Growing up in a dirty messy house

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I am one of three children. When we moved in when I was tiny my parents had started DIY so house had no carpets in some rooms and old furniture. The house was a basically a sh*thole. Clothes and crap everywhere, nothing was cleaned, I remember the microwave had old food in it. Sofas had stuff spilt down them. My bedroom had floorboards until I was 12 or 13. Bathroom did not have a proper floor until I was in late teens, just floorboards. I remember being so ashamed and embarrassed when I did have people over, which was not often. Just wished we could be normal like others. Parents both worked full-time in "professional" jobs.

I am so conscious now of not ever letting my kids go through this. Not a clean freak but house is clean tidy and warm, and I can't stand clutter. I don't get it, when I look back. I just don't get how they could not be embarrassed for us and want us to have some normality. It breaks my heart a bit. To think how easy it could have been for them to make the effort. I try to have compassion but I find it hard.

I usually do this and very aware that it's a legacy thing as well my grandmother was neglected, physically and emotionally abused she had my DM at 19 having got married at 18 to get away from her parents.
So my DM was raised by a traumatised mother.

However sometimes I'm just angry with my DM how could she not pull herself together enough for us kids?

Our house was an absolute tip growing up. My parents are hoarders (particularly my mum; in her case related to previous trauma) and everything was always filthy too. We're talking one clear path from the living room door to the sofa through the piles of crap.

Not only did this negatively affect me and my brother growing up because we couldn't have friends round, or find anything we needed, it still affects me now. My house is generally clean and tidy, but I really struggle with housework. It's something I constantly have to work to keep on top of, and something that I find completely overwhelming a lot of the time. I think, because I never saw housework being done, I never built up the everyday routines that other people did; when I went to uni I had no idea how often I was supposed to hoover or change my bedding because nobody had ever shown/told me. DH finishes with something and automatically puts it away, but my automatic response is to put it down and walk away. I have to consciously make myself stop, go back, and clear it. It's a constant battle and it's fucking exhausting.

I'm very reluctant to have people in the house, because I'm terrified of being judged. I do it, because I don't want my children to be like I was and never have friends round, but I will have an anxiety attack every single time. There are times I really hate my parents for the way the house was growing up, but my childhood was otherwise wonderful, so the good memories drown out the resentment. Most of the time.

My best friend growing up had this. Her house was filthy and smelly and massively cluttered. As soon as she was physically able - 8 ish, she kept her room pristine.
But... her mum had been widowed and had to go back to work full time, her grandmother was an alcoholic who had to live with them ( in a granny annexe) and my friends sibling is SN. In the 70's there was bugger all support.

There is a balance. A home needs to be lived in, but even when you are renovating there’s no excuse for it being properly dirty or your kids having no carpet to walk on. I’m thinking like actual dirt though not a bit of dust or a floor that hasn’t been mopped for, god forbid, a day. My home is under renovation, currently have no skirting boards and a stair carpet that’s marked with dripped plaster. But I know that in a months time it won’t be like that when the walls are finished and the carpet is replaced. However my daughters room was priority when moving in so that she had somewhere comfortable. Everyone is different. My ex liked our house like a show home and I couldn’t keep up. It’s excruciating living with someone who can’t cope with a bit of Lego lying around or a crumb on the worktop.

My sister has a beautiful country cottage for her husband & DS. Probably worth 500K.

It is a tip. Messy, full of "stuff" with many rooms so full they are unusable. Clutter everywhere eg recycling, all surfaces covered. There's so much stuff in the way that I doubt it's ever tidy enough to clean.

She has MH issues so that is part of it, but her husband doesn't work, just potters about in the crap.

I find it stressful visiting. They acknowledge their house is a mess & only tidy up for visitors (not family).

I do wonder about the impact on her son.

Our parents had a dated house (I grew up in 70's) & they rarely decorated. They were both war babies & grew up in austerity, although were wealthy enough - they just didn't prioritise an updated home. But it was clean.

My sister & her DH just don't prioritise either.

Now I view the whole world as I did my cousins -- as the 'normals' from whom i have to hide my inferior chaotic reality. I feel really anxious about anyone coming to the house as it seems to me that the home is a huge enlargement of myself, so that I have to extend my habitual self-disguise to a whole house. I keep the house veryclean and tidy but I am rubbish at home improvements so we have very old decor in most rooms and that makes me feel embarrassed and a failure.
This puts it better than I ever could.

I could have written quite a few of these posts myself! Otherwise I had a happy loving childhood which thankfully the memories of teens to be the ones I remember more. I just think my parents enjoyed the fun aspects of parenthood and couldn't cope with the boring parts. When I think of the house growing up its the embarrassment I remember more.

Could they have been depressed? It's no excuse really but I know when my depression gets bad I struggle to do the housework, I'll get a few days where I have loads of energy and get everything done and more but then the depression comes back and the house falls back into a state. I hate the mess, I am too embarrassed to have visitors and know that it's not fair on my children either (although they do always have clean clothes, everything they need and it's not unhygienic just messy) but I really struggle with organisation and time keeping. I always have and I grew up with an extremley controlling neat freak who wouldn't let me eat before I had washed up the pans I had used to cook the food, and would constantly call me a tramp/lazy/disgusting person because I could never figure out how to be organised.

My house is generally clean and tidy, but I really struggle with housework. It's something I constantly have to work to keep on top of, and something that I find completely overwhelming a lot of the time. I think, because I never saw housework being done, I never built up the everyday routines that other people did yes to this @CaptainCallisto

I've spent years building up the routines that should be second nature, it's actually really mentally draining as adds to the mental load.

On a positive note I have spent years teaching myself and the kids to get out of the house on time (another thing my parents never did) my DD since she started secondary has got such a good routine she is never late and sled manages so I've achieved something! Her bedroom is a tip though 🤣 but a typical teen one and I'm letting her learn if she doesn't pick up her clothes everyday then it's worse in the long run.

Argh no sleds 🛷 involved she does self manage!

I’m so sorry for those of you who grew up in neglected homes, and I’m so amazed that you’ve managed to turn it around and do things so differently for your children. You should feel very proud of yourselves.

My brother in law started the building work on his largish house 45 years ago. The bath still has no side and there is a huge hole( floorboards removed to get at something ) in the floor. No bannister rail on the stairs, boiler fitted at the start of the work, mess still there, walls never plastered or painted. He is autistic. His view is that everything works and that is absolutely all that matters. His wife left him after 20 years of it and bought a house , that was beautifully done up, just up the road.
My next door neighbours ( local vicar) bought the old school building in our village and began converting it into a home 5 years ago. It is an absolute tip. He is also on the spectrum. They sit and have bbqs right in the middle of the mess as if they were sitting on a beautiful terrace in monty dons garden. They don't seem to see the mess. They have 4 adult children who rarely visit. There are lots of academics in our village. They don't clean because their brains are far too huge to do anything as lowly as wipe a work surface or put the hoover round. They don't earn enough to pay for someone else to clean for them so they live in mess. I can't stand mess. I want to start and finish a project and then clear up afterwards. Other people have different priorities. I can understand why your upbringing still upsets you.

I'm the opposite way OP. When I was growing up, my mum had extremely severe OCD and the house was immaculate. I mean it was a show home and nothing was out of place. If I moved the remote control and put it back not straight she would go ballistic at me. I wasn't allowed to draw or paint or have toys out. I couldn't have friends round and the odd time I did, they tried to make my pristine bedroom messy which then made my mum mad with me once they left. I said to myself when I am older and have my own house, I would never be like my mum. Obviously I'm not dirty and I clean but I do have mess dotted around like cups on the side or toys left out, cushions out of place, beds not made properly etc. Just wanted to share my side with the opposite. It has affected me though with what it was like back then x

This is really bad. It's not normal parenting. A form of abuse really. Have you had counselling? Did it help? Book some more now?

On top of all the chaotic mess in my house there was the awful parental fighting about it. My dad viewed the mess as my mother's fault, regardless of whether she was working or not. And he abused her about it. I remember fights that included violence on his part, and they often centred on the fact that she was not like his own mother.

One irony is that after my parents divorced and my dad lived alone, his house steadily became more and more of a tip. It is now so bad that i and my siblings try not to go into it more than we have to. I would never even sit down there as it is so dirty.

My mother's post-divorce house was filthy too. But at least she had always been honest and open about her low standards. I was and am so fucked up by my parents behaviour when I was a child that i found it hard to feel anything when my mother died, and in fact the most cathartic experience for me was not the funeral but the clearing out of chaotic dirty stuff from her house. I know how bad, cold, horrible that sounds. I feel a bit broken by that coldness and detachment, but some of my parents fights about housework and other things were violent, and they lost sight of their children in the midst of their marital horrors..

I agree with a pp...of course its traumatic. I didn't grow up in a home like this but I can completely see how it could affect you years later. It does sound like your parents were overwhelmed. Did they suffer from depression at all? I remember my parents were friends with another couple who had four children. They were quite posh but down on their luck..the dad was unemployed and depressed. The mum was struggling to hold it all together. The house was in a shocking state. I remember being horrified when we would go round there...it must have been awful for the children. I can also see how it got in that state with the mum having so much to deal with

Like some pp's, I also grew up in a home where the opposite was true. The living room was for sitting on the sofa quietly watching TV, no toys allowed. Never allowed any "messy play", crafts etc. Mealtimes, being up dressed, beds made was all regimented. Never allowed friends over because they would make a "mess" (in my mums weird view). I tried to make her a Mother's Day breakfast once and she went absolutely mental at me for "messing up" her kitchen (I didn't even make much mess), so I never made that mistake again! I hated it.

I always swore my own DC would be able to actually live in our home. It's not spotless, nor is it dirty. To me it's just normal. I can be visitor ready in about half an hour. I don't want to live in a minimalist show home, it would depress me. Homes are for living in. I did have a friend who was messy and dirty, that's not good. But clinical isn't good either.

My comment is not aimed at you/ your dad, but a statement stood out (and I think it applies in many houses).

You say your dad offered to get your mum a cleaner and she refused because she was a martyr. Why was he buying it for her? Why was she the martyr? why could he not have got a cleaner for him? Was it her responsibility alone to keep on top of the house?

I think this applies in many homes among the adults. They both have a responsibility to do things for themselves.
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What a complete load of bollocks. They both had professional jobs so obviously had money. Me and my oh work full time, have 3 kids, I have a small holding with over 40 animals, and I still manage not to bring my children up in squalor. When you throw in my BPD, anxiety and depression in as well as severe insomnia, it’s not easy, but I do it because it needs to be done. It’s a complete cop out excusing neglecting your children because you’re tired from work.
Op, my mum had severed ocd so I grew up with a complete clean freak, but it was only yesterday I was saying to my oh how much she made me feel uncared for as despite my parents having plenty of money, they managed to bring me and my siblings up in poverty. In all my class photos I’m the only one not wearing a school uniform because they wouldn’t buy me one. I was brought up in a time where you were left behind if your parents didn’t pay for school trips, so I always was. I used to get put in isolation with the naughty kids because they didn’t know what else to do with me. I never had the right school supplies, had to sit by the poolside during swimming lessons as I wasn’t bought a costume. I brought it up to my oh yesterday as there was a book fair on at my childrens school and I went a bit mental buying a huge amount of books for my children, I overcompensate because I remember how sad I used to feel never being allowed to even buy a book once a year from the fair :/

Could they have been depressed? It's no excuse really but I know when my depression gets bad I struggle to do the housework, I'll get a few days where I have loads of energy and get everything done and more but then the depression comes back and the house falls back into a state.

Undiagnosed ADHD or ADD is also a frequent cause, with ADHD being more common and affecting 7% of the population. It causes executive function disorder, a sentimental attachment to items so people struggle to throw things out, and eventually you don't see the mess anymore. There are also the so-called "ADHD nests" which are clusters of items in the open what serve as visual reminders. And of course, all types of neurodivergence increases the chances of anxiety and depression which make the problem worst.

I grew up in a clean but very cluttered house and I only realised much later that both myself and my mum have ADHD. As an adult I'm absolutely aware that a home need to look clean and tidy but it's a virtually impossible task if you suffer from executive function issues. The best I can do is have certain rooms or areas (kitchen, bedroom, bathroom) clean and functional but tackling everything at once isn't possible.

I can easily see how a few kids, financial/work pressures and overall lack of help and support can lead to homes descending in chaos and it gets progressively harder to claw yourself out.

My husband grew up in a very, very tidy house. His mother wasn't allowed to go out to work and she was bored out of her brain. She couldn't drive and her husband didn't want her to go shopping on her own so she had literally nothing to do all day. She cleaned to have something to do. My husband was allowed lego and airfix models in his bedroom , but nowhere else. Making things with empty boxes, painting, creating, absolutely not allowed...too messy. When he came to live with us he couldn't believe that I let my children decorate the Christmas tree. He and his mother used to sit and watch his father do it . They weren't allowed because they wouldn't do it properly. His upbringing really affected him. It took years of living with me and my children to accept that you can make a mess whilst creating something and then tidy it all away at the end of the day. Mess is okay, tidying is a very important part of the process. You end up with a fabulous thing that you have built, beautifully painted walls, whatever but the clearing up is part of it. He came to us as a childless man of 40 with a twitchiness about things in the wrong place. He is a much more mellow new grandad now.

Many of these posts resonate. My dad is a hoarder and nothing would ever stay 'nice' in our house for more than a couple of weeks. Over the years he bought more and more storage - filled it, piled it, surrounded it - bought more. The house was never kept clean or tidy. Nothing was ever put away properly because you couldn't get where it was supposed to go.

What really upsets me, in hindsight, is that often my sister and I were blamed for the mess - when we were the only ones who made sporadic attempts to tidy, and 90% of it was my dad's ever growing piles of stuff. Well, guess what - since my sister and I moved out it has been totally unchecked and got worse and worse. Half the electrics don't work and can't be got to to fix now. The spectre of one day having to sort the house out looms over my sister and me constantly.

My house is nowhere near as clean or tidy as I'd like - because I had to learn these basics as an adult, it doesn't come naturally to me - but I like to think it's in a 'normal' range. I don't have children.

I grew up in a messy house with lots of cats and often felt embarrassed and ashamed, especially as some wider family members were often critical. I feel for my poor mum now, as I know it was just so much for her to deal with, working full time and looking after me, but it has definitely left its mark. I do a lot of journaling (I use the journalspeak method invented by Nicole Sachs), and realised a lot recently about how it's really impacted how I am as an adult. It's helped me to feel better about it, and relax my perfectionism around it (not that my house is perfect by any means, but I have spent years feeling bad about that, and I'm becoming much more accepting of how it is). Don't know if that makes sense, but I hear you!

I’m another one who grew up with the opposite - neither extremes are good. We lived in a show home and though I was allowed friends over, we couldn’t be messy. My room was cleaned by my mother 2-3 times a week, I hated the intrusion. I could never relax … have been determined to let my kids make a mess/not worry if their bedrooms are a bit untidy

Name changed for this. I grew up in a dirty and cluttered house and it does have long-term effects. My parents were loving and attentive when I was growing up, but I just don’t think they see mess/dirt. There are other reasons why they don’t prioritise cleaning but I do find it sad. As an adult I’m not a complete neat-freak, but mess/dirt makes me anxious and I always ensure my house is clean and fairly tidy. Sympathy to all of you with similar experiences (although I have to say some of them sound worse than mine).