to think that saying "my house is messy but clean" is a big fat lie?

[SwordViolin]

People say this all the time, my house is a mess but it's always clean but how? If your house is a mess then who knows what filth lurks under piles of papers or clothes or boxes. Anytime I've ever been in a messy house it has always been pretty dusty and unclean. Times when my house has been messy its much harder to actually clean, I need to tidy everything up and organise the space to get ot properly clean.

I mean it's fine if your house is messy and not cleaned because that's life we all have different tolerances of mess and dirt, we all have different circumstances but why say "my house is messy but clean" when it is so obviously not true?

Mines the opposite. Tidy but dirty 😐

I try my best but 3 kids and 3 dogs and one cat living rurally make it filthy. It’s always dusty with mud up the walls no matter how much I try. I laugh at people who hoover a couple of times a day when I’m a twice a day sort of person. I also wash skirtings and walls daily at times!

Short of putting everyone in the bin I’ve ran out of ideas.

Of course it's possible for a house to be messy but clean.
What could possibly be under the piles of stuff, if the not-cluttered parts of the house are adequately cleaned? Limbo-dancing kitchen grease? Flat rats?

There might well be a bit more dust if there are piles of untidied away stuff, but a bit more dust doesn't mean 'unclean'.

I know people with messy and filthy houses, and I know people with messy houses that are perfectly clean by very widely shared standards. The difference between them is very obvious.

I don’t agree.
I know lots of men single and married that like and keep a clean tidy house. If anything there’s more of them than women ( because most of my friends are either busy or a bit lax),
Surely if your thinking “ she doesn’t keep it clean” it’s likely to be because you ‘re friends/meeting with the woman in a house and know her. Otherwise most people going into a messier home than there own would wonder how the couple cope as both live there.

I'm really untidy. We have a brilliant cleaner who cleans and tidys thoroughly once a week

It all depends on how you define messy and what your understanding and standards of clean are. Very relative terms that mean many things.
I've heard people with a few soft toys strewn about say sorry my house is messy and I've had people with hoarding problem and enough cobwebs enough to a wig but they had no qualms about guests because they'd just cleaned.

Generally it's difficult to clean around many items the more you have the more effort and time to clean thoroughly.

Every time I clean and tidy, it looks like I haven’t after about 40 minutes until I help the DC tidy up their toys again. I think it depends on the mess. There’s a big difference between never tidied and cleaned and regularly tidied and cleaned but messy at the time. Mine certainly isn’t sparkling clean, but has a weekly proper clean and jobs done across the week like hoovering and daily toilet clean etc.

Phew that makes me feel much better . I only dust where I can see easily. I never dust high up😭 until I encounter the dust when I'm looking for something

If you have two school age kids have you forgotten what they were like as toddlers?

I clean my house weekly and do a very thorough clean fortnightly. Tidy up certain areas daily, if not several times a day. It was pristine pre-kids, even with pets it looked and felt very clean. Now DS walks in and it's like a tornado has hit it within minutes. You obviously cannot resonate with him fully just yet to tidy up after himself. So yes, it looks messy a lot of the time despite being clean.

I don't understand your dilemma, OP.

It depends what you mean by messy. My children spread toys all over the living room floor every day. Come round just before tea time and it's definitely messy but clean.

We also always seem to have a small pile of papers hanging around in the kitchen - I move them to clean! .

But I agree that if it's really messy and never gets tidied it's probably not completely clean.

I may be one of the few poeple to admit my house is both messy and unclean! However it is long-term messy, which gives dust and grime plenty of opportunity to build up. Plus there seems to be more 'stuff' than I have places to put it. I am slowly, slowly in the process of decluttering.

I have chronic fatigue and just can't do much. I did have a cleaner for a couple of years (wow that was great!) but when Covid began she left and I never got anyone again. My mother was the opposite of me, a demon cleaner, but one day she cried and told me she spent her whole life cleaning. I figured it just wasn't worth it, considering how everything just gets dusty again.

Fortunately my partner doesn't seem bothered by it. He is so busy with work (works from home) and he will whip out the vacuum cleaner on occasion, but basically we just exist with it. He hardly ever gets ill and although I have chronic illness (Hashimoto's) I don't seem to get anything else apart from Covid last year.

I would say my house is a bit messy, but clean.

There are no health hazards- kitchen area is kept wiped down as is fridge, bathrooms are frequently cleaned. I have a robot hoover which gets rid of the worst of the floor dirt.

However we do have a lot of stuff and I hate cleaning do things like skirting board dusting or window cleaning are not a huge priority for me. I don't seem to have the knack of getting somewhere show home clean no matter how long I spend.

I would describe my house as messy but clean. What I mean by that is that the bathroom and kitchen are clean (and generally very tidy). But the living room is messy with toys - we don't have pets, and don't wear shoes in the house, nor do we eat in the living room. So it doesn't get that dirty, and it's hoovered regularly (and is tidied before so that whole room does get proper hoovered). But then 3 seconds after that's done my 13 month old has tipped a box of bricks on the floor and my 4 year old has lined up all her toys so she can play schools.

Why do you care? It's not your home.

It's depends just how messy.

My house is messy but clean. When I say it's messy I don't mean it's like off the tv show hoarders.

I clean every single room every week and vacuum each day, wipe kitchen down everyday. But inevitably it's lived in. I can clean a room but there'll always be another pile of laundry another stack of dishes and pile of toys another load of coats, shoes bags dumped.

So when I say messy I mean it's not a show home.

I’m the same - my house is more tidy less clean!

Same. My DC get home and half an hour later the house is a mess, it's clean, but not at all tidy. I often have a big pile of clean laundry waiting to be put away, bench is often covered mostly in clean drying dishes and Tupperware, but also random bits and pieces, loungeroom covered in toys and blankets and couch cushions and teddies everywhere. Our house is too small for us and too full to easily put everything away tidily. Doesn't mean it's not clean.

I would think messy but clean means - I clean it but then kids play so there's toys about, however the floor underneath is hoovered and the kitchen/bathroom is clean. Mine is non messy and clean, then child does child stuff and mess comes until it's bed time

My living room is tidy but yesterday I noticed it was very dusty. So when I feel motivated enough (not so much in this heat) I'll get everything off the shelves and dust it all. And there are still cat paw prints on the wall from a fly chase at least a month ago 😬.

You need to get a life!

My home has never been a show-home and is rarely even spotless: there is almost always some clutter of various sorts but I never allow it to get to the point where it breeds germs. It's just common sense. There's a huge difference between the kind of mess which could breed germs (ie large sections of a kitchen worktop untouched for weeks) and a few books lying on the living room table.

Worktops wiped down, bathroom cleaned and toilet bleached. Fridge cleaned out, hoovering done, bedclothes changed etc. But I'm not killing myself over the fact there's a few books out of place or a few items out of place in the kitchen for a couple of days. Life's too short and its unnecessary.

I hoover daily, dust twice a week, all other jobs are done atleast once a week but I have a toddler and a 6 year old with sen so the house is generally messy as they follow me around emptying toy boxes/the shoe rack/ their bedroom drawers. Yes they are told to clean up and do but if you turned up something will probably be emptied out somewhere. But everything is cleaned underneath regularly and has order.

Of course it can be messy but clean. I gutted mine on Tuesday, it looked like a show home but its now Friday and the doom piles have built back up (kids colouring, holiday clothes pile ready for packing, letters waiting to be sorted, toys scattered, laundry to be put away). Doesn't mean its dirty, the kitchen and bathroom are clean and floors have been hoovered. Ill re sort it tomorrow on my day off. I tend to sort through every few days depending on my shifts but of course with children, it builds up on the days in-between. It doesn't suddenly become filthy in a few days.

My house is clean where it counts- so the kitchens and bathrooms, which are cleaned by the cleaner and then by me every day. The rest of it is clean underneath with a messy surface! Tidied up, but replaced with more mess. That's things like clothes discarded as the day wears on, papers, letters, work stuff (I work from home).

That level of mess is not going to do anyone any harm and I'm not interested in spending time putting all that stuff away to clean it daily.

YABU I make sure my house is lovely and clean painted kitchen bathrooms always clean carpets cleaned a few times a year rubbish taken out daily etc but there’s always clean washing needing putting away and toys everywhere sooo…..there’s that.

I think it depends how messy. If it's always messy and some things never get put away then no, it can't be clean.

On the other hand my house is fairly tidy but not particularly clean!

I do the kitchen every day and bathrooms once a week. Vacuum once a week downstairs and less upstairs.

Other cleaning jobs happen sporadically or never. I read things on here and can't really get on board with routines for curtains, windows, skirting boards, deep cleaning. The TOMM method looks like hell.

I do keep on top of all cat related mess though, I'm a cat vomit ninja!