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I have known a couple of people who live like that. They were not slobs. They were depressed.
Thats what I'm thinking. My house is a mess but a couple homes I've encountered that were actually filthy and probably health hazards were occupied by persons with some level of mental/emotional problems.
I'm not sure why some people concern themselves with the cleanliness of other peoples homes or feel the need to tell them there is no excuse to not keep their home tidy, manicured or sterile.
Generally, it boils down to too much stuff and too little time. Houses need consistent maintenance, and that means somebody, whether it be Mom or Dad, must take the lead and ensure that the work gets done. We live in a time when it often takes all hands to pay the rent, and there's nobody around to put away the laundry, scrub the toilets, and empty the trash. That all being said, people have lived like slobs forever. This is really nothing new.
ITA with the above and especially so on the bold. There have alway been slobs amongst us. I remember my great grandmother bashing her childhood/teenage neighbors because of their filth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MyNameIsBellaMia
Baloney. Nobody is too busy to clean house. Not legitimately busy. They might be too busy fiddling with their IPhones or whatever, but that's no excuse.
If it takes all hands to pay the rent, maybe it's because all the resident morons think they need the latest IPhones, etc.
And instead of buying the latest garbage for the chilluns, maybe we should go back to when kids had chores and homework to do.
See where I'm going here? Put down the damned phone and push a vacuum. It's good exercise!
With all the latest tools and inventions, trust me, homes most definitely do NOT need the maintenance they did 40 or 50 years ago.
I don't agree with the bold above. I am VERY busy and don't have time to clean before 9:30pm or 10pm.
I go to bed at 10:30. If I don't then I won't be well rested for work and my day to day life. So I don't clean as much as I used to.
I rarely watch TV and only play games on my phone when I am in the bed because it helps me fall asleep. I don't have a TV in my room. FWIW, I usually do a very thorough deep cleaning on Saturday mornings (if I'm not doing any activities on Saturday morning). The cleanliness from that Saturday clean will last through Thursday in the majority of the house.
I have older kids (7 and 14). Both of them do chores. However due to the demands of time in todays day and age my kids don't get home until around 6pm. My oldest goes to a pretty difficult school and so doesn't get done with homework until around 8pm most nights. He still cleans the kitchen everyday unless he had a baseball game that day (on those days we don't get home until 9pm or 10pm) and on game days, unfortunately, the kitchen just doesn't get cleaned. My youngest cleans our bathroom and living room throughout the week so those stay relatively clean. She tidies up while I cook dinner. She goes to bathe/shower after dinner, as does the oldest and they go to bed. I usually go to bed about 30 minutes after they go to bed. I have a husband and he works 2nd shift so is gone all day and sleeps most of the following day due to being up very late for work.
Where I'm going here is that families today have WAY less time to clean like they did 50 years ago. FWIW, I did used to be a SAHM for about 6 years and our house was always clean and dinner was always on the table at 5:30pm (when my husband got home from work). But when you have two working adults and kids busy with school and other activities, something has to give and it is usually daily cleaning since everyone is exhausted and ready for bed and don't want to clean through the midnight hour just to claim some sort of superiority over people who don't clean.
FWIW, I think my house is messy more often than not but I don't think it is filthy. You can see the floors though they may need to be swept. I also don't hoarde and am known in our house as a "thrower-away-er" lol. When I clean on Saturdays the kids and husband knows they better have all their crap they want out of the areas I am going through as I will just chuck it in a big bag and it will be out of the house.
This was a sore spot of mine recently. I know someone, personally, who lives in a total dump. It literally looks like a damn garbage dump in her house. It is appalling. It stinks, there's bugs everywhere - IN THE FOOD, crawling on the utensils, there's stains and splatters all over, spills dried up because they weren't cleaned up, the microwave is damaged because the mess has now been baked in, urine on the floor, (not pet), overflowing garbages, filthy clothes strewn about, napkins, Kleenexes, dirty dishes that are so old the residue is caked on/hardened on, papers, fast food wrappers, cups, bags, cat litter, dog poo, rust, grime, black marks near door knobs and light switches from filthy hands repeatedly touching the area, don't even get me started on the bathroom....laundry that never goes down - been sitting for months, untouched, a full sink of dirty dishes for weeks on end, boxes everywhere from all the new crap that has been purchased, arguments over where all the plates are, (because no one picks up after themselves, does the dishes, or brings their dishes to the kitchen when done eating), the yard is full of weeds and loaded with bugs that eat the fur right off of any poor pet that goes out to the yard, it's yellow and dirt with a bunch of rocks when just months before it was beautiful green because spring and some rain, but not mowed, (literally at one point it grew to over 2 ft high), not edged, not picked up, not maintained, not watered....
The entire place looks, feels, smells like a giant land fill.
And they do nothing about it.
I scrubbed that s**thole 4 times in a single year, top to bottom, everything, EVERYTHING, to give them a clean slate....maybe it was just overwhelming, so I helped...got them back to square 1, they just had to clean up after themselves, and put some effort in to the yard once a week.
It didn't take but a week or two before you could not tell I had done anything. I tried 4 times. To hell with them. Whatever diseases they get, whatever illnesses they get, whatever bites they get, they deserve every last one of them.
How anyone could live in such disgusting conditions is something I will never understand. It is beyond being lazy. It is lazy, no self respect, hoarding, and pretending. There's a whole lot of pretending going on.
THANK GOD I'm out of there.
When I turn that key in to the lock of my own place, clean, smelling nice, things put away, everything in order....no bugs!!!, you have no idea the absolute bliss that brings me knowing how things were for a year when I went to help someone. F that. Those ties got cut. Permanently.
Don't know how you lived with people like that. I need to have a clean house to have sanity
Occasionally there will be a sock on the ground or a small pile of towels but our house is always tidy and we do a good clean every couple weeks.
Don't know how you lived with people like that. I need to have a clean house to have sanity
Occasionally there will be a sock on the ground or a small pile of towels but our house is always tidy and we do a good clean every couple weeks.
I agree. I don't do well in mess.
It was not easy...really how I survived was spend the least amount of time using any part of the house and staying in my own area. I came to help...but one cannot help those who do not wish to help themselves. Is there depression there? I am not a psychologist so I wouldn't diagnose but they sure don't respect themselves or each other to live like that. I get the distinct feeling that the person I know had everything done for her when she was younger because that is her attitude...like she's owed it, but doesn't have to work for it because there is always an excuse as to why the house looks like a literal garbage dump. I'm not talking "looks lived in", I'm talking disgusting...that NO ONE on here would even attempt to make excuses for were I to share the pics. Yes, I have taken pics...because sometimes your friends need to see pics to fully understand. Don't want someone sharing pics of your filthy disgusting house? Clean.
Yes, it is definitely the case that, based on your casual assessment of a handful of people in your area, the entire nation of 300M+ people have "lost pride in their homes." Good investigative work.
Where I'm going here is that families today have WAY less time to clean like they did 50 years ago. FWIW, I did used to be a SAHM for about 6 years and our house was always clean and dinner was always on the table at 5:30pm (when my husband got home from work). But when you have two working adults and kids busy with school and other activities, something has to give and it is usually daily cleaning since everyone is exhausted and ready for bed and don't want to clean through the midnight hour just to claim some sort of superiority over people who don't clean.
I totally agree with you.
I am raising my grandkid now and even in the summer there are a zillion sports activities. I get off work at 3:30 have a 45 minute commute home, then off to the next county for practice. We get home roughly at 7:30 four days a week. I am also older, as are many couples nowdays with young children and it seems it takes longer and takes more out of you to get the basics done than it did when you were yonger.
It was not easy...really how I survived was spend the least amount of time using any part of the house and staying in my own area. I came to help...but one cannot help those who do not wish to help themselves. Is there depression there? I am not a psychologist so I wouldn't diagnose but they sure don't respect themselves or each other to live like that. I get the distinct feeling that the person I know had everything done for her when she was younger because that is her attitude...like she's owed it, but doesn't have to work for it because there is always an excuse as to why the house looks like a literal garbage dump. I'm not talking "looks lived in", I'm talking disgusting...that NO ONE on here would even attempt to make excuses for were I to share the pics. Yes, I have taken pics...because sometimes your friends need to see pics to fully understand. Don't want someone sharing pics of your filthy disgusting house? Clean.
Baloney. Nobody is too busy to clean house. Not legitimately busy. They might be too busy fiddling with their IPhones or whatever, but that's no excuse.
If it takes all hands to pay the rent, maybe it's because all the resident morons think they need the latest IPhones, etc.
And instead of buying the latest garbage for the chilluns, maybe we should go back to when kids had chores and homework to do.
See where I'm going here? Put down the damned phone and push a vacuum. It's good exercise!
With all the latest tools and inventions, trust me, homes most definitely do NOT need the maintenance they did 40 or 50 years ago.
I think there may be two different discussions going on in this thread. The first is about the filth that comes from hoarding, which commonly results from mental illness. The second is about the kind of disarray and deferred maintenance that arises from a two-income family with multiple children.
Family homes can be difficult to keep in immaculate condition because, well, people live there, and those people are busy and have different priorities. I've been a SAHM for going on twenty years. My house is mostly clean & orderly, but things can get out of sorts fast when I'm not on top of the chores and coordinating the efforts of others, and that was my point about two-income families. I grew up in a two-income household, and my mom was a maniac when it came to cleaning house. It took a lot out of her. Today, she'll often say that the first twenty years of raising children were a blur due to her constant exhaustion. We kids had chores, yes, but we had to be taught how to do things correctly and supervised while doing them, especially when we were younger. That's extremely time-consuming for a parent. It was when my mom was raising children, and it's still true today.
Parents and kids have a lot of demands on their time, and the stuff associated with those pursuits stacks up. There are bills to pay and lawns to mow and bathrooms to clean and meals to cook on top of errands and school obligations and summer activities and work travel. We do it but, honestly, our family calendar, even with a SAHM at the helm, is a little scary. And these are not frivolous pursuits. I feel like I have absolutely no down time at this point in the year. It's Sunday morning, and I've had a nice lie-in, but it's now nearing nine o'clock, and I've got a ton of crap to do today just like every other day.
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