What kind of house did you grow up in?

[Houseofvelour]

And has it affected how you keep your own house?

My childhood home was very messy and chaotic so I keep my home ridiculously clean and ordered, even with two toddlers.

My parents home was fairly tidy. Then they split. My mums home was very tidy. My dads was full of second hand rubbish furniture, cheap everything and it was always a mess.

Mine is a mess due to husband and kids being feral beasts but I so long for it to be clean. It absolutely lifts my spirit to come home to a clean and tidy house with no work for me to do in it!

Aggressively clean, with lots of huffing and martyrdom and clanging about. Any of my possessions set down in the rest of the house would be immediately dumped on my bed. If I cooked for myself as a teen, when I went into the kitchen to wash the pots immediately after eating, they would already be in progress with clear resentment. As if I was meant to let my dinner go cold and scrub the kitchen before eating.
My own housekeeping style is ‘clean enough’. There’s more clutter than I’d like but I keep it just below the level of causing stress.

Until I was 7 (late 1960s) we lived in a two story (plus attic and cellar) rented Edwardian semi. It was generally cold (no central heating, ice on inside of windows in winter), it only had an outside loo, and had no bathroom (bath was in the kitchen). My DM always kept it very tidy and clean. My parents were offered the house for £7k but couldn't afford it. The house is still there & the same type of houses on the street now sell for £1 million plus .
I now live in a more modern house but we don't have the heating on very often (I seem to have been inured to the cold.). It's also not as tidy as my childhood home.

A cold one. We lived on the north east coast and had no central heating. The heating for the whole house was a gas fire, which had to be lit with a match. I wasn't allowed to light it as a child, so at the weekends when my mum wanted a lie in I'd be freezing. We washed in cold water most of the time - and every winter the pipes would freeze and we'd have to move in with my grandparents (who's house was blissfully toasty) till they thawed.

My house is always warm, and I get quite anxious if I have to visit a cold house. I refuse to go and see my PILs at their house in winter for that reason - the one Christmas we spent there was miserable for me because I was so cold the whole time.

My parents loved buying knackered old houses, doing them up and selling them. So we moved a lot, I spent most of my childhood living in what was essentially a building site, spending my weekends helping my dad do building work.
Apart from the dust (and the brief stints when the house was finished and we hadn't yet moved), the house was clean but cluttered, my mum cleaned it weekly but wasn't obsessive about it.

I have 2 siblings, both of them live in modern houses and dislike old properties. I'm the opposite. One of them is obsessive about cleaning, to an unhealthy degree, my other sibling and I are fairly relaxed about it, similar to our mum.

However none of us have moved house very much as it was quite unsettling to come home from school to a load of empty boxes in your room and knowing you had to pack it all up again (although thanks to my parents I'm brilliant at packing!)

A cold, dirty house full of tat that absolutely reeked of dogs. I have a warm, clean, tidy house. And no pets.

I think our house was probably a normal level of tidy, though to be fair, we were hardly home as I spent most of my time with my grandparents as my mum worked long hours. I was an only child, so there wasn't much chaos. I wish it had impacted my perspective on my own house - ours is chaos and while not 'dirty', it's not tidy and could certainly do with more cleaning. We're just too busy, but unlike my mum, we don't have family help, so the chaos just happens around us while we are trying to work and hold it all together. My house certainly wasn't very lived in, whereas ours is probably too lived in.

Forgot to add, it was generally relaxed and happy in my home (homes?) growing up. My mum is a bit of an antiques fan so all the furniture was old but there was never anything we couldn't touch - though I did get in trouble for snapping the top off an antique chair when I used it to make a den

Utterly show home spotless. If I spilled water I was shouted at. I was never made/taught to clean, because my mum and dad had to have everything "perfect", as a result I grew up extremely lazy and unable.to take care of anything myself.

Generally tidy. Clean but not OTT perfect all the time.
Very family home - lots of photos everywhere. Holiday souvenirs, bits and pieces representing the family football team, fridge covered in magnets. Mine and my sisters toys quite prominent in one part of the downstairs, but mostly in a big toy box.

Bit mis match, and gradually it got very tired. There’s photos of me age 2 when our house was redecorated and extended, and then there are pictures of 4 years ago at Christmas in a house with the same decor and furniture (I’m in my thirties). Parents have now spent a lot of money completely renovating and it amazing now (very jealous of their new kitchen and bathroom) and knowing them it will stay like that till they pass on.
Growing up it was very much “we really need a new carpet now.....it’s carpet or holiday. We only live once let’s go on holiday!”

I like the cosy home with bits and bobs and have transferred that to my own house, except I keep mine a lot fresher and more matching.

What I haven’t continued is letting things just sit there broken or smashed. My family is just outright awful at DIY (I’ve had to do a lot of learning and have built my skill set to sort things myself). So if for example a kitchen door cupboard came lose and off, it would remain off for eternity. When I was a teenager my parents had a water leak and had to smash up a couple of bathroom floor tiles to access a pipe. The whole on the floor stayed for a decade. Never thought to just give the walls a quick fresh paint coat. This is what I’ve not carried on. I fix things. Can’t stand looking at a carpet stain or a line on the wall, I have a nice supply of paint tester pots to cover marks, and of something comes lose I fix it immediately, I’ve become a pro at polyfiller and realised that it isn’t anywhere near as hard to fix some things as my parents made it out to be!

Crisps had to be served on a plate, at the table. Everything had to be utterly clean and perfect and tidy to the point where I have ZERO memories of being With my mum at all, because all she did was cook perfectly and clean perfectly and she's still the same.today. I had a very, very lonely horrible.childhood, for many reasons.

I lived in two houses
One was clean but very basic-no tv or washing machine etc (we did have a fridge but that was about it)
The other (my parents) had layers of dirt and grease everywhere
You'd have to wash up again just to eat of something clean-they would wash up in water that was so greasy and manky it would be murky and black (normally the same water would be used over a full day of washing up-just topped up with hot water)
Clothes would be worn for a week before being washed
My dad once steam cleaned the kitchen and I honestly thought they'd got a new one
My mother swears she spends hours cleaning (she doesnt) and my dad just doesn't see it
I'm untidy but clean-my partner is both clean and tidy
Oddly they spend a lot of money decorating every year and they buy new furniture and carpets every 5 years
Our house is lived in but other people swear its spotless

@YouJustDoYou

Crisps had to be served on a plate, at the table. Everything had to be utterly clean and perfect and tidy to the point where I have ZERO memories of being With my mum at all, because all she did was cook perfectly and clean perfectly and she's still the same.today. I had a very, very lonely horrible.childhood, for many reasons.

That's really sad 😔

Reasonably clean (I think). I do remember being horrified at my friend telling me that her mum hoovered including behind the settee every day. Not particularly tidy. Full of stuff because my parents grew up in poorish families during rationing and never threw anything away.

Bodged DIY jobs - always working, nothing actually unsafe, but without the slightest eye to aesthetics and not entirely to regulations (I'm fairly sure there are several electric wires which go diagonally, because you can use a shorter one that way). Decoration was done once (particularly in the very 70s purple and lime room, that was painted over very quickly ) and that was it. Trends were a thing that happened to other people.

Warm enough. We would wake to ice on the windows in winter but once you were up and dressed you'd be ok. Always plenty of food.

Full of music and laughter.

I live in a smaller house with better heating and rooms that have been Designed (not particularly well, but colour schemes and things bought specially). Probably about the same level of cleanliness and tidiness, though I have got a bit more ruthless about Stuff.

An absolute tip. My dad refused to do housework (women’s work) and my mum never bothered even though she only worked part time. I live my house clean and tidy but I had no role model so I’ve had to learn. My mums house is still a pigsty and the kitchen is atrocious, every worktop is cluttered with shite!

Very tidy and clean , although if you looked beneath the surface like in drawers they were always a mess and often you could open cupboard doors and things would fall out . Our house is clean and clutter free , as are my drawers / cupboards . My sister has carried on in my mums traditions , her drawers / cupboards are a mess .

My first civilian home was always clean and tidy but my DM never worked. It was very cold in winter as we didnt have central heating.

I loved that house but what it taught me was that homes have souls. One Christmas my DF wasnt there and it felt soulless.

I spent a lot of time at my Grandma’s and both my Mum and Grandma absolutely love cleaning so their houses are spotless. When I say spotless, I mean there’s never a thing out of place. As soon as something is finished with, they clean it away. They seem to constantly be walking around cleaning unable to ever fully relax. I remember at Christmas both of them would stand with a bin bag collecting the wrapping paper as we discarded it...

I am not a fan of cleaning so my home is definitely not as immaculate, much to their disgust! It’s not hugely untidy and definitely isn’t dirty but I have 5 DC aged 11 and under so it’s far from spotless.

Ours was clean and reasonably tidy on the surface but every drawer and pot was full of stuff. It was a warm and comfortable house. Lots of books and pictures.

This ^
Mine is similar, though possibly slightly less tidy / more cluttered in places.
I'd like my house to be a bit tidier, but I wouldn't want to live in (or visit) a house where you can't put an empty coffee mug by the sink when you visit.

I grew up in a rambling farmhouse that was nicely decorated, well maintained and spotlessly clean. No-one would ever leave the house with e.g. dirty dishes needing washing or unmade beds - what if someone came to the house when you were out (doors weren't locked and DF was always about on the farm so this was likely to happen to be fair).

I am more relaxed about how quickly dishes are washed (same day rather than with 20 mins of the end of the meal) and ironing (only school shirts, Mum did everything including jeans, tshirts and sheets) and bed making (they are left to air all day, Mum makes them beautifully by 9am) and have a cleaner (I work, Mum didn't). Our house is above average clean and tidy but not comparable to DPs very clean house but DMum didn't WOTH so had nothing else to do.

Really quite tidy but not obsessively so. My mum wouldn't have to worry if people turned up unexpectedly. But she had her odd messy drawers Her mum was obsessive so mum always felt guilty as she's by nature not tidy. I'm like my mum, but without the guilt

My dad is super tidy and would always be the kind to take your glass away as soon as it was empty! Drives my mum a bit loopy.

But the house I grew up in was modern and always warm. My mum had lived in a Victorian freezing home so put a high price on warmth.

Messy, often dirty, poorly decorated. Dad was a chain smoker so all the walls were nicotine stained and everything stank of fags. Mum worked full time but wasn’t house proud anyway. To be honest I think she just gave up trying to keep on top of it.

I am obsessed with tidying and cleaning. I’m never happy with my house, I constantly want to change things. My childhood home haunts me.

Oh yeah, to add, my dad is rubbish at diy. Always had tons of shelving he put up groaning under the weight of books.

A Georgian manse.

There was masses of space and it was perfect. We played hide and seek indoors and had a huge amount of land around it and an Atlantic beach across the road. It was normal and well suited to family life.

I’m tidy by nature but not because I’m trying to be the same or different.