Thanks for your suggestion. I thought one thing folk did around here quite a bit was ask questions about and try to suss out familial/interpersonal relations. Do you feel everyone who does so around here is engaged in “an ego thing”? Or am I not allowed to do so, given my profession?
You say I do not understand the reasons many people have given. I don’t see that folk have presented a unified unambiguous explanation, or that I have expressed an unwillingness to be open to what is said? And I’m not saying their house is not to “my standard.” Instead, I’m exploring what “standard” their house might be up to.
I honestly do not think that a concern for how her housekeeping reflects on me is a major factor. My main concerns - which I’ve tried to state clearly and repeatedly - are that I want her and her family to be healthy and happy. I wonder if their clutter/mess is a sign of something else that might signify a lack of health/happiness in the household. I am curious whether that is how they WANT to live. If not, I wish to know if there is anything I can do to help.
I don’t think it is “judgy” for me - as a parent who loves his child and grandchild - to consider it sad that they live in such a dirty, messy home, when I do not perceive any clear reason. I do not wish to dictate how my children live their lives, but I am saddened when they make what I consider unfortunate or ill-advised choices.
I AM concerned about how others react because I anticipate people who enter her home might make unfavorable judgments and might take actions based on the state of their household. As I said before, I would have serious misgivings about having my kids over for playdates in a home like theirs. I don’t know that there is a benefit to having one’s neighbors think of one’s home as the most poorly kept in the neighborhood. And I personally am not comfortable in their home.
It is all fine and good for someone to choose not to adhere to societal conventions. There are repercussions to such a choice, however.
This sounds like decision avoidance to me. Does she experience anxiety around making decisions in general? Like, what to study in school, job, where to eat, what to watch, etc? If so, then a messy house could be an extension of that. If she feels anxiety about trying to decide where the vase goes, then it’s less stressful just to leave it lying around. As to why the vase lying about doesn’t bother her, who knows? For whatever reason, it just blends into the background and she hardly notices it.
If you are worried that the condition of her Home reflects on her mental state, (anxiety, depression), address that with her and not her cleanliness. If you think there is an underlying problem, refusing to go to her home and commenting on its state will hurt her.
If you’re concerned about the state of her house because of the consequnces it may have on her life, leave her alone and let her deal with the repercussions. She’s a parent, a wife, an educated adult. She will deal with it as she sees fit. Refusing to go to her home and commenting on its state will likely hurt your relationship, and that’s up to you to decide.
Reading over some of your old threads there seems to be a pattern. You observe an act (the blanket thing, dropping grades) and express concern over what the act may mean (lack of respect, depression), but rather than reach out to the child about the underlying issue, you seem to focus on the act itself. No doubt you care about your kids, but you seems to see fixing the action as a stand in for dealing with the emotional or mental issue you are concerned about.
Having kids in their 30s and 20s myself, one critical thing I learned is that each child needs different parenting styles and different relationships with us to be happy and healthy. One size does not fit all. So understand that it’s ok to be worried, have and opinion, and really care, in a positive building up manner. But one can cross the line to judgemental, deprecating, and damaging without always noticing. Also know that you are entitled to be worried and care, but you are not necessarily entitled to comment and correct anymore.
Be kind with her feelings and keep that as your goal, as you try to be there for her.
Really good point. Ties in with her saying she is “researching” how to clean/organize, when my wife and I feel it isn’t rocket science. Don’t make it more complicated than it is. Just start doing it. But that is who we are, and she is who she is.
Could also be that she’s just effing sick of the topic and is trying to show you she does not want to engage with you on this anymore. She’s putting up a wall and deflecting to her husband because she’s had it.
As I told above I go and clean my Son and DILs house occasionally. I wouldn’t be able to do this with my middle Daughter. She lives far away. But even if she was next door, she would find it intrusive if I came in and started cleaning. Sometimes kids are sensitive about parental involvement in their lives. I just know my Daughter would go berserk if I imposed my cleaning style on her. You have to know your kid to determine which course to take. Are you sure you’re not lumping all your kids together as ‘the kids’, rather than each one as an individual?
ETA now…the lil’wrekker is a whole other ball o’wax.
One last thing, vis-a-vis your professional “robes”.
I’m a professor so pity my children.
When they went off track I lectured. And lectured. I needed to make them understand and be enlightened. I wanted them to say “I get it now- thanks, mom!” I’m a hard-wired educator by god I was going to educate them. Every time.
But in reality I just needed them to listen (and follow the rules) and let me say my peace, especially as they got older. Maybe later they realized I was right and maybe they didn’t. So I needed to take off my professor robes, worry less if they agreed I was right, and focus on them doing what I said (when they were little) and giving me the courtesy to hear me out (as they became older).
Maybe there’s some truth there for you, about blurring your inclinations as judge and your job as a parent, too.
ETA: of course kids should understand why the rules are and what parents are thinking and all that. But there came a point where winning them over became the goal, not just explaining the issue, and that’s where I crossed the line way too often.
I am going to have to disagree with some of that because, frankly, 1. you never stop learning and 2. you never quit being the parent. 3. even 'adults" make poor decisions. 4. sometimes even the best of us need a boot in the pants when we are making poor decisions.
For example, I read on Dear Abby where the parents gave their kids a large sum of money that was supposed to have been set aside for the grandkids college funds. Fast forward over the years and the parents started asking about the money in which the kids started to give vague answers and finally it came out that the kids had spent their kids college fund on things like vacations, cars, and home improvements. Basically they couldnt be trusted with the piggy bank. Grandparents restarted the college fund but kept the parents out of it.
Over the years both my wifes and mine parents have given us advise. We listen. And we decide whether to follow it or now. We dont get mad when we get advice nor do they get mad when we dont always follow it.
Also goes with inlaws and adult siblings. I have inlaws who we like and have a great time with but in reality, I dont trust them. They are bad with money and have stolen from us. They once asked if they could be custodians of our kids if anything should happen to us and my wife and I said no way. And remember, these are people we love.
I realize that the mechanics of cleaning are not “rocket science”, but you have a human involved and that’s where things can get complicated.
At a certain point I realized that I had hoarder-tendencies and decided I was going to put a stop to it. It was NOT as simple as renting a dumpster and emptying the house. That only treats the symptom, not the cause. I didn’t want to clean up and then find myself back in the same place in a couple years.
I had to figure out why I hung onto stuff, and what got in the way of me getting rid of junk. I had to work on breaking the bad habits of a lifetime, and find a way to unburden myself of stuff without causing myself greater problems due to my own issues. Because I do have significant allergies and asthma I also had to figure out ways of cleaning without triggering flare ups and asthma attacks (it also means I look like a hazmat worker doing some routine chores like dusting and vacuuming, but it’s the cheapest and most effective solution I’ve come up with).
Occasionally I despair, but as my family and friends remind me, I didn’t get to this place overnight, I’m not going to fix it all overnight, either.
So if there is some internal issue going on, well, that may or may not be overcome, and might be part of why your daughter is “researching” cleaning and organizing. Or maybe not. But if this is coming from within your daughter and her husband, rather than imposed from without (like working too many jobs or not having money to make house repairs) there may be little you can do. In such a case, if she’s willing to accept help from you and your wife you can make a dent, but there’s only so much you can do.
The suggestion to get together outside of your respective spaces might be another long-term solution to this problem.
Certainly there are consequences to this situation. A very messy home will often leave people with a poor impression of her. And the ignored home maintenance will likely have a very high financial cost, as problems just get worse over time. I guess it’s up to her to experience those consequences. If they bother her enough, she may be motivated to change. But it will be difficult or impossible to impose such changes upon her if she is not interested.
However, there are also consequences to being too clean and organized. When I go to someone’s house which looks like it could be in a magazine, I feel like I can’t kick back and relax. I feel like I have to be super careful about messing anything up. I’m also reluctant to invite them to my house, since it won’t meet their standards and I assume they’ll think poorly of me.
If anyone reading this feels overwhelmed by the mess and has trouble starting the cleanup process, a good site is http://www.flylady.net/. Rather than confront the enormity of the task at once, she has you just do a small part. So you clean the sink today and worry about other stuff later. It’s a good way to get motivation for making small steps towards a cleaner house.
No, I have a toddler and am expecting a second in Sept.
I think we can agree there is no guarrantee that a child brought up a certain way will continue on the same path in adulthood. Hell, monstro and I are great examples of such deviation; we’re both agnostic although we were raised in a pentecostal household. I’m sure our parents are still befuddled by this “failure” but alas, it is what it is.
Since this trait only seems be in your daughter and not your other kids, it’s evident to me that “home training” is not the culprit here. At any rate, there are worse things in the world than being messy. I would try not to lose sight of that perspective.
How is your daughter’s relationship with her siblings? Could you perhaps enlist their help in bringing this concern out in the open? A little humor could go a long way too. “Girl, that stack of papers looks like it comes straight from 1984. Do you need help sorting through all this stuff? We could make a party out of it…”
My suggestion: turn the broken foot and your daughters staying home from work, into an advantage. You may hire a cleaner later, but first, hire a professional organizer. Like this one (in Toronto)
Your daughter and the organizer can work together ( allowing for your daughters broken foto) while you entertain the grandchild.
I have a cluttered house. Not with food messes. I can’t abide dirty dishes, not even in the sink. But I do make piles of stuff. At one point I had stacks of books on my bedroom floor that were almost as tall as I am.
My parents were pack rats and passed that on to their kids. They at least had the excuse of growing up in the shadow of the Depression where saving things was very common. As a kid I saved everything because anthropomorphized it so throwing stuff away was akin to killing it. As I got older it was because of my Dad’s logic that either “You might need it someday” or “It might be worth something”. But I never needed it and it was never worth anything.
It took will power and effort to fight those instincts and I am much better about it now but even still I have a tendency to save too much.
So yeah my house is messy (and because it is old and built with plaster, dusty). I am trying but what can you do?
Why do you choose to burden your adult daughter with your expectations? Why are your standards better or more important than hers?
Frankly, I suspect she’s saying she’s “researching how to clean/organize” as a nice way of saying “Dad, shut the hell up and let me live my life” in a non-confrontational way.
Personally if my parents came over and carped about how you want to “improve the standards of their lives”, I’d be a lot less polite. In other words, it’s none of your business.
If I got told to clean my room or they’d rifle through my stuff and maybe find something questionable, I’d probably revel in having a messy house when I got outta there. Just because someone behaves a certain way as a kid, especially through coercion, doesn’t mean they* wanted to behave that way, or will want to* as an adult.
Sorry, I don’t buy the “having kids is an excuse for having a messy/dirty house”. Certainly, kids make messes and leave toys around, but how about picking up after them or having them help pick up? My husband and I both worked full-time and had 2 kids back in the day. We were able to keep the house in good order without too much effort. Yes, you’d be able to find dust here and there and maybe an unorganized closet or cupboard. The house wasn’t perfect. We spent all of our free-time with the kids going places, playing, etc. So I don’t buy the excuse of using your free time with the kids instead of cleaning. When my daughter was a teenager her room went to hell, so I just shut her door. We just asked that she didn’t leave food or dirty dishes laying around. Our son went through the same phase as a teenager. But they would always help out around the house when asked - cut grass, wash dishes, etc.
I’m with the OP, I would not be comfortable spending time in a house that was that dirty. Messy, I can handle, but a dirty stove, counters, bathrooms, floors, etc. makes my skin crawl. I’ve been in homes like that and I find it very uncomfortable and I won’t eat food prepared there. And yes I know, I’d be shocked to see the kitchens in certain restaurants - but I guess of sight, out of mind!
Here’s a question for the OP…does your daughter keep herself and your granddaughter clean? Do they bathe regularly? Have clean clothes?
My coworkers kid me all the time about the chaotic state of my cubicle. A couple of weeks ago, someone hid a rubber snake under some random papers on my desk, and everyone laughed when I screamed upon finding it. What made it even funnier was that the snake had been there for an entire month before I’d noticed it.
But thing is, people still visit me in my crazy cubicle. The mess is a long-running joke, but it is never the main conversational topic. I think my feelings would be hurt if it ever was. However, a couple of well-placed zingers actually do give me a clue that maybe it IS okay to finally put the meeting agenda I’ve been holding onto since 2007 into the recycling bin and maybe I do need to find a proper home for all the monitor cables that are inexplicably jumbled up on the top of my file cabinet. I don’t notice those things until people bring them to my attention. As long as they keep their comments light-hearted and unladen with concerns over my mental health, it’s helpful feedback.
My house is quite cluttered. Books, papers, magazines piled high on the coffee table and dining room table (where we eat all our meals, keeping one corner clear). But the house is always relatively clean; no laundry scattered around; and the kitchen is always quite clean. We (mostly I) wash after each meal, although we leave the dishes that don’t go into the dishwasher in the drainer. This last used to drive my mother and step-father nuts. They wouldn’t have a dish drainer and insisted on wiping everything dry and putting it away immediately after a meal. For me, this all hits a happy medium, but it is not for everyone. The last thing my son does every night is to clear every surface of every book, magazine, paper around. I think that drives his wife a bit batty. She is more inclined to be like us. My point is that everyone is different. I have a cousin who is divorced because he is a neat freak and she couldn’t live with it. They are perfectly happy to share meals at his mother’s house when we visit and seem to get on fine; they just cannot share a household together.
I’ll never live up to my mother’s cleaning standards…and I don’t want to. Mostly my place is cluttered, but not dirty. I keep kitchen and bathrooms clean. But there’s a lot of stuff (and a ton of books) everywhere. Ever since I retired a few years ago, I’ve been working on cutting down on the amount of stuff I have, but really got my butt kicked into gear when your condo development needed termite tenting a couple of months ago. I got rid of a metric shitload of stuff. And mostly what’s left that’s not actually in a place it belongs in is unread books. 90% of them will be gone as they’re read. I feel a bit better about my place, but it’s never ever gonna be pristine and mega-organized. Just not me.
