Growing up in a dirty messy house

[Changedagain876]

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.

This all sounds so familiar ☹️

I grew up in a dirty cluttered house. My dad died when I was very young and my mum was a hoarder. I hated the clutter, there was barely a surface without stuff on it. And dirty too, I don’t remember seeing my mum hoovering after I was about 9 or 10.

My mum never made sure I had clean clothes, I remember re-wearing underwear and socks ☹️

I hated my childhood bedroom, it still had nursery wallpaper when I was a young teen. When I was 15 we finally moved house and I was so happy to have a fresh start. But the new house didn’t stay nice for long, once again it was full of clutter. The kitchen and bathroom were never cleaned properly.

Like others it made me over compensate, I hate clutter and can’t relax properly in mess.

I have read each and very comment, some of which have me absolutely balling my eyes out (and have managed to ignore the odd minimising comment from people who genuinely have no clue what we are talking about here). The story about the girl who would not let the boy she fancied come round. That was me. Thank you MN ❤

I never let friends come round as a kid, I was too embarrassed. It has stayed with me and I try to make sure my house is clean and tidy - in fact i'm a bit paranoid about it, I still hate people popping in unannounced, even though my house is fine - I want to be able to double check every room to make sure it's definitely clean before letting anyone in the house.

The other day my friend needed someone to watch her son at short notice. I've been in her house before and it's often messy, but this was the worst I've seen it (I guess because she wasn't expecting anyone to come over). Now, I don't care about mess in other people's houses, precisely because I grew up with it, but when I arrived and she had left, her son said to me with big eyes, please don't go upstairs, I'm afraid it's a complete state. He's only 8 and my heart broke for him.

It must be really hard for you, especially when so much costs money.

Have you looked online at sites where they give you routines to follow? The Organised Mum Method, Flylady etc? Facebook has Organise My House.

If you can rope the children in to help you might make inroads?

My sister and I never had enough underwear, even though my parents could easily afford it. I remember complaining I didn't have any clean knickers and my mum would say, 'wear the ones you wore yesterday', but the same thing would happen the next day and so on.

I remember this so well
My pants got so tight that they cut into me but it was pointless to ask for new ones because there would just be an excuse
I would wait til we were sent to my grandparents (who were wonderful and tidy and generous and kind) and tell them I accidentally forgot to pack any underwear, and I would get a new multipack from BHS or M&S, and it was wonderful!

By the time I was about 14, I was shoplifting bras because I had a big chest (32D) but was still expected to go braless under my uniform, with just a crop top

I get an inordinate amount of pleasure from buying multipacks of pants and T-shirts and other basics for my boys

I'm appalled that so many of us endured this, but I'm also feeling a sense of camaraderie -- so thank you, OP and PPs.

It galled me that at age six or seven I was becoming an outcast -- and not because I was a nasty bitch with a terrible personality, as my mother insisted. I was funny and good at games, and kids liked me. But I was so dirty and shabby that their parents warned them not to play with me. My worst patch was Year 6, by which time my second-hand uniform had worn so thin that I was lining it with sticky-tape to stop it falling apart, and I was pinning my underpants (of which I had very few) to my waistband to stop them falling down. And then I got my period ... Unfortunately my teacher's kindly attempts at an intervention resulted in another beating at home.

That year, I won a scholarship to a decent private school. The school gave me full free tuition, but my parents threatened to beat the hell out of me because the scholarship didn't include uniform and books. They refused to pay for these, so at the age of 12 I was facing a dismal future of no further education. I stood my ground. I made them pay, and I'm proud of myself to this day.

As to the state of the house, I never let friends come around as the place was thick with dust and mould and I knew that if they saw how I lived I'd be ostracised. By the time my DF died in 2018 he'd owned the house for 40 years and had never allowed the carpets to be steam-cleaned. The first thing DB (who lives there now) did was to rip up all the carpets, which were beyond salvation, and pull down the mould-infested wallpaper. We own the house jointly and are now planning how to rectify and pay for decades of neglect. It's going to be very costly.

This thread is so sad. Makes for very sad reading.

I kept thinking about this yesterday, at work. I realised I work in THE most sterile environment and even there I have high standards 😂. It would be interesting to find out if some of my colleagues grew up in squalor like me, that’s why we all work there.

So, for those of you. Who wanted to hear more.

I never wanted children, but I had one, my then husband insisted. Because there was simply not enough food at home to feed all of us. So in my head, I was scared I won’t be able to provide, to care for, to look after children. We were locked in the house for hours, more often than not without food. My ExH worked school hours throughout DD’s primary school. He was/is a spectacularly shit parent, but I took that over having DD home alone/with a childminder etc. I worked full time and more, all these years. I know there was after school etc, but in my head having a parent around was paramount. It couldn’t be me because he was lazy and not qualified to do anything, I was bringing in the money. Then came home and washed and cooked and cleaned. My kid was an extremely fussy eater and I relived the hunger trauma every day. I had to really work on it. DD is an exceptional cook and loves her food now.

I’ve still got the hunger trauma, I have enough food in the house for a couple of months at least.

Everything, and I mean everything has a place. I can close my eyes and go straight to the place I put a needle 5 years ago. Because it’s always the same place. One of the biggest traumas in my childhood is finding the house key just before we were leaving somewhere. We had one. We could never find anything, it was so cluttered and messy, absolutely no surface clear and any time. But mum and dad used to beat the shit out of us for misplacing things. We didn’t, there was just no place for them. Every time we needed any paperwork, we used to get a beating and I had therapy to stop the sheer terror I felt every time I couldn’t find something. It wasn’t even our paperwork, it was theirs. Normally unpaid bills.

I’m not judging them. I am taking care of the little girl I used to be, and give her what she didn’t have. It’s difficult to not project that onto my girl. DD might not always understand/accept my ways, although I’ve always been honest and upfront about my shortcomings. But she said to me that she knows nobody in this world would love her children more than me. Which makes me think she knows, deep down, just how fiercely I love her and that the mistakes I made were a result of trauma, not because I’m a shitbag.

I don’t think they’ll hate you. I do think you might want to sit them down, explain you’re strugggling, and together come up with a plan how to improve. Can any family member help just with making a plan for where to start?

Is it worth reporting to social services? Unthread a couple of posters says social services were actually quite helpful with how to tackle the mess.

Safeguarding training is very different these days. I, and several PPs, would have been reported in to children's services several times, were our situations happening today.

Safeguarding wasn't a thing in the 70s/80s...look at how many prolific abuse cases are finally coming to light now dating back to those times.

Sadly, children who are reported to children's services these days for this type of neglect are not given the time or support needed. Children's services are stretched so thinly that a case has to be off the chart to get attention. The phrase "good enough" is bandied around in safeguarding a lot and what that means in a real life family situation has lowered significantly over the years.

@Kanaloa what a beautiful and inspirational post. You sound like an amazing person to turn your life around so much, to have such a positive outlook, and to be such a great mum

Sushilushi · 18/05/2022 20:40

I’d argue that there are far worse things than no carpets, bare floorboards , piles of clothes and ‘old’ furniture referred to in the OP. Obviously dirt is not good, depends how extreme the lack of cleaning was. Give me faded and shabby over a Next catalogue look anyday… I don’t know how old the OP is but I believe our standards of today are way too high. There is far too much focus on lack of ‘clutter’, cleaning is the new Instagrammable trend (Mrs Hinch) and rooms looking like they belong in a magazine, not to be lived in …. A bit of mess and dirt can be beneficial to children’s immune systems!

@Sushilushi
Please can you read the actual posts on the actual thread rather than just having a vague idea of what it might be about and then spouting off your opinion of something not really related at all. Just take time to read people's real experiences. Please.

TiraMissSue · 18/05/2022 21:15

I grew up on a fairly clean but messy, scruffy council flat that I was a bit embarrassed of when I had school friends over. My mum was a single mum who escaped an abusive marriage and worked full time to build a career for herself.

I do bloody proud of her as an adult. She was (is) a really wonderful , loving, inspirational Mum, even if our house was a bit of shithole. I would rather have had her than a show home.

@TiraMissSue

That is such a lovely thing to say about your mum and I'm glad for you that she managed to bring up a happy child. However, your experience does not match what this thread is about. At all. For a start you say that your home was 'fairly clean.' Almost everybody on here is writing about homes that were really dirty.
Nobody at all is saying it was hard for them to live in a council flat. Nobody. In fact a large number of people are talking about growing up in large houses and with enough money to live nicely but having parents who couldn't keep them clean.

I was just adding my experience.

Some people had talked about scruffy, mismatched furniture or clutter. There’s a big difference between neglectful housekeeping/parenting - filth, hoarding etc - and having a scruffy house. That was the point I was making I guess.

One of the most abusive parents I knew growing up (my friends mother) had a show home. So it’s a complicated issue. But I was in no way trying to negate the experiences of posters who feel like they were neglected or had unhappy childhoods

Scruffy, old furniture is fine, if it’s in a place kept mainly clean and the furniture is clean.

Dust m is fine, when it’s not surrounded by pure filth.

Some clutter is ok. But not if at the detriment of not being able to find anything or use house properly ie dining table above mentioned never able to use for homework or eating as piled high for years and years.

Bathrooms not being scrubbed daily with a toothbrush spotless is fine. But people here are talking about bathrooms that haven’t been cleaned or fixed or decluttered their entire childhood.

I still have recurring dreams to this day about my childhood house and specifically the bathroom and toilet. It was an old house built in the 1940s and had a bathroom with just bath and sink and airing cupboard and separate toilet. My dad and older brother would sit reading on the loo and smoke. They didn’t even use an ashtray, they would flick ash on the floor and just leave it there. So going to the toilet that’s what you were confronted with. It made me sick.

The bathroom well I still have regular dreams about being late, trying to have a shower or a bath and the place being filthy and not being able to find clean towels. I was always cleaning it up. My mum must have been so ground down she didn’t care. We had a proper fireplace. I remember my dad smoking by the fire and flicking ash onto the kerbed hearth. It looked terrible. I told him once to get an ashtray or put it in the fire and he blew a gasket. Started mimicking me in a high pitched falsetto voice and swore at me.

Our cat had kittens in my parents' bed. One of them suffocated :'(

My own bedroom however was perfect. I made sure it was my oasis.

Last paragraph - perfectly put.

I resonate with this - also grew up in an immaculate home with a mother who was constantly cleaning. I have now turned into her and I get stressed if people turn up unexpectedly or the kids make a mess. There is a balance to be had I think.

This is a great post OP, thanks for sharing.

@AWOIF its damaging psychologically what happens to you as a child, it’s very important to fit in and appear ‘normal’. If they couldn’t cope why have 3 children? I’m very glad you had such a wonderful childhood that you have no comprehension or feeling for what she lived with.

I grew up in a very messy house in the 1950s. My mum and dad both worked full time in low paid jobs so it was a struggle to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. My mum was tired out all the time and so the housework never got done. The kitchen was always piled high with dirty plates and opened packets of food. Then when I was about 10 I realised this isnt the way my friends were living, so I decided I would do the housework. I got up early every morning and tidied up. On a Sunday my mum had a lie in and I cleaned all the downstairs rooms properly. I did this right up until my mum retired, when she took over and suddenly became very houseproud. Perhaps you could have helped a bit more yourself? What I do remember of my childhood is a loving caring mum and dad who always put us kids first before themselves. I would take that anyday over a clean and tidy house where you were afraid to drop a crumb.

@Horological - thank you. I’ve skimmed over those types of comments but I really appreciate your thoughtful responses to the extremely small number of people who think we’re talking about some unwashed dishes.

To everyone who experienced this too, thank you so so much for sharing on this thread. I’ve spent a large part of life thinking it was just me.

What I do remember of my childhood is a loving caring mum and dad who always put us kids first before themselves. I would take that anyday over a clean and tidy house where you were afraid to drop a crumb

@mybiggestfan I am sure that 100% of people on this thread would agree with that. But that is not at all what this thread is about. I'm sorry but I don't think you have read what the huge majority of posters have actually written about their real experiences and feelings. Not one person has said they wished their childhood home had been perfect. Most people are talking about living in absolute squalor and many about being neglected. This thread is not at all about living in a bit of a mess because their parents were very busy and chose to give them lots of attention instead of cleaning.

Please, read what most people are actually saying about what they actually had to live with.