Another factor might be that if the expectations are much higher than she can achieve, why bother trying? If she knows she won’t be able to keep the house anywhere close to spotless, she might as well just take the easy way out and leave the place cluttered. Since she knows it will be some degree of messy, she might as well not waste her energy trying to go from ‘very messy’ to ‘messy’ since people will disapprove of her in either case.
Eye of the beholder.
Or, one half of a couple wants to be a neat-freak, and the other is a messy. After years of cleaning up after the messy, only to have the messy sabotage the cleaning, the neat-freak surrenders to the clutter in the interest of not destroying the relationship.
If you think the messy is destroying the relationship, that goes back to eye of the beholder. The relationship is far more important than the clutter, or lack of it.
If you are truly uncomfortable such that you don’t wish to visit, then don’t. Do exactly as you mentioned, and host them in your place. With a smile on your face and no ill feelings whatsoever.
If you really feel it’s reflective of something amiss between them or with their mental health, keep it to yourself! It’s not your home, relationship, environment or business! These are grown adults who can and will, run their household as they see fit. Your own tender feelings about it, or standards for their conduct, should matter not a whit. That’s the very definition of adulthood.
It’s their ship to sail. As they see fit. If it crashes, it needs to be on their choices and opinions, NOT yours! Marriage is hard enough without this kind of outside interference. And yes, that’s what this amounts to. If they’re not fighting about it, what’s your opinion aiming to do exactly, start one? And if they are, how is you wading in going to help?
Step off. Stay out of someone else’s marriage. Always.
If they’re happy with it, then you need to get okay with it. In fact, this isn’t hard. You don’t *have *to get wrapped up in this, you don’t have to care about this.
Choose to see the universe offering you a lesson in letting stuff go, (advice you may well have proffered to another in your time maybe?) While it’s by far the most challenging course, you’ll def be a much happier fellow, if you do.
Just one opinion, Good Luck!
Who sits around worrying about the clutter in their neighbor’s houses? I never have.
My hoarder self says - then don’t give them nice stuff. Not in any way as a ‘punishment’ but … speaking personally, I hate it when people give me nice stuff. Stuff that has to be looked after and maintained. I can’t maintain things, you (generic) KNOW I can’t maintain things, so why put this elephant on my back? (Books I can cope with 
Books are easily organised. Apart from books I mostly don’t want to be given *any *physical item, though that may be getting a little extreme for most tastes) I far prefer to own items that are scruffy (but working) because they’re going to be scruffy anyway after spending time in my house anyway, and this way I don’t have to feel guilty about it.
I have a lot of quite professionally successful friends who have messy houses too. And our reaction to each others’ messy houses is very much along the lines of ‘thank God you have a messy house too! This makes me feel so calm and relaxed about the state of my house!’ I love my friends with messy houses. They contribute a great deal to my mental wellbeing. Knowing that someone’s house was untidy would make me *more *likely to be their friend, not less (though I do have tidy friends too. Maybe they like me for the same reason I like the more-messy people…)
It has not been my experience that a tidy person has ever helped me tidy things. Messy people can help though. At the start of this year a friend and I went on a mutually supported cleaning spree where we’d both simply text each other a picture of a room or a surface, clean and organise it, then text the after picture. It was very productive. But it only worked because we both know full well that neither of us would ever know where a vase was meant to go, and we’re both going to be able to celebrate “This desk had stuff on it. Now, two hours later, it doesn’t” as a major achievement.
Exactly this.
It means you are really smart.
Kids will grow up with healthy immune system and no asthma and no significant allergies.
Thanks again, all. You’ve really helped me frame this issue.
Couple of short responses:
[QUOTE}Who sits around worrying about the clutter in their neighbor’s houses? I never have.[/QUOTE]
They have a young child. Their child might go to other neighborhood children for playdates or parties, or might host same. In the process, parents might stop by for coffee. They might use neighborhood kids as babysitters. My dtr has longterm plans of hosting/teaching youth music programs/lessons in her home.
I don’t suggest that people “sit around worrying about” it. But if you happened to see something about a neighbor’s house that struck you as out of the ordinary, it wouldn’t even register with you? And there’s no chance you might make assumptions about the homeowners and possibly adapt your interactions with them somehow? And if one person formed an opinion, is there no chance they might mention it to another neighbor over coffee, or over the fence…
I understand that some folk may not care what their neighbors think of them. But my impression is that my dtr and her family seem to wish to be integrated members of their block/neighborhood/community.
I think I appreciate the sentiment, but surely you cannot intend this literally and universally. If you seriously suspect there might be something amiss with one of the adult people you care for most in the world, there is NO situation in which you should do/say ANYTHING about it? I don’t want to suggest a slippery slope about the horrors that might occur behind closed doors, but is there no instance in which you might lovingly inquire or offer assistance regarding a loved one’s health and happiness, or the health of their nuclear family dynamics?
Sure, if you inquire and are rebuffed, and have no reason to think there is anything HORRIBLE going on (such as abuse or life-threatening health issues), you should step back and respect their privacy. But to say your concerns should not even be expressed and assistance not even offered? I tend to be on the cold, unemotional side, but such a position strikes me as odd.
Final observation, my wife and I have encountered situations in the past when we wondered whether we ought to say something to our kids, siblings, parents. In many situations, we decided to keep our concerns to ourselves. But there have been some instances in which we decided that, although expressing our concerns might be difficult and unwelcome, we felt the potential benefits of expressing our concerns (benefits for both ourselves AND the other party) outweighed the negatives. I readily acknowledge that other folk might have chosen to act differently in any/all such situations.
My house is usually “cluttered.” I have a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old. My husband and I both work full time. During the summer, we have a nanny, and part of her job is to clean up after the kids. But during the school year, after a long day of work, making dinner, other chores (laundry, grocery shopping, paying bills, etc.), I often have no energy left for cleaning. My kids are getting better at picking up after themselves, but I often have toys all over the floor, dishes in the sink, a dirty table after dinner, etc.
We’re trying, as a family, to be better about picking up, but when you have multiple kids and 2 working parents, sometimes there aren’t just enough hours in the day to keep the house clean.
Ha Ha Ha! That’s a whole lot of ‘mights’ in that defensive paragraph! (None of which amount to anything but an pretty overt projection of your own feelings. )
And I very clearly did NOT mean, or say, under ZERO circumstances should anyone speak up, ever, about another’s home.
I clearly said, YOUR tender feelings, and YOUR standard of conduct, should have no bearing, and they shouldn’t. You’ve been right once before, so it must be okay now to interfere?
You’re being very, very silly with these misinterpretations and shadings of what others are trying to tell you. It kinda seems like maybe you just don’t want to hear that it’s not your place.
But it’s really not.
(And I suspect, at some level, you know it too.)
I’m sorry. I thought I expressed my serious question respectfully, without any insults. Having participated in this thread over the past few days, having read and responded to many posts, I honestly did not perceive that your comments were restricted to this specific instance. Instead, I thought you were suggesting an overall approach of non–interference. And, upon re-reading my comments/questions, I do not see where I was being overly “silly” or “defensive.”
I readily acknowledge the potential shortcomings of (mis)communicating in this messageboard format.
In the future, I hope I’m able to remember the results of my well-intentioned efforts to communicate with you.
Most likely worst case scenario is that your granddaughter becomes the kid who is only invited to other people’s houses. Unless the neighbors are just mean people, its far from a given that the family will be ostracized just because they live in a messy home.
Like you, I wouldn’t be all that enthused to visit a home littered with personal effects and debris; it’s really hard for me to relax in such an environment. And it’s not like I’m a neat freak, either. 80% of the time my living room is strewn with toddler toys and books. But I believe in some level of hospitality when I invite guests into my home, and that means cleaning up for them. It annoys me when I’m invited to someone’s home and apparently they don’t think I’m worth that kind of effort, even if it’s just family. But I generally keep these feelings to myself because my rational brain knows I shouldn’t project my expectations onto other people.
I think what this really boils down to is you feeling torn between wanting to be a loving father and grandfather and feeling repulsed by their living conditions. Mixed in this are obviously feelings of embarrassment too, because you think she’s begging to be judged as a no-account slob and you can’t fathom why she can’t see this as clearly as you and your wife do. To get over this (and yeah, that’s what you’re going to have to do), you’re going to have to accept that their messiness is something you can’t change and it doesn’t rise to the level of needing an intervention. Out of sight is out of mind, so just limit the amount of time you spend over there while making it easy for them to visit yours.
From what you’ve written (not just here but in the past), your daughter is naturally disorganized and passive in certain ways. Maybe these are major personality flaws but you can’t do anything about them, and there’s no point in worrying about it. Her life seems to be trucking along okay despite these flaws, and that’s what you should focus on.
As someone who lived in a hoarder-level filthy house, I guess I’ll weigh in.
People have been somewhat condemning of your concern about your daughter’s house. Their opinions are quite valid and worth taking into consideration, but since you have seen the house and they have not, don’t be too quick to dismiss your concerns based on Internet advice.
Personally, it does sound to me like your daughter has a problem. You say that she has many plans to clean and organize but that it doesn’t seem to get done — that was a hallmark of our situation, and the reason it got as bad as it did. My (single) mother was overworked and I suffer from a chronic illness, such that I barely have the energy or motivation to take care of myself, let alone my environment. At one point in my childhood, a small kitchen fire brought the fire department to our house and upon seeing it they reported my mother to social services. She was charged with misdemeanor child neglect and was told that I could not be allowed back into the home until it was deemed clean enough. You may think that that sounds like a rather extreme mess, but to the best of my recollection the condition of the house when this happened was very much like what you describe of your daughter’s house.
What’s more, after my mother and grandmother had thoroughly cleaned the house and I was allowed back, it eventually became filthy again. We would get it acceptably clean, then it would become filthy again. Over and over. Just a couple years ago we hired a professional cleaning service who had to charge us $8,000 and brought their own dumpster. The dumpster took up most of our yard and by the time they were done it was full. Most definitely a far worse mess than the one that got my mother a misdemeanor on her otherwise spotless record.
When your daughter says she never “learned how to clean,” you need to take that statement much more seriously than you seem to be. No, it’s not rocket science, but it’s not as simple as you seem to think it is. For someone who is naturally tidy it’s probably the easiest thing in the world, but for most people it’s quite difficult.
I can’t give advice on actually fixing this problem since I don’t really have my own shit together either. But I felt like my perspective was really, really, really needed because nearly all the replies I’ve read are saying you’re worrying too much. I don’t think you are.
This reply in particular really got me. 
Your wording is dismissive to the point that you seem to be suggesting the house’s messiness or tidiness has no psychological or emotional effect on its occupants.
That is absolutely not true.
Personally, the messiness of my house tends to greatly reinforce my depression and my habitual self-neglect. I also have vivid, disturbing nightmares about the mess, such as nightmares of our household pets starving and semi-literally drowning in filth. As a child I owned guinea pigs; it’s been a decade or more since that, and just last week I had a dream where a lone live guinea pig was shuffling through an ocean of its own feces in a cage with two others who were dead of neglect, in some forgotten dark nook of our house. Never, and I mean absolutely never did we ever treat our pets like that — compared to the house and to ourselves, we took great care of our pets. And I have nightmares about it still.
I know I talk too much, so I’ll just ask:
I still have a lot more thoughts on this. Would you like me to specify which facts about your daughter’s house I find concerning, and which ones I think are normal and shouldn’t be worried about? There’s certainly a mix of both in what you’ve said.
I’m interested…
Thanks for your viewpoint and experiences. My wife and I have a plan to talk/work with my dtr, to try to help identify whether there are ANY aspects we should be concerned about, and if so, what we could do to help address them - both in short and long-run.
Before you have a talk with your daughter, you might want to talk to a psychologist who specializes in hoarding to find the right approach. It would be very easy for her to feel attacked and make the problem worse.
Yeah, honestly, it doesn’t sound like you’re overreacting. I don’t get why some people keep jumping down your throat (unless it’s a case of “doth protest too much”). Having your socks gets noticeably dirty from just a couple hours in a house means the house is dirty, and that’s no good. It means they’re not vacuuming or cleaning anything on a regular basis - and with the amount of clutter you’re describing, I can see why. Now, multiple jobs, small kid, that’s already a recipe for a messy house. Broken foot, and definitely nothing is getting done right at the moment, unless someone else does it. But for the kid’s sake, you have to vacuum and clean. Every person I’ve met who grew up in a seriously cluttered home has been a giant mess. There’s psychological issues that come with living with parents like that. The kids have been depressed, possessive, angry, anxious, unable to make decisions, and unable to move out. They have noticeably worse health problems as adults and get sick frequently. There’s acceptably dirty, and then there’s “I haven’t vacuumed that side of the room in 2 years”. So she needs to change, but getting that to change probably can’t be done unless she wants to.
I have a small amount of a clutter problem, because my parents had a small clutter problem. Aside from the “it might be useful someday” problem, which it never is, and which I’ve squashed with effort, there’s the “big picture” problem. And it’s simply that I know basic cleaning tasks add up, fast. So I put off opening and sorting the mail, washing the knives, putting away the dishes, so I can focus on the big picture task I have for the day. I’ll do it maybe every other day, which I don’t like, but is what happens. When your life is so full that it feels like you only have an hour left to yourself at the end of the day (like theirs would), the little cleaning tasks will never get done because you never prioritize the cleaning. And then you won’t do it on the weekend when you’re off work because you’re desperately clinging to those hours of free time to relax. The bigger the pile of little things gets, the more insurmountable it appears, and the less you want to do it. Who wants to work all week and then spend all weekend cleaning? Nobody. So past a certain point it becomes an overwhelming problem that gives you anxiety and you do genuinely want to deal with, but you become paralyzed at the thought of dealing with it, so you don’t deal with it despite it upsetting you. The only answer is to do a massive clean up and then keep up with doing the little things as frequently as possible. If you can’t do that because you’re too depressed or anxious daily, or too busy, then you need outside professional help, or a realigning of life goals.
Me too.