Messiness!

[conuly]

1. DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: Whenever I visit my daughter’s and her boyfriend’s apartment, I have to bite my tongue about how cluttered the place is. It makes me afraid I’m going to sit on something when I try and sit down on their sofa. The kitchen table is invisible under all the stacks of stuff they have on it. They have to eat their meals at a coffee table in the living room, because there is no counter or table space that isn’t covered. Even the coffee table has stacks of papers and books and magazines, with just enough space for their plates and drinking glasses.

I get the impression they simply don’t see this as an issue, or even at all, which I don’t understand. This definitely is not how our daughter was raised.

How can people live like this and not get totally stressed out? --- CLUTTER QUEEN’S MOM

DEAR CLUTTER QUEEN’S MOM: Experience has taught me that everyone has their own clutter tolerance and awareness. Often it varies within families, and in your case you and your daughter have a wide gap between your perceptions.

As much as you might not like the way they live, if your daughter and her boyfriend are of a mind on this issue, I’m guessing it isn’t going to change any time soon, and you’ll find yourself having to grin and bear it whenever you stop in to see them.

Maybe you could start making plans to meet up at your home, or some place else less likely to get on your nerves, so you can focus on being together, rather than an environment that makes you uncomfortable.

https://www.uexpress.com/life/ask-someone-elses-mom/2022/12/13

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2. DEAR ABBY: My husband and I have two adult sons, 22 and 20. We helped them become independent by teaching them as teenagers to cook, do their laundry, scrub their bathrooms, vacuum, do dishes, etc.

Our oldest moved out a year ago and rented an apartment with his 28-year-old girlfriend. A month after he moved, we were invited to their place for dinner. The apartment was a mess. We let our son know they need to spend 15 to 30 minutes every day picking up after themselves so their days off won't be spent cleaning. They both work crazy hours.

Neither one thinks cleaning their apartment is important! We have bought them cleaning supplies, a vacuum, a mop, etc., to help them maintain their apartment, but they sit unused. Their place is now a total disaster. It pains me to see them live like this. This isn't how our son was raised.

By the way, she is the mother of a 5-year-old who stays with her three days a week. Part of me wants to call CPS because no child should live in these conditions, but I'm hesitant because of my son. He loves her and enjoys living with her. I desperately need advice on how to best handle this. -- FASTIDIOUS IN WASHINGTON

DEAR FASTIDIOUS: I understand that you are disgusted, but the "best way to handle this" would be to step back and stay out of it. This is how your son has chosen to live -- for now. If he is bothered by the mess, he's capable of stepping in to rectify it. You should not call CPS unless the child is in imminent danger.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearabby/s-2759486

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3. Hi Carolyn: I find it so frustrating when my partner will not do his share of the housework, saying that if I want the house clean, then I should do it myself. This happens even when his family is going to visit.

Do you think the frequent complaints from women about a gender imbalance in doing housework are because our culture has expectations that a woman should keep a nice home, but seems to have lower expectations for men?

I assume my partner’s mother will see a messy home as my responsibility. We all pay the price for archaic and sexist beliefs about housekeeping — but how do we get past it? Is it fair for me to tell his family that he didn’t want to help with cleaning, and I did not have time to do it all?

— Houseworked

Houseworked: The culture carries a lot of blame, as do parents for not rearing boys and girls to be equally attentive to housekeeping chores, as do the individual adults those boys and girls become for going along with these expectations instead of living in defiance of them — as does this essay, which sent me to my fainting couch (wapo.st/3Ex91tJ) — ha-ha, just kidding, I was furious, yet he was at least trying! — and I’m sure we could find all kinds of culprits.

But the needle/wet-towel pile isn’t moving until we insist that it move. For one, stop partnering with people who don’t carry their weight. If you get faked out somehow or they quit on you once partnered, then leave them for it. Say why.

Because you blew by those exit ramps, try this one: “Clean up your crap or I’m calling your family to cancel, and I will say why. I am not your freaking housekeeper.”

“If you want it clean, then you clean it” is so breathtakingly infantile and disrespectful that it warrants a breakup on its (de)merits alone. Plus, tidying for guests is baseline grace.

We won’t be done with outrageous domestic imbalances until people are done, done, done putting up with them, and answering to them — “tell his family”? wha? — and all the lame excuses churned out to defend them.

So. Are you?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/20/carolyn-hax-partner-housework-division/

Comments

[conuly]

1. Shockingly, different people are different, no matter who raises them or how.

2. I'm amazed LW's son still invites them over. As for CPS - I literally grew up in squalor. I assume that if conditions in this apartment were anything like what I grew up with, LW would have at least hinted at it, which makes this very much not an issue for child services. LW needs to seriously get a grip.

3. Divorce is always on the table. I'm just saying.

[minoanmiss]

#3 hiring a cleaning service might be cheaper, though I think Husband Who Refuses To Clean shoudl pay for it, not least since he allegedly is supposed to love his wife.

Or, counting in emotional wellbeing, a divorce might well be cheaper.

I am aghast at #2. She wants to call CPS on a single mother because her house is messy? Unless there's stuff literally rotting everywhere, I kind of want to steal her phone.

#1 pales against #2 but makes me roll my eyes.

[conuly]

I am aghast at #2. She wants to call CPS on a single mother because her house is messy? Unless there's stuff literally rotting everywhere, I kind of want to steal her phone.

Upon re-read, her reason for not calling is "even though nobody deserves to grow up in those living conditions, it might make my son sad", so... that's even more wtf.

I don't think for one instant that this is a CPS situation, and even if it theoretically could be I actually have enough experience specifically in a hoarding household as a child to be dubious that CPS could help unless Mom losing custody entirely is really the best answer (and it's probably not) - but if it were a situation that requires child services intervention, what sort of person holds off because of that sort of reason?

[lilysea]

Calling CPS is not appropriate unless the children are in real and immediate physical danger from the house!

for example, if the kitchen is a recipe for the kind of food poisoning that gets you hospitalised!

and even then, there are other things that should be done first, like

a) "It must be so hard to manage work and childcare and housework! I was thinking, would you like us to take the kids to the park so you can get some cleaning done in peace?" and

b) "Would it be okay with you if I cleaned the kitchen for you? Is there any specific way you would like it done?"

c) If the money is available "Hey, I would love to buy you a voucher for a cleaning service to do a one-off visit, how would you feel about that? Is there a specific cleaning service that you would prefer?"

The idea that mess = immorality really bothers me.

Mess is morally neutral. It can be a health hazard eg dust = asthma attacks, but mess is a PRACTICAL issue, not a moral issue.

[conuly]

Calling CPS is not appropriate unless the children are in real and immediate physical danger from the house!

I agree, especially since CPS is not really...

In theory, they ought to be equipped to provide exactly the kind of help that people in a hoarding or non-hoarding squalor situation need to get better.

In practice, we don't really know how to help that very well, and government interference tends to be more like a blunt instrument than a useful scalpel.

Growing up, it really was pretty bad - but we were still able to shovel out everything if we urgently needed the plumber to come through or whatever. We could've done it for child services too. What we couldn't do is keep it from getting bad again, and adding a stressor like "if you don't keep clean, you might lose overnights with your kid, and by the way, when they take your kid away they'll bag up all your stuff and throw it in a dumpster" is not actually going to help. It's more adding fuel to the fire.

It might be better if there's no psychological component, if it's honestly just a matter of the physical ability to clean. I don't know. But if the only problem is the mess, and it's not actually a health hazard, social services is not the answer.

[lilysea]

Also, given how overworked social services is, it might not get prioritised even if it is a very real/very genuine hazard.

There is a case in the news in Australia at the moment about a teenage mother with several children whose baby who died because the house was a genuine health hazard which caused respiratory problems.

Quite some time before the baby died, the Australian equivalent of CPS put a non-government agency on it, the nongovernment agency was repeatedly told by the mother they couldn't enter the home because she was having a bad mental health day, and other times the mother just didn't show up for appointments.

The nongovernment agency emailed AustralianCPS to say this, and Australian CPS just didn't do anything about it, because their case load was so bad that management had ordered them to close all unresolved files that didn't involve actual violence.

And then the baby died, and the medical experts and the coroner went "yeah, this was a direct consequence of how bad the home was"

[conuly]

Also, given how overworked social services is, it might not get prioritised even if it is a very real/very genuine hazard.

Oh, yeah, no, definitely.

I actually strongly suspect that one of the reasons that social services often jumps the gun to removal when it's not warranted, quite aside from all the other usual reasons (systematic discrimination on all axes, mostly, though in some areas there may be a profit motive) is because they're so underfunded they don't actually have many options besides "ignore it and hope it resolves on its own" and "remove, quickly, because you don't have time or money for nuance".

Of course, the solution isn't only to pump more funding into it. I'm not actually sure how best to solve things.

There's also the issue that even if removal is 100% warranted, it's traumatic and has a lasting negative effect. And if it's not warranted, even a very short-term removal, even to family or friends, has a lasting negative effect. So. I mean.

The situation is complex and everything sucks but we can't fix it by making it worse, and making spurious calls for kicks definitely makes it worse.

[lilysea]

Among other things,

I would love to see a child welfare agency run BY Aboriginal people FOR Aboriginal people -

because it would address over-removal by white people that happens because of racism and/or lack of cultural understanding

but it would also address UNDER-removal by white people who are reacting to the appalling overremoval of Aboriginal children in the 1950s/1960s/1970s by now no longer removing Aboriginal children even when they are in extreme immediate danger.

Australia currently has both over-removal AND under-removal of Aboriginal children - children who are safe or safe-ish being removed because of racism; and children who are NOT safe being left unsafe due to politics/optics.

I would also like to see some of the foster care money diverted into direct nonfinancial support for parents who are struggling (regardless of race)

eg "we can pay for some as-needed emergency childcare for you, ring this number if you start to feel overwhelmed and someone will come and do childcare so that you don't shake or hit your child"

"we can pay for a cleaner to come once a fortnight for you"

[oursin]

There is a difference between 'messy'/'cluttered', which may affront some people's aesthetic preferences, and living in actual filth, just saying.

(Will confess that my residence is somewhat of a tip, but nonetheless, principles of basis hygiene are observed.)

[green_grrl]

Yup, that’s me, too. Absolutely no food waste anywhere but the bin and plates in the sink (dishes washed 1xday). The piles of clutter, though? Well…

[ashbet]

I’d LOVE to live in a tidier house, but with both residents being disabled (ofc, in ways that people love to discount — chronic pain/fatigue doesn’t always show), the best I can keep it is sanitary.

(I do pay a friend to come out periodically and help with heavier chores and decluttering, but it’s a strain on my budget.)

Contemplating calling CPS over clutter is absolutely outrageous, unless there is a true danger to the child’s health.

[movingfinger]

I do wonder what "this is not how our daughter/son was raised" means. Does it mean "when our child was growing up, the whole family put on rubber gloves and scrubbed the house top to bottom every weekend" or does it mean "Mom kept the house immaculate and did all the cooking and laundry for everyone"? Because if you have to explain "they need to spend 15 to 30 minutes every day picking up after themselves," then that habit was never taught/ingrained.

Anyone who is working crazy hours while parenting a part-time five-year-old is doing everything they can, I think.

[finch]

#1 & #2 are the sorts of opinions that make it necessary for KC Davis to tell us that care tasks are morally neutral. My house is cluttered and I do my best to keep it clean and I also do my best NOT to let my hang ups keep my daughter from having social time with her friends because good lord. #2 was/is the stuff of my nightmares.

#3 is a whole other ball of marriage counseling, really.

[tielan]

I'm sure my mother mentally thinks like these LW, difference is that she bites her tongue most of the time.

[shanaqui]

I hate the "this is not how they were raised comments". Ugh. My wife and I have deeply different levels of tolerance for mess. We've come to a compromise that is definitely not how I was raised, but maintains our mental health (neither me having to do everything, nor my wife doing more than they can bear given their ADHD and depression) and keeps our surroundings reasonably liveable for me. That's our compromise, it takes us a fair bit of work (both of us do more cleaning than we'd like to do, approaching our limits for how much we can do), and screw anyone who judges it.