People not showing pride in their homes

[Auburngal]

Talking about those who leave the front of their homes (owned) in a state.

For example there’s a house down my parents road who has an old fridge freezer on their driveway for 5 years! Don’t understand why people spend several hundred quid on white goods don’t buy them from a retailer who takes the old one for free or for £10. I paid the retailer £10 to take my old washer away and to recycle it accordingly.

Then there’s a house opposite me who had their bathroom replaced and left the old loo and other bits outside the home for several months. A decent bathroom fitter would take the old stuff away as part of the package.

Then another family down my parents road have old children’s toys in their garden- play house, sand pit etc. The kids are too old for these toys now.

Then are properties with hedges on the road and used as a ‘bin’. Unless the owners have mobility issues - then there’s no excuse to remove the rubbish from the hedge.

People spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on their homes but I hate it when they show no care.

People need to show pride.

I am a member of a community litter picking group.

Maybe they have better things to do?

Have you knocked and offered to help pay for them to take the fridge freezer away?

The council charge and so do waste removal so perhaps their finances are better spent elsewhere?

Or it may be a burglar deterrent so that if people think the house is a dump then it may not be worth robbing!

Or perhaps it's none of your business?

One of them is right here on your thread, op 😂
Let's see how she justifies it?

My DH does all the home improvements so we can’t just get the plumber to take it away. We can’t afford trades for all jobs, only the few things we can’t do ourselves. Our old front door is currently out the front as our van is at the mechanics so we have no way to get it to the tip. I hope our neighbours appreciate we are doing our best to make our house nice and will stop cluttering up the front of our house as soon as we can.

I do take pride in my home but I don’t judge anyone I don’t know who doesn’t - maybe they are struggling with poor physical or mental health or money is very tight

I do agree that mess and rubbish are an eyesore and I have always avoided living in rough areas but many people can't and it's not my place to ride around in my golden chariot asking the 'peasants' to tidy up.

I used to litter pick on a popular beach but gave up after a row with the shitty council who do nothing about litter and fly tipping.

People spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on their homes but I hate it when they show no care.

Quite often they don’t, they may rent?

I live in a new build estate that isn’t even finished yet and some people have no standards at all. Why you’d spend almost 900k on a house and then not keep your garden neat I’ll never know. MN won’t like it but the social owned housing is the biggest mess.

there is also a house here when the women is an influencer apparently and let me tell you, the inside of that house is an absolute bloody disaster. She must take photos from very very clever angles 🤣

I take no pride in my home but I do litter pick. The two aren't connected. I see taking pride in your home as quite an old fashioned concept, like scrubbing your doorstep every week.

I am not particularly house proud, but the things you've mentioned in your op are beyond that. Of course nobody should be leaving rubbish in their hedge or white goods in front of their house for months on end. That is bad.

I live in a private road and there is a homeowners type committee. I roll my eyes at the middle classedness of it all and hated it when we first moved here...but actually at least there are no serious eye sores / health hazards like a gross old toilet. Worst thing round here is some of the neighbours have plastic grass and it looks awful. But they think it looks beautiful of course so 🤷‍♀️

This! This is my most unpopular opinion but I cannot bloody stand when people don't upkeep their homes. It looks disgusting and a lot of upkeep isn't new triple glazed windows it's stuff like simply not having an arm chair in your front driveway for extended periods of time or mowing your lawn. A lot of it is laziness.

Yep! I never get this with new build developments especially. One I looked at when I was house hunting and the one I wanted was one of the final four on the estate. The rest of the estate put me off! Its not hard to clean your windows, hang a curtain properly, cut your grass and maybe even add some affordable niceties like flowers

@Auburngal Re your comment about the bathroom fittings, I went with Wickes, who subcontract their work out to local contractors. I chose a well-known chain as I was worried about not knowing whether to trust local sole traders.

Well the contractors Wickes used took on too many jobs and couldn't cope, end result was I had the old bathroom outside the house for several months before Wickes sorted it out. Please tell me how I could have avoided this situation!

I know they aren’t rented. Plus many LLs Ts and Cs require the property to be in a reasonable state. The more mess etc, the less deposit you get back.

We also have one neighbour who puts their bin out on a Tuesday night and it's still there 3 days later, they only bring it in when they need to put a bin bag out and realise they need to go and get it first, despite driving past it morning and night.

Yes but how long does it take to do a quick blitz before the end of a tenancy?
Doesn't reflect how they live day to day.

You weren’t to know!

OBVIOUSLY dropping litter in the street etc is not acceptable.

However, people can do what they like with their own houses. They're not obliged to make their property look attractive to you. I personally wouldn't leave a fridge in my front garden for five years, but I also wouldn't think it was any of my business if someone else did, just like I wouldn't think it was any of my business if they painted their house a colour I don't like or had one of those ornamental fake wishing wells and a collection of garden gnomes.

A decent bathroom fitter would take the old stuff away as part of the package

Not everyone uses a bathroom fitter. Lots of people fit their own bathrooms; it's not actually that difficult if you're handy at that kind of thing and aren't changing the layout. My dad fitted my last two bathrooms.*

*We hired a skip for the rubbish, but if people are on a tight budget it's fair enough that they'd rather not spend extra on that.

I agree with this.

I preferred when people kept their ludicrous opinions to themselves or offered support for people struggling with the upkeep of their homes, but here we are where everyone has a voice and an opinion, no matter how shallow and self centred it happens to be.

I am a member of a community litter picking group.

I bet you are.

I think you should spend your free time and self proclaimed community interest in signing up to learn a bit more about human nature, and the struggles some people face that mean these things are unachievable for them.

I think I know what you are getting at. One crappy house that looks like Steptoes Yard makes a whole street look a mess. And if it’s stuff that can blow about spreading the litter it’s even worse. If the people who live there don’t care, I’m not sure what you can do about it though. And as pp have pointed out some people might want too but be struggling.

Do you need help removing that stick?

id rather have the judgemental baggage removed than a kids sandpit.

& before you made even more rude assumptions, my house front is tidy, thank you.

@Auburngal that's the thing, I think there could be others in similar situations waiting for builders to sort things out. It's not always laziness. I do the things I can to keep my house well looked after, but I can't physically move a whole bathroom myself and feel I shouldn't have to pay twice to do it when the original people paid are being slow.

A couple of my neighbours keep rubbish outside their houses (I suspect one has a problem with hoarding) and I don’t think any less of them for it. if you live close to other people you have to put up with their mess sometimes.