To ask if you grew up in a clean and tidy home?

[Netcurtainnelly]

Apparently your more likely to be clean and tidy if you were.

The house I grew up in was disgusting. Mine is clean but only tidy about 50% of the time (2 young DC). Whenever I can’t get bothered to clean I remember the rotten, mouldy smell of my childhood kitchen, it’s a great motivator!!

My mom was VERY clean and tidy, she’d do a spring clean twice a week. I’m clean but not that clean😂, and I don’t iron which annoys her to no end

I grew up in a clean and tidy house and I keep
a clean and tidy house. My DDs are adults with their own homes and theirs are clean and tidy also.

My mum was obsessed with tidiness. You'd be playing with toys and she'd be itching to put them away. Never allowed anything out. It was horrible and i'm relaxed about stuff as a result. If my kids wanted to build a week long lego land, i'd let them.

Plus as teens i'd my two bin bags once a week and make them hoover but my only rules were no plates left in rooms. It's their space. I used to hate how my room was just an extension of the tidy house space, and my mum used to insist on my cleaning it every day, or she would. No privacy. They had a few manky years but they soon learned to keep their rooms reasonable.

No, and my house is clean but untidy.

Yes. Immaculate. Wasn't allowed to relax in it. I am the opposite with my own family now. Hygienic home, but not always tidy. Lived in, I call it😂

I grew up in a very organised, clean and tidy home.

4 siblings - 2 of us (including me) have very organised immaculate homes. 1 sibling is quite clean, but has a house full of ‘stuff’ and the other sibling lives like a tramp.

Growing up our house was full of clutter. There was just stuff everywhere, tables covered in junk, bits and bobs all the way up the stairs.

When our parents put it on the market the person who came around to take photos offered to come back the following week, so they could make it more presentable. No improvement was forthcoming and there wasn't many interior photos.

My siblings and I all find mess and clutter very stressful. I make sure every item has a place. Usually out of sight.

Clean? Yes. Very.

By my goodness, my mum loved a car boot sale

I am not a clean freak by any means but a childhood friend of mine shocked me at how disgusting her house was. I don’t understand how someone can relax in a house that is filthy. Not just messy but disgusting levels of dirt and grime. Her poor kids.

@Fidgety31do your parents still live in such a bad environment? How do you cope visiting them?

No. I grew up in a filthy, disgusting mess. My mum sat in her chair by the fire, all day, drinking tea, smoking, and reading. The house was thick with dust, everything was sticky from the smoking, everything was covered in pet hair. The kitchen and bathroom were horrendous. Mould, grease, dirty dishes piled up, cobwebs, I never, ever saw the floors washed. We weren’t allowed to bring anyone over.

My house has always been clean and tidy. If I sit down to read and have a cup of tea, I stop reading to take the cup to be washed as soon as I’m finished. Anything I consider mess gives me stress, it’s as if I can physically feel it.

Yikes, it seems like you can get a complex about this in either direction. For me personally, my parents house was in the tidy/spotless end of things. My mum was a SAHM and inclined to organise and throw things away. I think the toys and detritis of our childhood really pained her at times. It could cause arguments (maybe she had a touch of OCD?) Blessedly as a teen my room was my own to make messy if I chose.

My standards are far laxer - my kitchen counters never gleam and there is far more dust, piles of post etc than my mum would bear - but I guess I did learn the useful habit of doing a reset at the end of each day by setting the dishwasher going even if only half full. Then, there are clean dishes in the morning at least.

I liked the book and blog 'A slob comes clean' all about improving your tidying up habits if you tend toward accumulating piles of things like me. She really gets it. She was also raised by a very tidy mum bewildered by why she found it hard to do the same

but I guess I did learn the useful habit of doing a reset at the end of each day by setting the dishwasher going even if only half full.

Why don't you wait until it is full before running it @TheGoldenApplesOfTheSun ? It's incrdibly inefficient to run it half full every day instead of full every other day. Maybe get some more dishes?

Because clearly efficiency isn't the priority, it's a dependable, time based routine.

I did and I’m a messy person. My mum was very tidy. My home is clean and tidy (ish) but I have to really work at it, it doesn’t come naturally and I don’t find it easy.

Quite untidy and my abiding memory is of the fridge constantly stinking as stuff had been allowed to spoil in it and not disposed of.

I am fastidiously clean and tidy now. We have just completed a whole homework renovation and my home is a palace now.

Are these helping, OP? Or was this a journalist thread?

Yes, same here. My DM wasn’t a very keen cook, but she was a very keen cleaner. Mine isn’t as clean but it’s very tidy and we declutter regularly.

Yes, gleaming. My mother's family and peergroup judged one another on the spotlessness of their houses. My dad came from domestic chaos but found a taste for order during National Service and now, as a widower in his late eighties, still keeps a sparkling house with the help of a cleaner. Only one of my siblings is similar. I'm not. I'm happy that I know how to achieve a very clean house but I'm most comfortable with a lived-in look.

I know it sounds a bit mad, but it really helps me! I was about to type out a whole explanation but there’s one on A Slob Comes Clean that pretty much sums up why it works for me: https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2010/06/why-i-have-to-run-my-dishwasher-every/

I also have a half size dishwasher, so it’s pretty easy for my family to fill it up.

No not clean or tidy usually when I was living at home. I remember being ugh at the bathroom sink and they hated me having people over without notice
my dad comments a lot now on how nicely I keep my home. It’s not immaculate but it’s always tidy/clean enough that I’ll let people in
i am forever apologising for “mess” and cleaning but people say it’s not messy at all

Yes I did, my mother was a housewife and had a cleaner / housekeeper and an au pair to look after us children. I am a clean and tidy person by nature but I work in a high responsibility job and have two very busy children, plus we live on a small farm, so our house is not always spick and span sadly. My husband also grew up with a mother at home and their house was neat and tidy, it he is naturally quite a messy sort! So I don’t think there’s any truth in the theory, or we are anomalies if there is. Currently my sitting room is fairly neat and hoovered but could do with dusting, the bedrooms are all clean and tidy, but the kitchen’s a bit messy and the bathroom sinks all need a wipe. I was out most of today though, and just about to take child1 to 3 hours of sports training. So I’ll have to try and catch up tomorrow around work.

No the house was gross. I keep a clean and tidy house but my sister went the other way and her flat is pretty bad.

Yes I did, but a lot of my memories of childhood are around my mum cleaning and not being able to “make a mess”, she’s not like that now with the GC. But my house is not clean and tidy it’s lived in and well used. I spend my free time playing and doing stuff with the kids. I can clean later, they are only little for a short time.