AIBU, to think these pictures were staged

[60sbird]

Would anyone actually allow their children to make a mess like this, I know I wouldn’t
metro.co.uk/2020/10/05/these-are-the-uks-messiest-bedrooms-of-2020-13371611/

I doubt they’re staged unfortunately.

The ones with young children’s I can understand. I’m often putting things away for it all to be pulled out and thrown across the floor 5 minutes later.

All the others though... My siblings and I lived like this throughout our childhood as we had parents with significant MH problems and were to some extent neglected. I maintain today as an adult that we should have had SS involvement. The house was unhygienic and at the worst times barely liveable although I do remember times where it was perfectly ordinary and acceptable which fits with the pattern of MH of my parents. The worst part is that we never really learned how to keep a house and live appropriately. I’ve had to work very hard on it but my siblings have really suffered and find it terribly hard.

My friend’s parents lived in a super messy house, not quite this level but piles of stuff on every surface, on the floor, super dusty etc. Some people just don’t care. She’s now a very clean and tidy adult!

I have been into so many homes where you have to gently shuffle your feet forward through the rubbish on the floor to get to the human being in the room.

Awful I would not cope with that kind of mess I would have a nervous break down being faced with that.

I once lived with someone whose room was like this. Couldn't get his door open properly thanks to all the crap all over the floor. Smelled funky too. Just gross....

They look staged to me, too.

My 9yr old daughter is extremely untidy, her room often looks like some of the kids rooms in this article and it really doesn't take long for it to end up that way. She likes to play make-believe and this apparently requires her to empty her dressing-up box, clothes out of her drawers and wardrobe, blankets, books and toys and to spread these things around the house. She will then use every excuse in the book not to tidy up after herself, its a constant battle between us, she even flumped down to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and threatened to kill herself once when I told her she needed to tidy her room. At the start of lockdown I spent 6hrs one day cleaning out her room, scrubbing crayon off the walls, fishing out books and clothes from under the bed, I had to empty out her toy boxes because as well as toys they were also full of dirty socks, snotty tissues, crisp packets and glitter. She had taken the wax from Babybels and smooshed it into the carpet and furniture. Then towards the end of lockdown I had to spend another 3hrs tidying her room because she'd wrecked it again. I've tried everything to get her to keep her room tidy, I can't stand mess. She's desperate to get pocket money, I've been saying for 2yrs now that I'm happy to give her pocket money if she keeps her room tidy, she hasn't been given a penny yet. She is just an absolute whirlwind of chaos and destruction.

@ClementineWoolysocks

Why is this shit being rewarded?

I daresay the parents of teens are hoping to shame them into cleaning up after themselves.

That's way way beyond messy.
It's disgusting. People who exist like that need help and support to lift them out of that.
Sadly, it must be normal to them because if my house looked like that no way would I be sending photos of it to anyone.

These people need help, not a contest that gives them yet another item to add to the mess. The prize should be to get in professional cleaners to completely do a top to bottom declutter and deep clean.

My friends entire flat was worse than that.

To be fair mine looks like them at the moment due to my roof leaking and having to empty the wardrobe to sort it out!

My room looked like that as a child. I could hardly see the floor. Even if I did try and tidy there was no where to put anything. My parents bought us lots of toys and hated throwing anything out. So we just accumulated loads of clutter. I used to find it very stressful and wouldn't invite friends round as I was so embarrassed.

@TheRealJeanLouise

It sounds like you & I had very similar childhoods and I agree with you. Looking back on it, I wish social services had got involved. I was neglected, I feel no anger towards the parent as there were a lot of mental health issues involved but I had an awful childhood and I'm only realising as an adult how much it's affected me.

It makes me sad to see so many responses on this thread saying things like Nonsense. If every child with a messy room was investigated where would it stop? There are way way bigger problems out there.

Maybe so but it is a clear sign of neglect. If someone had investigated me based on a messy room many more serious problems would have been found and I could have been helped. As it is I just have to try not to think about the first 18 years of my life and let go of the bitterness I feel at being robbed of a childhood.

Mine looked like number 12 when I was a teenager.

It's spotless now.

I don’t think they are staged. I go into people’s houses and would say this is closer to the average (not saying it’s average) than the picture perfect instagram homes.
Whilst too much mess is obviously damaging. I do think the idea of the perfectly tidy home is also very damaging as it isolates people from each other.

Why would anyone think it was a good idea to have these rooms publicised? Horrible.

Not staged. Plenty of people live in shit tips and are willing to let the world see how they let their child live for a free bed.

I saw a video yesterday of a house after tenants had left it caked in cat shit and what looks like human shit with loads of junk and general rubbish. They were only in the house 10 months. Disgusting.

Considering some people have houses that looks like this, I TA believable. You can't see my sons floor at the moment, he has god know how many soft toys, and every time I tidy up he starts looking for stuff and empties everything on to the floor. He will only help me tidy up now and again, he has autism and I'm sure some sort of defiance disorder due to the way he react when I ask him to tidy up. I had uproar yesterday when I asked him to pick up craft stuff that he'd dropped on the kitchen floor!

I was also incidentally very depressed as a teenager (my parents divorced due my father's drug use when I was 11, I was moved to a new village just outside the city I had lived in away from all of my friends, went to a strict Catholic school not knowing anyone at all and missed the first three days of year 7, realising I was bisexual by the time I was about 12 and felt deeply ashamed and like there was something fundamentally wrong with me, raped at 13. Bullied by both and teachers. By 16 I was suicidal, self harming and smoking a lot of weed (self medicating in hindsight). I was hanging out with a few seriously shady people and regularly getting very drunk /high.

I left school and went to college. Found a new group of people who were just better people all round, escaped the bullying and the drugs and alcohol. Had some counselling with the college which made me realise I wasn't just an awful person and it wasn't all my fault, and that I deserved to be happy as much as anyone else. Met my dp.

My mental health skyrocketed and suddenly I was able to put the energy into keeping both myself and my environment clean and tidy.

I don't judge when I see rooms like this, my heart breaks for the people they belong to.

Tbf a couple of the kids rooms on there just have a huge sea of toys over the floor- my DCs bedrooms have been turned like that in about fifteen minutes one time when we had a couple of very boisterous children round to play.

Some of them are clearly really dirty as well as messy though.

It’s sad as I’d imagine some homes like this are down to mental health issues.

I can believe the children's bedroom, I made the mistake of having my DS' party at my house.

I swear they got out every single toy, that I hadn't hidden, out to play with. I took the photo to remind me never to do it again

A bunch of soon to be hoarders I suspect.

With their own TV prgramme and a host of excuses for their slobbish behaviour that will absolve them of all responsibility.

They don’t look like children’s bedrooms, especially the one with the bottles of booze.

The one where the kids had created the mess in 5 minutes is believable and not a big deal to me. Easy to make a mess and easy to tidy away.

The clothes all over a child's floor bothers me because it's not a young child's job to be putting their clothes away and if they've got that many clothes that there's mountains, the parent needs to have a clear out.

The ones that gross me out are clearly teenage and young adult rooms with food waste, rubbish, alcohol bottles and general crap everywhere. That's not just mess; it's unsanitary.