I just had a total FIT about feeling like I spend so much time cleaning up (1) messes I didn’t make, which (2) I would get blamed for. That is, if someone came to my house and saw all the CRAP all over the floor, they’d be like “*raised eyebrows* Not much of a HOUSEKEEPER, is she?” And yet—did I make those messes? NO I DID NOT. So which makes more sense: blaming ME for not cleaning up the messes? or blaming THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THE MESSES? It is intolerably unfair.
I promise you if I came by and your house was trashed I would totally blame those dirty rotten kids of yours.
:)
Unfair indeed.
Yeah, I totally get that feeling every time I walk into my daughter’s bedroom. Followed by the thought that I’m a horrible parent for not having taught her to clean up after herself. But seriously…how much time do I want to spend making her tidy up? Because that sure isn’t going to be any fun…
Unless the mess is cigarette butts and empty vodka bottles, I would totally assume it was a mess made by children and not by the lady of the house.
-Sandy
This is why we should all lock our doors and never let anyone in. Amen.
Ah yes. Every time I look at our sink filled with dirty dishes (we have no dishwasher) I think, I know *I* didn’t eat all that food! How come I have to wash all those dishes?! And the answer is that I have to wash them because my husband doesn’t care if they’re dirty.
I have battled the same problem my whole life. My daughter’s have not inherited my clutter gene…so they come over and organize me once in a while…but I’ve found something new on a blog..wondered if you’ve heard of it..maybe I got it from your blog? Can’t remember, but in case you’re interested…go to flylady.com
She is a “personal trainer” for organizing your home a little bit at a time..check it out, you might be interested. It has actually gotten me excited about getting in control of my clutter habits. Good luck!
Sandy, I would not need to be leaving empty liquor bottles around were it not for the children, so those are their fault, too.
Oh..I got so involved I forgot the focus of my message…it has a kids part that helps kids get involved in taking care of their own stuff…great idea…they get a special email for them!!
OMG YES! It is unfair.
AMEN. I felt the same way about the wedding gift thank you notes that my husband has never mailed. A friend of mine, after reading the silly argument post and comments said to me, “So you and Swistle are married to the same guy, eh?”
I hate feeling judged for my house cleaning (or lack thereof). Even when it’s by ME.
The last time a good friend came over and our house was a DISASTER, she looked at me and said gently “Thank you for not cleaning up for me.”
“Anytime,” I said.
If my house ever catches on fire, I plan to meet the firefighters at the front door and say “Give me that hose and wait here, please,” so they won’t see any further into the house.
Ooh, I feel ya, sister.
I had the exact same fit this weekend, and every time my mother in law is coming to town. I promise those black men’s socks on the living room floor are not mine, and I usually manage to eat peanut butter toast without 3/4ths of it ending up on the floor.
ARGH YESSSS.
our house is often not up to Company Standards, even if it’s not a complete disaster (it does help, not having kids & all) but you know, not PRESENTABLE. and then i’ll get a txt from the bf saying “I’m meeting X & Y for drinks after work, but they get out of work earlier than i do, so i just gave them my key and they’re at our place now.”
and then my brain melts.
Wait, you live in my house!?!? Because I swear I just had this conversation with my teenager about picking his crap up.
i practice in my head the excuse I would give paramedics if they ever had to come haul me out of here…like:
robbers were just here and trashed the place
there was a tornado
i was on that show Hoarders.
I’m thinking you should spin Sandy’s comment “Unless the mess is cigarette butts and empty vodka bottles” and just go ahead make the mess cigarette butts and empty vodka bottles to distract from the children’s paraphernalia. Why do they get to be the only ones owning the mess anyways? :)
and I said all that to say this: i never go to anyone’s house and raise my eyebrows about their housekeeping LOL.
Thank you for posting this, and for the commenters saying their houses are a disaster too. I feel like no matter how often I sweep and pick up our place is ALWAYS a mess. And my husband not putting his mail away is the least of it, yet it is driving me the most crazy today. there is paper EVERYWHERE, and it’s all junk mail of his that I don’t throw out in case it is something he needs, but it just piles up! And then, when I commented, he says “I don’t want to start a fight, but I bet there is as much of it that is yours as there is of mine.” UM. No. There is not. Because I don’t CARE if my stuff gets shredded. I just toss it in the trash right away. GAH!
ps. My word verification is “abrat.” Is it referring to me or to my husband?
Ugh the cleaning and tidying issue drives me insane! We have a house cleaner every two weeks because my level of anger about always being the only one to ever clean anything was becoming epic. Even with that, I’m afraid if I die, my house could be come an episode of Hoarders because no one but me EVER puts anything away. I love my family, but the resentment factor on that issue is high and sometimes I want to run away and live alone (while visiting them) for awhile just so I can live in someplace that is not in a total state every minute of the day!
I had to laugh at the firefighter comment above because when I had to call 911 for my dh last year, I was half scared to death for my dh’s health and half scared they’d say something about the condition of my house. Even with all eight (yes, eight) paramedics and firefighters in my house, they did not say one word about what it looked like. Bless them.
I say this all the time! Lately, I’ve made a rule that there will be no Wii/TV/Computer unless the room the houses all those things is tidy… then I toss EVERYTHING that belongs to the kids into that room as I find it elsewhere in the house. Poor little things look so defeated when they walk into the room and find is all cluttered up. ‘Welcome to my world’, I say.
I hate the never-ending-ness of it too. Luckily, all of my friends have seen this place in all it’s glory, so I don’t worry about it so much. Also, their houses are messy too. :) Messy houses: it’s what happens when friends stop being nice (and clean!) and start being real. (We should have a MTV reality show!)
yeah. and why my husband is tidy about his own stuff and won’t raise a pinky otherwise? gah.
I was just thinking this morning that I wouldn’t mind being the only person who cleans or puts stuff away if my husband could at least pick up after himself. Like if he takes the milk out, he could put it back in the fridge himself FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Or when I come home from work, it would be nice to not see every dirty diaper my husband changed laying on the floor because my husband cannot be bothered to throw them away OH MY GOD. Aargh. I am getting all worked up again.
Ummm, as to your point, it’s like thank you notes. If your kids or husband don’t write them, people are like, “What’s wrong with that wife/mom?” even though it’s not your job! Blame the husband and/or kids, people!
As much as I miss my husband when he travels for work, I can’t help but view it as a mini-vacation since his trips represent ONE LESS PERSON TO PICK UP AFTER. I have yet to figure out how to get my husband to pick up his crap because he doesn’t care. I mean, my standards are already pretty stinkin’ low, his are even lower. Sigh.
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I just discovered your blog and I looovveee it…but now I’m going to spend all day reading the archives :( I’ve got things to do. Damn you Swistle
I swear, if there were a Nobel Prize for Spot On Blog Posts About Life in General, you, dear Swistle, would win it HANDS DOWN.
I’m soooo ashamed of the state of my flat that I dread ANYONE coming round, especially the parents of friends of my girls (they all seem to live in immaculate House & Garden type places, whereas chez Magic27 is frighteningly like a disaster zone).
And whilst some of the mess *cough* my desk *cough* is undoubtedly mine, the VAST MAJORITY most certainly is NOT. Yet neither of my girls even seems to NOTICE. And it drives me BATSHIT.
If I came to your house, I most certainly wouldn’t raise my eyebrows with disapproval – I would bring cupcakes and dessert wine, put all the kids in one room and sit and enjoy sweet, alcoholic treats with you!
It’s the same if my husband wears a wrinkly shirt or pants to work. People don’t think “Can’t he iron?” they think “Is his WIFE too lazy to iron his clothes?” Like I’m in charge of DRESSING him? Welcome to 2011, people.
And YES -R-. Thank you notes. Yes.
I read this once, and then printed it off and stuck it on my front door (I figure this is fair warning for anyone coming in, and if they can’t figure out where the mess came from after reading this? Well, do I really care about the opinion of such a dim-witted person anyway?):
COME IN
Come in. But don’t expect to find all the dishes done; all floors ashine.
Observe the crumpled rug, the toys galore, the smudgy fingerprinted door.
The little ones we shelter here don’t thrive on spotless
atmosphere.
They’re more inclined to disarray and carefree, even messy
play.
Their needs are great, their patience small. All day I’m at their beck and call.
It’s “Mommie come” “Mommie see!” Wiggly worms and red-scraped knee.
Painted pictures, blocks piled high, my floors unshined, the days go by.
Some future day they’ll flee this nest, and I, at last, will have a rest.
And which really matters more? A happy child or a polished floor?
Author Unknown
I promise that if I ever come to your house, I will blame your children for any and all messes. I can also blame Paul if you like, even if he didn’t make them either.
I am sending my son a link to this post right now (I’m at work) because he needs to read it! just to help him understand why the endless untidiness drives me so crazy.
That poem a few comments up…I need that poem to read to myself EVERY day.
Sometimes I get pissy when my husband is having people over because he gets to have the fun of friends visiting, while I am suddenly on a deadline for cleaning. It sucks.
It IS unfair!
For me right now, the crumbs kill me, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the one dropping cheerios in the living room… AND we have a defective dog that won’t eat crunchy things (fruit, meat, and cheese he’ll eat off the floor – he’s on some modified Atkins diet or something). He is no help w/ the majority of the crumbs…
One of my former students babysat for us the other day and I asked if it scared her to know her first grade teacher has a messy house – she was okay with it.
The day FIL died and I took the kids out of the house, Hub called to tell me that our friend and his aunt had come over to sit with him. I was glad he was not alone, but all I could think about was MY HOUSE and the 2 days of dishes and lack of a vacuumed carpet or swept floor and OMG there were people in my house. When I hadn’t done anything for probably 3 days.
YES!!! And it is 1000 times worse when everyone in your household is BIG (over the age of 12). I am going to start opening the door and saying, “I’m not picking up anything I didn’t leave out anymore, so excuse my house or better yet, say something snarky to the 3 other residents who live like pigs.”
Ahhha YES! I keep wanting to threaten to not pick up after, at the very least, my GROWN ADULT HUSBAND anymore, but then I think about how no one else but me would care and it would be a total pit within a day or two and then how my head would explode. I think the best solution, actually, to avoid the unfairness AND the head explosion would be for me to move into my own apartment. It could be adjacent to our home, and I would come over every morning to attend to the kids, but then at night I would retreat to my OWN place, which would be JUST AS I LEFT IT IE CLEAN.
Now that my kids range in age from 11 to 16 my mother has taken to asking why I haven’t taught my boys to clean up after themselves better. Right, I never say anything about the filth. We just let it go. NOT! So see, in the end the mom is STILL blamed for the mess.
My husband brought a coworker to our house one day after work, and I heard my husband warn coworker, “The house is probably a mess.” This hurt me to hear because it A) is most often accurate, and B) probably made the person wonder what kind of housekeeper was I? No need to get into the fact that if my husband was so unhappy with the condition of the home, he could pitch it, now is there? Preaching to the choir, here.
I think it’s such a crummy 1950s-style holdover to assume that it’s the wife’s ENTIRE responsibility to keep a home on top of all of the 900000 other things the wife is supposed to do. My husband sees nothing wrong with his parents calling to say that they’re in the neighborhood and stopping in (surprise!) which then turns me into a whirling dervish in an attempt to make the house look presentable–they’re not even my parents, for goodness’ sake! Argh.
Oh yes, I hate that too. I am not the one who made it, and yet it is my responsibility anyway. My husband has gotten pretty good about tidying up after himself; our house is tiny and he doesn’t like when the kids get into his books and papers. My kids hate cleaning up after themselves, so I’ll tell them I’d be happy to put their toys away for them . . . in the trash can. And then I do it, if they don’t hop to. They can clean up pretty well if their treasures are at stake!
I often feel like ALL I DO is clean up other peoples messes: kids, husband, dog……….YUK.
Oh my gosh the comment about the big black socks on the living room floor is so true!! And shoes. And other people’s mail. I don’t mind my ten month old as much because she doesn’t understand the concept of putting things away when you’re done with them. Apparently the other two grown humans I live with don’t get it either. My dear sweet hubby walks in from work, leaves a trail of shoes-socks-shirt-lunchbox on his way to the computer to check his emails. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. The house is never completely clean since I have to just keep shifting piles of mail from one surface to another. I think I should just start burning it ALL. ‘You want your tax return/cell phone bill/bank statement? Too bad!! Should’ve put it away while you had the chance!!! Muahahaaa!!!’
And why is it that cats always RUN onto the carpet to barf??? Like, the least he could do is stay on the linoleum, but nooo.
One of my favorite quotes, from Phyllis Diller: “If your house is really a mess and a stranger comes to the door, greet him with, ‘Who could have done this? we have no enemies!'” :)
for your math medal pleasure.
http://tiny.cc/aa1uo
DomestiKook- Heh. William proved to me yesterday that 2 = 3.