogs stay inside with him throughout the day when they are perfectly happy and even prefer to be outside. He has to vacuum daily because German Shepherds drop some hair. He also uses this as an excuse for not taking care of the half ton of soda, energy, yahoo cans in his room.

74

Once a month I sweep an mop the downstairs hardwood floors. 1 hour

Light sweeping as needed daily. 2-3 minutes

Dishes. 5-10 minutes every other day

Laundry. 20 minutes a week

So far we’re at 13 minutes per day, and I overestimated some of the numbers. There is a lot of wiggle room too. Like if I spend and hour and a half detail scrubbing the floors, I might skip a month. That’s 60 minutes. Then I can use some of that time dusting or washing windows. Sometimes laundry is folded while watching a movie, do we count that?

Thing is, you don’t have to scrub every surface every day. Did you mop yesterday? You probubly don’t need to mop today, or tomorrow. Obviously kids and dogs change some factors but as I said I used to have a spouse, 2 stepsons and a dog. No problem. Total time spent cleaning then? 60 -90 minutes per week tops.

I don’t make my bed, is that cheating?

walking around putting things away as needed, how do you measure this? If I grab a screwdriver from the toolbox, I don’t consider the job done until I put the screwdriver back into the toolbox. Takes like 5 seconds.

I cook and bake a great deal, I enjoy it. I clean the stove, food prep surfaces and cooking dishes as I go. By the time dinner is ready, the kitchen is as clean as when I started, how do you measure that? It doeasn’t take very long because I used to be a chef, so I’m quite fast.

Isn’t that like brushing your teeth before going to the dentist? :wink:

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

75

Huh? It takes at least 20 minutes for the washer to run one load.

We’re only two people, and it takes me at least 20 minutes to sort and prep, 20 to 30 minutes per load to wash an average of five loads, about an hour per load to dry the two or three that go in there, 10 to 15 minutes total to hang up the other two or three, and another 20 to 30 minutes to sort and fold all of that. That’s not counting running up and down the stairs to switch loads around. How are you doing your laundry in 20 minutes?

76

I imagine that’s only 20 minutes of work. You don’t sit and watch your washing machine the entire time it’s working, right? Drop the loads in, set it to run, go do something else.

I don’t bother sorting my clothes. Probably if I had some clothes that were fancier than polo shirts I’d be concerned about it. Color bleed isn’t a real issue, either.

77

I think this is part of it. I insist on this in particular because it drives me nervous to spend ten minutes searching for the drill because the last person who used it DIDN’T PUT IT BACK WHERE SHE FOUND IT. But everything goes faster if you know where to find everything and you aren’t climbing over stuff to get to other stuff. Plus five minutes keeping it clean is easier and more efficient than an hour making it clean and then letting it slide.

I think people who live in clutter but don’t like it tend to let it go until it becomes overwhelming, and then don’t clean it up because it is overwhelming.

I am not talking comfortably messy. My desk at work is comfortably messy, but I know where everything is and can put my hand on it instantly. Which is why nobody cleans my desk but me. My system may not work for everyone, but it works for me. What I am talking about is what doesn’t work for anyone - where stuff is out of control.

Regards,
Shodan

78

I don’t wish I could ignore the clutter more than I already do, which is too much for my comfort. I want my home to be comfortable, welcoming, cozy, full of fresh air, clean, and hospitable. When everything is covered with clutter, my home is not those things. Certainly I’m not talking about a surgical level of sterility–my home will never, ever be that–but it’s nice when I can sit down on the couch without having to move piles of book and junk first, or eat dinner without being surrounded with junk mail and toys.

Also, a clean and comfortable bedroom is a happy bedroom. Dust, stale sheets, and Legos on the floor are not, shall we say, conducive to harmony. Besides, fresh sheets and towels are two of the great luxuries in life.

79

There are many ways to get and keep your home easy to clean and keep that way. One is by double tasking,for instance; If you have a portable phone a lot can be done while on the phone. Dusting, picking up things etc. Put things away while you are cooking, If you have an automatic dish washer you can load it while you are cooking by putting the utensils in right away,If you do not have an electric one then run a pan of hot water with a little clorox and put your dishes in that as you go, they will be easier to wash. I do my laundry while on line. I put in a load, then switch to the dryer, etc. It is easier to do if you are organized. Hang clothes etc. away right away. It just takes 3 minuets to make a bed, a good start on a neat bedroom. While waiting for food to cook, one can clean a drawer or knicknacks. If you are behind, sit down, write a list of things that need doing, do at least one big job a day. Wipe you shower after every use, even a young child can do this after them selves,it is good training . Of course if one is happy with a mess then they are welcome to live that way.

Monavis

80

Funny - I have always joked that I like to be prepared in case open heart surgery should happen to break out in my bathroom…

Plus I’ve got 2 little boys that are not exactly discriminate about where they put their hands to lift the toilet lid or washing up very well afterward. I can imagine what kind of germs they ingest on a daily basis. :eek: