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.

How do I do that please? I'm up for solutions - I'm all ears.

Good lord no...... I'm so sorry you have to see ..... a bin!

Stop chucking rubbish into your front garden? Hardly a radical concept.

Aye.

I always kept my garden decent. Then I finished up working full-time, caring for my parents and latterly my husband.

Used my life savings to build an extension so that we could move in my mum. Finished up with drainage problems which I'm still trying to resolve.

I'm now on my own. DH died 3 yrs ago. I'm still not back to normal, but trying.

My garden - front and back - is still an absolute mess. Still trying to sort out the drainage problem.

I'm trying to keep on top of the hedge. I cut that when it needs done and I'm trying to clear rubbish as people throw it into the garden. (I live near a school, but my garden also borders a public path leading to a football park. I get dogwalker bags, half-bottles of vodka...Shout out to whoever chucked in the filled nappy.)

I've also had 'landscapers' chucking branches etc into what remains of the shrubbery in my back garden.

During lockdown, while DH was very ill, I caught a 'tree surgeon' trying to make a shortcut through my back hedge.

I've paid a few thousand to get tree surgeons to deal with some things in the back garden. (I got a lump sum when I retired earlier than I would have liked, but not enough to do everything that I need done. Part of it has already gone on trying to fix extension problems.)

Finally managed to deal with memorials and probate and so on.

You'd be horrified by my front garden. No fridges or suites, but my husband's garden trailer is still there. It was supposed to move back to the side after the extension was built, but then DH had his stroke and I've twice had to have the side garden dug up. (I've removed and re-planted our bulbs twice.)

A bit of the side garden will probably have to come up again. Ditto the back.

The firm that supposedly made over our front garden is bust. When I investigated by digging down, I discovered that they'd used odd bits of plastic instead of water permeable fabric. I started lifting and replacing everything myself, but I jiggered both my shoulders moving and handling my husband. Have since had two shoulder decompressions. Also turns out that I have knee problems.

I've gone back to work two days a week to try to cover the cost of getting my drains fixed. I do have a case, a lawyer told me, but it would take a thousand a day in court and 1.5k up front.

I've joked to folk at work that my garden is the one that lets down the street. Inside I'm dying. I'll get back on top of it once my drains are fixed, but it's going to take me a while.

Thus far, now that I've recovered as well as I'm ever going to from my shoulder decompressions, I've managed to use my old van to take the branches that others have dumped to the local tip.

I'm currently doing a little bit at a time in the front garden, since there's no drainage to dig up there. DH's garden trailer is still there.

Don't ask about the state of my house.

Well, how do I get the council to come any quicker? I paid for pick up, it's hardly my fault that it takes them 3 weeks to come?

What about the people who actually chuck the rubbish into my garden? Isn't it on them to pick it up not me? I'm disabled I can't pick it up.

And I rely on a lovely neighbour to bring my bin in, and he doesn't always get it brought in right away - the council won't return the bin to the back garden.

How can I be less scruffy and maintain my independence? I can't manage buttons or zips and my clothes definitely aren't ironed.

Any ideas on how to stop other folk chucking in rubbish? I know all about the 'broken window' syndrome, but some folk seem to chuck their rubbish in faster than I can clear up.

Well they could be suffering from either physical or mental illnesses, they could be elderly and have no one to help them. They could be dead, they could have drug or alcohol dependency.

Don't judge a book by its cover or a person by the outside of their home.

I’ll be honest our bush is used as a bin. We live near a corner shop and I’m not sure how often I should be digging out cans and bottles from my bush? I have children, a job and my children need lots of ferrying around.

people also Chuck rubbish in ours and neighbours front gardens daily and there seems to be loads of it in the street too. It’s gross.

sorry if it offends. Tbh I find people using our bush and front garden to Chuck stuff in as a bin offensive. We’re often in a rush in the am and in the evenings when we get home it’s dark so finding stuff in my bush is pretty difficult…. And then it’s the weekend of ferrying my children around….. but yup it’s the home owners that are the problem not getting a big torch and checking their bush regularly.

Same here.

I've currently got a broken kids tractor, and a flat spacehopper, three or four cans of red bull and some sweet wrappers in my front garden. I didn't put them there. I'll get my gardener to put the rubbish in the bin, when he comes to do the grass but why should I have to pay for a flat spacehopper and a busted kids tractor to be cleared away at £30 that aren't mine and are nothing to do with me?

I’m not a huge fan of people leaving white goods and old furniture in their front gardens and I would get the hump living next door to it.

But there is something unpleasantly sanctimonious and Hyacinth Bouquet about the phrase “taking pride in your home”. Conjures up images of bored curtain twitchers in pristine mock Tudor.

It also assumes that not being able to maintain your front garden is always down to laziness. There are many very reasonable explanations as to why someone may not have time or capacity to spend their life sweeping the front step or endlessly mowing the lawn.

I had literally zero time to do house maintenance for a few years (and zero free funds to pay someone to do it).
Had a funny moment - a couple of days after I tidied the front garden and repainted the door, one of neighbours down the road knocked on my door and expressed how delighted are they that I moved in, as the previous owner was a complete pig - and I've been living there for five years by that time 😂. It wasn't even that bad, no rubbish or anything, just weeds / overgrown bushes.

But there is something unpleasantly sanctimonious and Hyacinth Bouquet about the phrase “taking pride in your home”. Conjures up images of bored curtain twitchers in pristine mock Tudor.

This is what I mean.

It's possibly not pride, but shame. Making your disabled neighbours feel ashamed because they can't trim their edges, or can't afford £50 for someone to take away an item. Feeling superior.

Pride feels to me like a negative emotion, unless you've done something like achieved world peace. Feeling smug and looking down on people less fortunate seems nearer the mark.

A friend of my mum’s - DH decided to take the old washer to the tip instead of paying £10 for retailer to take old one away or council £25.

He damaged both the boot locking mechanism and the ceiling fabric on taking out the washer out of the car. Cost was £225

Our house and front is a bit of a mess tbh. We haven't had our windows cleaned in ages as we're going to get them replaced soon, but the main reason is DC with SEN. We both work in demanding jobs and our spare time and headspace is taken up either with spending time with DC, sorting things for the DC, doing the necessary day to day stuff, or getting much needed headspace and time to ourselves. DC2 is now 9yo and still wakes us in the night. They also get extremely upset if we throw or give ANYTHING away - even a scrap of paper, a stick, broken toys or too-small clothing, which makes it really tough. We're permanently exhausted and we do want to stay on top of those little jobs but we also need to live our lives. Neither myself or DP is particularly tidy which adds to the challenge.

Yes. I litterpick too, but I don’t think it’s anyone’s responsibility to keep the exteriors of their houses in a state I may find aesthetically appealing. I think I’d prefer a fridge to gnomes, but it’s not up to me.

I once lived in a late-1970s development on the edge of a village where the local residents’ committee was trying to enforce the original developers’ covenant forbidding caravans and commercial vehicles on driveways, but were fine with boats, and contravening the diktat against having front fences/hedges.

Yes, I have thought the same thing again and again. Hedges completely overgrown and messy, uncared for lawn and weed everywhere, litter in people's gardens, the inevitable armchair/ sofa at the front of the house.

I lived in a non first world country where front gardens were full of pretty flowers and homegrown veg, arranged in symmetrical shapes, pretty curtains, and pavements in front of the house swept daily...

I think it's a sign of people who are no longer part of a community, people who have had too much for too long (yes, even the poor) and no longer appreciate things, people who are isolated and miserable.

Or they're disabled and doing their best?

I have never seen a fridge or an inevitable armchair in anybody's garden but it seems it's rife on here.

Our house sale fell through because of next door's house - a rusty saucepan full of fag ends and empty beer cans on the door step, weeds, litter and dog shit everywhere. Ours is immaculate. They told the estate agent that they just couldn't buy a house with an eyesore next door.

She doesn't work and spends most of her time on her doorstep in pyjamas on the iPad, fag in one hand, beer in the other.

YANBU.

I had a fridge and a dishwasher for 3 weeks lol

How do you know there's a tip 5 minutes away?

Round my way, the council is saving money my restricting opening times. Not everyone has a tip in their town or village, and some of them are accessible via booking only. There's a waiting list in many places.

My next-door neighbour doesn't have access to a car.

Now that my head's beginning to get back to normal and I've cleared my garden of the branches that have been fly-tipped there, my neighbour and I have had a fence panel replaced between us.

I managed to book in to take the old pieces of fence away. Her son accompanied me and we also took the rest of the rubbish from her back garden. (Like me, she's an older widow and she had a stroke last year.)

If I'd not had the my old van, goodness knows how long we'd have had to wait for the council to uplift the rubbish. The neighbour had already tried to make bookings, but was unsuccessful.

FWIW my local tip is open 10-4 Mon - Fri and 11-1 Saturday. It's 6 miles away.

You have to book a slot.

Saturday slots are like hens' teeth.

The tip workers aren't allowed to help you out with anything into the skips.

So, assuming I could get a neighbour to put the green tractor and bouncy thing into the car, he would have to come with me to put them in the skips.

God what a bunch of sad saps

Oh, it drives me mad.

Someone dumped two plastic toboggans and a broken 'supersoaker' in my garden. I eventually managed to break them up and get them in my plastics bin, but it took me ages.

I always know when there's a booze offer on in the local Co-op, cos I get the empty bottles and cans shoved in my hedge.

And if I landscaped the garden and made it low maintenance and artificial grass I'd get ticked off on here for not thinking about the bees.