I donno. I grew up in a relatively well kept home, with an extremely abusive father and an emotionally neglectful mother.
I’d be a lot more worried about the emotional health of a family than how neatly kept they are.
I’m disorganized, and my wife’s a bit of a pack rat. There’s no room in our house that doesn’t have clutter here and there, and there are some places where there’s A LOT of clutter.
But other than my wife’s sewing room and the Firebug’s bedroom, there’s no place in the house where the clutter dominates. (ETA: And we make the Firebug clean up his room periodically.) You can walk through the house without paying constant attention to where you’re stepping (and what you might step on). There’s way more junk than necessary that lives on the kitchen counters for long periods of time, but there’s still plenty of kitchen counter to set a coffee mug down on safely, and you might have to move a few things before doing some serious cooking, but after a couple minutes’ prep, you can get down to it. My desk at home is a mess, just like my desk at work. Every bookcase in the house has random clutter of various pedigrees amidst the books, but you can get to the books pretty easily.
Dinsdale’s daughter’s house sounds way beyond ‘disorganized.’ It sounds like it’s approaching (if not already there) the level where you can’t use a good deal of the house because of all the stuff in it, where you can’t use or find the stuff you’ve got because of all the other stuff that’s taken over.
When it gets to that point, you’ve got a pathology, not a lifestyle choice.
Can you be my mom? I’ll get you a gift too!
I live in a house that would be considered "cluttered’ most of the time. Not dirty, cluttered.
I have a busy life and I just don’t want to deal with it. It’s not hurting anybody, nobody’s dying.
I’m not a big socializer, I’ll put in a modicum of effort if I have to have someone over, which is rare.
And I don’t give a shit if someone judges me about it. Well, I do, but only if they open their big fat yapper about it. My dad did that once and he has never been invited to my house again. I’ll go over to his house, but he’s not coming over unless I ask him to, which I can count on one hand in the last 10 years. And I don’t really care about that. I feel little to no need to entertain people in my home. It’s MY house to do with what I will.
If somebody doesn’t like it, they are more than happy to pay for a maid to come over, otherwise, they can keep their fat yapper shut about about it.
My 21 year old son lives in squalor (as defined by Broomstick’s post above). He also has a three-year-old, a very physical job, and substance abuse problems. From time to time, I will go over there and fill up garbage bags, ask for his dirty laundry, try to make a dent. It really is a source of despair to me that he doesn’t care more for himself.
Exact opposite in my house… I try to keep things clean but there is just “stuff” that magically appears because my husband doesn’t know how to put things back where they belong after using them 
I went the opposite way. I was a single kid of a single mom. We never owned a home, always living in rental apartments. My mom worked sometimes 2 jobs to cover the bills but as a result, the house was usually cluttered. No where near was the OP describes, it just wasn’t “we have company coming” clean all the time.
As an adult, especially after buying my first home, I am on the other end of the spectrum. I keep my house pretty clean all the time. Our current home is over 4500 square feet and to help with it we do have a cleaning company come in once a month. I don’t vacuum and mop every single day or anything but I pick-up clutter and do small things each day to keep the house at a certain level of cleanliness. My home is almost always is presentable should someone just drop in, by my definition of the term “presentable”. Haha. My wife also works full time and she doesn’t prioritize housework the same way I do and that does cause some friction between us. (Understatement) We also have a 3 year old and another due in a month’s time. Our daughter knows each night before her tub that she has to do clean-up-clean-up of her toys and put them away.
I don’t want to be judgmental about the OPs daughter but I cannot lie that I had a totally judgemental “What the hell is wrong with those people!” gut response. I just cannot understand living like that but hey… to each their own assuming no health and sanitary issues. I couldn’t do it but I don’t have to and I don’t. 
MeanJoe
You mention that there’s a 3-year old kid, too - that makes a huge difference. Sometimes you just kind of give up when there’s a little mess machine that trashes any attempt you might’ve made at cleaning. And at that age, they’re all action and no sense, so you spend all your waking hours applauding them for doing things you’ve seen them do twenty thousand other times and also making sure they don’t kill themselves on accident.
That said, it does sound like they’d benefit from a monthly or bi-monthly cleaning service.
Anecdotally, our house is pretty damn cluttered, too, due to a combination of my husband’s “filing system” (aka, everything is “put away” in piles everywhere so he can find it) and my kids’ stuff. Luckily, the kids are old enough to feel some embarrassment about the state of our house and have finally begun pitching in to clean it more deeply than just cleaning their own rooms. I mean, the bathrooms and kitchen are generally kept clean because I prefer sanitary & cluttered to flat-out filthy. But the kids are starting to take over some of the more involved scrubbing, which has been a revelation. They’ve always had chores, but I wish I’d given them more chores earlier.
Another couple of data points. I just went for a bike ride w/ my sister. She, her husband, and her daughter were at the party this weekend. My wife and I asked if she had any impression of the cleanliness of the house.
-My sister said her husband is not terribly appreciative of cleaning and is tolerant of considerable mess, but he observed that he had never seen a bathroom as dirty in anyone’s home.
-Her daughter said, “If you are having people over and they will be using the bathroom, don’t you at least put the (medicinal ointment) away in the cabinet?”
-My sister said when food was put out (we ate outside), there were no napkins, so she went into the kitchen to get some. She described the counters as an “I Spy” exercise, where there was so much stuff, it was almost dizzying to try to SEE the napkins or paper towels.
When straightening up, my wife asked my dtr where a couple of cheap glass vases went. My dtr told her to ask her husband. She often says that. We don’t know if my dtr just always prefers to have her husband make the decisions, or if he demands to control such things. When my wife asked SIL, he said in an exasperated way, “I don’t know!” Which suggests to us that there is something off in the relational dynamics.
I picked up a small pile of papers. My dtr told me to stick it on a much bigger pile. As far as I could tell, I was holding a couple of pieces of junkmail and a paystub. Just seems like an invitation to future problems to not immediately separate junk from important papers.
I asked my wife and sister if they thought the house was simply cluttered or unhealthy squalor. They both thought carefully, and said if it is not unhealthy, it is pretty close.
If I were my SIL, I think I’d be upset at my dtr for not carrying her share. (I forgot, he also works a second job. While she works 20 hrs/week.)
Of the list mentioned above, the only ones that really seem possibilities are:
-mental illness - depression, OCD, others
-battles between spouses/roommates over doing/not doing cleaning chores.
We’re trying to figure out the best way to approach this. Sometimes my dtr seems to seem to escalate things when my wife brings something up. But it seems like when she is over helping would be the natural time. We don’t want to make it seem like we are ganging up on her. And I don’t know about doing it with the SIL as well.
Above all else, we want our dtr and granddtr to be happy and healthy. From our perspectives, the negatives associated with their housekeeping greatly exceed any positives, and are pretty easily avoidable.
If a tube of ointment is a problem, then her standards are way too high to be reasonable, IMO.
And really it just sounds like you want us to join in condemning them now. The original question was “Why do people live in messy/dirty homes?” but now it just seems like you want us to say they shouldn’t live the way the live, with no really care for “why.”
And you still haven’t presented any concrete thing that sounds like a hygiene/health problem to me. Just clutter. I know you said the bathroom was messy, but ointment was the only specific given.
You said:
I think this is eventually what you will have to do. Sometimes it’s best to turn a blind eye and let them live their lives. As long as no one in the house is becoming ill that is. It’s probably best to accept that there are some things you’ll never be able to change.
A little clutter feels like home.
I’m never comfortable in a neat as a pin home.
I think the conditions that people choose to surround themselves in are a result of their thought processes. It’s an expression of their personalities, conscious or not.
Which really has nothing to do with it.
No. Not if they’re not asking for it.
You seem to think that affluent people are neat and clean and poor people live in squalor. That’s not really how this works.
Let’s try this one more time. It has nothing to do with resources. It has to do with what she wants.
If you and your wife came in and spent a weekend doing nothing but cleaning the house to meet your own standards, a month later it would once again look like you had never done it. Don’t waste your time or energy.
There are multiple reasons that people live in messy homes but short of creating a health hazard, people have the right to do it.
Sorry I gave that impression. I guess my preference would be that a household of party guests not wonder which of the household has the hemmorhoids. Yeah, we all have assholes, but I guess I think some information can be kept somewhat private.
I was merely offering these points to suggest it was not entirely my wife’s and my impression. Because I am VERY open to the possibility that our impressions are problemmatic in some respect.
And I do not want people to condemn my dtr. Whether or not you believe me, I derive no joy from discussing this, and would like nothing better than to praise her. And I am very thrilled that she is doing work which is important and gives her joy, even tho not well compensated. And their dtr is a delight, so they are obviously doing MANY things right.
When I said “sufficient means,” I wasn’t simply suggesting $. I understand that wealth does not = clean, and poverty does not = unclean. But, in my possibly mistaken opinion, if a family unit has BOTH parents working demanding jobs, it is more likely that they would lack the time and energy to declutter. If they were brought up in a socioeconomic situation where clutter and filth were the norm, I would understand it more. If they had multiple kids, maybe with health concerns. Or if they had physical or mental health concerns of their own. But their one child does not impress me as an overly demanding child. They have 2 sets of grandparents nearby, willing to help in various ways.
Sure she has the right to live that way. I anticipate it will result in more negatives than positives. And i don’t understand why someone who has the resources to do otherwise would choose to.
It sounds to me as though your gut is telling you something is wrong. Given that this person is your daughter, I’m assuming that you tend to know when something doesn’t feel right. I don’t think it’d be out of line to pull her aside, ask her how she specifically and her family are doing and if everything is ok and maybe just say something like, “I know how tough it can be to have a 3 year old and two working parents - if you need some help cleaning or just a few minutes to toss in a load of laundry, let me know. I’m happy to pitch in.”
You’re right that a super messy home can be an indicator of a greater issue like relationship problems, depression, mental health, etc., but it can also be caused by feeling simply overwhelmed, having a poor strategy to deal with cleaning the mess or just laziness/apathy. My husband has absolutely no idea how to tackle a trashed house - I have to give him simple pointers like, “start from the left in a room and work your way counter-clockwise.”
Like I said earlier, having a 3 year old doesn’t help a house’s organization, but if you are really concerned, say something. Also, a lot of people don’t like to ask for help. I know you say that there are grandparents nearby, but thinking of my own situation, the last person I’d ask to help me clean my house is my mom. Yeah, she’s supposed to be a caring, loving relative and all that, but she’s older than I am and the thought of asking an elder to clean gives me a rash (plus, she’s 3 hours away, so maybe it’d be different if she were always here).
My Dungeon Master lives in a house that, on a continuum from “You Could Perform Surgery There” to “It Will Be Featured On A Cable-TV Hoarding Show,” would be a couple of hairs shy of the Hoarding end. Oddly enough, he doesn’t hoard. Nor does he put dirty laundry anywhere except where it was when it fell off of him or his wife; nor do they put away dirty dishes or empty pizza boxes; nor have they ever vacuumed; and so on.
I won’t play the role of armchair diagnostician, but if I had to guess, I’d say there’s no mental illness going on there. He just appears to care about housekeeping the way I care about the outcome of the most recent cup-stacking tournament (viz, not at all).
OK, glad we cleared that up.
Oh but then why once again mention
I just don’t see how socioeconomic anything is relevant. It’s your daughter and her husband as individuals.
I won’t belabor it further but I think this is a sticking point for your thinking that is preventing you from accepting the situation as it is.
If I understand you, you said sometimes your daughter starts talking about things she’s going to do to get the house in better order but it never goes beyond talk. What if the next time she does this you offer to pay for a cleaning company to come by every two weeks/once a month to help her get things back in shape?
I agree that the socioeconomic signifying is not necessary. If anything, po folks are even more likely to be neat freaks lest they be judged “trashy”.
Your sister’s account does make me think this is more than simple disorganization.
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Off topic, but what word do folk suggest other than socioeconomic to refer to the entirety of one’s upbringing and experience?
It seems folk in this thread have focussed on the economic, far over the socio, which I did not intend. I was intending to include culture of upbringing, education, communities lived in for extended periods, and probably other factors as well. Not just income or wealth.