Were your parents messie?

[klpmommy]

And if so, are you? My parents were *very* messie, honestly far worse than I am, but I never learned how to do basic cleaning (my mom vacuumed once a year typically, she cooked only 2 or 3 times a year so there was very little learning to clean the kitchen, etc). So I really struggle to do the basics now. I am just wondering if other messies were raised like this. My great grandmother was a normal housekeeper (I used to think cleanie, but now I realize she was normal) but my grandparents were messies.

I am still processing the Messie No More book......

[monkeylicious]

i'm just starting the OCD chapter.

my parents were not messie (well maybe my dad was - but it was contained to his office. his desk is usually a mess :think ) my mom was what i would say a good housekeeper. she didn't have a schedule but things were done probably weekly (dusting, vacuuming, ...) dishes were done at least daily, a meal was cleaned up immediately afterwards... i was raised better than i do for sure. :blush which is why i'm always embarrassed when my parents visit :/

[erinee]

I would say they were more on the normal side. I sort of thought they were messie, compared to my grandmother and my MIL, but I think those two were definitely cleanies and my mom was more normal. She got the basics of housekeeping accomplished, but it was just pretty chaotic with 5 kids and a multitude of pets around all the time. I don't know how she did it, but she did a much better job than I do.

[bananacake]

No, my parents were not messies. I'm borderline normal/messie.

[Drew]

My mom was definitely a messy (she struggled with depression and substance abuse) and my step-dad figured he worked all day so he shouldn't have to clean anything. It was SO embarrassing for me when my friends wanted to come inside. :O I keep my house pretty clean.

[Marsha]

No. My dad is very organized, though a bit cluttery, he is like my dd in that he needs to "see" everything. And my mom had 11 kids, canned ALL of our food, and sewed ALL of our clothes and so on and I think she did a great job with all that she had going on. I learned from a young age the basics of housecleaning, which could be why it seems second nature to me.

My mom was raised by a depressed , adulterous mom and an alcholic free spirit dad and knew NO basic housekeeping skills at ALL when she got married. We were in a culture where your worth as a woman depended on yuor housekeeping skills so she had to learn quickly I guess. I think she did pretty well, considering.

[Jenny]

Yep, they definitely were. Still are. I can be, but not anywhere close to the same degree. I get anxious when I go in their house. :shifty

[dukeofhazzard]

OH YES! Both of them were/are messie!! My mom is just like me, she'd much rather be doing an art project or playing outside that doing housework :giggle. My dad, well, he's hopeless ;).

There's a messie BOOK?? I have to have it.

[MarynMunchkins]

Nope. I actually less OCD about cleaning than my mom. ;)

[brandi]

Oh for sure my mom was a messie! I was really embarassed growing up to have anyone in the house. Inever had birthday parties at my house and I never invited friends over.

I am the complete opposite. I am almost OCD about cleaning sometimes. I want everyone to feel comfortable and welcomed in my house, and not that guests don't feel that way in a messy house, it's just that I am not comfortable in a messy house, so I just assume everybody is like that. :O

Oh and BTW, DH is a complete messy, although b/c I don't let it get out of hand he's not too bad :shifty

[FaithfilledGranolaChick]

no, my mom cleaned non-stop and was obsessive about it... I am not messie, but not near as neat as my mom was.

I am more like my grandmother, we'd rather be doing a craft, project, cooking, playing etc... than cleaning :giggle

[Calliope]

Oh my goodness, YES! My father is one of those people who is actually at risk for being found buried alive in his own junk. I'm serious. The man can't throw anything out and gets super grumpy if you even try to make neat piles out his stuff because then he 'can't find anything'. :shifty

[MtnMama]

Both are messies. Calling library now for that book! :P~

[ThreeKids]

My mother always and still has no concept of organizing and is a pack rat. Having said that, she was as clean as she possibly could be under those circumstances.

As a kid, I never understood where anything was supposed to go because there wasn't much in the way of a place for anything. I think I would struggle with that concept whether I grew up like that or not. I cannot manage my belongings.

My mother is much neater now that she doesn't have a razor sharp memory. When I was a kid, she could remember where everything was even though things were randomly kept wherever. Now, she has to have a station for things or it's too dysfunctional. She also keeps her pack rat collection in the MIL apartment since there aren't any adult kids living there anymore. She's still always looking for stuff, though. She didn't have to look for things so much when she had a razor sharp memory.

When we start to feel guilty for keeping her busy too long and making her tired, we just remember that, if we dropped her off at home, she would spend the rest of the day looking for stuff so she'd be tiring herself out anyway.

[Sarai]

No- my mom is a normal/ slightly bordering on obsessive housekeeper (everything is clean, tidy, etc. She's not down on her hands & knees scrubbing the floor every other day, but she cannot stand it if something isn't in it's place, even if it's still being used. :hunh). She's a bit of a pack rat, but is getting better about that.

My dad is much more on the normal side- a little clutter, but everything is clean and mostly neat.

I can easily slip into "messy" because I get tired and easily overwhelmed, but as long as I keep up on things I'm fine. My mess tends more to clutter and not dirt, if that makes sense. I can't stand a dirty bathroom or floors w/crumbs all over them, but I can ignore the pile of clothes on my bedroom floor or the 500 pieces of paper on the kitchen table. :shifty For this reason, I try really hard to put things away as soon as I'm done with them and not "leave it for later". I've also found a lot of freedom in the "if it's not useful/beautiful/bringing me joy, then out it goes" philosophy. :yes

[Littledisciples]

No my Mom was very obsessive about her house. Nothing was a mess ever and if it was you cleaned it up right away. We where not even allowed to play in the house because yeah she did not want a mess. I think because we where forced to clean at so young ages and really clean that has lead to my complete laziness. :O

[beatlemommy]

No, both quite clean and organized. I am as well :shrug

[LadybugSam]

very very messy. I tend to do a little better, but i still struggle

[JJsMom]

My first thought was "yes" but now that I've really thought about it, no. My Dad didn't do *any* cleaning, but my mom really kept up on the house. There were a few trouble areas but all in all, it was clean. The reason I thought yes is because my mom has always had so many knick knacks on every flat surface she had. That feels messy to me, even though it really isn't. They also both smoked so looking back, it feels like the house had a film of yuck, yk?
I should tell my mom that she did a good job keeping the house clean. :heart

[HomeWithMyBabies]

My mom is a perfectionist who gave up.

My dad is a messy person, I think, in that he really doesn't seem to mind clutter, disorganization or dirt at home unless it's really awful.

[klpmommy]

My dad is a messy person, I think, in that he really doesn't seem to mind clutter, disorganization or dirt at home unless it's really awful.


that is my dad as well, but his current wife is an OCD cleanie so he isn't "allowed" to have piles of clutter or dirt all around. :)

[illinoismommy]

Yes. My mom was SO messy I absolutely cannot ever live that way. Ever.

[tempus vernum]

My mom and dad were normal people. I didn't realize it until I got to know a few messies. :blush My parents did very nicely and had a few trouble areas

I seem to be following their footsteps. I go through periods of obsessiveness where my house is really clean and organized but overall, I am normal and have some trouble areas.

[doubleblessings]

My mom was a messie. She was capable of cleaning and did at times get things very clean. She (like me) has some perfectionism that contributes. I remember her scrubbing the kitchen floor on hands and knees and using a scrapper to get up old wax and it really looking good when she finished, but daily/weekly mopping nope. She tends to hyper focus on something leaving the rest to fall apart.

She is much worse now since she is living alone. She is also a HUGE packrat. I am naturally very much like her.

[ThreeKids]

...My mess tends more to clutter and not dirt, if that makes sense....


That makes complete sense. Even though there are more toys that I can deal with right now, other kinds of clutter seem to not be as big of a problem as they were before I had kids. You can't leave whatever you brought in from the car in the entranceway for a week when the kids are going to tear it up/drag it around the house/have access to unsafe things/*get crumbs behind it*. Just the need to clean under things that wouldn't have got dirty for months if I didn't have kids stringing crumbs all over the house I think has made a big difference in the clutter.

[Lantern Light Mama]

Yes, my parents are messies. Now I have to work extra hard to stay motivated to keep the house clean. :shifty Nobody ever taught me there was joy in homekeeping so I have to learn it myself.

[SansSouci]

I haven't figured it out yet. I do know that my mom did a good job of keeping a clean house. And I know that she has a lot of clutter. So that's probably where I get my schizofrenic cleaning personality: I have lots of clutter, but I do strive to have a clean house.

One of the keys, I think, is that my mom cleaned the house when my brother and I were in school. So, we never saw the house being cleaned. When I got to college, I learned that toilets actually need to be cleaned - I had no clue!

So... with me, I'm constantly working on the clutter. FlyLady helped me a lot when I just had dd, but now I'm too overwhelmed to focus myself! Ack! And I try to at least let the kids see me clean things (ie: vacuum, dust, clean floors, clean bathrooms) so they have an idea of how things stay clean!

[AdrienneQW]

I grew up in filth. Big time call-CPS-and-take-the-kids filth. :shiver

My own house teeters between clean-but-cluttered on a good day and messy on a bad day. The "health hazards" are always taken care of - dishes get washed (if not every meal, then at least every day), toilets and sinks get cleaned, and I do an excellent job of keeping up with the laundry. But I don't dust/sweep/mop as often as I should, and there's always lots of clutter around. :bag

[chelsea]

My mom is totally organized, totally Martha-Stewart-esque, everything in it's place, leaning towards minimalist.
Enter my Dad. :giggle He is the ultimate Clutter King. He not only keeps what he has, but multiplies it (records a program on TV and makes several copies of it just in case he loses one...or one gets wrecked...or several relatives decide they might like a copy at some point down the road.) He has many interests, and keeps newspaper articles of them all, etc. He has a large pile of magazines, newspapers, etc beside his bed that drives my mom nutty! Yet somehow, if my mom takes ONE of his items and throws it away...he has this radar that detects that something is missing...and he will go looking for it and is NOT happy while doing so. :shifty
The main thing I ever remember my parents fighting about is that my mom wanted my Dad to declutter, and he didn't ever, so she would do it for him without his consent or knowledge :shifty and he would see things in the garbage and get mad and go on a "finding spree" to look through the garbages and get his stuff out, and look through the house to see if certain things were still there. Then he would ask "Where is my _____" and she would say "I don't know. I think I put it away somewhere" :doh and things would escalate. I was always in a cross between :nails and :giggle (nervously) the whole time...though mainly :nails . When it gets too messy in our house, my mom will get really sullen and start throwing away things. She *needs* for it to be clean. She can deal with a bit, but it gets to a point where the line has been crossed and she can't handle the mess (which is almost always someone else's because she doesn't seem to leave many messes around.)
I tend to be more like my Dad. I keep EVERYTHING, and get angry and feel violated when someone has thrown away my stuff. I wish I was more like my mom in being capable of keeping tidy. I keep things clean (hygenic) but I am majorly untidy. I love for it to be clean, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it.

[TraceMama]

My Mom was probably normal with a tendency toward perfectionist-induced messiness, if that makes sense! ;) She did a great job keeping up the house without being too OCD about it. Before any major function, though, I remember her cleaning for days ---- washing walls, floors, cabinets, etc. :yes

She came by that perfectionism naturally. You could've eaten off my grandmother's floor and her walls were washed once a month; she even used to iron sheets and her washrags! :hunh

So, Mom's and Grandma's perfectionism has been handed down and it exhibits itself in unfinished projects and some clutter-messiness around my house. :doh Dirt, though, is something I can't do very well. :shrug

Unfortunately, Mom never taught me the routines to keeping up the house and I find myself easily overwhelmed. Give me a pary to prepare for, though, and I can work my fingers to the bone to make it *perfect*. :giggle ;)

ETA: My Dad can't find his keys on a daily basis. :giggle So, although he's no fan of clutter, he doesn't know how to put it away or keep things in a "zoned" place. :shrug He'll also clean up when it gets bad, so I guess that makes him borderline normal. No one was truly OCD though. :)

[mellifera]

My mom was obsessively clean. I'm a bit messier. :bag I try to keep the squalor to a managable level--and my dh never complains, but I always feel a little inadequate when my parents come over. I feel a little better about it now because most of the clutter is baby stuff.

[Atarah]

My maternal grandmother was an OCD cleanie. She did not teach my mom how to cook, and only minimally how to clean because my mother was 'supposed to grow up and become a religious sister' (Catholic). She made it though the first year, and the mother superior called her in and told her she would make a much better mother than religious sister. :phew for me and my siblings.

My mother is a perfectionist messie. She would often conjecture 'I wonder if there are people who have a clean house all the time, or does everyone make sure things are clean before they have guests over.' (she knew the answer to that because of her upbringing, but I suppose it gave her solace to think all her friends 'normally' had messie houses, too). We did have weekly cleaning chores (bathroom scrubbing, primarily). The house was (and is) extremely cluttered and thus difficult to keep 'clean'. Prior to having guests over she did (and still does) have a 'marathon cleaning' session - dust, sweep, mop, move all the furniture to the center of the room to clean behind, scrub bathroom, etc. She'd even tries to cut down on the clutter, even if it means dragging boxes of stuff to the garage.

I was not taught normal cleaning/housekeeping. But, THANK GOD, I moved in with a cleanie for a few years. I learned that 1)clutter free = easy to keep clean, 2)everything you own needs to have it's 'place', or else it gets left about and *is* clutter, 3)if things are kept *basically* clean, then deep cleaning is easy - stuff like wiping down the bathroom mirror every day, and keeping the kitchen swept so food dirt doesn't get tracked all over the house, and 4)things DON'T have to be cleaned perfectly to bother with cleaning them. So long as something is cleaner when you finish than when you start, your time has been well spent. Lesley is my cleaning 'hero', and taught me almost everything I know about being a normal/cleanie. :heart Cleaning doesn't have to be a dreaded chore. :)

[klpmommy]

your #4 is one I am struggling with irt my floor. I think it is the only perfectionist place I have, so it is constantly a mess. It looks best when hand washed (tile) but that takes so much time so most of the time I just ignore it. :bag It looks fine if I just mop & spot clean the worst areas with a sponge, but my perfectionist tendencies come out .......

I lived with a cleanie for a year & it didn't rub off on me. :O

[joyful mama]

yes, and I often wonder if thats why I am the way I am (sometimes I'm shocked at the trouble I have with housekeeping and figuring out how and when to clean something :scratch) my sister and I are very similar in our cleaning styles, and are both much neater/cleaner than the home in which we were raised. When we were old enough, we did tons of the picking up/cleaning, mostly b/c we just couldn't stand it, and my mom had to work so much, she wasn't home or was too tired to do it. I think I'm on the more 'average' part of the spectrum... its not often anymore I'm embarrassed if someone is coming over :think.

Dh was raised in a cluttered home, not necessarily 'dirty' (mine was both). He isn't bothered by clutter at all. It bothers me a lot more. I have concentrated clutter atm... a few areas here and there, closets, drawers... but its not everywhere and anywhere like it was growing up.

[Zipporah]

My mum was a minimalist-if she hadn't used it in 3 months she'd get rid of it (unless it was something obviously seasonal like umbrellas and winter coats)
My dad is a messie-he learnt to keep his stuff at work though. I used to get paid to tidy his desk and do his filing at the end of every school term because the school secretary was hopeless. In terms of cleaning, they are both normal.

My sister is freakishly tidy-she still spoonfeeds her kids (and they're 3 :jawdrop) and doesn't let them play in the dirt :hunh She isn't clean though-just pretends to be.

[ThreeKids]

...She isn't clean though-just pretends to be.


Is that a distinction worth a spin-off?

If you came into my house, you'd think my kitchen wasn't clean because of spots on the counter. But, if I made you a sandwich, I'd put the bread on a dishwasher-sanitized plate, use a dishwasher-sanitized knife -- there never would have been anything non-sanitized dipped into the peanut butter jar even if you had no way of witnessing that -- , I'd make the sandwich with clean hands, etc..

Compare that to a counter that looks shiny, but you don't know if someone just laid their ground beef on it before putting it away and then puts your sandwich bread on the counter, and they just touched a doorknob or faucet knob with their hands. Of course, any crumbs would be quickly wisked away and the counter re-shined.

You'd have to really know someone to know whether their processes were clean or dirty despite the way their house looks.

[nadezhda]

Oh, goodness. Mom is a total perfectionist messie and Dad is a perfectionist cleanie. :smile I definitely favor my Mom. :shifty

[Minerva]

My mom was incredibly messy.
I am just moderately so. ;)

She used to have crap piled on every flat surface. I HATE that!!!!

[CJ]

I would say that my mom was a neat-freak! My messiness is my rebellion. But there is a big part of me LOVES organization and I'm pretty good at it too. My thing is that I have this creative side to me that comes out and I am a slob! I flit from one thing to another leaving a trail of messes as I go when I am in creative mode. I often think it is my rebellion because my mom had a really hard time with my messy creativity and was always telling me to clean up my room, etc. She is pretty creative and crafty herself and would even have me doing the "annual Christmas craft" in mass quantities for teacher, grandparent, neighbor gifts etc. Of course she would set up a card table in the garage for me, presumably so I wouldn't make a mess in the house! Ironically, my DD6 is EXTREMELY creative and is always "doing projects". Her piles and messes DRIVE ME CRAZY! I think I need some inner healing! :/