People who grew up in dirty/messy homes…

[Melbourne12]

What do you live like now?

I grew up in a cluttered, messy house. To paint a picture, it was one of those houses that was needing renovated for a million years.

Half painted walls (as if someone could only reach up so far and couldn’t be arsed to get a ladder), sunken sofas, a shower with a plastic bag sellotaped along the edge because it leaked into the room downstairs, broken drawers.

I had one school uniform and it got washed once a week, dishes were permanently in the sink. The kitchen table wasn’t functional as a table because it had a pile of shit on top of it, plus more shit under it.

Now that I’m an adult, I have my own home and it’s virtually immaculate at all times. Just small things like making the beds, hoovering and cleaning daily, not letting the washing build up, ironing the clothes, ensuring the place smells nice.

I hated the way I lived as a child and can vividly remember promising myself that I would never have my children in an environment like that. Needless to say, I’ve stuck to my work. I don’t want my child to be too embarrassed to have their friends round when they’re older.

I guess I went the opposite way from how I’d grown up, but I wonder if this is common?

I should add I also do housework because it needs done too. Don’t enjoy it but it’s done.

Grew up in a shithole. My own house now is like a showhome. I sometimes wonder what my parents think about it as they haven’t changed the way they live, and in fact have got worse.

I grew up in a house like this, although probably worse. The only cleaning that was really done was by me and my brothers and sisters. I hated and avoided having friends come to my home. Now, I wouldn't say I was a clean freak but I can't bear people coming to my house and it being even a little bit messy. If I have a visitor it has to be spotless!

The only habit I haven't been able to kick is a small pile of dirty laundry in my bedroom! It would be easy to have a laundry basket but I think that's the one thing that I have kept from my child hood and can't seem to kick. I think it's more of a mental thing rather than anything else.

Interesting thread. I can relate although my situation wasn’t as extreme. My house was definitely messy, cluttered and quite dirty growing up. I was comfortable with it until friends mentioned that the house smells. Also I noticed that it really hampers your organisation if things are just piled up everywhere.

Having said that I had a friend whose house you couldn’t really relax in because her mum would be picking specks of fluff off the carpet in front of you, she was so tidy.

now I try to be in between. There is an optimum amount of housework to be done.

My mum was a hoarder and had various problems. She didn’t wash up, we just ate off plates with accumulated dried up food on them. She didn’t wash our clothes so they piled up in the bath. We didn’t bathe, probably because of the pile of clothes in the bath.
I was in a children's home from age 13 and was expected to do my own ironing etc so I got used to a more civilised environment.
Now I think I’m a bit of a mix. I like a nice house and try to keep on top of things but I think my executive function is a bit hit and miss. I hoover a lot but I don’t dust much. I have tidy rooms and rooms I neglect.

I am the same, my mum and dad never kept a clean/tidy home.

I remember some girls at school once telling me I stunk of smoke, and as I got older I realised it was because my uniform only got washed once a week and they smoked in every room in the house even upstairs.

I now have a complex where my house has to be spotless. I can't sit and relax until it is. It's exhausting. But I have to do it.

My mother's house and my sister's house are very untidy and chaotic , they are both very lucky to have lovely houses and beautiful possessions yet neither of them make the effort to get on top of it.
I have helped out lots of times and a few days later things are back to square one , i have kind of given up.
I feel uncomfortable in both homes and admit to feeling judgemental to some degree, my main concern is for my sisters children it is totally unfair to impose this on their lives.
Their homes are clean enough but chairs , surfaces , floors and tables have stuff on them , i just cannot live like this.
I know people may be critical of me for looking down on my family's behavior but i can't help the way their chaos makes me feel , i will never ever live this way.

My parents was and are hoarders, I'm minimal to the point I only have 4 cups 4 glasses etc, my mum has 3 shelves for cups alone. There's 2 of them and 2 of us. I hate clutter makes me anxious

Oura was always clean and clutter free. Mum was always re decorating something. I swear our downstairs loo was re painted twice a year!
But im sure if you looked closely there was prob lots of hidden crap.

Im similar. Love cleaning. Always have to have home Feeling fresh and tidy. Mop Often, etc open windows daily.
I couldn't leave the house without making beds. And it being visibly tidy. Not Immaculate though my home is lived in.

My best mate had a house like You describe op. His house now is similar but not as bad.

Mother was a hoarder, and it would have been impossible to keep a clean house. House was not in best shape growing up. I ended up getting a very serious rare disease from the home conditions at 17. It nearly killed me, and other family members due to a severe pneumonia and bacterial infection. Public health agencies were all over the house and us, to prevent an epidemic in an urban area.

Limited budget so I wasn't allowed to have a bath more than once a week. No sanitary towels were allowed (expensive apparently) so had to tear up old rags. Very embarrassing and uncomfortable. I always felt dirty, very cold and my clothing options were limited. My standards in my home are better. Not perfect but I am mindful of the fact I don't want my own kids growing up like that.

I grew up in a very overcrowded, messy home and I never felt comfortable having friends round.
I’d say now my house is “lived-in” but not dirty. It’s a sort of happy medium really because although I think life is too short for housework, I like to keep a standard where I am happy to invite people round.

I remember staying at my parents when my DCs were little. I started to peel some veg to make them something to eat when my 1yo hurt herself in the garden, I was literally out of the kitchen a matter of minutes, when I returned the worktop had been cleaned, knife washed and put away. I asked where everything was and all I got was o we thought you’d finished. Yeah my idea of feeding my kids is leaving half peeled veg on the counter to be thrown away.

I grew up in a hoarding situation- I was so embarrassed to ask my friends to come.

Now my house is clean & tidy & i chuck stuff as I buy new stuff. I never want to live like that again.

My mums house was immaculate growing up. She's spend hours and hours cleaning every day. Her stress levels while cleaning were always very high, and she was shouty and intense and sometimes scary.

I am somewhere in the middle. It's clean, but I'll leave makeup products out on the dresser, or clothes on the floor - but everything gets tidied away at least every other day.

This is me too. I grew up in an immaculate home but I didn’t spend much time with my mum as a result. Not happening with my kids!

Meant to quote this.

This sounds exactly like my childhood home! I don't want my children unable to relax in a show home. Our house is clean and reasonably tidy but we have a lot of stuff on display and I don't feel the need to have everything 'perfect' and spotless.

I grew up in a house with no routines - sheets were almost never changed, floors were never mopped, washing up after meals wasn't a thing, and hoovering and tidying up was only ever done in a huge frenzy before visitors arrived. I had a Saturday cleaning job in my teens and it was an absolute revelation to me - when and what to clean, and how. Seems ridiculous but if you've never seen anyone clean a bath before you don't necessarily realise it has to be done, and that those grey tidemarks on the enamel can be prevented or removed.

My own dc have grown up in a clean and tidy house, helped by a naturally tidy DH who grew up in a very different way, plus being lucky enough to be able to afford a dishwasher and a weekly cleaner. It's important to me that the house is generally clean, tidy and well supplied with basics like hot water, clean towels, sheets, loo paper and soap. Having said that my dc's rooms are now disaster zones, as we agreed when they hit the teenage years that I wouldn't interfere. For different reasons they probably don't know how to clean a bath either.

I grew up in a house that was filthy. I never dreamed of inviting friends over and hated every second of the squalor and inverted snobbery. My mum still lives like that although my dad passed away 15 years ago. I think he damaged her, in that she was the one that worked full time and did everything for four kids and everything she tried to do to improve our quality of living....he destroyed. I'll never forget the look on her face when she came home from work to see the hall, stairs and landing that she'd recently papered and painted had been stripped off and covered with a wipe clean plastic sticky back thing called 'fablon'. She never said a word because he would have beaten seven sacks out of her.

I'm one of four girls and we all live in immaculate homes. I'm medicated for OCD.

I grew up in a house that was and still is always tidy but often very dirty. Strange mixture. My own place is a bit messier on occasion but always a lot cleaner. It was a happy loving house I grew up in though and I’m very grateful for that.

A friend of mine when we were at schools house was BAD like really really bad, it was a pre fabricated type bungalow on a farm and they had a couple of huge hairy dogs and it was FILTHY and falling apart. We’re now in our mid 30’s and whilst hers is a regular council house it’s filthy and messy too. That’s her normal 🤷‍♀️
My house was always immaculate as a child and I feel as though I’m lazy compared to my mum and could never live up to her standards now in my own home. She never ever openly judges but it’s ingrained in me, her standards are mine and I just can’t achieve that, between work, 2 young boys and a fairly large house il never live up. My house is clean and tidy but I don’t get chance to deep clean, inside cupboards and the extractor hood for example never get done 😩

Same, OP.

I did. I am very minimal in my ornaments etc. But still am a bit "scruffy"

Where I grew up was quite messy, though not as bad as yours. It was basically clean but there was quite a lot of clutter around, and my parents didn't believe in things like ironing or vacuuming every day. I thought it was great, because it meant they had such more time to do things with us, and even now that we've left home they still lead very full lives because they don't devote much time to housework.

I have friends who grew up in immaculately clean and tidy houses who say it was utterly miserable, because their mum (and it was virtually always the mum) spent so much time tidying, hoovering, washing, washing floors, ironing, dusting etc that she had no time for them. They were made to feel constantly guilty for things like spending time on their homework, because it meant they weren't tidying up or cleaning things. One of mine was saying the main thing she could remember about her child hood was her mother washing the kitchen floor twice a day every day even when no-one had been in there all day: she thought it was dreadfully sad that basically all her mother had to show for her life was years washing the same bit of floor which no-one actually cared about.

So I'm continuing in the proud tradition of prioritising time spent with my family and friends over housework, and we're all very happy with that carrying on basically for ever.

Gosh yes I can relate to this, my mum passed away when I was 10 and everything went to shit, the house was so dirty, mould on the walls, dirty floors, my dad smoked in the house and was old school, I grow up in actual poverty. When i reflect back it’s shocking, I was so embarrassed, my friends homes were all beautiful.
and my home is almost constantly immaculate. Always smells nice. Im almost obsessed with keeping it super clean. I think so my children can reflect back on having a comfortable clean home to live in. That’s so important. I think providing that for our kids is winning the lotto in life x