To think people are getting scruffier?

[HomeIsHardToFind]

I am currently house hunting, I have been in a lot of properties recently and to be honest I have been shocked by the state of them!
They look fine in the estate agents photos but when you get there it's a different story.....plates and bowls piled up in the sink, crumbs all over work surfaces, disgusting ovens and urine stains/smells in the loo!
My 'favourite' was the house that had holes punched in the doors of every room (double checked the agents pics and they definitely didn't exist at the time they were taken!).
I get it, I can clean if we bought the house etc, but if you are selling your biggest asset and you want the most amount of money possible surely you make it look the best it can for viewings? I feel like I've stepped into an alternative universe at the moment!
I have also noticed that many more people out and about stink. Not just a bit of a pong or like they have a manual job and haven't showered for 24 hours but full on makes me dry heave absolutely stink!!
I put some fuel in the car this morning and the 'gentleman' that came into the garage as I was leaving smelled rancid, it must have been days and days since he had washed🤢 I could smell him outside in the fresh air!
Maybe I'm getting on (I don't think so, only early 40's!!) but I seem to remember people having more pride in themselves, their home and their families (don't get me started on some of the poor kids I've seen with such greasy hair it looks like it's been stuck to their head with chip oil☹️).
Sometimes I wonder if its COL biting but then I think about people I've known that grew up in the 60's and 70's that were dirt poor taking pride in how clean their mothers managed to keep them with nothing but soap and hot water, so I think the only difference is that the pride has gone?
Has anyone else noticed this or am I just unluckily surrounded by scruffy buggers?!

This.

Societal eye can be a big bully.

@K0OLA1D shower gel works great for some people but others it doesn't. I use a strong antiperspirant and find I need exfoliating gloves and soap to make sure it's all off! I use shower gel everywhere else (soap on armpits and feet)

Just that if you're struggling with BO it's worth trying soap as it can work better than shower gel

I can only speak for myself but I have really found that it changed for me over time; I never used to smell at all and now I have to be very careful about what fabrics I wear and how I wash. I use an anti-pet-odour enzyme spray on the armpits of some shirts because I find that otherwise they smell as soon as they warm up 🤢

I was at the theatre in the week - the guy in front of me smelled absolutely rank.
If you can afford an £85 theatre ticket, you can afford to bath/shower, wear clean clothes and deodorant.

With older men they may well have had to move into shared housing with a shared bathroom. I can imagine not fancying washing in those circumstances. For older men having to live like that after having your own home must make you feel like a terrible failure. For women too but self esteem from getting on is perhaps less

😆😆😆👏👏👏

See I am a sweaty person, but only really my face. I never seem to smell under my arms. Unless I forget to put on deodorant. I use roll on Mitcham. If I use soap, as in a bar of or spray deodorant, I get such dry skin. DP doesn't use deodorant at all! And never smells of BO.

My eldest dc, now 12, keeps lynx in business. Both shower gel and Africa spray!

I take a medication which makes my sweat yellow, so I can't wear white. I have yellow patches under my arms in the summer. I just gave up. I wear mostly black now!

I also thought this was going to be about people wearing what used to be loungewear, fluffy tracksuits that look exactly like pyjamas etc But I have to agree, as someone who gets buses regularly, I've definitely noticed a dramatic increase in people who smell. Never used to have this at all, but I've had to move seats or leave the bus early on several occasions this year for the first time ever.

I wouldn't be happy about the urine smell either.

In the same time, commenting on people's dishes in a sink is just absurd.

As for the word "performative", I was answering to another poster who focused not on keeping the home nice for their own benefit, but on "demonstrating standards". Easy to notice if you use your comprehension.

Agree, and it's not always about money - you don't NEED to have a shower every day if money is tight, but you can still wash your pits etc, sponge down clothes, like people used to do in the olden days. I notice this lack of care about gardens and house exteriors in particular, doesn't cost anything to go out and pick weeds, sweep your path, etc (and yes I know a small number of people may not be able to do these things). I've seen people moaning on local FB that the council doesn't come and remove the weeds from outside their house ....

I wonder if some people have lost their sense of smell permanently from COVID? Or partially, so they don't realise.

Yes for a very small percentage of people. And yes it is an uphill battle for some, and that’s a different story, but let’s be honest here, it is not the majority by a long way of people with poor personal hygiene or dirty homes. Everyone understands if the person lives in poverty and has mental health issues, but let’s not pretend that’s what this thread is about or the majority of the issue.

yhere will be people reading this thread now. People who are not so poor they are in the position you describe, who won’t have got out of their pyjamas all weekend. Who won’t have washed or changed their knickers . Who could easily afford to and are not mentally ill. Whose house is dirty, unhoovered, dirty floors, dirty bathroom, dirty bed linen, dishes piled up.

people like this have always existed. And always will. I don’t think it’s escalated like the op thinks.i think it’s always been there. As said, 3 decades ago I looked at my first home at 20 and I saw minging ones. 10 years ago I looked for this one, way more expensive, and I still saw some. I moved several times in between and saw a dirty home every rung of the ladder.

go into any public loo. Any plane loo; and you see some folks are filthy. Loo roll chucked on the floor. Piss everywhere. Not flushed. Most workplaces have to have a sign for gods sake reminding people to flush or clean their own skid marks, not leave their pee on the seat.

just for some people, personal hygiene and hygiene in their home is something they simply don’t engage in.

I've always been a bit anal where housework is concerned as my Mum doesn't seem to see dirt and my family are hoarders.

I hoover every day, put washing away most days. Washing up gets put away before I head to bed. Toilet cleaned daily, litter tray scooped daily.

Then once a week I'll do 'housework' where literally everything including the dusting is done. if I know people are coming round I'll do a mega clean.

I would like to think if someone popped over unexpectedly my house was presentable. Whenever I've sold a place it was spotless for viewings.

As for people smelling, clothes on an airer in the study and don't smell, if something is taking tol long to dry I stick it on the radiator for a bit
I shower twice a day, couldn't think of anything worse than not showering.

I think the thing about smell is a strange one. I’ve seen perfectly well dressed professional looking people and their clothes honk. I don’t think they are aware. There is so much emphasis on low temperature washing and covering up stink with lenor perfume type crap or putting extra scented products in the washing but it doesn’t actually kill the bacteria. Slow dry it and you’ve got a recipe for horrible minging clothes that you’re nose blind to. God knows what that ‘off-beef’ smell is that some folks smell of though… I dread to think 🤢

And on the scruffy theme… the litter dropping… Jeez. What is wrong with people that they can’t put their shit in a bin? They have to dump everything just where they are - cans, bottles, packets, dog shit bags, whole McDonald’s bags full of packaging etc. Do people not give a shit about their environment and what it looks like?

Yanbu!

This .. coupled with caring for disabled family members and elders as the social care system is breaking down

Went to a large shopping mall this weekend and the car park was full of rubbish , mostly take away cartons / cans and so on
Why can't people take it home and dispose of it there ?

@Screamingabdabz I’ve come to realise that some people really don’t care what their environment looks like.
We live in a very small mansion block with no cleaner employed for the stairwell. Over time our neighbours have moved out and less, shall we say, ‘approachable’ ones have moved in. It would seem that some people will quite happily drop old tissues, sweet rappers, cigarette butts and even cat litter in their own building and just leave it there.

I used to pick up the odd piece of litter I found on the stairs but I now see that it’s an impossible task so I do my best to ignore it. I cannot understand it though, I simply can’t.

This would be logical if it hadn’t always been like this. And it has.

I’ve worked front end of social housing for > 15 years and would wouldn’t believe the proportion of homes I’ve been in that have punch marks in the doors, i’d say at least 50%! What are people doing with their doors? Who are these people?

(This is not intended to be a dig at SH tenants, grew up in SH and a lot of the homes I go in are much tidier than mine! - #selfconfessedscruffywench! it’s just meant to show that this kind of door punching behaviour is normal for a large proportion of the population. I’ve never personally known a door puncher)

I don’t think social care has always been like this, there was more residential care. My elderly relatives went to care homes when they were still functioning reasonably ok and they wouldn’t have been self funding. Further back there were sanatoriums etc where people went for months. There has been a big push for ‘care in the community’, mental health wards closed down en masse. It doesn’t only affect the person but the family too. Not that it’s a bad thing for people to not be institutionalised but it’s been replaced by family carers (or no carers) rather than professional care

@BoobyDazzler - door punchers are violent people. No mystery. Often a message to the rest of the house not to screw with the puncher or get the same treatment

We had to break into our kitchen once in our HA home, because the mechanism stuck fast. DP shoulder barged it to try and get it to open, but just put a shoulder sized hole in it. It looked like it had been punched. Ds2 was 2 weeks old... HV was due round the day after for a visit so we put a picture Ds1 drew over it 🙈

We had a new one hung the following weekend

I live in a country where we don't have central heating and sometimes have to dry my clothes inside in winter, lots of people do - they never smell musty. We had a twin tub too when I was married and working full time, I loved my twin tub!

Incidentally, I haven't noticed more smelly people than usual here.

All of us also have takeaways all the time, don't forget 🙄