To want to know what they mean by "horribly messy"

[MrsPreston11]

Just had the plumber leave mine, I always offer workmen a cup of tea and while he was finishing it he thanked me a lot saying he didn't get offered a cup the job before, but he was sort of grateful as the house was so bad.

On another occasion someone who works for a letting agent said I wouldn't believe some of the things she sees (school mum who I'm not friends with but we were having sort of a group conversation waiting to be let in, so I couldn't pry)

Now my brain is going crazy wondering what these people see on a daily basis. I mean I've seen those shows abut hoarders etc, but assume that's very rare.

Any of you in these lines of work? I want to know what it is folks who get to go to lots of homes see!! (Pure perverse nosiness on my part)

My Mum works for SS and some of the sights she's seen is hard to even imagine. Some people just live in a hole. A hole with used sanitary products, used condoms, and mould just laying around like it's the norm.

My dad worked for the council and was sent to some awful houses, this bathtubs full of excrement....

We bought a house to do up and there was cat shit and piss everywhere, walls yellow with nicotine... you wouldn't believe how some people live.

*think not this

I’m a landlord and over the years I’ve had a couple of properties left in a state that would make you sick 😷 absolutely disgusting.

I’ve a friend that is a social worker and some of the sights she’s seen.

Sometimes I think it’s unfortunately down to lack of knowledge or education as we do learn things like how to be clean from our parents. In other cases some people are just manky

Jesus, how very sad and scary. You wouldn't think it was that common though.

Makes you stop and think about the smelly kid in class etc, what hope do they have. :(

Our Visiting officer would never sit down in many of the houses she visited as "you could never be sure what you were sitting on".

Ive gone to some houses helping out my dad. One I recall, was terribly messy, post building up around the door, and packets of meat rotting. We reported it to the council, as it was an elderly resident, and they didnt really want to know as we weren't relatives

Sometimes i think people cant help it, their condition(s), mental health or capability doesnt allow. Others are just manky. I think everyone at uni had at least one housemate in their time that hoarded dirty plates and cups, and cleared several bin bags out at the end of term
...
You can tell the difference between clean but untidy vs. Never cleans though.

DH is a plumber and he too has faced the bathtub full of human waste - the toilet was blocked (not that it stopped anyone using it til it was full to the rim) so the family proceeded to shit in bin bags and throw them in the bath. Only once that was full did they ring the HA to get a plumber out! This is also not the worst story

I used to work in housing and also as police staff. Houses missing floor boards as they've been burned on the fire, overflowing loos, houses where it took a week to clear (just about with a pitchfork), rotting floors, due to urine around the loo, gerbils running around food on the table, animal shit everywhere, drugs paraphernalia lying around, dirty nappies piled up, food left to rot in the fridge for months...

My oh Used to be a plumber and seen some awful sights quite regularly - he used to do some social housing contracts for vulnerable people and sadly I think some people just got overwhelmed and they weren’t able to access support. One time he took the front of a boiler and there were cockroaches inside he said the family were very blasé about it but he was freaking out.

I brought DS to a child's birthday party at his home a few years back. I didn't really want to go as his mum is a very intense woman who doesn't respect personal space and I find very tiring to be around, but I knew on the grapevine that everyone else had turned down the invitation and I felt awful for the child having no-one go to his party.

The house was so, so bad. I'm a naturally messy person myself so I don't have very high standards. But this wasn't mess or even a bit of dirt, it was in a state I'd consider unlivable. There were piles of stuff, dirty clothes, clean(ish) clothes, toys, broken toys, household rubbish, used nappies etc on most surfaces. Boxes of the same collection of 'stuff' piled floor to ceiling in some rooms. Bags of rubbish all over the place. the walls were filthy, especially the walls near bins where over the years sloppy rubbish had obviously been thrown in the direction of the bin, hit the wall and slid down it leave a splat and trail of slop. The bins themselves were thick with dirt. And obviously the carpets and seating was filthy as you can't clean anything in that kind of mess. It was horrendous. While we were there the mum explained that their landlord had been around for an inspection a few days before which worked out well as it meant the house was so tidy for the party.

DS has other friends who I learned live similarly when we went to visit them. The day before I was due to come she text to say she was really busy and hadn't much chance to clean up. I text back not to worry about cleaning for me as I'm used to my own mess. But when I got there I just wanted to leave. The toilets were filthy - to the point of having caked on poo all over them. A lot of the doors couldn't be used as there were so many piles of stuff, mainly rubbish, up against them. Most of the floor space was covered in rubbish. The fireplace was overflowing with household rubbish and smelled of urine as when the toddler peed on the floor it was wiped up with kitchen roll and thrown in. The couch upholstery and chair covers were filthy and ripped apart. The walls and doors had scrawls painted all over. The ripped materials and painted walls were done by the children, who were 'free to express themselves'. The house was rented and it's the first time I've ever felt intensely sorry for a landlord as those walls and furniture were his.

In both cases the children are struggling to make and keep friends. They have learned really poor social skills. The first mother encourages the kids to take what they want and behave awfully in other people's homes. She herself is unpleasantly entitled but I honestly don't think she knows she is being that way and I her children are now learning the same behaviour. The second is very aware and intelligent but incredibly defensive of any perceived slight, babies the younger kids too much while putting way too much responsibility on the oldest, who is old enough to be gaining an awareness that his home isn't very nice. It's really, really awful. Both families have had social services involved but so far very little action as been taken. I don't know what the solution is, tbh. It's very, very sad.

Went to view a house that was for sale. The price seemed amazing for the size. The owner was confined to one room on the ground floor due to ill health. The rest of her family (kids and grandkids) had taken over the rest of the house. The place was filthy. Rubbish everywhere. Floors black. There were guinea pigs loose in the kitchen and they had pooed everywhere.
The garden was full of dog poo and they had clearly had a party as the garden had empty bottles and cans all over the lawn. The maddest bit was where they had taken the garden trampoline out of the hole it was sunken into, filled the hole with water (which then went muddy) and put some plastic sheeting down and covered it in baby oil (I know because the empty bottle was also on the grass) and used it as a water slide. I wonder what it would look like if they weren't having viewings!

How terribly sad :(

Now this is making me wonder about DDs friend who always comes to play at ours but the mum has never had DD to theirs, even with 2 years of the girls asking.....

They look like very clean, reasonable people though....so maybe I'm just giving it too much though.

I viewed a house to buy many years ago, wondering why it was so cheap.

I had a heavy cold that day and couldn't smell a thing. The house was fairly empty apart from four big dogs and their disabled owner.

I bought the house for a knockdown price only to discover the smell.

Rotting dog faeces in the carpets and heavy smoke smell everywhere. It was grim. The small back garden was just mud, or so I thought. It was dog poo, quite revolting and churned up by the four big dogs. Poor things, I'm guessing they didn't get walked much.

I think I was the only person the estate agent ever got through the door. The smell was unbearable.

When I first left home at 16 I hung out with some rather undesirable people to say the least... Some flats had no toilet seat, excrement all over the basins, bluebottles flying around rotting food left on the side, washing up piled high, cigarette butts, alcohol cans and drug paraphernalia all over the floors and every work surface. The stench was unbearable. The worst one was a middle aged man who had a toddler he had regular access to. The kid was often just dumped in his travel cot while everyone smoked around him (I always refused to, would open the windows and felt so so bad for the kid but was 16 and felt powerless.) Another guy had a staffy he just left locked in his tiny kitchen. I felt so bad for it I offered to walk it every day. People live like this and seemingly don’t give a second thought to it.

Luckily I only lived among those people for a couple of months before escaping. It was truly eye opening.

My mum’s partner’s DD lives similarly. She is early twenties, has one DS that’s around three and she has a take away every night but rarely throws the packaging away so it’s just piled up high all over the kitchen. Likewise there’s clothes strewn all over, if her DS runs out of clean clothes she just buys more rather than washing them. Really atrocious.

my standards have dropped since getting a landlord kicking - if there isn't food smeared up the walls and into the carpets, if the cooker has been cleaned in the last year and if there isn't rubbish ankle deep I think it reasonably tidy.

strangely the one thing that was clean was the toilet. TFFT. And yes, we were told that we got away very lightly.

in the normal world - I have a friend with sort of hoarding tendencies, but no worries about accepting food or drink and this person is always clean themselves.

I was a smelly kid in class and believe me my ‘home’ was horribly messy, you couldn’t see the floor in the kitchen, hall, anywhere actually. My SW did comment on my LAC file that it was the worst house she had been in, I didn’t know any different at the time and when I did I tried my hardest to clean but it was a loosing battle. It has made me a tad over the top with cleaning but I’ve slightly relaxed now, I will allow people to sit on my cushions on my sofa without fixing them obsessively

You never know what goes on behind closed doors

Working as a SW, I had one family that I always visited last, so that I could go straight home, drop all my clothes into the previously prepared bucket of disinfectant by the door and dash into the shower. It was truly grim.

We used to say we were going on a "feet will stick to the carpet" visit.

Years ago (10 years+) I met a new friend and her children at a park the other side of town. It started to rain and she said I could wait at hers until my bus came (had a 3 year ok and newborn). It was awful really bad and I made the mistake of sitting on the sofa in my white trousers. It felt damp and it wasn't until I got home did I realise I had a big brown patch on them!
Same with dh grandparents, they don't own a vacuum and have a dog, they have had the same carpet down for over 30 years. I haven't visited them since having children. It was so bad and they never opened a window plus kept the fire on full all year. I couldn't breathe after 30 mins in there. To make matters worse the grandmother was on oxygen 24/7. I felt like I would need oxygen if I lived there.

what a lot of terrible stories. In a world where a billion don't have a toilet - entitled fortunate people treat homes like this. Disgusting.

DH is a painter and decorator and he did a house where three of the residents smoked and he said the walls were BROWN and greasy....he said it absolutely stank to high heaven.

A friend is a landlady, and recently evicted a family who'd lived in her house for 7 months (and never paid a penny rent, hence the eviction).
I went with her once they'd left, as she wasn't sure if they'd have actually gone.
The place was filthy. The walls were black, carpets were all mouldy, there were dirty nappies everywhere, broken toys, dirty kids clothes, the kitchen cupboard doors were hanging off, worktop were warped, the bath had a huge hole in it, the toilet was caked in poo, along with the floor round the toilet.
I've honestly never seen such a mess, and the tenant had the cheek to say she'd cleaned!
It cost my friend over £10000 to get the house back to a reasonable condition, and now shes selling up as she can't afford it anymore.
The tenants have 3 small children, and have had ss involvement for a long time. (Small village, everyone knows everyone else's business).
The tenant now has a lovely council house, and the neighbours are complaining about the smell.

I have a family member who is always immaculately dressed in designer gear as is the whole family. All well educated, Holiday regularly, like nice things etc but their house is grim. The house a nice house in a desirable area with all the latest gadgets but I dont think anyone has wiped a worktop in months.
If they have visitors stuff is chucked in cupboards and the hoover might get an outing but it’s still pretty mucky.
They spent thousands on new bathrooms last year but within weeks the toilets were so filthy you wouldn’t want to use them.
He won’t clean so neither will she and they’ve been in a deadlock for years. Could easily afford a cleaner too but can’t/won’t as they would have to pick things up first
The kids get a shock here when I make them help clear the table and put things in the bin instead of throwing them On the floor
Not as bad as some on here but still awful

DH often mentioned residences he’d been to at work (police) where he’d feel like wiping his feet upon leaving