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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Can messy, scruffy people change?

48 replies

Shuffleshoop · 26/02/2024 08:36

I've been wondering if it's possible to change if you've always been messy and scruffy? I feel really embarrassed and ashamed about having a messy, scruffy house and always looking a state. I do try but it doesn't seem to get me anywhere. I wonder if it's just my nature so not something I can change? If you've managed to change from a messy scruff to being neat and tidy how did you do it? Are some things innate or can scruffs change?

OP posts:
bringmorewashing · 26/02/2024 10:09

It can be really hard but I think it's possible to get on top of things if you have a plan. I manage to keep the house clean partly through lifelong habits formed without too much thought, and partly through planning ie. organising good storage and having a (loose) sort of system in place. Otherwise it would be an endless uphill battle!

There are various youtube channels about cleaning and organising with different methods to follow that might give you some ideas?

Dogskidsdogs · 26/02/2024 10:17

I think it depends why it's scruffy and your priorities.

My home is generally presentable but it does slip on the days that I work as when I'm home I prioritise the children's clubs, eating and having some down time. However I will then spend my day off doing a thorough clean.

However even when it's clean it is lived in and certainly not a show home. I have children, pets and a limited income. The kitchen needs replaced and areas need decorated. I can't afford to do all the things that need to be done currently. Then there's motivation and prioritising.. I could decorate at weekends but priority currently is family time and on childfree time I do bits but I balance with time with friends.

Ginandjuice57884 · 26/02/2024 10:19

I've learned to be tidier than I used to be. I'm definitely not a no clutter person but equally don't have stuff strewn around willy nilly.

As for looking a state... I'm not really sure what that means but I certainly don't give a shit what I'm kicking about in if I'm at home, walking, or running errands. As long as I am comfortable in it I don't care what sort of state anyone thinks I'm in, as it's nobody's business but mine. I'll make something of an effort to go out for dinner or a gig or meeting friends but I never spend hours getting ready, that's just not me. It sounds like you have low self esteem and you're comparing yourself to other people.

Katemax82 · 26/02/2024 10:55

I can't manage it, I have 3 kids, shit loads of laundry and not much storage space, and no dishwasher. I struggled even with loads of space and a dishwasher

Shuffleshoop · 26/02/2024 11:15

I'm a single parent and got ADHD so it is probably innate for me. I shower every day, brush my teeth, my hair is often in the mum bun though, don't always wear makeup but always feel better when I do. My clothes are supermarket brand, I hang them carefully but rarely get the iron out. Feel like I'm always in a rush and never finish anything. I would love to have a home people can drop by any time, but the reality is it's only really visitor ready after a couple of hours of cleaning and tidying. I'm trying to shrink that time, but no dishwasher and DC are all ND too so don't pick up after themselves or see the mess.

OP posts:
Shuffleshoop · 26/02/2024 11:17

I am a smudged mascara, laddered tights, messy hair person. Just the way I am I think. Clean tidy neat people never seem to understand that it is not as easy as 'just' doing this or that. All those little things they seem to do with ease are really the hardest things for me. Maybe I need to accept I will never be 'Instagram ready' 😂

OP posts:
Cvoight · 26/02/2024 11:19

I totally relate to your posts @Shuffleshoop !

I am messy, scruffy, untidy in so many ways, but with regard to clothing, I have to dress ‘up’ a bit to look a normal level of smartness. Does that make sense? So i could wear a fitted Hobbs skirt and I would look casual, whereas other people would look like they were off to a formal work thing.

Merrow · 26/02/2024 11:23

I'm very messy, my natural state is very messy, but I have a DP who hates mess and I accept that things are better when they're not a mess! I haven't changed, but I've found some coping mechanisms that work. One is DP altering me when they're 20 minutes away (I WFH, they don't) and I blitz the mess I've created in that time (I have always created mess). I carve out time in my calendar for when I'm going to do tasks rather than assuming I'll get round to them. We have laundry baskets for the different wash types so it's already sorted and easy to put on. There's nothing out of place by the end of the night, but toys will stay out all day if I'm in charge whereas they would be tidied away frequently if DP was.

OriginalUsername2 · 26/02/2024 11:28

I used to be awful in my 20s.

I learned the “one touch rule”, not because I’m brilliant but because I’m lazy. If you don’t make mess in the first place, later-you isn’t faced with any!

Also a quick morning routine of making the beds, putting a load of laundry in and a quick whip round with the vacuum keeps on top of things.

pastypirate · 26/02/2024 11:33

Hey op - can you elaborate a bit more? Pic of a room as an example? I mean is it knee high in clutter or just not like a page out of the next catalogue?

Do you feel scruffy next to someone else? I ask because even on good days just bumping in to lovely mum of dd2's little friend makes me feel like a scruffy student in comparison!

Have you hot any budget for new things or no? No judgement if it's no - that's the case for most of us. Keep posting x

JonVoightBaddyWhoGrowls · 26/02/2024 11:35

Having read your updates, I think you have to work within your limitations.

So, for example, clothes:

Don't wear tights. Sorry, but it's as simple as that. If you can't keep them nice, don't wear them (I very very seldom wear "nice" tights for this exact reason). Or wear thick ones or leggings. Or, buy a bunch and keep spare pairs everywhere (I did this when I DID wear tights more back in my old City days - handbag and desk drawer in particular).

Prioritise buying clothes that don't need ironing - I have developed a style that is largely made of items that don't need ironing. I only iron cotton/linen t-shirts and trousers in the summer basically. Or, if you can afford it, get an ironing lady. If you're disorganised, pre-agree a schedule with her - weekly/fortnightly or whatever works.

Hair tied up in a bun is fine frankly. More important is whether it's clean.

House - this one is difficult, especially if you have ADHD. But a few tricks that might help:

  • when you walk into a room, identify one thing that is messy/out of place/clutter, pick it up and put it away/throw it away. Sometimes, as a teenager, I'd have to do this 20 times before I got my room to the point that it was tidy enough to meet my parents' standards! Grin
  • Robot vacuum - I can spend 5 minutes zipping around a room, picking things up/throwing away/putting away then leave the robot vacuum to work it's magic. I never cease to be amazed at how much neater/tidier my house looks post vacuum. And I've also noticed that houses that have a generally "untidy" air, are often ones where the owners will admit to being a bit behind on vacuuming.
  • Keep toilet cleaner next to the toilet and routinely throw it in to soak and clean the toilet. Similarly, if you wash your face with a flannel, use the used flannel to do a quick wipe down of the bathroom sink sometimes. I regularly toss them into the bath and them to wipe down the bath while I'm showering too. This does not replace proper cleaning, but keeps the place tidier/cleaner on a day to day basis.
  • After meals, while tidying up/washign up, do the same trick as with the rooms above. Every time you think you're done, go back and check that all the stuff not he counters is put away, they're properly wiped down etc.

If you're cluttered. try and find a day where you go through and toss things. A friend or family member helping can be useful here.

Anahenzaris · 26/02/2024 11:36

Given the ND aspect for you and your children, I’d recommend looking to resources around household management specifically addressing these factors. If you have access to support - ask for assistance from then around what strategies work better.

Don’t give your kids a free pass because of their ND. This won’t be a favor long term. They need to start learning as kids how to manage a household. You all need ways to achieve that work for your brains - even if it hurts short term.

I think like most things there’s an event of inate you and effort. For some the effort to pass a bar is much lower than others.

As for specific advice - look for easy wins. If the budget stretches - get a capsule wardrobe suitable for your career. Well fitting clothes goes a long way to looking put together. For the home - declutterring will help, as will having places to put things away. Finances play a larger part here than people often acknowledge. Good storage that looks nice and works can be expensive. Plus it is easier to throw things out when you aren’t scared about needing them again. But having somewhere to put away work bags and school hats and other storage options that address genuine use make a huge difference.

Personally - I’m still very much a work in progress. I still haven’t managed tidy, but my place is clean and tidier than it used to be. But I can change that, I just need to make it a higher priority.

TwangBoob · 26/02/2024 11:39

Yep. I was messy as heck when I was young to my mum's frustration! Couldn't really get a grip on it through my 20s due to adhd i believe and lived with a couple of hoarders. Then, had a bit of a nervous breakdown about it all and learnt some coping mechanisms, now very passionate about decluttering, organising and having a clean, fresh home! Devote a lot of time and money to it tbf.

takemeawayagain · 26/02/2024 11:39

I love being a little scruff. I think I'm probably ND in one way or another though.

Lourdes12 · 26/02/2024 11:56

It's possible with less stuff. If you want a tidy house with minimal effort you need to own less things. Ask yourself much time do you want to spend on inventory in your house without sacrificing your wellbeing and energy resources - it all comes down tot that

gannett · 26/02/2024 11:58

I'm messy and scruffy and tbh I don't especially care. There's always something more interesting or more important to do or think about. Tidiness is not a virtue to me, nor a priority. I actually feel more organised when things are out, not put away, and I can see what I need without having to open every drawer.

Cleanliness is a different matter and I wouldn't let the kitchen or bathroom fester.

I've definitely improved since my student days - not really consciously but I think every time I moved house I got rid of a shitload of stuff, and moving in developed a new system that worked for me, and then largely stuck to it. I'm quite minimalist in my tastes so that helps. DP is a neat freak so I've improved because of that too, but I don't go out of my way to get on his house-proud wavelength. He knew what he was getting with me!

I'm presentable but that's down to having a straightforward personal style that doesn't require much attention being paid to it (mostly athleisure these days) and never having had a job that requires the full primped professional look. I learned only to buy well-cut clothes that actually fit me properly, the size on the label be damned; if you do that you can get away with jeans and a T-shirt a lot of the time.

JonVoightBaddyWhoGrowls · 26/02/2024 12:07

I think there's also two things that are relevant, particularly if you're ND.

The first is that a lot of people, especially NT people, underestimate how much time and effort it takes to keep a house clean and tidy. We have a cleaner once a fortnight who comes for 5 hours. In addition, I'd say that between DH and I, we do another 5-6 hours a week (at least) of cleaning and tidying (I'm excluding cooking, but including everything else such as laundry, post-dinner clean up, day-to-day maintenance etc).

And for ND people, this becomes even more complicated because carving out that amount of time is really hard for them if they have executive function issues. A silly example - DH is really good at collecting glasses/plates/mugs from around the house. DH is also really good at loading the dishwasher. However, for DH (who most likely has inattentive ADHD - based on the fact that DS has been diagnosed and the two are like two peas in a pod re behaviours...) these are two completely SEPARATE tasks. He simply cannot collect mugs from the lounge and put them straight into the dishwasher. He just doesn't see it. He will put them in the sink, fully intending to load them. Inevitably, he will forget. Then, assuming I don't do it, he will come back into the kitchen later and do the "dishwasher loading" task.

Another example - DH is really good at tidying rooms. However, he cannot organise himself while tidying. So after he has tidied, things have been put away but he often can't remember where, or they have been piled up into neat piles. Watching him attempt to declutter and/or organise a room is absolutely torture - he will have everything out, go through it all but at the end... it looks almost the same.

Another example of an NT vs an ND person - DH will go to hang up the washing. It will take him twice as long. Why? Because first he put it in the basket to take it upstairs to where we hang it. But on the way he got distracted by three things. Then he started hanging it. But he wanted to listen to a podcast while he did it but couldn't find his head phones so spent 5 minutes looking for them....

Similarly, I think a lot of NT people don't realise how much easy multi tasking they do to make life easier for themselves. My sister can clean her kitchen while calling me for a catch up - DH couldn't do that if his LIFE depended on it. I will often zip around the house grabbing things, putting things away, plumping cushions etc all without focusing on one specific task. When Im' done, the house is that little bit tidier from being able to action a whole lot of smaller things seamlessly and simultaneously.

BertieBotts · 26/02/2024 12:19

You def need to try A Slob Comes Clean! She's amazing and really gets into the nitty gritty of why all the "just do this!" doesn't work. I can't focus on podcasts unless my hands and eyes are busy, so I put it on while I'm cleaning or tidying up or folding clothes to put away etc. It's become sort of linked with cleaning in my mind which helps as well.

Is it possible for you to get a dishwasher? I kept an eye out and bought a second hand one on ebay years ago cash on collection. I had to swap over the water connections from the washing machine every time I wanted to do a wash as I had no splitter but it was worth it anyway. It made a huge difference. I was just not keeping up with things without that. Dishes is actually the most important thing (according to Dana) and I'd agree with her that it makes the most difference, because old food hanging around REALLY makes the place look untidy, much more so than anything else (except perhaps actual rubbish - so I'd combine - dishes and bins - these need keeping up with if you can't manage anything else, prioritise those). They also tend to get in the way and make it difficult to just do things - if you can't use the dining table for homework or colouring or crafts, if you can't easily cook in the kitchen without doing a whole clean up operation first, it makes it hard for anything to happen in the right places. And when you don't have an accessible dining table and cooking space, it makes it hard for mealtimes to be a set activity that happen at a set time, which means (IME) food gets consumed elsewhere while you're not fully paying attention and small hands manage to transfer food mess to a lot of other things in the house which means there is a constant depressing layer of just grime on everything and it feels really hard to keep on top of this.

Any kids who are old enough, ROPE THEM IN to washing up and keeping on top of bin emptying. This is as simple as getting them to take their plates out to the kitchen, drying up (doesn't matter if they do it badly, it's just building an expectation/habit), taking a closed bin bag to the outside bin if they aren't old enough to actually deal with the emptying part yet.

I also really HATE doing dishes by hand because of all the sensory factors around it - smells and the water being wet and it being hot and then getting cold too quickly, slimy things, bits coming off and floating around in the water, residual grease, smelly sponges/cloths, the fact you stack things up to dry and they are just there forever - gaaaaaaah.

My most ADHD friendly washing up routine was to stack everything ready to wash on the left side of the sink and first boil a kettle and fill the sink with literally boiling water. Wearing gloves and/or using a long handled scrubbing brush, dunk everything in the water one by one and give it a very quick once over rinse with the boiling water. Stack again on the left. Drain the water and fill with normal washing-up temperature hot, soapy water and wash things up as normal. If the water changes colour, looks greasy or the bubbles disappear, drain all the water and start fresh with new water. But you get a lot longer out of the water by doing the boiling rinse thing first.

Also, I bought washable dish cloths and I put them into a basket by the washing machine immediately after use rather than letting sponges sit around and breed bacteria, which I find disgusting. When the basket gets full, it prompts me to collect bedding and towels and do a 60 degree wash.

Dana's theory about "Dishes Math" is interesting too - she explains that when you leave dishes piling up foe days and then do them, it takes ages, probably over an hour, so you get into a mindset of thinking "Oh it's not worth doing them yet - I'll wait until I have enough that it makes sense" because you think if 3 days' worth of dishes takes 90 minutes, 1 day's worth of dishes is going to take half an hour. But realistically one day's worth might actually take more like 10 minutes because the longer you leave it the more the time multiplies. It doesn't make logical sense, except that it does - it's to do with stains being more set and dried on, as well as having to re-run water multiple times, as well as not having drying space for everything at once, as well as having more stuff to wash because you've always run out of things so you get more things instead of re-using what you already have.

For other tasks I have been using an app called Tody which I really love. It sets out what needs doing by order of urgency and I find this helpful because I just don't really get a sense by looking around the house of which area is most important or where to start. Partially because everywhere can be chaotic but also partially because I don't really know what I'm looking for. So the app is helpful. It took me 2-3 attempts to really stick with it but it's working well for me now. The key was getting the amount of tasks right and starting with a small amount. I kept setting it up with everything I could possibly think of and that was unhelpful. The thing that made it finally work was giving myself a rule "if the task stays on the list too long and is stressing me out, just delete it". Because yeah sure maybe cleaning the bath IS the most overdue task in my house, but if I haven't done it in a year and nobody has died, nothing bad is going to happen if I ignore it for another 6+ months. Build on achievable successes first rather than smacking yourself in the face with your failures every day, that helps nobody!

tealweasel · 26/02/2024 12:52

I'm definitely not a naturally tidy person and I have to work on it quite hard (not helped by having a husband similarly inclined plus a toddler). What's helped for me is picking one or two of the worst offenders and having a 'rule' that I use for them. So, for example, clothes everywhere was one of our problem issues - so the rule is clothes cannot live on the floor. If it's dirty laundry, it goes in the laundry basket (and we have at least one on each floor). If it's to be worn again, we each have a shelf/basket in our cupboard where these things go. Coats are hung in the cupboard, clothes to be recycled/donated go in a special recycling bag. There's a place for everything, and it isn't the floor. If it's been left on the floor, I work on the assumption that it's laundry and it goes in the basket.

Ditto recycling - we (well, particularly my husband) are bad for leaving empty packaging sitting out which needs to be recycled. At the end of each day, I gather all recyclables into a bag. Ideally they're then taken out front and sorted, but at a minimum they can be moved to the utility room for later sorting and at least my sides are tidy. Same with dishes - they all need to go in the dishwasher or the sink, even if they aren't washed immediately. No cups/plates left in the living room or on desks in studies.

By sticking to my rules on a few big things it makes the rest easier to tackle - quicker to vacuum when not maneuvering round piles of clothes, quicker to wipe down counters when they aren't covered in empty cereal boxes and milk cartons...

I will say though, this all became a lot easier when we moved house and (1) decluttered significantly in the process, and (2) had more space for storage.

pastypirate · 26/02/2024 13:20

Hey op - I'm also adhd. I found the resetting the room a bit of a lightbulb for me - so deciding what lives in the living room and that room being tidy means everything else is removed. Plus blankets are folded and cushions arranged. Ionce I had locked down what the reset is it was much easier. Also easier to say 'kids fold the blankets and put the cushions tidy' and they get it after a while.

Taylormiffed · 26/02/2024 13:22

I don't know. I have wavy hair and walk most places so always feel scruffy.

justaboutdonenow · 26/02/2024 13:47

I'm tidy at heart, but am AuDHD, have fibro & also have a big family, assorted animals & quite a hectic life all round, so my house reflects that.

I am weirdly good at cleaning, organising & tidying other peoples' homes & thongs though!

circlesand · 26/02/2024 14:23

I'm much tidier than I used to be.

The way I did it was by marrying someone who is very neat and tidy 😂

Over the years we have both compromised - he accepts a little more mess than he was used to before - and I make more of an effort to clean up after myself.

It works out OK and I am actually quite proud that I've changed some longstanding habits since we've been together.

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