How Messy Can a Home Get?!

[kerrisan]

I spent my New Year's weekend (well, Sun-Wed) at a friend's apartment in up Fort Worth. I was really excited about it: seeing old friends (she and some others have graduated and moved), shopping, and just being out of the parents' house!

My enthusiasm was a bit dashed when we got to her apartment. As soon as we walked in, we saw paths. I'm not kidding. There was a path from the door to the kitchen, the door to the living area, the living area to the bedroom, the bedroom to the bathroom. What was making up these paths? Bags of trash, clothing, random food, books. There was hardly any space for me and my friend S's stuff.

She has a chair that I didn't even know about until I looked hard enough under the garbage.

There was literally no counter space in the kitchen. Plates, cups, cooking utensils, and trash were pilled precariously on top of it. There was no room in the sink to use the spout. I tried to pour myself a glass of water and nearly broke two nasty, coated champagne glasses.

To make things worse, she has a cat. An inside cat. There was no way I could sleep in that living room with that horrid urine smell, so I kindly asked her if I could clean her cat's litter box. She actually seemed confused as to why I would want to. This poor kitty had been using this nasty box for so long that the huge mound of cat pee and litter I tried to scrape off nearly broke the scooper.

The bathroom . . . oh God, I could hardly stand to shower in there. It was just gross.

My friend S and I couldn't stand it. When our friend left we started cleaning. I did the kitchen and she did the bathroom (we didn't want to clean the living room because despite how disgusting it is, she seemed to know where everything was). The kitchen alone took 2 hours. She has about 3 fulls sets of dishes and 95% of them were either in the sink, in the dishwasher, on the counter, or on the floor. I found a science experiment in a martini shaker. My nails were black underneath after the cleaning.

This place is so bad that after 3 total hours of cleaning, you couldn't tell that we had done anything at all.

I think the problem is she just has too much stuff for a 1-bedroom apartment. I also think that she never fully unpacked and has never cleaned the place since she moved in last summer. I was really, really glad to be back here where it is clean.

How disgusting does your living space have to be in order for you to clean it?! :soapbox::rant:

[AFpheonix]

My 4-H leader when I was a kid had free range indoor bunnies. Cocoa puffs everywhere....
And they had the trails through the house thing going too.

What was even funkier was that the zoning around their house changed, so the area around them was getting really built up with these fancy homes, and they had pigs living in their front yard, and muddy, underfed horses in the back. I'm sure the neighboring home owner's association was amused....

[Luna]

That would be my husband if I didn't clean. I've tried going on "wife strike" thinking that once it got from messy to just plain filth - he'd recant his sloppy ways and fix it.

Nope.

The cats recently peed in the 2nd bedroom we use as the laundry room/cumputer room/junk room. We have wall to wall carpeting. After a couple of days of asking him (b/c he was off from work) to do the laundry the peed on and please scrub the rug where they went I finally blew up and did it myself. It still smells bad. I've tried Urine Gone, Oxyclean, Arm & Hammer rooom/carpet eliminator...to no avail. We're not suppossed to have pets and now we may have to pay to replace the whole carpet. I don't know why they peed - they've never done it before.

But back OT, I've known people to live in filth like that. I think it's part pack rat, part depression and a self-conscious issue. They create a surrounding based on how they feel about their life.

[NightAngel]

That Nature's Miracle stuff really works! It's a bit more expensive but it is completely worth it.

[blas]

They had an episode of Dr Keith about women who horde.......surrounding themselves in garbage and papers and books and whatnot, and they refused to throw anything away, I mean anything. I do think that's extreme and probably a very mental disorder...

Then there are people who are just naturally slobby....

First, since I'm a noted manhater, I will pick on the men. A good friend of mine from work lives with 2 other guys in a duplex upstairs. Their place looks like a tornado went through it. The food still on the plates in the sink is stuck like superglue; it'll take some real elbow grease to get that shit off. Their tiny little garbage can has been overtaken by mounds and mounds of empty pop/beer cans and empty pizza/frozen food boxes, ramen noodle wrapping, etc etc....and they are so damn lazy that if someone knocks an ashtray over....oh well. There are cigarette butts and ashes everywhere. I don't go over there much anymore, but when I did, I refused to take my shoes off (weird how filthy they are but they insist you take your shoes off). Their bathroom....I won't even go there. Empty toilet paper packaging, empty bottles of shampoo on the floor, hairs from shaving all over the sink, toothpaste all over the sink.....and some kind of pink stuff (I'm guessing calcium or rust, because I've had something similar at my apartment and used CLR on it) growing inside the bathtub. The bathroom tile is filthy. There is always a gigantic cloud of smoke in every room.

Now, the women aren't totally in the clear here. My best friend that I grew up with since I was 8 is a total slob. I used to dread her spending the night at my house because she made such a mess....and she's not the only one. Out of the few lady friends I have, their places ALL look like this:

Dirty underpants and bras hanging from the shower rod or laying on the bathroom floor. Rolls and rolls of toilet paper slinking around the whole bathroom, makeup and curling irons and flat irons and perfume and lotions everywhere. In their bedrooms, similar to the bathroom.....clothes ALL over the floor. Clothes spilling out of the closet. Books and magazines and old mail and bills all over the floor. The bed completely unmade. Empty ice cream containers all over the kitchen counter....empty packs of cigarettes everywhere! At least four or five full garbage bags just sitting in the kitchen because no one wants to take it out.

I'm guilty of not having a dresser and folding my pants up and piling them on my closet floor, along with my undies and socks. But they are NEAT piles, at least they are neat, lol. And I have a problem with accumulating too many plastic bags for my taste.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

That would be my husband if I didn't clean. I've tried going on "wife strike" thinking that once it got from messy to just plain filth - he'd recant his sloppy ways and fix it.

Nope.

The cats recently peed in the 2nd bedroom we use as the laundry room/cumputer room/junk room. We have wall to wall carpeting. After a couple of days of asking him (b/c he was off from work) to do the laundry the peed on and please scrub the rug where they went I finally blew up and did it myself. It still smells bad. I've tried Urine Gone, Oxyclean, Arm & Hammer rooom/carpet eliminator...to no avail. We're not suppossed to have pets and now we may have to pay to replace the whole carpet. I don't know why they peed - they've never done it before.

But back OT, I've known people to live in filth like that. I think it's part pack rat, part depression and a self-conscious issue. They create a surrounding based on how they feel about their life.

I'm experiencing similar issues with the dog. She's having peeing accidents all over my carpeting in the office and, even though I'm scrubbing with OxyClean/PineSol/dish detergent and water and using old towels to blot up the excess and leaving the windows open to air it out (and a Glade plug in open all the way) it still reeks.

It's like this dog has gone on a major Pee-A-Thon and as soon as I get one spot odorless, another one appears. It's even worse when she's in the house as opposed to outside (she couldn't go outside today as it's been raining.)

And I can't stand filth . . . my catboxes are scooped out twice a day (sometimes 3 times if it's messy outside and several of the kitties are inside.) I sweep and mop the laundry room floor/wipe down the washer and dryer almost daily.


Sheets are changed on my bed weekly whether or not they need it. I dust/windex and vacuum weekly. Bathroom weekly as well, more often if needed.

I've been cleaning house since I was 8. My bedroom floor doesn't have junk piled around everywhere. I was taught to keep my room picked up when I was 5 when my Mom got tired of picking up after me (working 2 jobs didn't help the situation back then either) and threw everything that was in the bedroom floor into the biggest garbage can she could find and hauled it outside.

You can bet I kept my room picked up after that. :angel:

[XCashier]

:puke: Gross! I think I might have run out of there screaming.

Now, I'm hardly Felix Unger. Most of my stuff is still in boxes (we're moving out of state in February, why unpack what we don't need?) and I haven't done as much cleaning as I normally do, due to being sick for five weeks. However, I would never let my place get to that level, even if I were at Death's Door. The dishes and laundry must be washed, garbage taken out and the cat's litterbox scooped out, at the absolute minimum. And no paths through the floor, even with a child who likes his toys everywhere. ;)

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

In my first year of college I had a roomate who was like that.

His only excuse was laziness. He came from an amazingly rich family and had his own apartment with a maid. He came from Canada and thus was allowed to move in early. His uncle had come with him for the first few days and left when I arrived with the two other roomates. When the uncle left, he told my parents and me to "call him if anything happens".

Talk about your omens.

This guy was an absolute filthy pig. Smoking was not allowed in our on-campus apartment, but he didn't let that stop him. If he'd spill his soda on the furniture, he'd leave it there to get sticky. His desk was basically coated in a layer of sticky spilled soda and cigarette ashes.

Plus, he'd use my dishes and not wash them. He'd leave them in his room with food particles stuck to them. I think I had to throw most of my dishes away at the end of the year.

I tried to get him to clean up after himself with no success. I tried to get my roommates to back me up, but one was quite a bit more laissez-faire about it than I was, and the other usually wasn't around because he couldn't stand having to share a bedroom with this hog. So I decided to drop the whole thing until I spotted any cockroaches or other suspicious life forms hanging around the place, which amazingly never happened.

He'd throw big drinking and drug parties and leave the evidence scattered all around the apartment (something else the school frowned upon). I spent many nights sleeping over by my friends. I think he "borrowed" my cell phone to call a casino not too far from campus, because I sure as heck didn't remember making any calls to that locale. He'd have card games at my place with some pretty sketchy people who I figured were his "bookies".

I can't recall him going to very many classes at all. He'd sleep deep into the afternoons and stay up all night, every night.

[kerrisan]

I'm not a neat freak by any means (ask my mommy! ;)), but my apartment is at least livable! I don't see how my friend couldn't have been embarrassed by what we saw. One day roomie and I had an unexpected "friend" (term used loosely) drop by and my room happened to be a pigsty at the time, as did our kitchen, I will never let that happen again! The countertops are now almost always spotless, dishes don't stay in the sink overnight, trash is picked up off the floor regularly, and in my room, the only super-messy place is my desk (I'm a creative genius ;)). I mean, I have limits!

She did quietly thank us for doing some cleaning for her. Maybe she got the hint?

[iradney]

The cats recently peed in the 2nd bedroom we use as the laundry room/cumputer room/junk room. We have wall to wall carpeting. After a couple of days of asking him (b/c he was off from work) to do the laundry the peed on and please scrub the rug where they went I finally blew up and did it myself. It still smells bad. I've tried Urine Gone, Oxyclean, Arm & Hammer rooom/carpet eliminator...to no avail. We're not suppossed to have pets and now we may have to pay to replace the whole carpet. I don't know why they peed - they've never done it before.


Slightly OT

The previous house we lived, the tenants had obviously kept their large dogs in the carpeted living room. the stench was unbelievable! I went out and bought an enzymatic pet odour remover and it worked like a bomb! You could also try steam cleaning...apparently the heat kills the germs and the smell.

back On Topic
- Back in highschool, there was a girl in our group who was really untidy (and her mom too!). You'd go to visit her, and the first thing we would do is clean up her kitchen! I think I went into her bedroom 3 or 4 times in the 5 years we were friends - that place was nasty! Clothes everywhere (dirty AND clean!), plates, glasses, books, toys, hairballs, hobbits...ick!

[ZumZum]

We aren't neat nicks either, we live in "clutter". We do have a cleaning lady though, so that helps. We are just extremely disorganized.

I had an ex-boyfriend whose house was so bad I almost ran out of there screaming.
We stopped at his house on the way to his mom's birthday party at a bar. He needed to get her present and I needed to pee.

When you mentioned "paths" I flash backed to that house. There were paths there, too. Of dirty laundry, newspapers, trash, ugh.

I go to use the bathroom and almost got sick. The litter box was in there and sounded like your friends. The tub was so dirty I wasn't sure what the original color was.

[Kiwi]

I do the bulk of our cleaning, K will do dishes until the cows come home, but he zones out when the bathroom needs cleaning, or the carpets need vacuming and he doesnt understand why we even need a duster....

at a push he will do some laundry (his laundry, and he can manage towels), he does a great job at the dishes but wont think to wipe down the counter, the stove top, the mircowave or the fridge....if I ask him to do anything like that he has the attention span of a flea... he will last 30 seconds...if im lucky.

So I have two choices... nag him like a mule, or be thankful that I will never ever get dish hands ever again. If he does the dishes and takes out the trash and brings the grocries up our 3 flights of stairs im more than content to do the rest. Ive learnt over the last year to pick my own battles.... I can get mad about the 4 day old cup of solid coffee...I choose to ignore the empty candy wrappers on his desk.

he has been very good at keeping his mess in our office to a minimum, and his wardobe door shut... but still asks me where clean socks/pants/work clothes are

the blessing is, hes willing and able, the intention is there.. its the follow through, he just literally doesnt SEE the mess until its piled high.... and one good side to me only working 30 hours a week is I usually have 1 day off to make sure our place is presentable

[Broomjockey]

I thought I was formerly bad.

Being an only child from the home of a family that used dust as a place-marker for where to put stuff back, I had some bad habits.

1. We never ate in the Dining Room, and I'd leave my dishes on the floor beside whatever chair I happened to eat in, sometimes several days worth if no one called for a dish round-up.

2. Garbage (Wrappers and packaging and such) would go on the floor if there wasn't a garbage can within arms reach. And I mean that literally. A more than a couple of times I'd floor some garbage rather than take 3 steps to get to the garbage can. Decomposables would go on the convieniently located dinner plates left over from the last meal.

3. Clothes would live in my laundry basket until it was time to wear them, then go in a pile near the door. Once I could no longer find any particular piece of clothing (shirt, underwear, etc.) it was time to stuff the remaining clothes in the dresser, dump the pile of laundry in the basket, and whine at my mom that I need laundry done.

4. Things such as cassettes and videos would pile up next to their player because I would pull the case out, put the item in the player, play it, grab something new, take the old item out, sometimes put it in its case, and put the new item in. When I was done, the last thing I watched would remain in the player.

5. In fact, anything I used would remain where I last used it.

There are a few other things, but I'm proud to annouce, that after 5 years of living out on my own, almost all of my bad habits are fixed. Much to the relief of future roommates, I'm sure :D

[blas]

I totally forgot about the part in this thread regarding pet odors...

Now, I am a big animal lover. I would rather have multiple cats and dogs the rest of my life than ever have a child. But that's neither here or there.......part of being a true pet lover is that we realize that sometimes dogs have accidents if they aren't let outside in time and sometimes cats will regress and pee all over furniture and certain linens. Some reasons we can explain regarding that, and some we can't. But the point is, that can happen to ANY pet owner, and as long as the smell and stain are gone in record time, there shouldn't be a problem and those people should not be considered slobs.

*big breath* However....

I had quite a few friends in my elementary and junior high days. All of my friends had pets at their home. Some of these friends...well...their families were....a bit less than even halfway neat. Litter boxes were full to the brim (and let's face it, would you use a toilet that was all the way to the rim covered in shit?), the foul stench of cat piss was everywhere. It was as if the cats would pee anywhere and everywhere, and no one would ever clean it up. Also, cat puke and hairballs.....I made the fatal mistake of not watching my footing at a slobby friend's house right on top of a couple piles of kitty puke.

I also had a friend who let her rotweiler poop in the front porch and would make the guests walk around the land mines to get inside. That's gross.

[Dreamstalker]

To make things worse, she has a cat. An inside cat. There was no way I could sleep in that living room with that horrid urine smell, so I kindly asked her if I could clean her cat's litter box. She actually seemed confused as to why I would want to. This poor kitty had been using this nasty box for so long that the huge mound of cat pee and litter I tried to scrape off nearly broke the scooper.
OMFG, poor poor kitty. Can't they develop UTI's from something like that?

Mom and I try to clean McGriff's litter box at least once a day (it rarely smells, but seeing as we use the back hall door a lot and the box is in the back hall it makes sense).


Also, hoarding stuff like that can be a kind of mental disorder. A friend of ours, his mother is like that. She lives in a small house PACKED with junk. She's mentally incapable of throwing stuff away. Her son (our friend) tells us that to even take out the mouldering trash in the kitchen, he has to wait until she's asleep and sneak the garbage out to the curb, because if she catches him, she flips out.
My grandmother was like that. The lower level of the house was livable, but the upstairs was/is a disaster. Cleaning out the attic a few weekends ago (she's in a nursing home now, so wasn't around to yell at us) was an adventure. Unfortunately, I didn't find any of the toys that had been missing for years.

I'm guilty of not having a dresser and folding my pants up and piling them on my closet floor, along with my undies and socks. But they are NEAT piles, at least they are neat, lol. And I have a problem with accumulating too many plastic bags for my taste.
Me too...I organize the piles when I have time, but at least I do organize them.

DGoddess, I've heard that at least in cats, peeing all over even with a clean litter box could be signs of a kidney problem.

[Mr. Rager!]

I clean. I'm a big-time neat freak. I think it was gbm85 that made the joke that after I get done wearing clothes, they go straight into the washer. Sad thing is, that's not too far from the truth.

I'm moving into a house with two of my friends very, very soon. My friends are both excited. They both cook! I'm thrilled because they cook, I don't cook... but I do clean.

So, I'll be fed (you guys don't have to worry about me starving to death) and the house will be clean. :D

Of course, don't think that I'm going to allow them to be total slobs. I have this bad habit of getting slightly (by slightly, I mean very) cranky if people just create unecessary messes. Both my friends are aware of this, and they are aware of the fact that they might just very well be kicked out of the house if I go into one of my cleaning sprees. Those don't happen often, but when they do... :eek:

and I've seen houses that were total disasters, only once. I refuse to see it again after the first time.

[Dreamstalker]

I should have taken pictures of the campus apartment I shared with a woman who was older than my mom (and saw the need to play the role, apparently). She would not wash dishes. Seriously, they would sit in the sink for days with food crusted on them (I refused to clean up after her). After finding a few of mine used and broken (these were broken when they were in the cupboard...tell me how that could have been an accident as she claimed), I stashed my dishes in my room.

The fridge was also a nightmare. I regularly saw rotting tofu and other foodstuffs kept way past their effective lives, how she never got sick is a miracle. How I never got sick from my food being in the vicinity of that stuff is a bigger miracle. She would keep cooked rice for upwards of 2 weeks (OK, I understand about wanting to get a few meals out of it, but why not just cook what you need when you need to?).

The "common living room" was being used as her personal storage unit, so a bedroom that should have been more than big enough for me was crammed due to me having nowhere to put the stuff that was in the living room of my other unit (we both had single units, I was thrown in with her due to serious roof leaks in the other units and Housing needing to shuffle people around). My vacuum cleaner and other supplies went missing...I saw my vacuum in her room and she denied taking it.

Yeah, it wasn't an ideal situation for either of us (I required a unit to myself due to a documented learning disability), but the units were designed for two students to have plenty of room (two, not one with plenty of room and the other feeling like she lived in a closet).

I never saw any wildlife when I was there, but apparently the unit had to be bug-bombed when she left this past summer.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I'm sloppy, but I am clean. I am constantly battling clutter. However, you can eat off the floor of my place. I don't like clutter (hence the constant battle) and I can't stand filth. I just cannot relax in a dirty house.

I knew someone who's house was so filthy it was unreal. I could go on and on, but I think the story that sums it up best was the time a turkey carcass was left on the dining room table.

For four months.

I am not making this up.

It was like that scene in Great Expectations or something. Gross.

[blas]

I am the master at playing headgames with roomates to make them either clean or find somewhere else to eat/stay.

When I first moved in, my roomate would eat lunch and supper at the apartment before heading to his gfs. He would NEVER do the dishes. Me, being a freak of nature, would wash them all the time after every meal. However, seeing he was just taking advantage of it.......I started a game. My side of the sink vs your side. Mine was the right side, his was the left. My side was always empty. His dirty dishes stayed on his side and I didn't touch them or bother with them, until it had been over a month and his dishes were still there and we were running low....so what I'd do is wash a spoon or fork whenever I needed one, and a bowl if I needed one. So he'd notice that a couple of things had gotten washed, but not all of them. He then realized I wasn't cleaning up after him anymore and quit eating at home and now only does at his girlfriend's house where she'll clean up after him :P.

One time I DID have to break down and do his dishes because something that was still stuck to his plate (remains of a fruit salad or something) had caused fruit flies and I had to wash the dishes and then pour vinegar down the sink to kill them.

Oh yeah....and once when they got in a fight, my roomate ate at home and then left his bowl of mac and cheese ON THE COUCH ARM and a half drank glass of water on the coffee table with a lovely ring around the bottom. RRRRRRR!

[protege]

I try to keep my house clean. However, since I work full-time, it's difficult. Things aren't helped by a certain four-legged critter getting into everything and leaving little furballs all over the place.

Right now, the house is pretty clean, except for the furballs. As long as it's not kitty puke (or worse!) it's not a big deal. He likes to curl up under the living room table, so it's not too surprising that there are furballs under there. I try to keep them vacuumed up, but I feel if my guests don't like that, too damn bad. Kitty lives here, they don't :p

The basement and garage are another story. I don't really care what those areas look like. It'll eventually get cleaned up when I put the Christmas stuff away, and the electrician comes in to install new sockets. For now, nearly everything is stacked around the middle of the basement main room. Messy, but I'm not about to move that crap multiple times until the work gets done :p

[Crazyredhead]

I can't stand clutter and messes, but in this little house it is inevitable. There are 7 people in a small 1,000 (I think) square foot, three bedroom house. If I don't clean up, no one will. My hubby will yell and scream but will do nothing.

Yes, I have a 16 and 13 year old daughter. But if you don't tell them to pick it up, it will dissappear from there sight. My daughters know how to clean, but getting them to do it is like pulling teeth. My three boys also know how to clean, but they are the same way. I'm always yelling at them to clean up. I end up having to turn the tv and the PS3 off for the night or until the house is clean.

My hubby won't even lift a finger to do anything. He will sit on the couch all day doing nothing, because it is his day off and he shouldn't have to do anything. I'm always yelling at him about his shoes by the bed (i'm always tripping over them), his cups by the couch (which usually get knocked over and spilled), and the bathroom, where he leaves enough facial hair to cover cousin it.

The kids will drop there trash where ever they are. I yell at them to pick up the trash and that my floor isn't a land fill. No one knows how to rinse off there plates and open the dishwasher and put them in. No one understands that soda and juice on the floor will get sticky, at least not until they are sticking to the floor. The girls want cats in the house but I have to clean the little box, unless I tell someone to. BTW, we have taken on another cat, a big yellow tom, along with my siamese. I got rid of the other cats awhile ago (another story).

No one seems to understand that when you clean the kitchen that the oven and the kitchen table is a part of the task.

I have wall to wall carpeting (I hate, hate, hate it) through out the entire house, and everyone acts deathly afraid of the vacuum. Also, everyone here is afraid that they are going to get sucked down the toilet if they flush it. So, I have to go around the house and flush the toilets (2). If I am gone for the day and come home, the toilets are usually so full that you have to be armed with the plunger with flushing, and they have overflown on occasion (gross).

I do all of the cooking and cleaning. If I am gone all day long and don't get home till 9 or 9:30, everyone is hungry. My hubby is still in the same position, on the couch, that he was when I left. He hasn't gotten up to cook for the kids or anything. He then complains that he hasn't eaten all day and that he is hungry. Usually, I will cook for the kids and let him starve. There is usually lunch meat, ramen soup, bread, PB&J, left overs, and a microwave around.

I have tried going on a wife and mother strike, but I usually give in. I cannot stand for my children to be hungry or in a dirty house, to hell with him. And if I want it done right I usually have to do it myself.

I only have a really hard time keeping up with the laundry.

The only really bad problem is with my 5 year old son. He is still peeing the bed at night. I have stopped him from drinking or eating anything 30 minutes prior to going to bed. I have started getting up in the middle of the night to take him to the bathroom, but he still pees. The entire house reeks at times. I have to wash his blanket and sheets almost everyday. It has gotten so bad that his smell is in the towels, everyones clothes and even the dryer. I am about ready to take him to the doctor. The doctor said that if he gets to 7 and still pees then he will have to put him on meds, but I can't wait that long. I am too embarrased to ask anyone to come over to visit, or if someone does come over, I am mortified, cause I know that they can smell it. The house really stinks. I have plug ins everywhere and cans of air freshener piling up. Lysol is losing it's effectiveness. My son is actually taking pride in the fact that he is peeing the bed, he just seems amused in the morning that he did it again, and will annouce it to everyone that he went. He is fine through the day. I was looking at the diapers yesterday and I think that I found some big enough for him, he is just going to have to wear them until he is done. I told him that he can have a new mattress if he can go 1 full year without peeing. I don't want to ruin a perfectly good mattress and money.

[digilight]

I went to my BIL and SIL's house yesterday to feed their dog and cat. You walk in the door and holy shit it stinks. The floors are covered in trash, dirty dishes, clothes, etc, etc. The dinning room has about 2-3 weeks worth of dog shit lying around (yes dog shit). The counters are covered in trash and dirty dishes so they have started piling dirty dishes on the floor also. I had to find a phone to try and figure out where in the hell the dog food was so I stuck my head in their room and the smell of dog piss (god I hope it was just DOG piss) almost made me pass out. Their front porch is covered in empty cat food cans (maybe 30-40 of em).

Now CRH. My son has become fully potty trained within the last 4-6 months or so. He still has the occasional accident (very very rare though). We really limit how much he has to drink starting from about the time he gets home (maybe about 6 pm). I don't force him not to drink, I just don't give him a full cup each time. maybe a 3rd of the way full each time so he isn't forcing himself to drink a full cup and then ask for more. I found at times though, I had to wash the stuff in hot, and sometimes send it thru a second time. As for the dryer smell, have you tried running thru a clean towel (that doesn't smell) with a few dryer sheets and a clean tennis ball (the ball with keep bashing the hell out of the dryer sheets and make them work a little better) on hot for a while. Also wiping it down inside and out, all surfaces with maybe a baking soda or a vinager/lemon juice mixture and letting it air out for a few hours first. Make sure to clean the lint trap real good, and clean the lint hose and exterier lint screen (get rid of all the old lint that could be holding the smell in, once it is in there and dries each time you run the drier it get covered in hot wet air and reactivates the smell. On the washer, run a empty load of just hot water and bleach, or hot water, washing soda, and lemon juice, let it run its course and then run a second load of just hot water to rinse it real good. (both of these loads with no clothes in them)

[blas]

Oh Crazyredhead, I second you on the toilet flushing strike.

For some stupid reason, my entire family other than myself (at my parent's house, that is) have this "if it's yellow let it mellow" policy, which I can't figure out why, it's not like it's going to cost extra to flush the toilet every time you pee, but anyway, I was the "pee pee police", up until the time I moved out. The second anyone in my family left the bathroom and I didn't hear a flush, I'd run in and flush it. If I was in the middle of something or didn't feel like playing potty police, I'd yell "FLUSH IT RIGHT NOW!"....and I'd usually get a "Blas, shut up!" or "Blas, mind your own business!". No, I won't mind my own business. Urine stinks, especially if you leave it just sitting there in the toilet. You're not going to save a lot of money by refusing to flush the toilet, and we were on city water, not a septic tank...although I know people who have septic tanks who flush after everyone uses the potty.

My roomate has done that a few times before....he's came home after work while I was asleep, took a tinkle, and left it mellowing in the potty (with the seat still up, of course! jerk!). Of course he wasn't there when I woke up so I couldn't tear him a new one, but I did drop the hint the next time we spoke that flushing the toilet doesn't hurt.

I moved in with a guy to avoid all the woman drama that comes with living with other women....and I ended living with a guy that has the temper of an emotionally unstable girl and the cleaning habbits of a spoiled rotten only child.

[Binky]

The cats recently peed in the 2nd bedroom we use as the laundry room/cumputer room/junk room. We have wall to wall carpeting. After a couple of days of asking him (b/c he was off from work) to do the laundry the peed on and please scrub the rug where they went I finally blew up and did it myself. It still smells bad. I've tried Urine Gone, Oxyclean, Arm & Hammer rooom/carpet eliminator...to no avail. We're not suppossed to have pets and now we may have to pay to replace the whole carpet. I don't know why they peed - they've never done it before.


hehe I have a kitty as well and we're not spose to have pets either...but what I did to prevent kitty from deciding that random places are great kitty litter trays was to train her to go pee pee in the toilet using the 'LitterQuitter' ...and it's worked! now the only place she will go the toilet is the bathroom, sure she will have her accidents, but its only ever in the bathroom, and that’s easy to clean up. Maybe you should try that to prevent your kitty from ever going to the potty on the carpet?? Not only that, but it's easier to hide all trace of a pet when you don't need to use litter trays because the oder of the tray doesn't linger. Sorry this doesn't really get rid of the smell, but it might prevent it happening again :D

as for the actually topic...yeap I'm a slob...if my BF didn't do the dishes I wouldn't have any clean plates...I jsut have no motivation...I clean the apartment maybe ....once every few weeks? If that...and the only reason I cleaned the fish tank was because it was so green you couldn't tell there were fish in there anymore, the only evidence of life in there was the occasional flash of gold LOL I'm terrible...clothes pilled up in the dirty clothes basket, clean close pilled up in another, undies randomly strewn over the floor in the bathroom, bedroom and even the lounge room :rolleyes: , cat hair EVERYWHERE! it's a wonder people even want to come over...however I've started to get a tad embarrassed about having people over ever since some random smell started to surface every second day...the whole place was stunk out...:( so embarrassing when you have someone come over for the FIRST time and all they can smell is random funkiness...ahh well I'll learn, and yes I HAVE cleaned since then, but the smell still randonly comes out...will find it one day

[Der Cute]

CRH, go on strike.

Move out for a week or two, stay with friends, get the hell out of the house. They need to learn how to clean. And the consequences.

And for your kids: they dont clean? Fine. No phone, no out, no new clothes, nope. Tough shit, you made your bed, lie in it. Serious. Go AnalNazi on them.

as for Mr. 5Pee, it sounds like he's asking for attention, in a converted way. Do you spend more time hollering @ the others about the smell/mess than you spend with him? Literally?
What about trying a 3 day, no pee goal...and if he makes it, he gets to go out with you for a half day.
Move it up to 7 days no pee - whole day w/ Mom.

One month no pee - party! Serious. Reinforce good behavior, and do not reinforce the negatives.

Good luck.
Cutenoob

[RecoveringKinkoid]

My husband had a habit if never flushing if he only peed. I don't want to see that. Flush. I would walk in there and yell, "Hey, you saving this bowl of stale piss for anything?"

It kind of embarassed him, I think. He tends to flush now.

We had a couple invite us over once for drinks and as God is my witness they had dried dog shit on the floor. No kidding, and it was not a fluke. There were several piles of dogshit in various stages of freshness scattered throughout their house.

Okay, first off, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU THAT YOU ARE OKAY WITH THAT?

Secondly, why on earth would you not clean up if you know you are having guests????:eek:

[kerrisan]

Kinkoid, that's exactly what I'm wondering. How can people not be embarrassed by that?!

When I met the friend that I stayed with, she had a roomie. After that she's lived alone (in 3 separate apartments). Now I know why . . . but I'm not sure if it was her decision or her roommate's decision. :no:

[Crazyredhead]

What pisses me off more than a messy, dirty house, is when I tell the kids to sweep the floor, put away the dishes and reload, wipe the table off and wipe the counters off and what do I find when I get home??...... nothing. They didn't do a damn thing but argue amongst each other about who is going to do what.
http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d189/dimebar_probably/Smileys/th_chainsaw.gif

My oldest daughter is less than a month away from being 16 and the ohter one is 13. They are old enough to babysit the younger ones for a few hours. I went to the gym for 3 hours and came home and the house is worse than when I left. Not a thing was done. My 13 yo tried to tell me that she swept. Well she must not have turned on the vacuum cause there was still dirt there that was there when I left.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y261/GawkyEndymion000/arracher-cheveux.gif

Well, needless to say, I went apeshit. You could have heard me at the other end of the trailer park, which is quite big. I am sorry to say that I swore some. It was about 8:30pm and I sent all of them to bed, and took away there TV, PS3, gameboy and computer privlages. I told them they better have some homework to do, cause they are going to end up growing roots in there rooms.

[stormtreader]

What pisses me off more than a messy, dirty house, is when I tell the kids to sweep the floor, put away the dishes and reload, wipe the table off and wipe the counters off and what do I find when I get home??...... nothing. They didn't do a damn thing but argue amongst each other about who is going to do what.

The trick here is not to say "I want this doing" but to say "kid 1, you do a, b, c. kid 2, you do d,e,f. Youve got 1 minute in front of me to swap jobs if you both agree to a swap, after that you do the jobs youre assigned."

Its the old problem of whats everybodys is nobodys.

It sucks to have to do it with 13 and 16 yr olds, but you might at least find the stuff done when you get home that way, and if its not, you know who was supposed to do it.

[Banrion]

My brother and I worked out early on how to divide the chores. I did anything inside the house ie, dishes, vacuuming & he did everything outside the house ie, raking leaves, shoveling snow, taking out the trash. Worked great for us. While my chores were more frequent, his were by far more difficult, and took longer all at once.

ETA: My brother is a sweetheart too, if had nothing outside to do, and I had alot, he wouldn't mind putting away clean dishes from the dishwasher, or vacuuming the living room once in a while.

[blas]

Crazyredhead.....the small punishments offered by others for your kids not doing their chores are very rational and reasonable, and they should scare your children into doing them..

But if that still doesn't work....there's always what my mother did. She ruled the house with an iron fist (dad had no say in anything when it came to discipline and punishment). Now, these punishments are very severe and harsh, and very unnecessary for these small offenses, but it sure as hell scared me and baby brother into never not doing our chores again, otherwise we'd be prisoners in the house forever.

One time, because baby brother didn't load the dishwasher for 2 days, he was grounded for almost a month. I'm not joking......and after that month of not being able to go anywhere except school and work, he's never forgotten to load the dishwasher since.

When I neglected to vaccuum for a week straight, I was grounded for over a month. Not just "no going out Friday night" or "No going out with friends." I was grounded and stuck at home......and I was 18 years old.

Extreme, yes. Unneccessary, yes. But it's a last resort if you can't find any other way. You are not a slave to the house and others should pitch in and do their part!

As for your man......tell him no nookie until he does his part. He should hop right to it.

[Rapscallion]

As for your man......tell him no nookie until he does his part. He should hop right to it.

Ah, the old Lysistrata method...

Damned fine play, that.

Rapscallion

[AFpheonix]

Because of this thread, my hubby got a thank you and a smooch for flushing regularly and being all-around awesome.



He looked at me kind of funny.

[Tanasi]

With mine if it's not rating a butt-busting I stand them up in the corner. They don't sit, they don't lean, they don't talk, no one talks to them, they must face the corner and stand there. I've had my oldest daughter beg for a spanking just to get out of the corner. Nope just stand there. I've come home from work before and found all five kids with their noses in different corners. My parents were always giving out punishment work that they knew we hated. Move that pile of rock out behind the barn, ok move it back. It was a huge pile of rock all together it was several tons.
However when it comes to something harsher I'm not shy about making them high-step in a circle giving them a dose of hickory-t. My mom will make them take a spoonful of castor-oil. :puke:

[Der Cute]

CRH:

My mom was/is a person who wants a clean house 99.9999% of the time.
My dad was/is a person who does his own thing (aka slob compared to mom)

Me, and my sister...well, frankly we didnt give a shit about cleaning.
But we had to do it, because Mom would punish us if we didnt.

One thing I will say is that Mom and Dad WERE NOT A TEAM ON THIS ISSUE.
Mom yelled at Dad. Mom yelled at us kids. Dad would then yell back at everyone else.
See the problem?

Mom would come home after work, and wanting a nice clean house but getting teenager-debris (shoes, coats etc) and Dad-debris (same) she'd literally throw hissyfits.

Now looking back I think Mom had a bad day at work, and took the anger out on us with the "It's not clean for me" problem.

Same with Dad. He'd come home, and if he had a bad day at work, well, you had better boogie outta the house. You'd get yelled at for not having the shoes straight.

My point here is threefold:
Mom and Dad were not teams on this
they used us kids as anger releases for daily life
they werent very specific on cleaning.

Finally at the age of 13, I had to do my laundry. Mom sat down at a typewriter (old) and typed out a FAQ list for laundry. And hung it at the washer/dryer.

If I ran out of clothing, well, I was responsible for getting it cleaned up. And all the possible "stallings" were answered on the FAQ sheet.

One other thing I hated is that....well, I'm different from my parents. They're not as analytical /left brained as I am. So Mom saying "I want you to clean your room" doesnt/didnt work for me.
I needed specifics. What's the definition of room clean? To me, it was a path to the bed & cleans in the dresser...dirties on floor.

Doing dishes? Well, to me that sounds like just washing /rinsing dishes & putting them in dw. Done. NOOOOOOOOO....
Well, then call it cleaning kitchen if you want to add on wiping stove, table & countertops!!!

Let the kids have their own room and be themselves in that room. It stinks? Fine. Shut door. Whine about dirties? Tough noogies, go wash yourself. You dont have any undies? Well, better do extra chores & get the $ to go buy new ones or do the laundry. Sounds like you'll have to time it better next week.

Write out a list of chores for the house to be done.
Monday : Vac
Tues: Dust
Wed: Windows
Thurs: Mops
Fri: Laundry or slack off....
Weekend: do what you want

But make sure the people responsible for those chores understand there's a price to pay. Dont vacuum? Ok, you dont get dessert. Vacuum too sloppy? Well you get to do it over then.

And remember: the first few months of you being CALM and collected about this are going to be harder. Because things may not be to your standards.

Oh, and by the way. If you come home and are upset/pissed about the dirtyness and cluttery? Walk out. Stop. You assigned those chores to someone. Dont do it yourself just cuz you know how to do it. Let them fall on their face.
And STOP YELLING. Seriously. I knew how to tune out my parents by the time I was 4.

Cutenoob

[ZumZum]

The only really bad problem is with my 5 year old son. He is still peeing the bed at night.

CRH, we had the same problem with our son. We took him to the doctor. We had to keep a diary of everything he ate for a week. We had to cut out chocolate, caffeine, and citrus after 7pm.

We did wake him up routinely in the middle of the night (usually around midnight). He also slept in training pants.

It took two years, I know, that's a long time. He was 10 when it finally worked. He is now going to be 14 and is fine.

I know you don't like this scenario, hopefully your doctor can help. Medication was our last resort, but we didn't need it.

I am not against medication, believe me. I was ready to do it, but DH and DS decided to keep trying the plan we had going.
I wish you the best of luck. Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

[protege]

And STOP YELLING. Seriously. I knew how to tune out my parents by the time I was 4.

My mother was like that growing up. She was *constantly* screaming about something, usually because "nobody" wanted to help her around the house.

That was a load of crap. We *tried* to help her out, but got tired of the bitching. She wouldn't tell us how to do things, yet would scream when the task was done "wrong." After several months of this, we said "you know, if you don't like it...either tell us, or clean your own damn house."

After 30 years of that, I moved out.

[digilight]

Cute and Protege have good points. Making sure that the kids know what is expected, not just a general clean up the living room. But a checklist, vacume, dust, etc etc. Don't overload, but assign specific tasks for specific days, ie, vacum mondays, wednesdays, and saturdays, dust on tuesdays, etc, etc.

Teach them how to be self sufficiant, I was never really taught how to do laundry, my mom always did it for me. Now I do all our laundry at home (it would never get done if I waited for the wife to do it). But it took some learning, seperate colors/whites hots/colds/warms what to put with what. Nope you can't cram everything in one load. Ahhh so thats why all the whites look dingy and crappy.

And as parents work as a team, never let them see a crack, they will use it to their advantage. Just like on supernanny and nanny 911 a rewards/punishment system work great (it can even work on your husband *hint*hint*) whether its a favorite meal, a family night out, a bonus on allowance, or getting to smash the old broken tv in the backyard with a sledge hammer. Whatever works to motivate.

Now for my BIL/SILs house, there is no help, I think we just need to burn their trailer down and start from scratch. Don't think I'm bashing mobile homs, cause I'm trailer trash too, Double wide baby.