To think that living in a very messy house does impact on children

[HeatingOnInJuly]

I was thinking of this based on the "small ways your parents fucked you up" thread so it kind of stems from that

My parent's house was very messy - they would say it was normal family clutter, and that it was cosy and lived in, but I'm not sure I've ever been in a house quite like it since, so I think it must have been unusually messy

Door handles would fall off and were never fixed, ancient carpets would be ripped up and the floor would be left, bare cement, for months. Piles of washing everywhere. Nappies bagged and left on the floor for days, though they made it to the bin eventually. Kitchen was frankly dirty, with sides invisible due to stuff being piled on. Nobody ever put anything away after it was used, it would just be left. I didn't realise until well into adult hood that people would immediately put something back where it belonged after use, as a matter of course, everything from bottle opener to hoover was just left. Never sat at dining table due to being piled high with shit. Never taught how to do any chores or how to clean properly and manage laundry. Cupboards unusable as they were so jammed full of stuff. The furniture itself was good quality - plenty of art on the walls, sofas were expensive, good carpets when we had it - so I think this meant it passed as arty and bohemian but actually it was a tip

Never any clean uniform or Games kit which led to detentions at school. Yelled at for losing things when things inevitably got lost the minute they were set down. Difficult to study as the rooms were kept dark with the curtains closed. We were always late because of things getting mislaid. Clothes never hung up, just picked from a communal pile that lived in a walk in closet.

Friends would have been welcome, but by the age of about 8 I was too embarrassed to invite them,but of course I couldn't tell my parents that so I made excuses.

Parents had good jobs and were comfortably off, they just couldn't be bothered to clean or tidy as there was always something they'd rather be doing.

They insisted until they were blue in the face that it didn't matter, that life was too short to waste cleaning, that sort of thing, but actually all it resulted in was a dishevelled childhood where everything seemed out of control and chaotic. If I'd told them that the house was embarrassing they just would have laughed at me.

When I moved out and had my first child, I did what I knew and for about a year or two my flat was a mess. I didn't know how to keep things clean and organised, and I read things like that "dust if you must" poem that floats around and ignored 99% of housework because I was spending time with my child. But then I noticed the same thing happening especially when nursery started, being late because everything was lying everywhere or no clothes were washed or dry, "losing"new clothes or toys in the mess and only finding them once they were outgrown.... It made me realise that while obviously there's no need to go to extremes and scrub your loo with bleach and a toothbrush every day, there's a reason why being reasonably clean and tidy is seen as a desirable life skill. I had to teach myself how to manage a home and to do the most basic tasks thanks to the Internet

The state of my childhood home had a really negative effect on me, and I could see the same thing happening with my own child. no it's not neglect or abuse, but when your house is so messy that it's not a pleasant or comfortable place to be, or when the mess is causing regular stress and impacting on other ordinary bits of life, then your child probably would quite like you to do a bit of cleaning rather than a craft activity with them, certainly once they're a bit older. I think people are really fooling themselves if they think that level of mess doesn't impact on their children

[roxfox]

Food for thought! Thanks everyone for sharing

[LadyPrigsbottom]

How awful @isabellerossignol . I'm so sorry. I agree btw, that must be a lot worse in some ways for the people around her than it is for her .

[FudgeBrownie2019]

I can't cope when there's clutter and mess. I've tried, I've let things go for a few days and it genuinely upsets me to the point it impacts on my mood, my sleep, my stress levels. I'm certain it's because of homes I lived in as a child (I grew up in foster care for ten years).

We had a new kitchen put in a few years ago that needed some significant building work at the same time. I moved out with the DC to a hotel for a fortnight. It was bliss and I coped with everything, juggling work, school, the usual stuff, but wasn't frantically hoovering and dusting brick dirt every ten minutes the way I would have been if I'd been at home. I'm certain the DC will look back and realise what an absolute tool I am, needing to leave the house when renovations happen, but for my own sanity it had to happen.

[HowLongCanICallitBabyWeight]

I think there's a happy medium, I agree the level of chaos you describe definitely will have had a negative impact, but so does sitting a child in front of a TV/in a bouncer/playpen for hours every single day because your home must be spotless and instagrammed, or not allowing more than one toy or any messy play at all for fear of things/clothes being dirty.
I know more like the latter these days, but a good friend of mine grew up in a house like you describe and I was one of only two who ever saw inside her house, she was very well liked and popular but would always make excuses about having people over. She told me she was embarrassed and tried to clean but there was just too much to do that was beyond a 14/15 year old. Her dad has an MBE, people wouldn't have expected their house to be the way it was.

[tearskeepflowing]

Nuts that this is all being posted tonight. When I am in bed almost in tears trying to work out what to do with the mess!
I grew up in a messy lived in house, it was normal to me, but also embarrassing. Unfortunately it didn't make me a neat freak, and mess just seems to follow me around. I've decluttered and don't buy much new stuff now
I find it really hard to maintain a tidy house but also am filled with anxiety about a messy house, I honestly don't know where to start most days. My dd is just as bad and the near tears is because she wouldn't sort out any of her stuff and said why should she when they rest of the house is messy. (The mess in the rest of the house is overspill from her bedroom!!!!!)
Thankfully my dh has finally realised that I'm not a stepford housewife and has started helping out a lot more.
And hopefully dd will improve too .....

[tearskeepflowing]

Nuts that this is all being posted tonight. When I am in bed almost in tears trying to work out what to do with the mess!
I grew up in a messy lived in house, it was normal to me, but also embarrassing. Unfortunately it didn't make me a neat freak, and mess just seems to follow me around. I've decluttered and don't buy much new stuff now
I find it really hard to maintain a tidy house but also am filled with anxiety about a messy house, I honestly don't know where to start most days. My dd is just as bad and the near tears is because she wouldn't sort out any of her stuff and said why should she when they rest of the house is messy. (The mess in the rest of the house is overspill from her bedroom!!!!!)
Thankfully my dh has finally realised that I'm not a stepford housewife and has started helping out a lot more.
And hopefully dd will improve too .....

[SarahAndQuack]

Yes, of course it has an impact.

My family home was both cluttered and messy, a bit like yours. What stays with me are the odd few times in my childhood a non-family adult would be invited into the home. Often, I'd be cleaning and they'd comment on how good I was, and my parents would either look surprised and agree, or swallow down obvious irritation. I constantly got into trouble for using j-cloths or cleaning spray.

At school I remember being teased for having tangled hair and messy clothes, and I must have smelt. When I was in my teens my mum washed my clothes once a week - I washed them in the sink more often, but usually with shampoo and I wasn't allowed anti-perspirant.

By the time I was in my late teens my parents had a mouse infestation and for years they denied it was an issue. My dad would leave food out, uncovered, then pick out the mouse droppings and say it was fine to eat. He still won't cover food or put it in the fridge.

It took for my rather fragile baby to get sick, for them to realise their fridge was a health hazard, and they did replace it. However, I visit my parents less often than I would like, because their house is so disgusting. Every time I visit, I realise how lovely it is to live somewhere clean. My house is by no means perfect - we live in the countryside and muddy boots on the kitchen lino are a reality; we don't always remember to dust as much as we should - but it is so, so wonderful to be able to walk about barefoot and know the floor is clean and nice and you won't stick to it. It makes me realise that as a child, I normalised that. I thought everyone's feet stuck to the kitchen floor, and everyone had a kitchen bin that stank and a fridge that smelled like rotten milk, and everyone's living room carpet was covered in dead flies and random spills.

I think it is abusive. Maybe not deliberately, but the effect is the same.

[LaurieMarlow]

Both extremes are bad.

But everyone’s different. Many people don’t need a very tidy house to relax or avoid anxiety.

I laugh at ‘tidy place, tidy mind’ though. Who wants a ‘tidy’ mind? The most creative and smart of my acquaintances definitely err on the messy side.

[MessAllOver]

I agree entirely. Kids need to be able to invite their friends over without being embarrassed. Otherwise, they miss an essential part of growing up which can have consequences for their confidence and social development.

There is clearly a happy medium, as pp have said. When (pre-lockdown) we would invite toddler friends over, the place would start tidy and then become absolutely trashed. I would have been mortified for any of our friends to be paranoid about dropping their coffee or children making a mess so they couldn't relax... Dark sofa colours and wooden floors are the way forward here! But, after they left, all the toys would be returned to their homes and the place hoovered up.

Also, can children (especially young children) really play if there is clutter everywhere? How do they dance or build a huge railway train or toy town if there isn't a tidy bit of floor anywhere for them?

[HowFastIsTooFast]

YANBU OP. My Mum was fairly slovenly when I was growing up. She was a young single parent who just didn't seem to give a shit about the house. It wasn't horrendous but messy, her cleaning wasn't up to much, laundry was neglected, food would go off, things didn't get fixed, cat would get fleas and she wouldn't ever sort it out and so on. I don't think I ever realised or was ashamed when I was a kid, but looking back now makes me cringe, especially when I think of the homes of some of my friends, and what they must have thought when they came to mine.

Still now she has a broken couch that she inherited over 20 years ago, and lives with the decor chosen by the people she bought the house from around the same time. She can well afford to do it up but all she's had done in that time is a new bathroom installed (I dread to think what the installers thought of the one they were ripping out) She's better than she used to be thanks to my Stepdad, but I don't stay with them when I visit any more, I can afford a hotel so I book one.

It also took me a long time after moving out to learn how to properly manage my home. I'm not exactly Mrs Hinch but I'd be appalled at a guest visiting and thinking I was lazy or dirty so I keep on top of things day to day and deep clean fairly regularly, and my future kids will hopefully grow up to follow suit.

[Guineapigbridge]

OP, I think in your mum and Dad's defence, cleaners weren't really that common in the 1970s and 1980s. People just didn't "get a cleaner". So it must've been harder to keep on top of it all if you weren't inclined to be tidy. Now there's less of an excuse, it doesn't cost much to hire a cleaner and it is not socially frowned-on like it used to be.

[AllsortsofAwkward]

My parents house wasnt tidy my mother worked and my father was a sahd. Table covered with my mothers stuff, kitchen cluttered shes alot a harder but won't accept cleaners.My nana was the opposite and a clean freak. I like to think I keep a clean and tidy house with 3 kids and we both work. I've cleaned my parents house since and it's got back to how it was. I just to have the energy to do her house aswell as maintain hers.

[JaniceWebster]

Kids are expected to tidy up at school from reception, if not earlier, and pretty much all of them are quite happy with that. They can tidy up at home just as well if you encourage them.

If you go to bed in a clean and tidy house, it doesn't take much to keep it up the next day. Maintaining a house you are happy with is so much easier and less time consuming!

[Italiangreyhound]

[SarahAndQuack]

I laugh at ‘tidy place, tidy mind’ though. Who wants a ‘tidy’ mind? The most creative and smart of my acquaintances definitely err on the messy side.

I do agree with you that it's possible to go too far into being 'tidy'. But I've never met anyone who's creative or smart, who lives in filth and chaos. I know a couple of people who lean heavily on the 'I'm a bohemian creative, me' story. But the truly creative people I know - the ones who actually make beautiful things as opposed to saying they want to make beautiful things - are disciplined and, yes, tidy. I know a fair few people who make a living from their creative work, so I'm not just stereotyping from one or two examples.

[HeatingOnInJuly]

Yes, the allergies - I forgot to even mention the coincidence of my asthma clearing up more or less for good once I moved out.

The overcompensating is something I do too. School supplies especially. I wouldn't say I hoard them because hoarding is my worst nightmare, but I'm a sort of school supply prepper? In that I'll always make sure they have two or three more rubbers or pencils than they'll ever need at one time. It's utterly mortifying to be the child always having to borrow a pencil or be told off for having no calculator. When you know it's not really your fault but don't have the words to explain why.

Sometimes I see posts on here and FB where parents joke about being a bit of a disorganised slummy mummy, bloggers who write funny posts about their chaotic morning, and while I KNOW it's just a bit of an over exaggerated jokey post about how hard parenting can be, and I KNOW the issue is with me and not them, I just cringe

[PuppyDogTales]

YANBU. I overcompensate too as a PP has said and my kids have everything they need, always ready, always to hand, I replace things when they get old, worn, broken or too small etc, the house is clean and tidy, we always know where the Selotape is and the scissors

[NetofLemons]

It very tricky in a partnership when one is keen to keep everything clean and tidy and the other hasn’t got the ‘eye’ for tidying and cleaning, of being non-cluttery, nor the sense of preferring to do so and of valuing an ordered space, because the parameters have been set at messy from an early age.

Also it’s not a given that non-tidying up families ‘spend more time with their kids instead’- sometimes IME there are mental health reasons, or extra time being spent on paid work or voluntary work, instead of tidying up.

[Fawnandwren]

DSIL has had a new baby we went round the other week and the house is a mess (was always messy and dirty before the baby as well) I can't feel comfortable in mess and dirt so I put everything in the dishwasher, spritzed and wiped all the surfaces down, laid the table for the take away, took me 2 minutes. Noone is ever that busy, just lazy and dirty. I don't invite people to my house for them to clean no that's my job, but I can't relax in a dirty home. My mother is the same, as was my grandmother.

[HeatingOnInJuly]

Isabellerossignkl that's so so sad. You must have felt so helpless. I hope you can still have some connection with the children, even just news?

[Happydinosaur53]

I have to disagree with you. It is abuse/neglect. It sounds like you went without basic needs such as clean clothes or a safe and clean environment to live.

[JaniceWebster]

Also it’s not a given that non-tidying up families ‘spend more time with their kids instead’

I'd argue that it's actually the opposite! Wasting half your life running after paperwork, frantically searching for missing documents/shoes/clothes/keys/phone and everything, being late to provide whatever is being asked by the school, is not having an enjoyable family life.

[thepeopleversuswork]

That sounds very difficult and actually bordering on neglect. I struggle to keep my house optimally tidy and I do have hoarding tendencies but I do think a basic level of order and cleanliness is important for children to feel safe.

I think the other end of the spectrum is pretty bad as well, though. Homes that are like showhomes make me feel anxious and stressed out and I think living somewhere you can't put a teaspoon down for half an hour without a bolloking would be horrendous.

[isabellerossignol]

@HeatingOnInJuly

Isabellerossignkl that's so so sad. You must have felt so helpless. I hope you can still have some connection with the children, even just news?

Yes, I do, thanks. They are adults now and are in contact with their mother too. There is love between them, but irreparable damage too.

It's very sad actually, there is little help available for hoarding disorders. I'm not sure if that's because no one has yet developed a treatment plan, or because the severity of the situation isn't recognised. But sending a social worker round once a month to sit in the kitchen and demand that the patient washes the dishes before to hey will leave definitely isn't a helpful treatment.

[HowFastIsTooFast]

That's true @NetofLemons. It must be very hard when each half of a couple have a different attitude to mess and cleanliness, like a constant tug of war.

Not long after DP moved in with me I was lamenting that my small kitchen & poorly organised storage means I needed to have more stuff out on the surfaces than I'd like, at which he declared that it also grated him (although he'd never have said unprompted as it's my flat) We then spent a happy evening together totally reorganising the entire room and researching storage solutions to solve problems. That might have been the day I realised he was a keeper