I love Whoopee and I’m so pleased she is back to writing on her blog. Her blog is, hands down, one of the best family life blogs ever. (I may have accidentally had a sex dream about her husband recently though. How could I?! I felt terrible when I woke up because I reeeally like them as a couple). At the moment there is an interesting discussion happening over there, both in her post and in the numerous comments coming in, on how you feel about visiting or having a messy house. I am a ‘tidy house’ person whose soul and home have been completely crushed by the chaos of managing two young children and work outside the home.
I love going to visit people in untidy, lived-in houses. They never look the same twice, like a landscape in changing light. I feel flattered, welcome, and comfortable when invited into a lived-in house. I feel that way because things have not been hidden. I have been allowed to step into someone’s life just as it is, and I take that as a compliment. I like being surrounded by the hand-labelled, overflowing, boxes on their shelves; at the piles of books on the stairs, by things in progress. I like seeing life in a house. I feel at home and at ease and allowed to relax in a house that is for living in. Never tidy up for the Cornwells.
(Related: on the first warm day of Spring this year, I was walking through the neighbourhood, and I smelled marijuana. A man was walking towards me: young, black, wearing a cloud of skunk smoke. As we neared each other, he subtly hid the joint behind his back. I thought: what? It’s ME. HELLO? I used to smoke that. I used to grow it. I – Do I really look like someone you have to HIDE it from? Shit. Yes I do. And it really threw me, and made me feel dismayed.)
Anyway.
I don’t know why, sometimes, when you go to someone’s house, they say “Sorry about the mess,” when their possessions are lying around. Why are possessions called mess? Why are they apologised for? They are evidence of living, of doing, of being, creating. They are nothing to be ashamed of. Unless there’s like a dead body under it all and the laundry has been carefully arranged to hide it.
I’m reading this (as a new reader to your blog) as someone who has just toiled for a couple of hours in the house and it doesn’t look like anything has been achieved. I’m messy, our house is small, but I do like the tiny living area to look half okay. It barely ever does. Having said that, I feel every so slightly uncomfortable if I walk into a home that is pristine; it doesn’t feel right.
I hate having a messy, cluttered house but I fight a losing battle with the other members of my family not caring one iota about mess or clutter.
And I agree with Lisa B, when I walk into a pristine home I feel uncomfortable. And not good enough (because my own home is far from pristine).
I don’t think my house will ever be in danger of being pristine. I do try for tidy, occassionally neat and even sometimes clean though.
I admire pristine homes, especially ones which house children, and I know a few, where there is NOTHING accumulating on the kitchen bench/hallway table. I usually inquire about how this is achieved as it is simply beyond me. Generally the answer is a combination of ruthless efficiency (deal with that thing immediately or throw it out) and well planned systems (a place for everything and everything in its place). But how do you have a place for the screw top from the bike tyre valve, and the extra picture hook, and the piece of parquetry that has lifted and which one day you will glue down and the batteries which are not yet dead and the coins from foreign countries that you don’t feel right chucking out? I also admire people who have clearly not tidied even the slightest bit and are happy for their unwashed breakfast dishes to remain on the table as you share your lunch together. Increasingly I have stopped apologising for the state of my house, as I am generally comfortable with how it is and it seems a kind of dishonesty to apologise, as if I am pretending that I normally live much more tidily. If a very tidy visitor feels smug then I’ve done my good turn for the day, making them feel good.
Would smoke floating out from under the door of the back room and dog fur all over the place turn a lived in home into something to hide? Would you be judged for having kids in a lovely messy home like that?
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. I grew up in a very, very tidy house, with a stay at home mother who I now see needed more out of life and was depressed for a long time. I have always been a hoarder, and am trying to get better about this now, but fundamentally I think that you can have a clean uncluttered house or an awesome life. I still feel guilty my house isn’t cleaner, even though I work full time (like my dad did). I always tell friends with messy houses that homes are not showrooms. My concessions to tidiness are trying to follow FlyLady’s housework routines (I like her attitude of minimizing time spent cleaning), because I like a lack of clutter more these days. But I still kind of look around my house with satisfaction that if it looks a bit interesting, I’ve got my priorities straight.
Oh, I’m so with you on the ‘crushed tidy person’ front. I have begrudgingly surrendered to chaos but it feels unnatural. I was at a friend’s new apartment recently and I was taken aback by the intensity of my feelings while sitting in her soothing silent freaky-neat order – a perfect mix of envy and longing.
I generally have no problems having parent friends over in chaos, we’re all in this together, but my clean-gene relations are another story. My parents very unexpectedly dropped by recently at the tail end of a significant personal slump. The physical manifestation of this slump was borderline squalor in my house and I was so ashamed that I couldn’t let them in. My mum said all the right things about not worrying etc but I didn’t believe her for half a second. I said I had been sick, got the kids to say hi out the front and shooed my folks away (they only live an hour and a half from my place). So much of the time I manage to talk myself out of caring what other people think but it doesn’t always work.
We are also in the throes of renovations; have been for 4 years, now (that picture on whoopee’s blog of the angle grinder and cookies looks oh-so-much like home), and am finally starting to see that there might be light (and less plaster dust) at the end of the tunnel, but I’m not sure I believe it will happen before I croak.
Why bother vacuuming/cleaning/dusting when tomorrow He-Who is going to sand a different wall or cut wood/gyproc/plywood in another corner of the house, covering it in dust and sawdust all over again? Why bother putting things back in place when next weekend, they’re all going to be jumbled into the middle of the room in a teetering mass all over again?
We packed up the dishes, except for 4 plates and bowls, so we kind of live out of the sink. The cupboard where I keep the spices above the stove has been removed and put back (and accordingly, the spices have been removed and put back any old way) more times than I can count. I can’t find anything anymore. I spent 2 months waiting to mail insurance papers because I couldn’t find my envelopes.
You can’t take your shoes off for the plaster dust/dog hair/stray nails, and we keep an ironing board on each couch so the dogs don’t make themselves at home while we’re at work.
But the only people who come to visit are family who either don’t care or do, but we don’t care what they think about it. They don’t have to come over.
Besides, it’s great, this renovation-as-excuse. No one needs to know that it might look just as bad if there weren’t renovations happening….
psst, thanks for letting me know that whoopee’s back. I love her blog.
I like having a tidy house and try to minimise clutter, although I’m not always successful. Our study desk is a balagan! However, I don’t care how other people’s houses look – they have no effect on my mental state, unlike my own house! I ask people, especially those with kids, to stop apologising “for the mess”. My partner is quite tidy himself but isn’t helping the kids to tidy in his time with them, which aggravates me somewhat.
I find I need a certain level of tidiness so that I can actually use the rooms in my home properly. I care most about the kitchen because I cook a lot and cooking in clutter stresses me out and makes the whole thing more difficult.
I aim for a home with “a place for everything and everything in its place” – it’s the only way any kind of consistent tidiness (however partial) will ever work, but like other commenters, I’m a hoarder, from a family of hoarders, so finding a place for everything is a long way off being achieved!
My parents constantly criticise each other for being messy but they’re as bad as each other. I find that really wearing. I hope my partner and I can be more constructive.
I think a lot of people have got more relaxed about messy homes with more wives and mothers working. I think most of us accept that there are only so many hours in the day, so much energy and effort and something has to give. A bit of mess doesn’t have moral consequences so what’s the big deal? The exception is probably in the “Having it all” media invention, where a well-kept house is essential, but I think we’re getting wise to this myth.