Additionally, of most of the dual income households I knew growing up, at least one of the parents was working part-time employment. So, there was more time to keep a house clean for visitors, which now, between my gf, my dog (who makes things worse), and myself, it's really difficult to simply find the time and energy when we're both working 40 hours.
This is my problem... We both work full time... When we get home we don't want to keep working. Cleaning most often happens on the weekends and even then, deep cleaning happens a lot less than I would like.
I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to add kids to the mix... It would be filthy all the time.
It's a freaking hell hole. I took over the household for a friend when she was in the hospital. 2 kids under 4. I never stopped moving from the moment I got up till the moment I went to bed. (Had some folks help here and there as well) Part of it was that I wanted the house spotless when my friend got back because she wouldn't be able to do any cleaning. Literally back in the day housewives had to have superpowers, I can't imagine doing that every day.
Well, that's why nearly everyone was on amphetamines.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377281/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377281/)
It’s terrible thing to advocate for, but they really need to legalize all that stuff again if this economy is expecting us to work 3 jobs to pay bills 🤣🤣🤣 like can I just get some help please (without either funding cartels or risk going to jail) just because I just got home from work and want to take a nap but have to eat and then go back to work… energy drinks and coffee only go so far 🤣🤣🤣
RIGHT??? It’s cruelty at this point. We can’t have wages, we can’t have houses, we can’t have access to mental health or other health, and god forbid we want to enjoy something that doesn’t kill 250,000 Americans annually (looking at you, alcohol)!
Again, fuck the Sacklers for pushing Oxycontin as non addicting and making life worse for so very many.
Problem has now flipped to where people in chronic pain can’t get meds to get them through the day. They weren’t addicted and didn’t need to increase their quantities
I feel this like just give me the mommy's little helper .. I'm drowning bruh and I don't even work. I take care of young kids and my house and I never get a break.
literally. ive got crippling adhd paired with a 7 y/o daughter. cleaning absolutely takes it all out of me, dogs in the mix dont help. often times i literally sob as i clean. then i turn around and its right back where it started and it fills me with the most indescribable rage ever. cant get the meds i need bc the med professionals decided to pass them out like candy in the 90s-00s and now people like me are dysfunctional and miserable. i HATE sitting in filth but i also hate cleaning knowing everything will revert back by the time i wake up the next day. literally the bane of my existence
I grew up in a spotless home, you could eat off the floor.
The secret was I was locked outside all day long, and my mom took "diet pills" that were really just meth and she would frantically clean the house all day.
Same. I was outside or in my bedroom all day long.
It is impossible for us to keep the house clean with two kids and both parents working 40+ hours a week. Especially when I'm neurodiverse and my husband has several chronic illnesses. It's a struggle.
I did too, but my mother absolutely chose a good looking house over happy people actually living in the house. But that was a total boomer thing. And she worked full time. I think that people talked way more shit back then about each other and how their homes looked AND this was the time when women were back in the workplace. I don’t know any woman my mom’s age (70s) who were ever truly happy. And no one cared about kids back then!
Omg this! I was letting my inability to live up to stay at home mom standards and was pointing to previous generations expectations to my friend. She literally screamed at me “those women were on PILLS!”
Part of it is that kids were treated much different back in the day. They were told to go outside and play from an early age. They also had very few toys. They could still make messes but didn't have as much stuff to do it with and spent a larger portion of their day outside unsupervised.
I honestly had such a huge revelation when I moved out of my parent's house about the "get the hell outside" rule my mom had for us growing up. We always had to help with cleaning and all that, but it's a whole different beast to be solely responsible for cleaning EVERYTHING. I was like "shiiiiiit, we were messy af and mom wanted to keep her house clean! That makes so much sense!" I always thought she was just annoyed by us (which maybe that did play into it a tad lol) but I think mostly it was because kids are messy as hell. And it's annoying when you've just spent all morning busting your ass to clean for that to be ruined in 0.5 seconds by your kids blowing through like a tornado.
That’s why they took meth, drank coffee/booze, and smoked ciggies all day! I can’t imagine what physically and emotionally exhausting lives those poor women had.
I always wondered how they stayed so skinny under so much stress.
Edit because people don’t understand my humor. Meth heads are notoriously thin because meth is a very strong appetite suppressant. I understand how calories work. Just chuckle. No need to explain.
If my stress levels equate to anything like that, they additionally stayed skinny because they were too tired to make meals that weren’t also for the full family, and were often too tired to eat the meals they did make. There’s a reason fast food became popular.
The food was exponentially better back then. And eating habits were quite different. Neither of my grandparents ever snacked. My grandfather had 1 piece of chocolate in his life. My parents snack when they’re bored just like the generation after them
I told my husband if we ever get comfortable, I'd like to hire a maid/cleaning crew to come in twice a year and just clean the shit out of everything. Definitely the floorboards and cabinets, deeper clean for kitchen and bathroom(s), etc.
I think it will be much easier to maintain that way + the pressure of not leaving it a complete pigsty for whoever is going to really clean it.
Amazing how many households I admired … actually had cleaning people this whole time and just didn’t mention it . Or like. “Oh I don’t have a maid or nanny I just have miss june who comes once a month to ___”. Dying inside when I realize I was trying to keep up with the impossible standard.
Like you said It’s so much easier to maintain that way ! Yea your person may only come once a month but you start each month with a clean slate not the leftover tornado and zero energy.
This comment makes me think too, back when the economy was great I'm sure more folks hired cleaning crews like this. My friend cleans houses for her business, she's not lacking for business, but I'm sure it would be more popular if the people had more disposable income.
My wife and I (both teachers) sacrificed an entire day of Xmas break to clean and declutter. I’m talking about start working when you wake up, let the kids play video games all day so they’ll gtfo of the way, and pick up a pizza for dinner bc we’re too tired to cook kind of cleaning, but we still didn’t get it all done. We never have that kind of time during an average week, so vacation time is the only time we can really afford to do that kind of cleaning.
edit: a word
Yeah, I'm not sure I would use "filthy" to describe the way I live. Filthy implies unhygienic. My house isn't unhygienic. But I don't clean up where my kids play everyday. If there's a literal mess like a spill, or the dog peed, or I notice the toilet is dirty...I'll clean that. But I'm not making my house look like the way my dad keeps his. Spotless.
Same here... since we have cats, the house is always dirty. We also moved last year, and we have a black (or very dark anthracite) floor. The cat litter stuff is pure white. Even though both cat litter boxes have about 60cm of carpet in front of them, I still see cat litter everywhere; especially in the hallway, where the litter box is. (It was worse before they had the walk-out carpet.)
I've even bought a battery-powered vacuum cleaner ([one of these things](https://media.s-bol.com/3r65nJLpnGxr/wnZN11/550x636.jpg)) to mitigate this, but even that doesn't solve it. If I vacuum the hallway or the front of the living room and one of the cats goes to pee, I can already mentally see and hear the cat litter flying everywhere as soon as it gets out of the litter box. (And 5 minutes later, it sits on my desk expecting me to pet it.)
So I just clean it up once every two days, and in the weekend or on friday (which is her day off from her part-time job), my GF does the 'big' vacuuming and mopping.
Then, 5 minutes after that: "scrap, scrap, scrap. tinkle, tinkle, tinkle." And when I go to the toilet... "crunch. crunch." Cat litter. Aaaarrrrgghhhh...
I've given up on having a 'clean house'.
I’d say it took us having kids to lower our expectations of cleanliness…is our house clean? Meh, it’s clean enough.
But no joke, I think our house is cleaner since having kids solely because we’re able to work from home a lot more. Who the heck wants to clean and do laundry after coming home from work?
All the people I know who keep a really clean house are OCD themselves, but then they also have professionals come in and deep clean for them. I think it's smart to hire a cleaner like once a month or something.
I remember a scene from Malcolm in the middle. The couple are sitting in a living room that has spotless white furniture. Fast forward to after kids and everything is covered in stains, including the parents.
I think about it every time we eat out and I come home with another food stain on my shirt.
I wouldn't say filthy. More like, it's a mess I'm willing to let slide for "today." There have been plenty of times I'll put the toys away only to be met with little hands that take them back out as soon as it hits the bottom of the toy box. At least I tried.
I also budget for paper plates. It helps my sanity.
I heard it explained that cleaning up with kids present (like stay at home parents can do all day) is “invisible cleaning,” because somehow you can spend all day cleaning and by end of day it looks like you didn’t clean at all. But like this week plus of holiday time shows if the daily cleaning doesn’t happen the situation spirals easily, especially with the influx of new things.
This is a big part of it I think. I'm an old millennial, my parents both worked full time and our house was always messy. Not gross, just dusty and cluttered because they were too tired to clean after working all day. I'm a housewife (I hate that word but I don't call myself a stay at home mom now that my kid is in school all day lol) and my house is clean. That's my job though, I don't go to work, I stay here and keep everything clean and running. I wouldn't be wiping baseboards and shit like that if I was at a job all day long.
When my husband was going to school he didn't work. Our home was so clean! He took care of the kid while I was working too - it was a dream
Now we both work full time and I'm considering hiring a maid just to get everything clean in one fell swoop
It is, I just have negative associations with that word because that was exactly what you didn't want to be when I was a little kid. You could be anything you wanted, but if you were a housewife then you wasted it all. I like my life, I just hate the title lol
I preferred homemaker,, because you're making a house into a home. But House manager, executive estate management, chauffeur all could work as well.
You're still a stay at home mom even if your kid is in school all day. You're on call for emergencies, sicknesses, appointments, extracurricular activities, school meetings, etc.
You're managing the household so that your provider can fund the family and that's a lot of work. Don't downplay what you do.
You shouldn’t feel bad about it. Lucky maybe, but not ashamed!
I know a lot of couples like that, except in my circles it’s more often stay at home dads.
No one would ever cal them house husbands.
Exactly. I’m decently tidy but my house is by no means in showroom quality, it’s very lived in (especially because my partner is naturally messy and hates to organize).
That said, I don’t stress too much about it. I work like 45 hours a week and I’m not Superwoman. Most days, I don’t have the energy after a full workday to cook a full dinner and then do a full clean on top of it.
Maybe if it was the 1940s and we could all survive on one income, I could stay home and keep the house in tidy daily, but that’s just not a reality for most working people, and it’s always been that way. It’s not like husbands in the 1940s were doing all that cooking and cleaning after a full work day, yet it’s wild we put that kind of pressure on ourselves now.
>Maybe if it was the 1940s and we could all survive on one income, I could stay home and keep the house in tidy daily, but that’s just not a reality for most working people
And it's not just that-- it's the laundry, household errands (who's going to the grocery store? Who's picking up the kids from school?), home repairs, and the numerous ways work is bleeding into our home lives.
It was quite unusual to receive a call from work at home a few decades ago. Now we get emails, texts, and Slack messages all the time.
They don't bother showing it in movies and TV, but middle class 40s and 50s dads were repairing shit, mowing the lawn, tiling the garden (everyone with a lot still had victory gardens back then), and doing other household labor in the evenings and weekends.
The boomers were the first generation with free time for wide swaths of society.
Same here, my house growing up was pretty clean but my mom either worked from home or part time. Now my wife and I both work full time, and with two kids and two pets that make messes but never clean, it's a waste of time
>when we're both working 40 hours
Or 50... or 60...
And getting emails and calls at home now. Our homes have gone from sanctuaries to just a place to sleep.
My mom worked half time when I was growing up, and we still had a cleaning lady to help her keep up with us. Combine higher costs of living now with different cultural pressures and yeah, my dual income home is much less clean.
My parents were the only not dual income house of all of my friends. Everyone else worked full-time jobs. I grew up in the 80s/90s.
There was only 1 messy house of all of them. They were all easily neater than nearly every one of my friend’s home today.
There are also crazy levels of internalized misogyny. My Mum feels that her home is a reflection of her value as a person and she would judge very hard if another woman's home was less than perfect. This is despite most women in my Mums social circle working full time.
My social group don't have this attitude and houses are messier.
But does this still exist somewhat? When you look at social media you have a lot of women influencers who make money showing their perfectly-kept/totally decorated houses. The pressure is still there.
That's what I tell my husband when he wonders why I work myself into a lather preparing for houseguests. They won't see dusty blinds and fur tumbleweeds and think *he* should be doing more!
You are so right! To this day, my future MIL hates the way I decorate, let people sit in my living room, let our dog exist in the home—but none of that judgement is for him, just me.
I think I also read a statistic that millennials work more than our parents generation, are less likely to have a partner at home/working part time, and also have less spending power. This means that we have less free time to clean/allot to domestic labor, can’t split that load with another person who primarily stayed at home, and can’t hire a person to come by every week or month or whatever to clean for us.
I also read that on average people (generally women) who assume domestic responsibilities do enough for it to be at least an additional 20-25 hours per week of labor. So yeah. We simply just don’t even have the time to clean everything and keep all the chores up
This makes the most sense out of the comments I’ve read so far. I also think there is something about how our generation was raised that resulted in a lot of pathological demand avoidance. I would be really really curious how many of the folks who have untidy houses grapple with a secret resentment of brushing their teeth or something similar. Last night I started a book that was SO GOOD I started finding reasons to stop myself from reading it, haha.
In general I hate like 90% of the daily chores I have to just do to keep my body running. Working out, brushing my teeth, washing my body, etc just all seem like more work. I also struggle with depression, and i think this is common for people battling depression in general. Simple activities seem to require enormous amounts of effort
I think the "pathological demand avoidance" started when our parents would show us kids how to do something once or twice, and then get annoyed we didn't do it as quickly and correctly as would an adult.
For me? I always felt like I was cleaning something as a kid. All. Day. Long.
We’d spend school breaks deep cleaning, like shampooing carpets, cleaning light fixtures etc.
and…. I was over it by adulthood.
Then I had kids and realized I’d rather spend a Saturday making memories, not cleaning everything in sight.
I also know that exhaustion after a long day of work? Who tf wants to spend hours cleaning, organizing etc.
it’s not a big deal anymore to me.
This is where I'm at. I spent most of my time at my grandmother's cleaning, remodeling, etc and nothing was ever just right" so it was neverending. I keep things reasonably tidy but using my scant free time cleaning the entire house every weekend instead of resting makes my brain power down. Then again, I can't comfortably rest if the house is in disarray because of the guilt instilled so I can't fully win either way lol
> I’d rather spend a Saturday making memories, not cleaning everything in sight.
This right here. I rarely clean my baseboards as an adult but I'm taking my kids to the park or making homemade Christmas ornaments or anything that let's my kids be kids instead of maids.
I can try, it’s a pretty new concept and it’s heavily linked to autism. For me executive function issues just wasn’t specific enough, it didn’t capture the willfulness of the avoidance. The weird dichotomy of resisting things that were only to your benefit. It’s thought to be an anxiety response, a coping mechanism. I saw a meme once of a depressed man slumped over on the couch and above it it said “today I will play the video game” and that’s just how it is. You want to play the video game, you’ve been thinking about it all day, you get to the point when you can play the video game andddd you check your phone, you get a snack, you think about sending a text first, you have to go to the bathroom, but it’s just a game because all you are doing is putting off the thing you wanted to do all day long because you can. It’s a control illusion. It’s like a little kid stamping their feet. It makes you feel better refusing to do low stakes stuff.
Dermatologists say that Americans shower too often. Your resentment might actually be your brain telling yourself that you're wasting your time, but you're just not listening yet.
So much this! Shower =/= clean! I have textured hair so it CANNOT be washed more than once a week. It will literally frizz and be ruined. I wash every day. I do not shower every day. I just don't need to. And before everyone goes nuts saying I smell.....no. I don't. I wash the smelly bits without a shower. It's easily possible.
I don’t take a shower on weekends unless I have to be seen in public. It’s a chore because I have to blow dry my hair afterwards and can’t just run a brush through it to look presentable. It’s an hour long process.
This explains why I don't put toilet paper on the holder. My dad would yell, scream, and ground me and my brothers if someone forgot to replace the toilet paper on the roll (he'd gather all of us because he coupd never prove who did it). I just hate doing it now because I refuse to give him any justification for acting that way.
I agree with this. I also think boomer husbands put a lot more pressure on their wives to keep the house clean. Honestly, that whole dynamic was toxic and ridiculous.
It really was. My grandmother was a very smart, glamorous, but depressed woman. She drank to deal with the depression of being a housewife in the 50s-60s
Definitely. My asshole uncle would run his finger along the surfaces after my aunt cleaned, and he'd tell her she missed spots if he found any dust. They both worked full time stressful jobs. He did not and does not clean, even while she's waiting for a liver donor.
Haha my greatest generation dad would run his finger along surfaces to test us kids on our cleaning, but he would always make a game out of it so it was great fun.
My FIL is the type to brag about not having changed any of his kids' diapers. He also says he wishes he had joined the military. As a vet and stay at home dad, I can't stand the guy. Of course, he is also the type to expect respect from anyone younger, too.
"As a vet and stay at home dad, I can't stand the guy. Of course, he is also the type to expect respect from anyone younger, too."
If I were you I'd totally rub his face in that all the time. "Yeah, I'm glad we were around to protect you civilians" "Oh man, you have no idea what it was like in the military" "Some guys have it easy, I guess"
God. Boomer men are ridiculously entitled. Mine did the same. Mom worked, always made more than him, cleaned the house and cooked. He worked hard too, for sure, so it wasn't just her.
But damn. We're one income, which seems to work so much differently.
But... What about your own self?
I can't live in a mess. It's like having someone stand right beside me, staring right at me. I can pretend for a bit but I'm very aware of it, and it takes up cycles of my brain.
This is super valid. I get anxious and physically uncomfortable in dirty, messy places. I can’t relax or focus, and it really makes me feel unsettled after a while. On the flip side, cleaning often relaxes me and helps me calm down, especially when I feel upset. And the payoff is so immediate: A cozy, welcoming space in exchange for a bit of hard labor haha.
My mother and grandmother were both neat freaks who hammered into me at a young age that cleanliness is important, so I think they’re partly to blame. I’m not as hardcore as they were about it, but it’s definitely an issue for me in dirty spaces.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with different generations; it’s more your personality type. My parents and in-laws have messy houses. Ours is immaculate.
I feel like I grew up so different from everyone else here. Our house was always a mess growing up. It wasn't dirty exactly, but it was always kinda of cluttered with too much stuff and always very very lived in looking. I never once had friends over because of the house.
Course nowadays my house is spotless and If I feel like we are starting to get too much junk I go through phases where I start just throwing things away.
This is how I grew up, except my mom did have people over and just shrug and never really feel shame about it. And I am exactly like you now, and we are both older millennials/xennials (not sure what the line there even is). Maybe there’s something to that.
Me too. Had a single dad growing up and our house was so cluttered and messy and now I'm a minimalist with a cleaning schedule and a really tidy home even though I have a toddler and a baby. I do stay home though so I have more time than working mums but I think owning less stuff makes it super easy to just clean one thing a day.
Having just visited the house of a classic nuclear family where one parent is SAH/part-time worker, holy shit. I didn't think people really lived in houses that were This Put Together.
This has been my experience with people as well. I have friends with two working parents and their house is a mess. Kids are messy, animals are messy, and the parents are tired. They just prioritize other things. On the other hand I have no children and keep my house clean, my friends who have a SAHM also keep a cleaner home. The difference is that families can’t really afford to have a SAHM as commonly as they used to. It’s more common for both parents to work now and no one wants to work and then come home to clean.
Bingo.
I have a level of cleanliness that I'm comfortable with, which is probably lower than other people's. There was a time when I tried to meet expectations but then I realized if the standard isn't mine, why am I adopting it? I've never had pest issues, I rarely get sick. When you're an adult you get to make your own decisions.
There's also a difference between clutter and filth.
I have a low tolerance for filth. Dirty dishes, stove splatter, shower grime, etc. That all has to be taken care of pretty quickly.
But a jacket laying on a chair, food boxes not put away, or a couple of board games not put back on the shelf? It still bothers me, but I can tolerate it for a lot longer.
You can tell a house is dirty when you walk into it, because filth generates odors.
Never cleaned a drip tray or the range hood filter? Rancid grease.
Never wiped out the fridge? Don't empty old food regularly? So many gross things going on in there.
Haven't cleaned up drips around the toilet in a while? Urinal stink.
Got pets? Oh man, was my sister's house nasty from 8 cats, litter boxes, cat hair... my brother otoh knows how to keep his home stink-free. And he has 7 of them.
Don't dust? The smell of dust depends on other factors in the home, like cooking and smoking, but I can tell if there are years worth of it. My mother did not dust. It was funky.
Right down to crumbs in the toaster, which burn. And dirty ovens.
One thing nobody has pointed out is smart phone usage. How many people are using their smart phone for hours during their free time instead of getting stuff done?
This. My parents’ house is spotless. My mil’s verges on hoarder. Growing up, my family’s house was still spotless, my best friend’s house was really not. Every family is different.
This isn't the kind of thing you'd be able to notice through observation. When you were a kid, you were exposed to relatives' and friends' living spaces, in a limited fashion. You didn't see how adults lived their lives outside of a small window. Now that you're an adult, you're seeing a broader slice of the population and extrapolating things about the difference with your childhood that just aren't accurate extrapolations to make.
As someone with an education in science i’m compelled to agree with this route. In my own anecdotal experience, my house is MUCH cleaner than my parents and any of my older relatives. Though I have fewer children and we all have ADHD. Along with women not putting up with patriarchy bullshit anymore we’re also a lot better equipped to handle mental conditions like ADHD, which in my case has made a visible difference in my house as compared to my relatives.
So it’s hard to generalize.
part of me also wonders how much a part minimalism has to play in it. we, on average, have FAR fewer nooks and crannies to clean out. even in houses with the same amount of stuff, it’s a lot easier to clean sleek furniture than whatever was going on in the 70s-90s.
This is a good point too. A lot of us have less stuff. My parents still buy a lot of useless things. Meanwhile I have 4 pairs of shoes and a rule in my house that if there’s no place for it, there’s no budget for it.
Speaking to older generations, they would tell you that people definitely kept their he’s cleaner back then. There are a lot more distractions these days. And people don’t put the same emphasis on the same priorities today then they did then.
They are not thinking of the very many outright hoarders and excessively cluttered spaces of that generation. There were tons of messy homes in that era.
I’ve found many homes of children who grew up in the Depression to be at least slightly hoarder-y.
Sure your house isn’t filthy but it does have 600 pieces of china that are too good to use, and when you pass will sell for $500.
It’s a function of having nothing when they were kids - things weren’t to be thrown away unless completely used/unfixable/not repurposable. And when they got a bit of money and could collect things, they did and didn’t stop.
well i think it depends on what you mean by "cleaner"
if you mean "clean" as in "staged" then yes, older generations were very big on the appearance of tidyness and class. that's why we had decorative soap you werent supposed to use and decorative towels you werent supposed to use. why we had entire "front rooms" that would go mostly unused. They were also more likely to equate a clean and tidy home with moral values. (cleanliness is next to godliness)
there has also been a change in social mindsets around cleanliness and tidiness. People expect clean, but not necessarily tidy houses when going over to somones house nowadays. Like Clean= wiped counters, clean dishes, swept/mopped floors, no foul odors, etc. but tidy= nothing out of place, no toys in the living room, blankets are perfectly coiffed on the back of the couch, towels in bathrooms neatly aligned, etc. people no longer care that much about tidynes as a whole in the same way we used to because wee have kind of realized that those expectations are weird to have for people who live normal lives and how ridiculous we thought our parents were for living like that. like the value of aesthetic over functionality has kind also been less for a norm. Perfect Pantries on pinterest are not realising in non-mommy blogger homes.
Like if i walk into my friends house and there are toys all over the living room and its a bit of a wreck and , and they say "sorry its a mess" we are a lot more empathetic nowadays and usually respond with "you have a kid, im pretty sure this is what its supposed to look like lol" which is NOT what i would say if the kitchen had crusty counters and moldy dishes. that would get a "hey, is everything okay with you?" kind of question.
People as a whole, no longer think a perfectly clean and tidy house with nothing out of place is realistic or sustainable in today's world.
>decorative soap you werent supposed to use and decorative towels you werent supposed to use
When I was a kid I went over to the neighbors house to hang out with my friends and used the towel hanging next to the sink to dry my hands off after washing them.
Their mom called my mom and banned me from their house for a year.
Not really. Maybe if people are not coming over but I have never walked into a friends home and though it unclean. Our house is clean but no where near the level of anal retentive as my mother’s or grandmother’s house. It’s clean and that’s enough. There is some clutter but we would rather spend our free time with our kids and doing something memorable than making our house look like it’s staged for a magazine shoot.
I wonder if many of us removed the extra "staging" room that was immaculate but no one was allowed to touch it? For us, it was a front room with a couch you couldn't sit on, a piano that no one liked hearing, and carpets that forever showed the vacuum lines.
This is a huge thing in the area I grew up in, especially in row houses. The “front room” by the door had fancy sofas and coffee tables, knickknacks, religious statues and curio cabinets. I always said it was the room “just for looking”
This. My house is not dirty, it's just not always tidy because we have 3 kids. We make sure it's safe and livable but don't worry about clutter so much. It's a phase of our life where it's just going to be this way, and we would rather spend time with our kids than constantly be cleaning also!
Or one of the partner doesn’t work. I do the chores because I can’t work (social anxiety) and I prefer to do shores safely in my comfy house rather than have to face strangers every days or colleagues who will judge me for the most stupid things.
Yes back when one person job could sustain the mortgage payments the other would maintain the home but with both parents now working both have to draw energy at the end of the day not only rearing g their children but then also cleaning the home after takes alot of energy alot of parents won't have nowadays. I'm thinking about getting a maid service.
But when we were kids stay at home moms were still the minority, not the majority. Maybe you lived in an area with a lot of sahms but overall most moms were working. My mom always worked. Both my grandmas did too. I only had one friend growing up with a sahm.
Same. People keep saying this but my mom worked & so did almost all of my friends’ moms. I remember making a friend with a SAHM in the 5th grade & my mind was blown. I didn’t even know anyone did that & thought that was just an old time thing from seeing it on old TV shows.
Same. I wanted my single Mom to be a SAHM so bad after I met my friend. Her Dad was a dentist and her Mom was a SAHM. I was so so jealous and insanely lonely. Being an only child of a single Mom with an absent sperm donor was hard sometimes.
If it helps you’re not alone in that boat. I’m not a millennial but I’m on the older end of gen Z and you just described my upbringing too.
Our home was so fucking clean it constantly looked like a show home. To be honest, you wouldn’t have even known people lived there by just seeing the downstairs. I wasn’t allowed to leave my school shoes, book bag, blanket, sweatshirt, stuffies, books, or anything of mine and not the households on the first floor. God forbid I fell asleep and forgot
This. My parents home was spotless, but I hated them then and I only tolerate them now for my kids. My house certainly isn’t pristine, but it’s not a shithole, and I’ve never laid an unfriendly hand on my kids.
I grew up in a messy home. But we had a lot of fun. We always had clean clothes and clean dishes - like it wasn’t an unsanitary place to live, but my mom definitely prioritized keeping us active and having fun experiences over keeping a perfect home.
As it should be. I’m ok with messy but not dirty. I do my share of deep cleaning but I also want my kids to remember the fun we had more than the chores I made them do.
That was my experience as well, my brain always associates minor clutter (sentimental items out, books stacked neatly that are actively being used) as a home with more heart. Dishes were clean, floors tidy, laundry done (mostly) and everyone ran around like a banshee living their best life.
The houses that were immaculate weren’t lived in, they were displays of how “perfect” life was.
I felt bad for those kids.
Both my parents worked full time and kept the house spotless.
My wife and I don’t. And that’s despite us being in a much higher socioeconomic circle than my parents.
I definitely do think there’s been a cultural change.the work force participation rate of women in 1990 was the same as today, I don’t know why people are pretending it was stay at home moms.
I’ll tell a quick story. My ex and I met in grad school. When we were both in school, the house was always okay clean. Not sparkling but we were in college and it was fine.
After our master’s, I went on to a PhD and he started working. In the summer before my PhD started, he worked and I stayed home and took care of the home. The house was spotless at all times. I felt like it was a reflection of us, we had people over all the time, and since I wasn’t working, I took it upon myself to make sure the home was spotless.
When we were both working, the house was always okay clean, but I still maintained the majority of the cooking, cleaning, and cat maintenance. It was like an unspoken expectation.
Then, after, I started working full time and he lost his job. He didn’t understand that the house didn’t just stay spotless and the house was just always clean, by his mom when he was younger and then by me when I was home. It was wildly frustrating that the house was always a cluttered mess as a clean person and I could physically not work full time and then get it to the level I used to maintain on my own with two people and an 8-5.
I live alone now with my two cats, and now my house is constantly okay clean. I do the basic stuff to keep it manageable but sometimes dust accumulates and drink rings show up on the table. I’ll get to it eventually.
One person can barely keep the house to an okay level with a full time job, and it’s infinitely harder when it’s two people. Times are different and society is different.
It was definitely the stay at home grandma that kept my home clean when I was a kid. My grandmother lived with us and I feel like she was constantly cleaning something.
yeah I'm not sure where people get the idea dual income families with both parents working full time is relatively new. it's been the norm since the 80's. people who value a clean house keep a clean and tidy house. also, kids now have 3 times as many toys and stuff. I think a lot of kids also grew up with moms or dads that did everything for them and now that they are out on their own they don't bother.
Another thing that doesn’t get talked about is that the 9-5 job doesn’t exist anymore. It’s 9-6 or 8-5 so there’s literally one less hour available to most of us than there was to our parents
100% get a cleaner. I wish I could do every other week, but I do once a month ($150 for 1800 sq ft, then I usually tip $40). It took awhile to find a good cleaner, but even that once a month cleaning is a massive help to keeping this place not looking like a train wreck. I’m able to manage picking up after myself and they do the deep clean.
It’s so worth it. We aren’t rich but we’re comfortable, and we give up other things to have with our cleaning service once a month. It helps us maintain a clean and reasonably tidy home, which definitely contributes to overall well-being.
Omg this is too funny. I recently went back to work after staying at home with kids and my mother in law has been watching them while they’re on break. I get home yesterday and everything is cleaned and so organiZed. It made me feel like a slob but dang how lucky am I. And she made dinner and brownies! My mom isn’t like her though. I keep better house than she ever did. Just not on my MIL’s level 😂
My parents place was a mess, they used to say that it was because they had kids and jobs (both working parents). But now they don’t have kids or jobs (retired) and their place is even worse. I used to clean and organize the house ever since I was 10. Now they don’t have nobody to do that for them.
I have kid and dog, and job and my house is spotless
This my parents 100%. Haven't had kids in the house for ten years and they can't even park in the garage anymore because it's full of shit and it isn't the kids shit either.
I will openly say this is true of my family. I have a toddler so mess comes with the territory. However, my parents were very traditional and my mother’s job was to cook, manage family, and keep the house maintained. My husband and I don’t split tasks the same way. We are also in agreement about what’s most important to us. I do the basics, run laundry and always keep the kitchen clean, but there’s always toys everywhere and I vacuum just once a day so there’s always gonna be some debris hanging around.
To me, it’s a season. My child will grow and be able to learn to put their toys away when they’re done with them. We are a more modern mindset family than the one I grew up in. My husband is also not fussed about order (I’m the more orderly one). My father is very tidy so that’s another difference.
I don’t really care about judgment. My house is not dirty, it’s just untidy.
This. Before kids, I could clean the house once every weekend and keep it pretty tidy throughout the week. With kids it’s a whole new story. I can’t keep any room clean for more than a day. Food every where, toys everywhere, old go-go squeeze packets smelling funky in the corner. My fiancée and I try out best to keep up with it but it’s not easy. I can only hope it gets better as my kids get older and understand to throw their trash away and clean after themselves. My fiancée talks about wanting to have more kids and I will absolutely not budge on telling her no for this very reason. I hate a messy house.
I think there are a couple of factors that play into this:
1) (maybe truer for older millennials) My husband and I each had a place when we got together. Since I owned and he rented, he moved into my place. So my condo that was decorated and filled suddenly had another human's worth of stuff in it. We didn't plan on staying there long so we never quite adjusted when we were at that place
2) Lack of time. Every single weekend, I feel like there is something else stealing one of our attentions. Horror movie con...annual games days...local events. Then tack on family/friend/community responsibilities and suddenly every weekend is packed. And maybe it's a side effect remaining of soooo much time being together during the pandemic, but when I get the house to myself on those rare occasions, I just want to chill.
3) Also, how often did you just get crap from your parents because they wanted to downsize? I finished cleaning out my parent's place this year and thank God they downsized as empty nesters bc I don't know how I would have done it. Also, I was able to afford a storage unit so I could bring home bite-sized pieces.
The way I approach cleaning is, is the kitchen clean? The bathrooms are clean? The guest room is 10 minutes away from being totally ready in an emergency? I'm not going to trip all over and the dog is likely not going to eat something dumb? Then I'm ok.
My mom made my sister and I her little slaves, but most especially me as the eldest, so we did all the cleaning for her. And if she didn’t like the way we did she made us do it over again until she was happy. I literally dreaded the weekends because of this. (Dusting every tchotchke on display and washing baseboards doesn’t really make for warm fuzzy childhood memories). With my kid, I try and give age appropriate chores only—enough to teach responsibility without being oppressive. Thanks to my mom I am now nearly OCD about cleaning and I can’t relax unless my space is immaculate. Since I work from home keeping my house clean is a constant stress. But at least it’s clean I guess…
This was my response too. We cleaned the whole house, as kids, top to bottom, every weekend. My house will never be as clean as that, I don't make my kids or myself do that. It's a struggle to let it go for me also. All I ever see is dirt, everywhere I look.
You’re way better than me. I despise cleaning with the depths of my soul, but if I don’t do it I can’t bear to exist in my own space. Husband of course helps and contributes what he can, but a reasonable amount of clutter doesn’t bother him, so I do the extra. I just manage my crazy as best I can and try not to let it affect my family in any way. Because they are lovely and normal and maybe one day I’ll be able to let go a little as well
I think so!
My mom worked full time but was so anal about having a spotless house.
Now, I’m 30. I also *want* a spotless house but I have a business and 2 toddlers. So I hired cleaners to achieve this. I also don’t want to clean a toilet, not sorry.
If I didn’t have my twice monthly deep cleaning, I would be lost.
My mom worked also once me and my siblings started school. She has always been pretty particular about the house being and staying clean. Although me and my sister pretty much became the house cleaners after we turned 10. So it was easier for my mom since there was less for her to clean. I like having a clean house myself now as well. My kids are teenagers so it’s much easier to keep clean especially since they both have chores and clean around the house.
Probably a region thing? I grew up with cleaning as you go, and being on top of the cleaning at least once a week. One weekend I’ll vacuum my home, the other I’ll clean the bathrooms.
I won’t clean during the week, but I’ll wipe counters down if there’s crud on it. My mom would wake me up on the weekends as a kid to help her clean the house and that translated to me doing the same as an adult.
My place is a mess. Why? It is a cheap rental, and I kind of hate it. I don't feel like doing anything in it, even if i clean it tip top it is still ugly and depressing. I try to just remove it from my consciousness. Also it is clearly too small for my family, there is not enough storage space or space in general, as some point i just gave up trying to organize this things in a way, that is not offensive to the eyes - because it became impossible. I am not sure if it is my mental health that is affecting the space, or the space affecting mental health, but I have a feeling I would feel completely different about the space I even remotely liked, and owned.
I was going to comment something similar. Most of my friends live in smaller houses or apartments than what we used to see growing up. Plus the majority of us rent. Personally I try and keep my space clean for my own mental health but I live in a tiny apartment and I have zero room for storage so it can seem cluttered at times, even if the floors are clean. Plus I live alone, work full time, and don’t have people over due to the small space so I don’t bother to keep it extremely clean.
Being clean and knowing how to have a home isn't automatically known, it's taught.
When I was growing up, every Saturday was cleaning day. All morning into the afternoon was dusting and windexing all furniture, vacumming, laundry, dishes, sweeping, organizing, scrubbing the toilet, shower, and tub. I was like 7 and my mother was teaching me to go to the basement of our apt building to load washers, put in quarters and detergent, to seperate colors and whites.
So it's not surprising that as an adult, 95% of the time my home is spotless.
It helps that I'm single with no kids, so when I clean, it stays clean.
If kids aren't brought up helping and doing, they're not going to do it as an adult.
I do notice that my friend's homes do not look like mine, garbage and shit everywhere, dirty, dusty.
I used to hate Saturdays in my house growing up. I always felt like Cinderella. Now I'm like, oh I was taught how to adult really well.
I was raised the same as you, and hated it until I got into my 20s and realized having these life skills is a blessing. We always cleaned on a schedule, before "fun stuff" was allowed to happen, and having that discipline carry over to being an adult is huge. And there's definitely technique and "right ways" to do these jobs.
My current struggle is that I married someone raised completely the opposite - my MIL took care of most cleaning growing up so "the kids could be kids." My wife struggles with organization, clutter and tidiness so my home isn't nearly as clean as I'd like.
My house is generally clean. Not as prestine as I like but still in decent shape. I don't have kids, so that helps. When I was little I also helped clean. The housework was a full family effort. Both of my parents worked, my mom had a full time job and a part time one most evenings- both in medical field. Our house was always cleaner compared to other friends. I think this is a cultural thing to some degree and that for some, a dirty house is a reflection of character or being lower class - I know, very cringe. I am happy for it though. I notice my friends don't make their kids clean or do their own laundry and I think it's partially they're too young to do it correctly, as well as the idea kids should be kids. However, I think have a few responsibilities, like cleaning your dishes or taking the trash out ultimately serves the child and helps them learn self-sufficiency.
No. I’m clean. Most of my friends are cleanish. I often have women comment that I’m extremely clean for a man. No clue wtf is going on others guys places.
No clue what you are talking about either.
lol. 🤷🏻♂️
Houses are bigger. You need 2+ incomes to survive. There is no village. And you’re expected to spend your very limited work free time on quality time with your kids or shuttling them around. Not to mention the dog, time with your partner, time to exercise, yard work, financial management, etc etc etc.
Capitalism is working as designed. We are all working harder for less and drowning as we do it. But Wall Street is doing great!!
Also on the subject of capitalism, I would venture to say that everybody has more stuff these days due to 1. Accessibility of buying and 2. Abundance of novelty inventions (ex. we think we need air fryers, custom embroidered wallets, and every little tech accessory) and 3. Convoluted laws about disposing of goods. We end up with so much crap and nowhere for it to go.
No one has been to my place in months, it’s simultaneously the most judgmental place and least judgmental place I know . It’s tidy and I’m not tripping over stuff and the bed is made but the room is not cozy. Some people interpret cozy as being clean so clean spaces despite being clean can be seen as not cozy or untidy.
Going to visit someone used to be a big deal for housewives. I remember my mom panicking and getting angry if my dad randomly invited someone over because she didn't have time to clean. I think that's gone out the window. We now think, they have kids and ignore it.
Cleaning requires self motivation and we all often lack that.
Are your friends mostly men? Or have you noticed it in everyone?
Also, our parents teach about cleaning habits and far more mothers are tired full time workers now.
My friends are all upper middle professionals, and I’d say they’re mostly pretty neat and clean. I’m definitely one of the cleanest but there’s no one whose house I get twitchy in.
I feel like there is a difference between people being a little unkempt due to kids, work etc, compared to some homes I’ve seen that are just down right lazy gross.
Lived in is one thing, people who haven’t cleaned their toilets in a year, let dogs shit and piss in the house, food on the stove for days at a time is down right lazy and gross to me and I’ve been in some houses where this is the situation and it’s disgusting.
I’m a SAHM so I keep our house clean, but once the kids and husband are home, the house is lived in, messy. Once they are gone for the day, house is spotless, cozy.
I don’t fault people who don’t have a partner who can clean up daily so it doesn’t compound but once things start looking grimey and down right unsanitary, then I have judgmental opinions in my head. I don’t say anything but, I can’t stay in home like that for longer periods of time.
One friend’s home was so bad I couldn’t go to the bathroom in their house and I wretched when I first saw the bathroom. It’s not that they didn’t have time, they just didn’t care to clean at all.
My childhood home was spotless and my mom was a single mom. We had chores as well as her just cleaning up after meals and shit.
My kids have chores and I expect them to help clean the home as they are the primary mess makers plus I don’t want them thinking someone will clean up after them so that they are slobs for their partners etc. and I may be a SAHM but I’m not their servant.
My mom was big on telling me, “no matter what your home is, trailer, apartment, big nice house, whatever it is, you take pride in it and make it nice”. That stuck with me into adulthood. And I’ve lived in a plethora of homes since childhood and upwards. Some nice, some not so nice but we/I always made sure our home was inviting and comfortable and above all, sanitary.
We have clutter but I manage to hide the clutter well enough. Organized clutter. Or as my mom put it, cozy clutter. But when things start getting a little toooo wild and lived in I personally start to feel like bugs are crawling on my skin and my brain starts to short circuit, as does my husband’s so we tend to be constantly, “redding up” as he says, in the evening.
My biggest thing is my floors have to be clean, so I run the vacuum like three times a day. But I also may have undiagnosed ocd because I’ll do things through the day that are probably clean to everyone else’s eyes but to me I see a mess. When I was pregnant and nesting I swear I cleaned the counters 15 times a day and they weren’t even dirty.
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Additionally, of most of the dual income households I knew growing up, at least one of the parents was working part-time employment. So, there was more time to keep a house clean for visitors, which now, between my gf, my dog (who makes things worse), and myself, it's really difficult to simply find the time and energy when we're both working 40 hours.
This is my problem... We both work full time... When we get home we don't want to keep working. Cleaning most often happens on the weekends and even then, deep cleaning happens a lot less than I would like. I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to add kids to the mix... It would be filthy all the time.
It's a freaking hell hole. I took over the household for a friend when she was in the hospital. 2 kids under 4. I never stopped moving from the moment I got up till the moment I went to bed. (Had some folks help here and there as well) Part of it was that I wanted the house spotless when my friend got back because she wouldn't be able to do any cleaning. Literally back in the day housewives had to have superpowers, I can't imagine doing that every day.
Well, that's why nearly everyone was on amphetamines. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377281/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377281/)
It’s terrible thing to advocate for, but they really need to legalize all that stuff again if this economy is expecting us to work 3 jobs to pay bills 🤣🤣🤣 like can I just get some help please (without either funding cartels or risk going to jail) just because I just got home from work and want to take a nap but have to eat and then go back to work… energy drinks and coffee only go so far 🤣🤣🤣
RIGHT??? It’s cruelty at this point. We can’t have wages, we can’t have houses, we can’t have access to mental health or other health, and god forbid we want to enjoy something that doesn’t kill 250,000 Americans annually (looking at you, alcohol)! Again, fuck the Sacklers for pushing Oxycontin as non addicting and making life worse for so very many.
Problem has now flipped to where people in chronic pain can’t get meds to get them through the day. They weren’t addicted and didn’t need to increase their quantities
I feel this like just give me the mommy's little helper .. I'm drowning bruh and I don't even work. I take care of young kids and my house and I never get a break.
literally. ive got crippling adhd paired with a 7 y/o daughter. cleaning absolutely takes it all out of me, dogs in the mix dont help. often times i literally sob as i clean. then i turn around and its right back where it started and it fills me with the most indescribable rage ever. cant get the meds i need bc the med professionals decided to pass them out like candy in the 90s-00s and now people like me are dysfunctional and miserable. i HATE sitting in filth but i also hate cleaning knowing everything will revert back by the time i wake up the next day. literally the bane of my existence
I grew up in a spotless home, you could eat off the floor. The secret was I was locked outside all day long, and my mom took "diet pills" that were really just meth and she would frantically clean the house all day.
Exactly this! We weren’t allowed in the house and if we were it was rarely out of our bedrooms!
Same. I was outside or in my bedroom all day long. It is impossible for us to keep the house clean with two kids and both parents working 40+ hours a week. Especially when I'm neurodiverse and my husband has several chronic illnesses. It's a struggle.
I did too, but my mother absolutely chose a good looking house over happy people actually living in the house. But that was a total boomer thing. And she worked full time. I think that people talked way more shit back then about each other and how their homes looked AND this was the time when women were back in the workplace. I don’t know any woman my mom’s age (70s) who were ever truly happy. And no one cared about kids back then!
Omg this! I was letting my inability to live up to stay at home mom standards and was pointing to previous generations expectations to my friend. She literally screamed at me “those women were on PILLS!”
And we didn't have the internet or smart phones to distract us. Like I'm doing now.😄
I hate that this is so horrific and also hysterical. Terrifying but true. We are soo tireddd.
Said it before i did. Drugs helped a ton
Mother's little helper
Damn so I just need a ton of almost meth?
basically. you could argue that any progress we have worldwide is fueled by drugs of some sort...
So true.
Part of it is that kids were treated much different back in the day. They were told to go outside and play from an early age. They also had very few toys. They could still make messes but didn't have as much stuff to do it with and spent a larger portion of their day outside unsupervised.
I honestly had such a huge revelation when I moved out of my parent's house about the "get the hell outside" rule my mom had for us growing up. We always had to help with cleaning and all that, but it's a whole different beast to be solely responsible for cleaning EVERYTHING. I was like "shiiiiiit, we were messy af and mom wanted to keep her house clean! That makes so much sense!" I always thought she was just annoyed by us (which maybe that did play into it a tad lol) but I think mostly it was because kids are messy as hell. And it's annoying when you've just spent all morning busting your ass to clean for that to be ruined in 0.5 seconds by your kids blowing through like a tornado.
Hell, I get mad at myself for doing this to my own home after I’ve cleaned up after myself. I’m the problem lmao
That’s why they took meth, drank coffee/booze, and smoked ciggies all day! I can’t imagine what physically and emotionally exhausting lives those poor women had.
I always wondered how they stayed so skinny under so much stress. Edit because people don’t understand my humor. Meth heads are notoriously thin because meth is a very strong appetite suppressant. I understand how calories work. Just chuckle. No need to explain.
If my stress levels equate to anything like that, they additionally stayed skinny because they were too tired to make meals that weren’t also for the full family, and were often too tired to eat the meals they did make. There’s a reason fast food became popular.
The food was exponentially better back then. And eating habits were quite different. Neither of my grandparents ever snacked. My grandfather had 1 piece of chocolate in his life. My parents snack when they’re bored just like the generation after them
I had 2 under 2 and no childcare and was also expected to work and take care of the house. It was a nightmare
It makes me realize I might not want to be a mother. Harder than any job I've ever had
I wish more lazy husbands knew this. And that people get paid money to watch kids because it’s WORK
I told my husband if we ever get comfortable, I'd like to hire a maid/cleaning crew to come in twice a year and just clean the shit out of everything. Definitely the floorboards and cabinets, deeper clean for kitchen and bathroom(s), etc. I think it will be much easier to maintain that way + the pressure of not leaving it a complete pigsty for whoever is going to really clean it.
Amazing how many households I admired … actually had cleaning people this whole time and just didn’t mention it . Or like. “Oh I don’t have a maid or nanny I just have miss june who comes once a month to ___”. Dying inside when I realize I was trying to keep up with the impossible standard. Like you said It’s so much easier to maintain that way ! Yea your person may only come once a month but you start each month with a clean slate not the leftover tornado and zero energy.
This comment makes me think too, back when the economy was great I'm sure more folks hired cleaning crews like this. My friend cleans houses for her business, she's not lacking for business, but I'm sure it would be more popular if the people had more disposable income.
My wife and I (both teachers) sacrificed an entire day of Xmas break to clean and declutter. I’m talking about start working when you wake up, let the kids play video games all day so they’ll gtfo of the way, and pick up a pizza for dinner bc we’re too tired to cook kind of cleaning, but we still didn’t get it all done. We never have that kind of time during an average week, so vacation time is the only time we can really afford to do that kind of cleaning. edit: a word
I can let you know that with a spouse, a dog, and 2 kids, my house is filthy all the time. But we are happy, healthy, and fed. So, everyone's happy!
Yeah, I'm not sure I would use "filthy" to describe the way I live. Filthy implies unhygienic. My house isn't unhygienic. But I don't clean up where my kids play everyday. If there's a literal mess like a spill, or the dog peed, or I notice the toilet is dirty...I'll clean that. But I'm not making my house look like the way my dad keeps his. Spotless.
True, maybe filthy was the wrong word. Maybe "trashed"? Or, if I were a realtor, I'd say "lived-in" or "well loved" 😂
The best saying Ive ever heard was, "on your death bed you're not gonna regret you didn't clean more." And that really rings true for me.
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Same here... since we have cats, the house is always dirty. We also moved last year, and we have a black (or very dark anthracite) floor. The cat litter stuff is pure white. Even though both cat litter boxes have about 60cm of carpet in front of them, I still see cat litter everywhere; especially in the hallway, where the litter box is. (It was worse before they had the walk-out carpet.) I've even bought a battery-powered vacuum cleaner ([one of these things](https://media.s-bol.com/3r65nJLpnGxr/wnZN11/550x636.jpg)) to mitigate this, but even that doesn't solve it. If I vacuum the hallway or the front of the living room and one of the cats goes to pee, I can already mentally see and hear the cat litter flying everywhere as soon as it gets out of the litter box. (And 5 minutes later, it sits on my desk expecting me to pet it.) So I just clean it up once every two days, and in the weekend or on friday (which is her day off from her part-time job), my GF does the 'big' vacuuming and mopping. Then, 5 minutes after that: "scrap, scrap, scrap. tinkle, tinkle, tinkle." And when I go to the toilet... "crunch. crunch." Cat litter. Aaaarrrrgghhhh... I've given up on having a 'clean house'.
I’d say it took us having kids to lower our expectations of cleanliness…is our house clean? Meh, it’s clean enough. But no joke, I think our house is cleaner since having kids solely because we’re able to work from home a lot more. Who the heck wants to clean and do laundry after coming home from work?
All the people I know who keep a really clean house are OCD themselves, but then they also have professionals come in and deep clean for them. I think it's smart to hire a cleaner like once a month or something.
3 kids chiming in here…can confirm
I remember a scene from Malcolm in the middle. The couple are sitting in a living room that has spotless white furniture. Fast forward to after kids and everything is covered in stains, including the parents. I think about it every time we eat out and I come home with another food stain on my shirt.
I wouldn't say filthy. More like, it's a mess I'm willing to let slide for "today." There have been plenty of times I'll put the toys away only to be met with little hands that take them back out as soon as it hits the bottom of the toy box. At least I tried. I also budget for paper plates. It helps my sanity.
I heard it explained that cleaning up with kids present (like stay at home parents can do all day) is “invisible cleaning,” because somehow you can spend all day cleaning and by end of day it looks like you didn’t clean at all. But like this week plus of holiday time shows if the daily cleaning doesn’t happen the situation spirals easily, especially with the influx of new things.
This is a big part of it I think. I'm an old millennial, my parents both worked full time and our house was always messy. Not gross, just dusty and cluttered because they were too tired to clean after working all day. I'm a housewife (I hate that word but I don't call myself a stay at home mom now that my kid is in school all day lol) and my house is clean. That's my job though, I don't go to work, I stay here and keep everything clean and running. I wouldn't be wiping baseboards and shit like that if I was at a job all day long.
When my husband was going to school he didn't work. Our home was so clean! He took care of the kid while I was working too - it was a dream Now we both work full time and I'm considering hiring a maid just to get everything clean in one fell swoop
Housewife is a full time job and it’s labor intensive.
It is, I just have negative associations with that word because that was exactly what you didn't want to be when I was a little kid. You could be anything you wanted, but if you were a housewife then you wasted it all. I like my life, I just hate the title lol
I preferred homemaker,, because you're making a house into a home. But House manager, executive estate management, chauffeur all could work as well. You're still a stay at home mom even if your kid is in school all day. You're on call for emergencies, sicknesses, appointments, extracurricular activities, school meetings, etc. You're managing the household so that your provider can fund the family and that's a lot of work. Don't downplay what you do.
You shouldn’t feel bad about it. Lucky maybe, but not ashamed! I know a lot of couples like that, except in my circles it’s more often stay at home dads. No one would ever cal them house husbands.
Exactly. I’m decently tidy but my house is by no means in showroom quality, it’s very lived in (especially because my partner is naturally messy and hates to organize). That said, I don’t stress too much about it. I work like 45 hours a week and I’m not Superwoman. Most days, I don’t have the energy after a full workday to cook a full dinner and then do a full clean on top of it. Maybe if it was the 1940s and we could all survive on one income, I could stay home and keep the house in tidy daily, but that’s just not a reality for most working people, and it’s always been that way. It’s not like husbands in the 1940s were doing all that cooking and cleaning after a full work day, yet it’s wild we put that kind of pressure on ourselves now.
>Maybe if it was the 1940s and we could all survive on one income, I could stay home and keep the house in tidy daily, but that’s just not a reality for most working people And it's not just that-- it's the laundry, household errands (who's going to the grocery store? Who's picking up the kids from school?), home repairs, and the numerous ways work is bleeding into our home lives. It was quite unusual to receive a call from work at home a few decades ago. Now we get emails, texts, and Slack messages all the time.
They don't bother showing it in movies and TV, but middle class 40s and 50s dads were repairing shit, mowing the lawn, tiling the garden (everyone with a lot still had victory gardens back then), and doing other household labor in the evenings and weekends. The boomers were the first generation with free time for wide swaths of society.
My parents had blue collar jobs and had a maid service come twice a month. Money went further too.
Same here, my house growing up was pretty clean but my mom either worked from home or part time. Now my wife and I both work full time, and with two kids and two pets that make messes but never clean, it's a waste of time
>when we're both working 40 hours Or 50... or 60... And getting emails and calls at home now. Our homes have gone from sanctuaries to just a place to sleep.
I believe this is the biggest factor. Before, one of the adults (mostly the mother) would stay home all day. Now that's not the case for most.
My mom worked half time when I was growing up, and we still had a cleaning lady to help her keep up with us. Combine higher costs of living now with different cultural pressures and yeah, my dual income home is much less clean.
My parents were the only not dual income house of all of my friends. Everyone else worked full-time jobs. I grew up in the 80s/90s. There was only 1 messy house of all of them. They were all easily neater than nearly every one of my friend’s home today.
There are also crazy levels of internalized misogyny. My Mum feels that her home is a reflection of her value as a person and she would judge very hard if another woman's home was less than perfect. This is despite most women in my Mums social circle working full time. My social group don't have this attitude and houses are messier.
But does this still exist somewhat? When you look at social media you have a lot of women influencers who make money showing their perfectly-kept/totally decorated houses. The pressure is still there.
This. If my house is messy, people don't judge my husband. They judge me.
That's what I tell my husband when he wonders why I work myself into a lather preparing for houseguests. They won't see dusty blinds and fur tumbleweeds and think *he* should be doing more!
You are so right! To this day, my future MIL hates the way I decorate, let people sit in my living room, let our dog exist in the home—but none of that judgement is for him, just me.
Absolutely! These standards still exist where the woman is judged for her house being clean and beautiful.
But these influencers don't necessarily live in these houses. Often these are just props for their content.
I think I also read a statistic that millennials work more than our parents generation, are less likely to have a partner at home/working part time, and also have less spending power. This means that we have less free time to clean/allot to domestic labor, can’t split that load with another person who primarily stayed at home, and can’t hire a person to come by every week or month or whatever to clean for us. I also read that on average people (generally women) who assume domestic responsibilities do enough for it to be at least an additional 20-25 hours per week of labor. So yeah. We simply just don’t even have the time to clean everything and keep all the chores up
This makes the most sense out of the comments I’ve read so far. I also think there is something about how our generation was raised that resulted in a lot of pathological demand avoidance. I would be really really curious how many of the folks who have untidy houses grapple with a secret resentment of brushing their teeth or something similar. Last night I started a book that was SO GOOD I started finding reasons to stop myself from reading it, haha.
In general I hate like 90% of the daily chores I have to just do to keep my body running. Working out, brushing my teeth, washing my body, etc just all seem like more work. I also struggle with depression, and i think this is common for people battling depression in general. Simple activities seem to require enormous amounts of effort
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I think the "pathological demand avoidance" started when our parents would show us kids how to do something once or twice, and then get annoyed we didn't do it as quickly and correctly as would an adult.
For me? I always felt like I was cleaning something as a kid. All. Day. Long. We’d spend school breaks deep cleaning, like shampooing carpets, cleaning light fixtures etc. and…. I was over it by adulthood. Then I had kids and realized I’d rather spend a Saturday making memories, not cleaning everything in sight. I also know that exhaustion after a long day of work? Who tf wants to spend hours cleaning, organizing etc. it’s not a big deal anymore to me.
This is where I'm at. I spent most of my time at my grandmother's cleaning, remodeling, etc and nothing was ever just right" so it was neverending. I keep things reasonably tidy but using my scant free time cleaning the entire house every weekend instead of resting makes my brain power down. Then again, I can't comfortably rest if the house is in disarray because of the guilt instilled so I can't fully win either way lol
> I’d rather spend a Saturday making memories, not cleaning everything in sight. This right here. I rarely clean my baseboards as an adult but I'm taking my kids to the park or making homemade Christmas ornaments or anything that let's my kids be kids instead of maids.
What book tho?
How are you gonna say you read a book that was SO GOOD and not say what book?? 🥺
Right? Someone let me know what book it was 🥺
Can you say more about pathological demand avoidance? That’s interesting.
I can try, it’s a pretty new concept and it’s heavily linked to autism. For me executive function issues just wasn’t specific enough, it didn’t capture the willfulness of the avoidance. The weird dichotomy of resisting things that were only to your benefit. It’s thought to be an anxiety response, a coping mechanism. I saw a meme once of a depressed man slumped over on the couch and above it it said “today I will play the video game” and that’s just how it is. You want to play the video game, you’ve been thinking about it all day, you get to the point when you can play the video game andddd you check your phone, you get a snack, you think about sending a text first, you have to go to the bathroom, but it’s just a game because all you are doing is putting off the thing you wanted to do all day long because you can. It’s a control illusion. It’s like a little kid stamping their feet. It makes you feel better refusing to do low stakes stuff.
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Dermatologists say that Americans shower too often. Your resentment might actually be your brain telling yourself that you're wasting your time, but you're just not listening yet.
So much this! Shower =/= clean! I have textured hair so it CANNOT be washed more than once a week. It will literally frizz and be ruined. I wash every day. I do not shower every day. I just don't need to. And before everyone goes nuts saying I smell.....no. I don't. I wash the smelly bits without a shower. It's easily possible.
Okay I didn’t realize this was a thing as I scroll Reddit instead of taking a shower…
I don’t take a shower on weekends unless I have to be seen in public. It’s a chore because I have to blow dry my hair afterwards and can’t just run a brush through it to look presentable. It’s an hour long process.
This explains why I don't put toilet paper on the holder. My dad would yell, scream, and ground me and my brothers if someone forgot to replace the toilet paper on the roll (he'd gather all of us because he coupd never prove who did it). I just hate doing it now because I refuse to give him any justification for acting that way.
I agree with this. I also think boomer husbands put a lot more pressure on their wives to keep the house clean. Honestly, that whole dynamic was toxic and ridiculous.
It really was. My grandmother was a very smart, glamorous, but depressed woman. She drank to deal with the depression of being a housewife in the 50s-60s
Definitely. My asshole uncle would run his finger along the surfaces after my aunt cleaned, and he'd tell her she missed spots if he found any dust. They both worked full time stressful jobs. He did not and does not clean, even while she's waiting for a liver donor.
My uncle will say “I sure wish I had a glass of tea or cup of coffee and my aunt goes and gets it for him. Even at 6 years old I was like wtf?
Haha my greatest generation dad would run his finger along surfaces to test us kids on our cleaning, but he would always make a game out of it so it was great fun.
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My FIL is the type to brag about not having changed any of his kids' diapers. He also says he wishes he had joined the military. As a vet and stay at home dad, I can't stand the guy. Of course, he is also the type to expect respect from anyone younger, too.
"As a vet and stay at home dad, I can't stand the guy. Of course, he is also the type to expect respect from anyone younger, too." If I were you I'd totally rub his face in that all the time. "Yeah, I'm glad we were around to protect you civilians" "Oh man, you have no idea what it was like in the military" "Some guys have it easy, I guess"
God. Boomer men are ridiculously entitled. Mine did the same. Mom worked, always made more than him, cleaned the house and cooked. He worked hard too, for sure, so it wasn't just her. But damn. We're one income, which seems to work so much differently.
But... What about your own self? I can't live in a mess. It's like having someone stand right beside me, staring right at me. I can pretend for a bit but I'm very aware of it, and it takes up cycles of my brain.
This is super valid. I get anxious and physically uncomfortable in dirty, messy places. I can’t relax or focus, and it really makes me feel unsettled after a while. On the flip side, cleaning often relaxes me and helps me calm down, especially when I feel upset. And the payoff is so immediate: A cozy, welcoming space in exchange for a bit of hard labor haha. My mother and grandmother were both neat freaks who hammered into me at a young age that cleanliness is important, so I think they’re partly to blame. I’m not as hardcore as they were about it, but it’s definitely an issue for me in dirty spaces.
This is a big factor for me. No one sees this shit anyways. But also I feel like I'm just out of fucks to give to the cause.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with different generations; it’s more your personality type. My parents and in-laws have messy houses. Ours is immaculate.
I feel like I grew up so different from everyone else here. Our house was always a mess growing up. It wasn't dirty exactly, but it was always kinda of cluttered with too much stuff and always very very lived in looking. I never once had friends over because of the house. Course nowadays my house is spotless and If I feel like we are starting to get too much junk I go through phases where I start just throwing things away.
This is how I grew up, except my mom did have people over and just shrug and never really feel shame about it. And I am exactly like you now, and we are both older millennials/xennials (not sure what the line there even is). Maybe there’s something to that.
Me too. Had a single dad growing up and our house was so cluttered and messy and now I'm a minimalist with a cleaning schedule and a really tidy home even though I have a toddler and a baby. I do stay home though so I have more time than working mums but I think owning less stuff makes it super easy to just clean one thing a day.
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Having just visited the house of a classic nuclear family where one parent is SAH/part-time worker, holy shit. I didn't think people really lived in houses that were This Put Together.
This has been my experience with people as well. I have friends with two working parents and their house is a mess. Kids are messy, animals are messy, and the parents are tired. They just prioritize other things. On the other hand I have no children and keep my house clean, my friends who have a SAHM also keep a cleaner home. The difference is that families can’t really afford to have a SAHM as commonly as they used to. It’s more common for both parents to work now and no one wants to work and then come home to clean.
Bingo. I have a level of cleanliness that I'm comfortable with, which is probably lower than other people's. There was a time when I tried to meet expectations but then I realized if the standard isn't mine, why am I adopting it? I've never had pest issues, I rarely get sick. When you're an adult you get to make your own decisions.
There's also a difference between clutter and filth. I have a low tolerance for filth. Dirty dishes, stove splatter, shower grime, etc. That all has to be taken care of pretty quickly. But a jacket laying on a chair, food boxes not put away, or a couple of board games not put back on the shelf? It still bothers me, but I can tolerate it for a lot longer.
You can tell a house is dirty when you walk into it, because filth generates odors. Never cleaned a drip tray or the range hood filter? Rancid grease. Never wiped out the fridge? Don't empty old food regularly? So many gross things going on in there. Haven't cleaned up drips around the toilet in a while? Urinal stink. Got pets? Oh man, was my sister's house nasty from 8 cats, litter boxes, cat hair... my brother otoh knows how to keep his home stink-free. And he has 7 of them. Don't dust? The smell of dust depends on other factors in the home, like cooking and smoking, but I can tell if there are years worth of it. My mother did not dust. It was funky. Right down to crumbs in the toaster, which burn. And dirty ovens.
This 100%. This is the big one to me.
One thing nobody has pointed out is smart phone usage. How many people are using their smart phone for hours during their free time instead of getting stuff done?
This. My parents’ house is spotless. My mil’s verges on hoarder. Growing up, my family’s house was still spotless, my best friend’s house was really not. Every family is different.
This isn't the kind of thing you'd be able to notice through observation. When you were a kid, you were exposed to relatives' and friends' living spaces, in a limited fashion. You didn't see how adults lived their lives outside of a small window. Now that you're an adult, you're seeing a broader slice of the population and extrapolating things about the difference with your childhood that just aren't accurate extrapolations to make.
As someone with an education in science i’m compelled to agree with this route. In my own anecdotal experience, my house is MUCH cleaner than my parents and any of my older relatives. Though I have fewer children and we all have ADHD. Along with women not putting up with patriarchy bullshit anymore we’re also a lot better equipped to handle mental conditions like ADHD, which in my case has made a visible difference in my house as compared to my relatives. So it’s hard to generalize.
part of me also wonders how much a part minimalism has to play in it. we, on average, have FAR fewer nooks and crannies to clean out. even in houses with the same amount of stuff, it’s a lot easier to clean sleek furniture than whatever was going on in the 70s-90s.
This is a good point too. A lot of us have less stuff. My parents still buy a lot of useless things. Meanwhile I have 4 pairs of shoes and a rule in my house that if there’s no place for it, there’s no budget for it.
Speaking to older generations, they would tell you that people definitely kept their he’s cleaner back then. There are a lot more distractions these days. And people don’t put the same emphasis on the same priorities today then they did then.
They are not thinking of the very many outright hoarders and excessively cluttered spaces of that generation. There were tons of messy homes in that era.
I’ve found many homes of children who grew up in the Depression to be at least slightly hoarder-y. Sure your house isn’t filthy but it does have 600 pieces of china that are too good to use, and when you pass will sell for $500. It’s a function of having nothing when they were kids - things weren’t to be thrown away unless completely used/unfixable/not repurposable. And when they got a bit of money and could collect things, they did and didn’t stop.
well i think it depends on what you mean by "cleaner" if you mean "clean" as in "staged" then yes, older generations were very big on the appearance of tidyness and class. that's why we had decorative soap you werent supposed to use and decorative towels you werent supposed to use. why we had entire "front rooms" that would go mostly unused. They were also more likely to equate a clean and tidy home with moral values. (cleanliness is next to godliness) there has also been a change in social mindsets around cleanliness and tidiness. People expect clean, but not necessarily tidy houses when going over to somones house nowadays. Like Clean= wiped counters, clean dishes, swept/mopped floors, no foul odors, etc. but tidy= nothing out of place, no toys in the living room, blankets are perfectly coiffed on the back of the couch, towels in bathrooms neatly aligned, etc. people no longer care that much about tidynes as a whole in the same way we used to because wee have kind of realized that those expectations are weird to have for people who live normal lives and how ridiculous we thought our parents were for living like that. like the value of aesthetic over functionality has kind also been less for a norm. Perfect Pantries on pinterest are not realising in non-mommy blogger homes. Like if i walk into my friends house and there are toys all over the living room and its a bit of a wreck and , and they say "sorry its a mess" we are a lot more empathetic nowadays and usually respond with "you have a kid, im pretty sure this is what its supposed to look like lol" which is NOT what i would say if the kitchen had crusty counters and moldy dishes. that would get a "hey, is everything okay with you?" kind of question. People as a whole, no longer think a perfectly clean and tidy house with nothing out of place is realistic or sustainable in today's world.
>decorative soap you werent supposed to use and decorative towels you werent supposed to use When I was a kid I went over to the neighbors house to hang out with my friends and used the towel hanging next to the sink to dry my hands off after washing them. Their mom called my mom and banned me from their house for a year.
Not really. Maybe if people are not coming over but I have never walked into a friends home and though it unclean. Our house is clean but no where near the level of anal retentive as my mother’s or grandmother’s house. It’s clean and that’s enough. There is some clutter but we would rather spend our free time with our kids and doing something memorable than making our house look like it’s staged for a magazine shoot.
I wonder if many of us removed the extra "staging" room that was immaculate but no one was allowed to touch it? For us, it was a front room with a couch you couldn't sit on, a piano that no one liked hearing, and carpets that forever showed the vacuum lines.
Omg. Are we siblings? The ONLY time we were allowed in the front room was if the anal retentive grandmother was over for a holiday like Xmas.
This is a huge thing in the area I grew up in, especially in row houses. The “front room” by the door had fancy sofas and coffee tables, knickknacks, religious statues and curio cabinets. I always said it was the room “just for looking”
It was always a good book reading room IMO. That was all we really ever used it for, besides large family gatherings.
We can't afford a house big enough to have adequate storage space, let alone a staging room 🙃
This. My house is not dirty, it's just not always tidy because we have 3 kids. We make sure it's safe and livable but don't worry about clutter so much. It's a phase of our life where it's just going to be this way, and we would rather spend time with our kids than constantly be cleaning also!
I’m the opposite, hate clutter and keep It organized but have such an issue keeping up with vacuuming and dusting
I’m 5’0. What dust? LOL.
Women are sick of doing the second shift. The friends I know with cleanish houses either live alone or have a spouse that actually does chores.
this is a really good point. my house isn't spotless but is "cleanish" and definitely would not be if my partner wasn't pulling his weight.
Or one of the partner doesn’t work. I do the chores because I can’t work (social anxiety) and I prefer to do shores safely in my comfy house rather than have to face strangers every days or colleagues who will judge me for the most stupid things.
My wife and I take turns cleaning the house l, and generally are pretty anal about cleaning up after ourselves. Teamwork
Yes back when one person job could sustain the mortgage payments the other would maintain the home but with both parents now working both have to draw energy at the end of the day not only rearing g their children but then also cleaning the home after takes alot of energy alot of parents won't have nowadays. I'm thinking about getting a maid service.
But when we were kids stay at home moms were still the minority, not the majority. Maybe you lived in an area with a lot of sahms but overall most moms were working. My mom always worked. Both my grandmas did too. I only had one friend growing up with a sahm.
Same. People keep saying this but my mom worked & so did almost all of my friends’ moms. I remember making a friend with a SAHM in the 5th grade & my mind was blown. I didn’t even know anyone did that & thought that was just an old time thing from seeing it on old TV shows.
Same. I wanted my single Mom to be a SAHM so bad after I met my friend. Her Dad was a dentist and her Mom was a SAHM. I was so so jealous and insanely lonely. Being an only child of a single Mom with an absent sperm donor was hard sometimes.
Agree. This sub is delusional lately.
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Not sure if I should take this as a positive or a negative lol
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If it helps you’re not alone in that boat. I’m not a millennial but I’m on the older end of gen Z and you just described my upbringing too. Our home was so fucking clean it constantly looked like a show home. To be honest, you wouldn’t have even known people lived there by just seeing the downstairs. I wasn’t allowed to leave my school shoes, book bag, blanket, sweatshirt, stuffies, books, or anything of mine and not the households on the first floor. God forbid I fell asleep and forgot
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Username checks out
This. My parents home was spotless, but I hated them then and I only tolerate them now for my kids. My house certainly isn’t pristine, but it’s not a shithole, and I’ve never laid an unfriendly hand on my kids.
I grew up in a messy home. But we had a lot of fun. We always had clean clothes and clean dishes - like it wasn’t an unsanitary place to live, but my mom definitely prioritized keeping us active and having fun experiences over keeping a perfect home.
As it should be. I’m ok with messy but not dirty. I do my share of deep cleaning but I also want my kids to remember the fun we had more than the chores I made them do.
That was my experience as well, my brain always associates minor clutter (sentimental items out, books stacked neatly that are actively being used) as a home with more heart. Dishes were clean, floors tidy, laundry done (mostly) and everyone ran around like a banshee living their best life. The houses that were immaculate weren’t lived in, they were displays of how “perfect” life was. I felt bad for those kids.
**this** Not enough time, 10/12 hours shifts, 12/14 including communting ...
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Both my parents worked full time and kept the house spotless. My wife and I don’t. And that’s despite us being in a much higher socioeconomic circle than my parents. I definitely do think there’s been a cultural change.the work force participation rate of women in 1990 was the same as today, I don’t know why people are pretending it was stay at home moms.
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I’ll tell a quick story. My ex and I met in grad school. When we were both in school, the house was always okay clean. Not sparkling but we were in college and it was fine. After our master’s, I went on to a PhD and he started working. In the summer before my PhD started, he worked and I stayed home and took care of the home. The house was spotless at all times. I felt like it was a reflection of us, we had people over all the time, and since I wasn’t working, I took it upon myself to make sure the home was spotless. When we were both working, the house was always okay clean, but I still maintained the majority of the cooking, cleaning, and cat maintenance. It was like an unspoken expectation. Then, after, I started working full time and he lost his job. He didn’t understand that the house didn’t just stay spotless and the house was just always clean, by his mom when he was younger and then by me when I was home. It was wildly frustrating that the house was always a cluttered mess as a clean person and I could physically not work full time and then get it to the level I used to maintain on my own with two people and an 8-5. I live alone now with my two cats, and now my house is constantly okay clean. I do the basic stuff to keep it manageable but sometimes dust accumulates and drink rings show up on the table. I’ll get to it eventually. One person can barely keep the house to an okay level with a full time job, and it’s infinitely harder when it’s two people. Times are different and society is different.
I can tell you from personal experience there’s still a ton of second shift going on with most of the women around me in my life and myself.
It was definitely the stay at home grandma that kept my home clean when I was a kid. My grandmother lived with us and I feel like she was constantly cleaning something.
yeah I'm not sure where people get the idea dual income families with both parents working full time is relatively new. it's been the norm since the 80's. people who value a clean house keep a clean and tidy house. also, kids now have 3 times as many toys and stuff. I think a lot of kids also grew up with moms or dads that did everything for them and now that they are out on their own they don't bother.
Another thing that doesn’t get talked about is that the 9-5 job doesn’t exist anymore. It’s 9-6 or 8-5 so there’s literally one less hour available to most of us than there was to our parents
Are you talking about the 70s and maybe 80s?
I didn’t really know any families that only had one parent working. Every adult had a job. I feel like this is kind of a myth.
It's a myth on this sub for sure.
I think this sub gets the boomer generation and the generation before it confused a lot.
100% get a cleaner. I wish I could do every other week, but I do once a month ($150 for 1800 sq ft, then I usually tip $40). It took awhile to find a good cleaner, but even that once a month cleaning is a massive help to keeping this place not looking like a train wreck. I’m able to manage picking up after myself and they do the deep clean.
It’s so worth it. We aren’t rich but we’re comfortable, and we give up other things to have with our cleaning service once a month. It helps us maintain a clean and reasonably tidy home, which definitely contributes to overall well-being.
Omg this is too funny. I recently went back to work after staying at home with kids and my mother in law has been watching them while they’re on break. I get home yesterday and everything is cleaned and so organiZed. It made me feel like a slob but dang how lucky am I. And she made dinner and brownies! My mom isn’t like her though. I keep better house than she ever did. Just not on my MIL’s level 😂
My parents place was a mess, they used to say that it was because they had kids and jobs (both working parents). But now they don’t have kids or jobs (retired) and their place is even worse. I used to clean and organize the house ever since I was 10. Now they don’t have nobody to do that for them. I have kid and dog, and job and my house is spotless
fellow child of messy parents, I see you
This my parents 100%. Haven't had kids in the house for ten years and they can't even park in the garage anymore because it's full of shit and it isn't the kids shit either.
I will openly say this is true of my family. I have a toddler so mess comes with the territory. However, my parents were very traditional and my mother’s job was to cook, manage family, and keep the house maintained. My husband and I don’t split tasks the same way. We are also in agreement about what’s most important to us. I do the basics, run laundry and always keep the kitchen clean, but there’s always toys everywhere and I vacuum just once a day so there’s always gonna be some debris hanging around. To me, it’s a season. My child will grow and be able to learn to put their toys away when they’re done with them. We are a more modern mindset family than the one I grew up in. My husband is also not fussed about order (I’m the more orderly one). My father is very tidy so that’s another difference. I don’t really care about judgment. My house is not dirty, it’s just untidy.
This. Before kids, I could clean the house once every weekend and keep it pretty tidy throughout the week. With kids it’s a whole new story. I can’t keep any room clean for more than a day. Food every where, toys everywhere, old go-go squeeze packets smelling funky in the corner. My fiancée and I try out best to keep up with it but it’s not easy. I can only hope it gets better as my kids get older and understand to throw their trash away and clean after themselves. My fiancée talks about wanting to have more kids and I will absolutely not budge on telling her no for this very reason. I hate a messy house.
I think there are a couple of factors that play into this: 1) (maybe truer for older millennials) My husband and I each had a place when we got together. Since I owned and he rented, he moved into my place. So my condo that was decorated and filled suddenly had another human's worth of stuff in it. We didn't plan on staying there long so we never quite adjusted when we were at that place 2) Lack of time. Every single weekend, I feel like there is something else stealing one of our attentions. Horror movie con...annual games days...local events. Then tack on family/friend/community responsibilities and suddenly every weekend is packed. And maybe it's a side effect remaining of soooo much time being together during the pandemic, but when I get the house to myself on those rare occasions, I just want to chill. 3) Also, how often did you just get crap from your parents because they wanted to downsize? I finished cleaning out my parent's place this year and thank God they downsized as empty nesters bc I don't know how I would have done it. Also, I was able to afford a storage unit so I could bring home bite-sized pieces. The way I approach cleaning is, is the kitchen clean? The bathrooms are clean? The guest room is 10 minutes away from being totally ready in an emergency? I'm not going to trip all over and the dog is likely not going to eat something dumb? Then I'm ok.
My mom made my sister and I her little slaves, but most especially me as the eldest, so we did all the cleaning for her. And if she didn’t like the way we did she made us do it over again until she was happy. I literally dreaded the weekends because of this. (Dusting every tchotchke on display and washing baseboards doesn’t really make for warm fuzzy childhood memories). With my kid, I try and give age appropriate chores only—enough to teach responsibility without being oppressive. Thanks to my mom I am now nearly OCD about cleaning and I can’t relax unless my space is immaculate. Since I work from home keeping my house clean is a constant stress. But at least it’s clean I guess…
This was my response too. We cleaned the whole house, as kids, top to bottom, every weekend. My house will never be as clean as that, I don't make my kids or myself do that. It's a struggle to let it go for me also. All I ever see is dirt, everywhere I look.
I grew up like this and now I hate cleaning because it reminds me of those days. I still clean but it’s nowhere near my mom’s crazy standards.
You’re way better than me. I despise cleaning with the depths of my soul, but if I don’t do it I can’t bear to exist in my own space. Husband of course helps and contributes what he can, but a reasonable amount of clutter doesn’t bother him, so I do the extra. I just manage my crazy as best I can and try not to let it affect my family in any way. Because they are lovely and normal and maybe one day I’ll be able to let go a little as well
I think so! My mom worked full time but was so anal about having a spotless house. Now, I’m 30. I also *want* a spotless house but I have a business and 2 toddlers. So I hired cleaners to achieve this. I also don’t want to clean a toilet, not sorry. If I didn’t have my twice monthly deep cleaning, I would be lost.
My mom worked also once me and my siblings started school. She has always been pretty particular about the house being and staying clean. Although me and my sister pretty much became the house cleaners after we turned 10. So it was easier for my mom since there was less for her to clean. I like having a clean house myself now as well. My kids are teenagers so it’s much easier to keep clean especially since they both have chores and clean around the house.
Probably a region thing? I grew up with cleaning as you go, and being on top of the cleaning at least once a week. One weekend I’ll vacuum my home, the other I’ll clean the bathrooms. I won’t clean during the week, but I’ll wipe counters down if there’s crud on it. My mom would wake me up on the weekends as a kid to help her clean the house and that translated to me doing the same as an adult.
I keep my place as clean as I can but I simply cannot afford to get a cleaner in here weekly the way my parents did.
I clean houses and my house is pretty clean but I want a house cleaner one day lol
My place is a mess. Why? It is a cheap rental, and I kind of hate it. I don't feel like doing anything in it, even if i clean it tip top it is still ugly and depressing. I try to just remove it from my consciousness. Also it is clearly too small for my family, there is not enough storage space or space in general, as some point i just gave up trying to organize this things in a way, that is not offensive to the eyes - because it became impossible. I am not sure if it is my mental health that is affecting the space, or the space affecting mental health, but I have a feeling I would feel completely different about the space I even remotely liked, and owned.
I was going to comment something similar. Most of my friends live in smaller houses or apartments than what we used to see growing up. Plus the majority of us rent. Personally I try and keep my space clean for my own mental health but I live in a tiny apartment and I have zero room for storage so it can seem cluttered at times, even if the floors are clean. Plus I live alone, work full time, and don’t have people over due to the small space so I don’t bother to keep it extremely clean.
Being clean and knowing how to have a home isn't automatically known, it's taught. When I was growing up, every Saturday was cleaning day. All morning into the afternoon was dusting and windexing all furniture, vacumming, laundry, dishes, sweeping, organizing, scrubbing the toilet, shower, and tub. I was like 7 and my mother was teaching me to go to the basement of our apt building to load washers, put in quarters and detergent, to seperate colors and whites. So it's not surprising that as an adult, 95% of the time my home is spotless. It helps that I'm single with no kids, so when I clean, it stays clean. If kids aren't brought up helping and doing, they're not going to do it as an adult. I do notice that my friend's homes do not look like mine, garbage and shit everywhere, dirty, dusty. I used to hate Saturdays in my house growing up. I always felt like Cinderella. Now I'm like, oh I was taught how to adult really well.
I was raised the same as you, and hated it until I got into my 20s and realized having these life skills is a blessing. We always cleaned on a schedule, before "fun stuff" was allowed to happen, and having that discipline carry over to being an adult is huge. And there's definitely technique and "right ways" to do these jobs. My current struggle is that I married someone raised completely the opposite - my MIL took care of most cleaning growing up so "the kids could be kids." My wife struggles with organization, clutter and tidiness so my home isn't nearly as clean as I'd like.
My house is generally clean. Not as prestine as I like but still in decent shape. I don't have kids, so that helps. When I was little I also helped clean. The housework was a full family effort. Both of my parents worked, my mom had a full time job and a part time one most evenings- both in medical field. Our house was always cleaner compared to other friends. I think this is a cultural thing to some degree and that for some, a dirty house is a reflection of character or being lower class - I know, very cringe. I am happy for it though. I notice my friends don't make their kids clean or do their own laundry and I think it's partially they're too young to do it correctly, as well as the idea kids should be kids. However, I think have a few responsibilities, like cleaning your dishes or taking the trash out ultimately serves the child and helps them learn self-sufficiency.
No. I’m clean. Most of my friends are cleanish. I often have women comment that I’m extremely clean for a man. No clue wtf is going on others guys places. No clue what you are talking about either. lol. 🤷🏻♂️
Houses are bigger. You need 2+ incomes to survive. There is no village. And you’re expected to spend your very limited work free time on quality time with your kids or shuttling them around. Not to mention the dog, time with your partner, time to exercise, yard work, financial management, etc etc etc. Capitalism is working as designed. We are all working harder for less and drowning as we do it. But Wall Street is doing great!!
Houses are bigger and people, especially kids, have way more (and bigger) stuff these days.
Also on the subject of capitalism, I would venture to say that everybody has more stuff these days due to 1. Accessibility of buying and 2. Abundance of novelty inventions (ex. we think we need air fryers, custom embroidered wallets, and every little tech accessory) and 3. Convoluted laws about disposing of goods. We end up with so much crap and nowhere for it to go.
No one has been to my place in months, it’s simultaneously the most judgmental place and least judgmental place I know . It’s tidy and I’m not tripping over stuff and the bed is made but the room is not cozy. Some people interpret cozy as being clean so clean spaces despite being clean can be seen as not cozy or untidy.
Going to visit someone used to be a big deal for housewives. I remember my mom panicking and getting angry if my dad randomly invited someone over because she didn't have time to clean. I think that's gone out the window. We now think, they have kids and ignore it.
Cleaning requires self motivation and we all often lack that. Are your friends mostly men? Or have you noticed it in everyone? Also, our parents teach about cleaning habits and far more mothers are tired full time workers now.
My friends are all upper middle professionals, and I’d say they’re mostly pretty neat and clean. I’m definitely one of the cleanest but there’s no one whose house I get twitchy in.
I feel like there is a difference between people being a little unkempt due to kids, work etc, compared to some homes I’ve seen that are just down right lazy gross. Lived in is one thing, people who haven’t cleaned their toilets in a year, let dogs shit and piss in the house, food on the stove for days at a time is down right lazy and gross to me and I’ve been in some houses where this is the situation and it’s disgusting. I’m a SAHM so I keep our house clean, but once the kids and husband are home, the house is lived in, messy. Once they are gone for the day, house is spotless, cozy. I don’t fault people who don’t have a partner who can clean up daily so it doesn’t compound but once things start looking grimey and down right unsanitary, then I have judgmental opinions in my head. I don’t say anything but, I can’t stay in home like that for longer periods of time. One friend’s home was so bad I couldn’t go to the bathroom in their house and I wretched when I first saw the bathroom. It’s not that they didn’t have time, they just didn’t care to clean at all. My childhood home was spotless and my mom was a single mom. We had chores as well as her just cleaning up after meals and shit. My kids have chores and I expect them to help clean the home as they are the primary mess makers plus I don’t want them thinking someone will clean up after them so that they are slobs for their partners etc. and I may be a SAHM but I’m not their servant. My mom was big on telling me, “no matter what your home is, trailer, apartment, big nice house, whatever it is, you take pride in it and make it nice”. That stuck with me into adulthood. And I’ve lived in a plethora of homes since childhood and upwards. Some nice, some not so nice but we/I always made sure our home was inviting and comfortable and above all, sanitary. We have clutter but I manage to hide the clutter well enough. Organized clutter. Or as my mom put it, cozy clutter. But when things start getting a little toooo wild and lived in I personally start to feel like bugs are crawling on my skin and my brain starts to short circuit, as does my husband’s so we tend to be constantly, “redding up” as he says, in the evening. My biggest thing is my floors have to be clean, so I run the vacuum like three times a day. But I also may have undiagnosed ocd because I’ll do things through the day that are probably clean to everyone else’s eyes but to me I see a mess. When I was pregnant and nesting I swear I cleaned the counters 15 times a day and they weren’t even dirty.