Just relax, lower your standards....

[PippyLongmocking]

...live in a shit hole.

Why do untidy people get to languish in their own filth and squalor, while tidy people get the choices of;

1. Clean and tidy for them.
2. Nag, whine, beg, plead, create whiteboards, starcharts, threaten divorce.
3. 'Lower your standards'. In other words live in a crap hole.

Why does no bugger say 'increase your standards' or 'compromise you piggy, pay for a cleaner'?

Aibu to think the messiest laziest member of the household has a better deal.
They get to do jack shit while proclaiming 'I just don't see mess' 'it doesn't bother me'.

My standards are now so low that it's unrecognisable what they are.

People tend to say lower your standards when a child is sick for example or you have several kids with a small age gap. I have seen these examples on a post but never in reference to a partner. Re a partner I guess you would only really find out they were slovenly when you start living together or they become so over time. I can only imagine how difficult it would be. Besides talking about it and threatening to walk I'm not sure what else you could do. If you want to stay a cleaner is needed or he has to change his ways.

I enjoy being a scruff.

If that means I end up living alone -- why that's marvelous. How can I accelerate the process?

Lol @lljkk
That's the irony - both parties happier!

OP YANBU and your OH sounds like a bit of a pig. That would be a dealbreaker for me. Its one thing to have to be nagged about it when you first move in together but after months/years to be that slovenly when you know it upsets your partner is kind of an insult.

Its one of the hardest parts of cohabitation IMHO. Which is why it needs to be entered into with great caution.

It’s a deal breaker for me too. My standards are not high, so I’m not prepared to lower them. And I’m also not willing to live with an adult who leaves all or most of the work to me. It’s incredibly disrespectful and there are no redeeming features that mitigate disrespect, in my view. I would certainly divorce someone who didn’t respect me.

I'm loving the car analogy below. I know lots of men whose cars are pristine, and 'don't see mess in the house.' So the exact comparison is just to throw sweet wrappers or whatever in their car.

Your update saying that he changed from a reasonably clean and tidy person to someone who refuses to clean up his own piss once you had DC changes the situation for me.

Did you address it then, as in "Why have you stopped clearing up your own piss etc?" and if so, what was his response? Something like "Oh well we don't have time for that now we have children?"

I live alone and am fairly slovenly, but in the situation you describe, I would feel utterly disrespected. That is what would make me want to LTB.

I had higher standards when my kids were little and would muck in.

Now I have teens who won't tidy for love nor money nor screen time and I hate my house . Wish I could have a few weeks off work to get it tolerable again.

Have these partners changed since when you first got together with them?

Me? Single parent. Bloody love my gorgeous home. Yes I suppose it is almost show home clean. But nothing wrong with that If it is a happy home.

My daughter said to me “I love sleep overs but some of the homes leave me feeling like i need a shower! I love coming back and walking in to our lovely and clean home”. And that made me feel happy.

Women love to be martyrs, men dont.

* I left it to see how long it would take.*
i ended up making the bed.

Cutting your nose off to spite your face

He wouldn’t have noticed and been blissfully unaware
Meanwhile you would have been twisted in anger and frustration every time you walked in to bedroom and saw it.

@Moonface123

Women love to be martyrs, men dont.

This

I imagine these women go around with mouths constantly in shape of a cat’s bum. With a tense atmosphere for the children

Shudder

They do @Oftenithinkaboutit
Which is why, often, 'ltb' advice is often in everyone's interest, as opposed to the 'can't break up a family' advice.

I am separated from my H who did performative housework - he once spent 2 hours hoovering three bedrooms. Didn’t move any furniture so Christ know what he was doing.

My new fella “doesn’t mind mess”. His house is filthy. So I don’t go there often. I won’t stay in it and when I am there I try to ignore it. I used to nag a bit but he is happy so what’s the point? Interestingly he’s quite posh and I think posh people are less arsed about standards. Im from a very working class background and my mum never stops cleaning and tidying. My fella thinks I am uptight about mess, but I agree about standards - I’m not comfortable in filth so why would I want to just tolerate it?

My teenagers are minging because teenagers. But the at doesn’t bother me so much and I am not fanatical, but I also won’t lower my standards to tolerate new fella’s manky ones.

I don’t know what the answer is because it would make me utterly miserable and I’m at a point in my life where I think it’s too short to be unhappy at home.

Well I'm messy (not slovenly or unclean, I clean bathrooms and wipe surfaces just not every day) and when tired/overwhelmed more so.. DH is tidy...It causes me a lot of pain tbh. I hate seeing him pained and unhappy when the place is messy (kids, dog, 2 full on full time jobs) but I find it really really hard to be tidy. I care less, but I am also highly distractable and poor at time management. I can keep on top of work related stuff (full on job) but that leaves very little capacity to operate well at home. It's partly who I am (neurodiverse) and a bit stage of life (energy levels flagging thank you perimenopause). Occasionally we row about it, I feel worn down and in my darkest moments have fleeting thoughts of "well just fucking leave then and find someone less messy and as awesome as me". Mostly I know he's being reasonable, but just feel very very tired by it all. It's endless...(and yes we have a cleaner). So I don't know that if agree that as the messiest person I have the better deal as the whole thing just weighs me down...

My dh does not ‘see’ when things need doing around the house, neither do the kids and it’s infuriating.

I have lowered my standards a fair bit and don’t touch the kids rooms - if they don’t want to make their beds that is their choice - but I can’t leave bathrooms as it makes me feel quite ill and I do insist on bedding being changed weekly.

Dh is very much a do it later sort of person. I like to load and run the dishwasher after dinner so I can empty it first thing in the morning when making my coffee or breakfast. Dh would leave it till the morning which would be fine except that I’m generally up first. I have no doubt that he would do it when he got up but I don’t want to have to look at it so I just get on with it. Likewise, on the very rare occasion he is up first he would not think to empty the dishwasher, it is left for me. Also, I change the bed on the same day every week and every week dh says ‘I was going to do that’ when obviously he wasn’t or he would have!!!

I have given up complaining and can cope with mess if I have to, but I can’t deal with filth and dirty toilets, sinks or surfaces. Mould in the bathroom would be the last straw for me. I tend to leave what I can and only do the things that really bother me but I do find it a bit unfair that I have chosen to stop complaining in order to avoid an argument but he hasn’t altered his behaviour at all. One day I will address this again but I just can’t face having the same discussion time and time again.

On the plus side, my ds is slightly messy but never leaves the toilet dirty. And will study if he has friends coming (as he knows that I won’t be doing it for him). So nagging can work.

*will tidy

@arethereanyleftatall

They do *@Oftenithinkaboutit* Which is why, often, 'ltb' advice is often in everyone's interest, as opposed to the 'can't break up a family' advice.

Exactly

The man may be behaving like a dick

But the woman going around with a set frown, huffing and puffing - is what will eat in to the children’s daily lives

I should point out that dh leaves the car in a state too!! But his desk at work is pristine!!!

@LuaDipa

My dh does not ‘see’ when things need doing around the house, neither do the kids and it’s infuriating.

I have lowered my standards a fair bit and don’t touch the kids rooms - if they don’t want to make their beds that is their choice - but I can’t leave bathrooms as it makes me feel quite ill and I do insist on bedding being changed weekly.

Dh is very much a do it later sort of person. I like to load and run the dishwasher after dinner so I can empty it first thing in the morning when making my coffee or breakfast. Dh would leave it till the morning which would be fine except that I’m generally up first. I have no doubt that he would do it when he got up but I don’t want to have to look at it so I just get on with it. Likewise, on the very rare occasion he is up first he would not think to empty the dishwasher, it is left for me. Also, I change the bed on the same day every week and every week dh says ‘I was going to do that’ when obviously he wasn’t or he would have!!!

I have given up complaining and can cope with mess if I have to, but I can’t deal with filth and dirty toilets, sinks or surfaces. Mould in the bathroom would be the last straw for me. I tend to leave what I can and only do the things that really bother me but I do find it a bit unfair that I have chosen to stop complaining in order to avoid an argument but he hasn’t altered his behaviour at all. One day I will address this again but I just can’t face having the same discussion time and time again.

On the plus side, my ds is slightly messy but never leaves the toilet dirty. And will study if he has friends coming (as he knows that I won’t be doing it for him). So nagging can work.

Come live with me clean one. I do dishwasher at night and install in the morning, if it's finished a run before dinners I'll use the plates in there before getting new out, if I'm cooking I'll unstack that badboy before I begin so thst dirty stuff is cleared and in there rather than piled up. Why have a lovely pike of shitty mess on the bench and a fully clean ready to be emptied dishwasher? Crazy.

My husbands favourite phrase is 'I was just about to....' before lots of activities I'm doing at the time.
Today while he meandered around the garden I ripped up all the weeds from the path.
I enjoyed it. It's fine. But why can you step over weeds/mess/toddlers before doing something.

Cats bum face, someone mentioned I must be ruining everyone's life in my house with my asking people to clean their own pee pee up? Life will cat bum face them, their future partners will thank me, they'll not think mummy must clean up my tiddles until I'm 30. I'm OK with that.

Dint worry, the bathroom is mould free, but if left to DH it wouldn't be.

I pay myself a cleaning salary from the joint account. I'm pretty cheap. But it helps my rage

* Cats bum face, someone mentioned I must be ruining everyone's life in my house with my asking people to clean their own pee pee up? Life will cat bum face them, their future partners will thank me, they'll not think mummy must clean up my tiddles until I'm 30. I'm OK with that.*

But in the example you gave, you weren’t asking. You’d left the mess and was keeping track of it to see if anyone dealt with. And when they didn’t you did it yourself.
They wouldn’t have noticed
Meanwhile you stewing the entire time

‘I just don’t see mess’ is my DP’s favourite excuse. He is the most pedantic and observant person I know but dirt, grime, clutter and mess are completely invisible to him. Once I went on a work trip and when I got back, I found the kitchen window overrun with some sort of a bug? Baby spiders? They hatched in a herb pot and there were hundreds of them, the plant was completely limp and mangled, it looked like a scene from a horror movie - my DP, left to his own devices for 5 days, did not notice.. He hangs his shorts on the side of the bedroom standing mirror in October when he upgrades to jeans, and they will hang there all winter until it’s shorts weather again (the jeans will then spend the summer dangling off the side of the mirror catching dust). The more I nag, the less he does and the more inflated his view of his (near zero) contribution to house work becomes!! It’s torpedoing our relationship but he just doesn’t want to know

The problem is someone else's "mess" or "dirtiness" is subjective. A neighbour of mine is obsessively clean and tidy. Eg things she will do include:

• if I stand and rest a hand on the kitchen counter, I will see her wipe it with antibacterial wipes as we leave the room.
• hoover 3 or more times every day
• wipe bannister hand rail several times a day
• her house is almost empty looking. No photo frames, ornaments, cushions, because she feels these are "messy".

So yes some people would argue she could "lower her standards".

The point is there's a balance between how sterile and empty your home life needs to be, vs the time you can reasonably spend cleaning and tidying it.

Meh, I have ADHD, 3 daughters, I’m a lone parent, I study full time and work part time.

I have a cleaner 3 hours a week who also changes our bedding fortnightly.

I couldn’t muster up a fuck to give about toys being left out, laundry not put away etc.

To those who are concerned - he’s lovely in every other way so no, it’s not a controlling relationship.

When I say he’s walking around looking for something that needs cleaning - what I mean is, if something is dirty he will notice it and I won’t

His common refrain is “rabbles, you have never once vacuumed or cleaned xyz”. My response is - “because it’s never bloody dirty, you do it before it needs doing”

However mission creep is a real thing. We have one sink that is shiny black - I’d rather replace the bloody thing. However we’ve gone from making sure that no soap or toothpaste is left on it to a cloth appearing . “If you just dry it down when you finish then there won’t be white marks”

To him that’s nothing, to me it’s another 30 seconds added to all the other nothings that mean I’m doing something less enjoyable than what I’d rather be doing