So bear with me, please, this is very long but I want to include as much detail as possible.
I have a friend of many years, let's call her Amy, in her 30s who’s a single parent to three girls aged 3, 5 and 6. Amy and her ex husband split up amicably when she was pregnant with the youngest. The kids go to their dad’s house one night a week and every other weekend and slightly over half of the school holidays. Otherwise they are at home with Amy. Amy works school hours and Saturday mornings from home - she has a computer in the box room set up for this. The girls share the biggest bedroom and Amy is in the medium bedroom. Also in the house are one bathroom, a small kitchen and a living room. There's a table, supposedly for eating at, in the living room. Usually when she's working the girls are at school but on every second Saturday morning they're watching TV/playing on tablets and helping themselves to any snacks or drinks they need while Amy works.
Money isn't abundant but there's enough to pay bills, food, clothes etc and also have a few extras for toys, outings, favourite foods etc. Amy and the girls are mutually affectionate and loving. I'd say they have a lovely bond.
So that's the context. This is the issue. Amy's house is really bad. By arrangement I visit every Thursday morning for a half hour catch-up - Amy takes an early lunch break and we sit and chat. Over the months I noticed that things were getting more and more cluttered and grubby each week but lately it's struck me that I think it's crossed a line. To sit on the sofa, which is a cloth sofa thoroughly stained with juice and food spills, you have to move armfuls of laundry. Some of the laundry is clean, some is dirty but there's no attempt to keep them separate or really keep track of which is which. Amy says to put the laundry on the floor to make room to sit down but the floor is dirty carpet covered in crumbs and hairs and grit and general lack of vacuuming. Vacuuming would be a problem because the floor is cluttered with toys, skateboards, the box for a huge trampoline which the girls got for Christmas but which hasn't been put up yet, and a huge Barbie dollhouse. I'm not sure there’s room to put the trampoline up because the back yard is full of bikes, scooters, a broken bed and one of those Eglu hen pens for their pet chickens.
I decline offers of drinks/food because there are never any clean mugs or plates and Amy will go through to the kitchen to wash some but to do so she'll need to take dirty pans out of the sink and then she won't be able to put the pans on the work surface cos it's covered in food boxes and wet laundry that needs to go in the dryer but there's already clothes in the dryer that she'll need to empty the dryer but all the laundry baskets are already full on the kitchen floor so she throws those clean, dried clothes onto the sofa and then there's nowhere to sit etc etc. You get the idea. No simple domestic action can be performed without dealing with a whole other logjam of domestic actions.
The table to the side of the lounge that's meant for eating at has paperwork and school bags and colouring books and last years uneaten Easter eggs, still boxed!, all over it and the chairs have laundry on them so nobody can sit there. The kids lie on the floor to watch TV and usually sit wherever they can to eat. A lot of food is delivered takeaway - I think because it's so daunting to start to find clean plates and cutlery and pans etc. They also all eat a lot of fruit and raw vegetables. I've never known kids who like munching on a carrot as much as these three.
I don't know what upstairs is like but the stairs up are unvacuumed and have things (books, laundry, shoes) at the sides of every tread.
So to ward off the inevitable questions:
- Yes, I have offered to help tidy, clean and sort. Several times. But Amy says she wants to chat when I visit, not do any housework. I've also said that I could come round for a couple of hours one of the weekends the girls are with their dad but she refuses. ‘I’ll get round to it soon.’ I have a lot of pressures on my own time and kids of my own so can't offer much in the way of practical assistance.
- Yes, I have explicitly told her that things need to be cleaner and tidier. She laughs it off while agreeing with me.
- No, she couldn't afford a cleaner. And also a cleaner wouldn't be able to start cleaning due to the clutter.
- No, I don't think Amy is depressed. She's a very cheerful, hilarious, upbeat person who brings sunshine to my life.
- Yes, I think she might have ADHD. No, I am not a doctor so this is not a formal diagnosis.
- Yes, I'm worried about the kids. They're always clean and tidy looking in their personal appearance so I don't have worries about their personal appearance but I know they have, for instance, missed out on PE at school because a gym kit couldn't be found in time that morning. I suspect Amy fairly often will just buy the kids new clothes rather than trying to get a grasp of the laundry backlog, which obviously then adds to the clutter. This way of living isn't sustainable for them.
- Yes I am doubtless a nosy bastard and bad friend for posting this here.
So how worrying is this situation? The kids are bubbly and ebullient and clean when I see them which admittedly isn't all that often, probably once a month or so when I'm picking the middle one up on a Sunday to take to Junior Parkrun with my son. Amy seems pretty content with her life. But there isn't any sign that she's going to want to arrest the ever increasing clutter and grubbiness. What should I do?
What's prompted me to ask now is that yesterday when I arrived with two takeaway coffees and some cookies for us to share (this is my way of pre-empting being offered a cuppa - see above) I noticed that the Costa cups and paper bag from last weeks catch-up snacks were still on the trampoline box which seems to have become a kind of informal seat/coffee table in the living room. Also on the box were several Barbies, a clean potty, a slightly muddy egg from one of the hens, the inevitable clutch of laundry and a pile of paperwork and I thought: this has, I think, crossed a line.
What would you do if anything? Thanks.