Most cluttered houses aren't very clean.

[FindingMeno]

All that stuff in corners, on surfaces, under beds.
There's not enough hours in the day to clean the stuff you can get to, let alone anything in the deepest darkest recesses.
Right?

Yabu

YANBU

I agree. I have declutrered one room by about 40% this week ( loads to charity ) as when we moved in yonks ago now we planned to go through all our crap and just get here first... it's taken this long! I couldn't believe the dirt and dust amassed from just moving stuff. It wasn't grubby stuff either. I had tubs of clothing and accessories from a previous life where fashion was more involved in mh career, makeup bags ( clean and unused ) and stuff like that, not anything that was rotting basically and still I was hoovering and gutting all the space it had been in and its so clean now. Makes me want to do the rest of the rooms but its so hard choosing what is crap and what is handy crap lol

Depends a bit what you mean by clean and cluttered. My house is probably cluttered in that it doesn’t look like an advert for minimalism and it’s definitely a bit dusty in corners and under beds, the windows probably need cleaning etc. I don’t really regard it as particularly dirty though or any kind of problem. Bathrooms and kitchen are clean and hygienic, the floors are reasonable, beds are clean, there’s no mouldy dishes or rotten food around, we don’t have mice or ants and nothing is a health hazard. I have no wish to live in a sterile bubble, my house is lived in and looks like it.

If you mean cluttered in a Mr Trebus hoarding kind of way then yes, that seems to go hand in hand with actual dirt and pests. And yes, if you want a very clean house (ie you’re the type that cleans your washing machine weekly and hoovers everywhere daily) then it probably does need to be very minimalist to enable that.

I think both YABU and YANBU - our house has areas that are pretty cluttered and areas that are usually clear. I’d say that you are right, there definitely will usually be dust lying behind a stack of really useful boxes or under a bed used for longer-term storage etc as no one is going to be regularly pulling everything around to hoover. However, we also only occasionally interact with those areas, and in daily life the places in the house that we actually use are frequently cleaned (and are accessible to clean as we use them frequently, so long-term dust-gathering clutter doesn’t get to accumulate). So if you came round to watch tv, use the loo and eat dinner (etc) you might glimpse clutter through an open door to another room but you wouldn’t be in a “dirty” environment yourself at any point.

My house is cluttered. No way is everything clean. It is impossible.

You're probably right, but what does it matter if it's not clean under the bed or in corners no one goes in?

I wouldn't call a house "unclean" because it had some stuff stored under the beds? You sound a bit obsessed. A bit of dust in a dark corner won't hurt anyone.

Yanbu. I always get the feeling that houses with loads of ornament tat displays are very dusty and dirty. I also think the same of kitchen counters cluttered with utensils displayed. I'm very much an 'everything must have a place' type of personal and hate clutter.

But very clean and tidy houses are soulless and uncomfortable, so you pays your money and takes your choice. A small amount of clutter is homely, even with a nice layer of dust!

So what

Of course you’re correct, unless you spend all your time moving shit then cluttered homes are unclean.

I would say very dusty as opposed to dirty / vermin filled. (That is my experience of my childhood home)

It's cleaned (in the middle) just not so much around the forgotten edges.

YANBU. More 'stuff' is just more surfaces to collect dust on.

Agreed.

Yanbu, we recently cleared the ILs cluttered house as they downsized and because there was just so much ‘stuff’ I swear it took double the cleaning to get it sorted.

Had they had things reasonably uncluttered in the first place there wouldn’t have been so much dust & dirt.

They're unfortunately now in the process of filling the new place in the same way 🙄

Agreed. My biggest thing is keeping of top of clutter, I don’t mind keeping things but it has to go in lidded storage boxes or vacuumed packed bags. People who say their house is ‘cluttered but clean’ - it can’t be that clean because you can’t get to surfaces etc to clean properly

Aye, if you like

Why is "very clean " needed, yes not scuzzy and basically kept decent but I'm not planning on operating on someone in the corner of my lounge

DM always tells me that her house ‘might be messy, but it’s always clean’. It can’t possibly be clean when 80% of the surfaces are covered in hoarded crap. But what would I know??

lol at rhe silly semantics. She means particularly clean as I’m sure you know..

Yes I agree but my house isn't less clean because of the clutter. The clutter and mess go hand in hand because I don't have time to deal with it. I work and have a messy family and a cat. My MIL's house is uncluttered and immaculate because she's retired and has no children or pets in her house. My house was like that before I got the dc's and the cat. I am sure it will be again. I know how to clean it, what to clean, what clutter I need to get rid of but just not enough time to get to it.

I think an important point is when was it last cleaned thoroughly? A month ago? Six months? A year? Longer? My house is cluttered with books and china but they all get taken out of the cupboards and dusted or washed once a year. If a room’s damp and left full of junk, unaired for five years, that’s when you get problems.

Ours is reasonably cluttered, and while it isn't very clean it's certainly clean enough. I don't think having a house that's less than very clean is a failing.

Who cares?!