to think everyone has become obsessed with cleanliness

[palamino]

i have been reading other threads, eg frequency of changing towels/pyjamas/sheets, frequency of cleaning house/bathroom/toys. I must be a complete slob, towels changed weekly, pyjamas changed weekly, sheets every 2-3 weeks, house cleaned once a week. I don't squirt everywhere with disinfectant multiple times each day, if food drops on the floor briefly I would not automatically throw it away, and I have never minded the DCs getting mucky. We are the most healthy family i know, the house never looks dirty or untidy (apart from teenagers rooms-i just shut their doors!!), i am definitely not into this obsessive cleaning lark !!

I think it is other people who think they are bonkers- they think it normal!

Maybe only one kid wears pj's.. maybe the older and man just wear duds for bed.

Not everyone wears pjs for bed.

Even one kid and 7 pairs of pyjamas a week is bonkers!

Making a kid put dirty pjs back on doesn't compute in my head.. poor buggers

It's child abuse ffs

I x posted there.

I was joking that the 7 pairs of PJs is abusive. Since some people would probably say that on here

I got that bizarre stuff this thread alone.

I do find Mumsnet obsessed with housework - it is one of the many things that goes over my head and makes me suspect I am not a 'real woman' (I am also not curvy & don't want to go on spa days).

I am lucky that my DH has higher standards than me & does most of the housework, otherwise we would live in a shit tip.

When the kids were little, I worked less hours so had to pull my weight more. Hallelujah, I have just secured a fab FT job with a commute. DH is happy to stay on reduced hours & take up the slack in the house so I have a cast iron excuse to swerve the endless groundhog days of keeping a house clean.

I do think some people quite like housework - my DH plays the martyr on occasion, but I know he finds it relaxing and prefers it to the hurly burly of corporate life. I hate it & would rather work outside the home times a million.

Notice that I am not putting a value judgement on either of us - we are both equally wonderful. But if you quite enjoy a wee scrub, the whole housework thing will seem very different than to those of us who loath it. But as long as it gets done to the people in houses satisfaction, then who cares? 'Let go, let it goooo'.

Yes. You can enjoy a clean house without this being some outer manifestation of deep inner turmoil or a sign of child neglect and poor priorities.

MrsDeVere sitting under a tree etc did make me laugh

I suspect there are more of us more alike than some are letting on with regard to cleaning - there will be a huge swathe of people right in the middle just beavering away on and off keeping their houses up together.

However, if the 7 pairs of PJ's per person on a holiday (or 4 pairs and finding a laundrette) is correct - now THAT I can't understand. I used to take one pair for my DC's. If they got grubby, they slept in their pants shock hooror! Life's too short. Holidays are meant to be just that - a rest.

My mum was obsessive with cleaning. It was her way of trying to bring some order into her life when living with my sociopathic father.

It was a pain at times. I couldn't put down a cup without her taking it away to wash up and if I dropped a crumb she would be there picking it up. The house was immaculate and it took over her life.

When she left my dad she still continued to clean obsessively but now at the age of almost 60 she has managed to let things go. We would never leave the house until she felt it was clean enough and she would wake up at 6.00am so she could spend an hour cleaning before we woke up when in fact, nothing needed cleaning as it was all done the night before. I believe she sat down at night to relax about 9.00pm and she was a SAHM. We are very very close and she was a great mother who I could talk to about anything, the conversations always happened while she was cleaning; although that never bothered me. Her taking things away while I was still using them did.

I moved out when I was 17 and became a slob. And I am not kidding. I moved here and became quite obsessed about cleaning.. I now think I strike a decent balance between the two. I have areas of the house that need a clean, but on the whole it is hygienic enough.

I feel like I spend loads of time on housework, but it's still always a mess.

My friend is obsessive about cleanliness and order...she has been from a young age. Her house is absolutely immaculate, but she doesn't get freaked out if she visits someone with a messy house. She's not afraid of germs, but suffers from anxiety. It's exhausting to watch, but she really can't help it. She still has a very full and fun filled life. I try and learn from her, but I useless at being tidy...

I do think it has a huge bearing on how your parents were and that means it will affect our DC's. Obsessive cleaning can turn a child into an untidy messy adult. And vice versa... slobby houses often mean the child becomes ultra clean with their house.

i hoover every day, other than that i just have a general tidy, shove bleach down the loo, everything else is done once a week. I think you can clean too much. I have a friend with a very clean house, she cleans every day, no clutter, everything spotless and smelling of bleach. They seem to get every illness going around.

The tidier my house is the happier I feel. Actually I don't feel like I'm myself when my house is a mess and im a mess I feel a mess.

I wash dishes every evening, I sweep the floor or hoover every evening, the bath is cleaned daily and the sinks. I tidy up the living room and plump cushions wipe down coffee and dining table before I go to bed. I spend maximum half hour every day on cleaning. Oh I also make beds and wash up breakfast every morning before I do school run and go to work and usually a load of washing a day, this is not excessive I only have two sets of uniform and work 5 days, it would be very unhygienic to re wear my uniform.

I polish, do glass tables and mirrors, mop, water plants, change beds, hoover sofa, wipe kitchen cupboards, wipe fridge ect ect on a Friday night or Saturday morning. My house is lovely, clean and comfortable and it's usually at mine my group of friends congregate.

I also do the weeks ironing on a Sunday afternoon and any batch cooking to make life in the week less manic. Basically I'm lazy I hate running around and doing things last minute so anything I can do to make my life easier and give me more time in bed reading I do.

I couldn't live in a shit hole but I don't judge anyone who does and it wouldn't effect a friendship.

I wonder if there is some relationship between education/professional status /social background and the value you place on a clean house/housework.

One or two posters have suggested that devaluing housework is a kind of snobby superiority.

Certainly I'm aware that in some traditional working class communities all sorts of judgmental words - slut/slattern etc - were used against women who didn't keep the home up to scratch. And perhaps in an era when manual labour meant that clothes were filfthy, and there were lice, bedbugs, etc - the consequences of not laundering, scrubbing etc were both highly visible and more serious. Perhaps this attitude has carried on into an age when supposed labour-saving devices, cleaner working conditions etc mean there isn't the same need to scrub and polish.

There's less of a tradition - going back a couple of generations - of middle class women cleaning, because they employed domestic help to do this for them. Their worth/goodness wasn't defined by their personl domestic labour in the same way.

So if you place less value on cleaning and a clean home, it doesn't necessarily make you a snob. It can simply mean that your background has given you a different outlook on life.

I actually agree Marianne. I have always thought this.

I am glad a lot of people are obsessed with cleanliness as it is the foundation of my business! Hehe!

We used to be obsessed with cleanliness and how our own home looked but, as our cleaning business grows and we work around the clock we are having to drop our obsessions one by one! Oh the irony - I consider myself cured of all my own personal hang-ups but hubby not so much, he is getting there though we just had to be forced to drop certain 'issues' through lack of time!

Whenever we hire a new cleaning employee they are obviously house-proud at home by vitue of them wanting this kind of job and two thing happen in this order - firstly they train with us and learn all about our products and tips and professional cleaning standards then they get super obsessed with their own home as they try out all this at home! Next step we fill up their schedule with work and they are working full-time cleaning for us, they are forced to neglect their routines at home due to cleaning for others all day! I say 'welcome to our world!' find it so funny it happens EVERY single time!

Can't figure out how to use smiley here but 'GRIN'

Would having a clean house really mean that families would be more likely to catch colds, chickenpox etc? I can see hoe being too sterile could lead to more stomach bugs under certain circumstances, but I can't understand how living in a clean house would make you catch "every illness going around"

The winter vomiting bug is a virus so what difference would living in a super clean house make?

I'm not a scientist so I'm prepared to be corrected.

It is just folklore , isn't it?

We lived in a ver clean house. My mum washed floors every day, toilets 3 times a day, bathroom daily, and bleached kitchen daily.

All towels and bedding in boil wash.

We did not succumb to terrible bugs. Rather the opposite.

One aeria of clean-freakery I adhere to is when it comes to food hygiene.

Can't be too careful with raw meat.

Area

Wtf is aeria?!

I think there is just a tendency for frustration with people who feel the need to be super clean. If people like new towels every time and can afford it, that's fine. It's just if people really think that it's necessary for health and wellness it's frustrating so - people being 'super clean' because they like it and it relieves their anxiety - not frustrating, people who say that 'eugh you've rubbed off skin cells with it - minging, you need to wash it', slightly frustrating - we are really not that gross - a few dead skin cells won't hurt anyone unless you have really severe allergies or something. The levels of cleanliness you need to abide by to remain sanitary are really not very high at all in this day and age of sanitised water systems, and understanding of basic food hygiene and hand washing.

So you must be uneducated if you like a clean house?

Ok will give back degree then

fanjo that's not what I was saying at all :S I was just trying to propose a theory as to why this topic gets so fraught!