What is so wrong with “upbringing and experience”? Or “cultural exposure”?
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Nothing wrong with them - they just aren’t at the tip of my tongue/fingers.
But how are they better/different than “socioeconomic”, defined as “of, relating to, or involving a combination of social and economic factors”?
Suck it Jordan ‘tidy your room’ Peterson.
I’d be glad to adopt you.
But, I do want to say I never reorganize my Son and DILs stuff. I just clean. Kitchen, baths, laundry and such. I wouldn’t dare touch the desk or private drawers. If I wash clothing, I fold it and put it on the bed.
I have started recently, cleaning the girls rooms, with them helping. It’s a fun thing to help them with Barbie things, we dress babies and build-a-bears. They seem to love it.
The little one asked me this weekend where my toy box was. She wanted to help me clean it. I had to laugh.
I’m in the same boat as Crafter_Man (presumably a garbage scow). My wife doesn’t clean shit. Magazines from 20 years ago still in piles. Every horizon surface covered in knick-knacks, old bills and receipts and other random crap. Part of it is we have 2 kids under 4 in an apartment. But that doesn’t excuse the giant pile of god knows what next to our bed.
I’m not so sure it isn’t a socio-economic thing. Her parents never made a lot of money and their house is always a dump. Which is mind-boggling to me since they have an entire basement not being used. They are always having yard sales, which you would think would get rid of a lot of it, but they go to yards sales and get just as much crap.
As mentioned, she has OCD. I can’t reason with her on this issue.
As one example of many, there are a dozen refillable water bottles on our kitchen counter, right next to the refrigerator. I don’t know why they’re there. No one uses them. They’ve been there for years. But if I throw just one in the trash, she will throw a fit. She will say something along the lines, I paid money for that! We can’t throw it away!!"
In other words, if we used money to pay for something, then throwing it away is considered “wasteful.” :rolleyes:
If I continue to complain about some trash in our house, she will (sometimes) say, “O.K., O.K. I will take those items to Goodwill.” And those items will sit there for a year. And then another year… it never goes to Goodwill.
Because “upbringing” encompasses values and norms—things that don’t always neatly line up with how much money and education someone has.
I think all of us know what you’re alluding to with your use of “socioeconomic”. But you gotta admit it has classist overtones.
The thing that jumps out at me is her seeming lack of self-consciousness at the thought of guests seeing their messy home. This suggests to me that she and husband aren’t just tolerant of clutter, but they are so accustomed to it that it no longer registers in even their peripheral vision. Which again makes me wonder if this level of inattentiveness is new for her. Growing up, was there a struggle to get her to keep her room clean? If she went to college, was she a slob? I became a neater person after I started living on my own, so I understand that behavior can change for good or worse with adulthood. But still, if it’s as bad as you’re saying it is, I would find it concerning if this side of her has sprang out of nowhere.
It isn’t like rich = tidy and poor = messy, but in my experience there is a definitely some correlation between socio-economic status and household tidiness. It only makes sense, given that:
- Poor people often have to work multiple jobs or longer hours just to make ends meet, so have less time to dedicate to household chores
- Rich people have the option of paying someone to clean up their house, if they don’t want to do it themselves but want to live in a clean home
Thus, the only reason you’d see a rich person living in squalor would be if they for some reason chose to live that way (ie. don’t think it’s worth spending time or money on staying tidy, or just prefer the mess for some reason), while for a poor person, they might WANT to live in a cleaner place, but can’t afford to spend the time or money to do so (so they might not really be CHOOSING to live in squalor, in a meaningful sense).
In the upper-middle class circles that I am familiar with, I would say >50% of the people I know hire a house cleaner on at least a monthly basis (including myself) - I know from experience that my place would be a lot more filthy if I didn’t exercise that privilege (through not quite to the point of what the OP describes their daughter’s place looks like).
Because when you say something like the “socioeconomic population you are familiar with”, most people would assume you are referring to the people you share the same social class with. E.g…, “upper middle class”.
In contrast, simply referring to your daughter’s upbringing (as in, “She was not brought up in a messy/dirty home”) does not suggest to the reader you believe that social status has anything to do with messiness/dirtiness.
People sometimes ask me why I don’t drink alcohol that often. I would never think to reply with something like, “My socioeconomics probably explains why I do not drink alcohol very often.” Because that is just way too broad and imprecise of a statement. Instead, I would say “My upbringing in an alcohol-free household probably explains why I don’t drink very often.” It better communicates what I’m trying to get at without offending anyone who is not in my socioeconomic group.
“Demographic” also works better than “socioeconomic population”.
This jumped out at me too. I may not be bothered by my clutter and mess, but I do know that other people would be bothered by it. So that would motivate me to clean up before I invited anyone over.
So I’m kind of wondering if Dinsdale and wife are being too polite. I certainly don’t want to encourage him to go full-force McJudgey Judgerson, especially if there is history of that happening in the past. And any feedback should be given with a lot of diplomacy and tack. But I actually don’t see the harm in a parent pointing out all the hairballs accumulating in the corner, for instance, or any musty odors that certain noses might be numb to. There are lots of things that are really easy to ignore for someone who is “mess blind”. Personally, parental feedback has helped me figure out what I need to check when preparing for guests.
I have always been disorganized, but as a kid I was always good about following parental orders to keep things tidy. That’s because our mother did not trust us to come up with our own “to do list”. Her “to do lists” really helped to make household chores not-so-overwhelming. And of course her stern judgment helped to motivate me to do a good job. 
I think if you were to ask her, I don’t think she would say I was especially disorganized as a kid. But my teachers knew. They just didn’t complain about it because it never got me in trouble.
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Because “upbringing” encompasses values and norms—things that don’t always neatly line up with how much money and education someone has.
I think all of us know what you’re alluding to with your use of “socioeconomic”. But you gotta admit it has classist overtones.
[QUOTE]
I find this pedantic digression curious. I’ve been a lawyer and a judge for 30+ years, so I am generally interested in using and defining words somewhat precisely. It never crossed my mind before today that “socioeconomic” was an undesirable word, or that it could be viewed as uncharitable code. My understanding is that it was sufficiently vague that one could posit whatever social and economic (bearing in mind that not all economics is money) factors one wanted it to encompass. I intentionally used a broad and imprecise term, because I did not want to presume the relevant factors. Surprised me to find that other folk seemed to interpret it more narrowly.
“Upbringing” impresses me as much more limited, seemingly restricted to one’s youth and family influences. And aren’t values and norms “social factors”?
I’m surprised on the occasions that I find a word I use is interpreted differently than I intended. I don’t know if the classist overtones are inherent in the word, or in how some people perceive it (if there is a meaningful difference.) But I won’t be niggardly in expressing my appreciation for correction. 
We put some effort into keeping an orderly home when the kids were young. We didn’t have a ton of money, so we wanted to take care of our home and possessions to make them last. Our first house was rather small, so we felt a strong desire to keep messes controlled. When the kids were young, when they finished one activity, we would teach them to clean up before they started another. When my wife and I did a home repair project, we showed the kids that proper planning, finding the correct tools and materials, and cleaning up after were crucial parts of the job.
We were never rich - I’ve worked for the gov’t all my career. We always placed an emphasis on buying few, quality pieces - furniture, clothing, etc. - and taking care of them.
When the kids were middle school/high school, we told them that if they kept their rooms clean, we would respect their privacy and have no reason to have to rifle through their drawers and closets, where we might find who knows what. They kept their rooms clean. Really no struggle.
We would require that they help with the weekly cleaning and yard chores. Any parent knows how it is - teaching your kid is FAR more work than just doing it yourself. But we thought it important. Eventually, they had their assigned tasks. IIRC, this dtr did some amount of the laundry (her preference.)
I think my dtr’s cleaning “habits” began her junior-senior years in college. She lived in an apt w/ 2 girls. One was a complete slob: dirty dishes throughout the apt, would drop things on the floor and simply not pick them up, bathroom a disaster, etc. My dtr will say that she and her other roommate refused to clean up after the 3d, and essentially became as messy as her. Almost competitive messiness. Their apt was a disaster. I cringed to visit it. But I had lived in some ratholes as a college student, and I didn’t want to tell my kid how to live as she was exploring her independence… She was dating her present husband at the time. He visited her, so he could have had some sense of what he was in for.
After college, she moved in with her fiance. Their apt was OK at first. Then they got a rescue dog with issues. It caused tremendous damage to their apt such that they lost their damage deposit and had to pay additional $. So it was always somewhat sad to me to visit and see what new damage the dog had done. It was somewhat of a warzone… But in terms of clutter, I imagine they simply didn’t own enough at the time to constitute a clutter.
After a couple of years, they bought their house. Having the additional space seems to have contributed to both hers and SIL’s worst habits in terms of order/cleanliness.
I’m a messy person for many of the reasons listed above.
From my perspective, I seem to create chaos. I noticed this when I was on vacation with someone and splitting a room. Within an hour, my side of the room already looked “lived in.” (I hadn’t been there long enough to truly create a mess). But just in unpacking just a few things, I had somehow done it in such a way as to create clutter - while their side looked straightened up - and this is when I was trying to be considerate that another person was there and sharing the space. I’m not really sure how this happens. And the grind from keeping it from happening far outweighs the benefits to having a straightened up room (until it doesn’t. Then it’s overwhelming and a different question)
Um. No. You clean the bathroom. You use bleach where it is needed. You put the caps on things. But no, you don’t need to put the ointment away (of course, if it is not, people are going to know about your _____ problem. But that isn’t a clean/clutter issue, it’s a privacy one)
Not really, so long as you know that something important exists, when it needs to be done, and where it is. Separating it out might help you know all those things, but it isn’t a requirement.
Also, if I were your daughter (and in some ways, I am very much like her)- knowing that you were talking to her aunt about her behind my back would not make me more likely to ask for help or accept it if offered.
It’s a more precise way of alluding to one’s specific home training. For instance, my siblings and I were raised to do chores without expecting anything in return. But that’s not how other households may operate; allowances are given in exchange for chores in some homes and in other homes, kids may not really have chores. This is an upbringing thing; not an SES thing. Another example: in my aunt’s home, kids were expected to wash their hands before going to bed. My parents, in contrast, could’ve cared less if we brushed our teeth at night, let alone washed our hands. Economics have nothing to do with this difference in household-specific norms, so it doesn’t make any sense to use a term that implies that it does.
So I take from this that your daughter’s default setting favors a cluttered living space. You could clean everything up to tidy perfection, but she and her husband just don’t have the motivation to maintain it. They apparently don’t see their clutter the way you do, and there’s probably no way to get them to see it short of being rather blunt with them.
Years ago, I traveled to Ethiopia and visited their equivalent to the US’s CDC. All in all, the facility was fine and they were in the process of doing some renovations, trying to modernize things. But what was interesting was the debris left in the courtyard in an area where no construction was going on: a white porcelain toilet was half buried there, right in plain view. I remembered me and my boss standing around, surveying the premises, and he turned to me and asked for my theory on why that toilet had not been thrown out a long time ago. The only thing I could think of was that the toilet had been there so long, no one but outsiders could see it. Everyone else just registered it as part of the background.
That’s how it is for your daughter and SIL.
Interesting that you think of relational dynamics, when what seems obvious to me is that neither your daughter or SIL seem guided by a strong organizational framework when deciding where things go. That’s precisely why the clutter exists, right? Rather than working out a system for placing things, and sticking to that system, they just use the most convenient horizontal surface.
So what seems like a straightforward question to most tidy people (“where should this go?”) probably feels like a complicated word problem to a math-phobic 7th grader. That’s where the exasperation comes from.
I think he’s nailed it. Even if you were taught to keep a clean room as a kid, if you don’t develop organizational skills as a couple or a batch of roommates, actually putting things away can stop you in your tracks.
We all have different triggers of things we can or cannot tolerate. My ex husband was a musician. He had two or three boxes of paper that he moved from house to house full of scraps of paper with songs he had written. They were never organized or sorted and the cockroaches loved them. Every time we moved, we loaded up those damned boxes of bugs and papers. Generations of cockroaches followed us from house to house. As a result, once i was on my own again, I became ruthless about paper clutter. Can’t stand it; won’t have it. He probably felt that way about shoes. I was and am still bad about leaving shoes around the house.
I also don’t agree that messiness is tied to one’s socio-economic status. There are lots of well to do people who become hoarders. I think a lot of them have enough room to hide it better. Or have the resources to keep the city at bay. I was a faithful watcher of “Hoarders” (any other Possums out there?), and more often than not it seemed that the worst situations were people who owned their homes and had no landlords tho worry about.
Another issue is does the person have alot of hobbies or interests that take up alot of room?
Are they into arts and crafts? Then your probably going to see art and craft supplies and finished/half finished “projects” all over the place. Ex. a sink full of soaking paint brushes. Kitchen table with a project all over it.
Do they like gaming or have alot of collections? Try storing all that stuff.
Now I have inlaws that really are not into anything and their home reflects that. No clutter makes it easy to clean.
REALLY good points, you, but I’m gonna continue on this pedantic digression. Do you have adult kids? I’m variously disappointed, impressed, humbled, and gratified by the myriad ways that our efforts at “home training” - intentional or otherwise - failed to take with our 3 kids. 
As soon as the kids went to preschool, we realized we were no longer the sole dictators of influence they received. By the time they are adults, they’ve been strongly influenced by friends, teachers, their chosen consumption of media, their reactions with salespeople/officials/whomever. Then there’s the whole aspect of their innate personalities…
When your adult child does something you disagree with or don’t understand, it is generally a fool’s errand to try to ascertain what you could have done differently in their youth to forestall this eventuality.
But back to the meat of things - folks have really helped me think through this. Haven’t helped me feel more comfortable in their home, tho… And doesn’t lessen the frustration when they complain about their financial means, but fail to take care of the possessions they have. :o
I’ve posted before about how difficult we find it to give them stuff and then see it get trashed. Or when gifts of money get spent in ways we would not favor. Folk have consistently reminded me that a gift does not have strings attached. I am trying to adopt that attitude, but at times it remains difficult.
Perhaps it’s time to take off the judge’s robe and be less judgy. Deep down, are you more concerned for her happiness or how you think her housekeeping (or lack thereof) might reflect on you? I ask because many people have given you reasons that her house may not be to your standard yet you don’t seem to be able to understand. Perhaps it’s more of an ego thing than anything? You don’t have to answer, just throwing it out as something to think about. You seem awfully concerned about how she presents, judge and analyze her life and are now talking about her to others here and in real life, which seems more like an ego thing. You seem way too involved to me in her business which may indicate that you’re taking it personally, ergo ego.
One way around this is to give them shared experiences rather than things or money. Take them to a play or a ballgame or a Ren Faire (or whatever your common interests might be); rent a cottage at the beach or in the mountains and invite them along; take them on a trip to somewhere all of you want to go.
This is one thing my wife and I have done with my in-laws. Each summer, we rent a cottage on Anna Maria Island in Florida, which is about an hour’s drive from the in-laws, and we invite them to join us for most of a week. This gives them a chance to be with us and the Firebug at someplace that’s not their house.
And since my recently deceased MIL was a major hoarder (every surface piled high with stuff, narrow paths through the rooms, the whole bit - I fully sympathize with you, Dinsdale), these get-togethers were a lot more pleasant than they’d have been otherwise.