Sooo….
I’ve lived with my daughter, her hubby, 3 teen grandsons, 7 yr old granddaughter, cat, and two dogs for two years and it’s a never ending battle. (I took an early retirement to become a caregiver, and after mom died, I was on reduced income. They asked me to move in with them. Plenty of room there)

I do the housework much of the time. If I don’t do it, NO ONE will. I’ve yet to see my daughter or hubby pick up a broom, load a dish into dishwasher, put away laundry, dust, etc.
Chores are assigned to the teens, who do very incomplete jobs. They never wipe up their sticky spills from the counters or floors, litter box stinks to high heaven, house smells doggy (worse when it rains), one of the dogs’ shedding is out of control(enough daily dog hair on the hardwood floors to create another dog), the floors in the boys’ and grownups’ rooms(including the spacious walk-in closets) are literally knee-deep in clothes(both clean & dirty), shoes, books, toys. Mail and other papers overflows onto the kitchen counters and you have to find a space to cook (even though there is a mail center built into the kitchen). Dog #2 was just acquired, is not housebroken and no one is making the effort. The boys’ bedrooms literally reeks of feet and dirty clothes.

When I’m not working my PT job, I often get the youngest ready for school, but can rarely find her clothes because they are usually lost in the knee-deep laundry in her parents’ room. She’s allowed to play and ‘live’ in every single area of this 6000 sq. foot home.
Yes it’s a 6000sq ft 800K, McMansion, 6 bedr/4 1/2 bath, complete with chef’s kitchen, in a guarded-gated/golf club community where many of the homes are showplaces inside. My family isn’t the least bit embarrassed. Well, maybe they are, because they rarely have guests, unless of course, I’ve gone on a rampage and cleaned up, making the boys help out.

So far, I manage to keep the common areas fairly neat and enforce the kids to keep it neat (cause I can’t stand mess), but their bedrooms are out of control and their bathrooms look like cesspools. Brown stains, hair, dirt, etc. on the toilets and floors.

My modest in-law section, however, remains neat. I share a basement and media room with the teens and they keep it relatively neat because it’s my ‘domain.’
The parents, however, do not contribute to keeping the common areas neat. Dad’s a gourmet-chef-of-sorts but his culinary exploits leave mountains of dirty pots, pans, utensils, and refuse for someone else to clean.
To avoid an argument(it’s their house), I simply pick up their messes.

I’ve actually cleaned and organized mom & dad’s bedroom upon their request, whenever they were expecting out of town visitors, because of course the visitors will want to tour the entire house including the master suite with the walk-in shower and jacuzzi tub!(go figure)
They are always grateful for my help but a month later, the knee-deep clothes and trash will reappear, including the empty toilet paper rolls coving the water-closet floor and overflowing wastebaskets. LOL!

I know for a fact my dear family will never change. I’ve tried talking to my daughter and hubby about their untidy ways, and I either get excuses about their busy lives or they ‘disconnect’ and accuse me of being the one with the problem. My grandsons simply don’t care and state that “mom & dad does it.”
Would you believe that they recently spent 2grand on a bells&whistles front-loading washer/dryer? And my daughter expresses the desire of owning a more regal-looking 12000 sq ft home. More space for more mess. LOL!

BTW, my daughter refuses to part with her kids baby clothes and school papers. I packed them away for her. Three 6cu ft boxes of papers, and 10 huge storage boxes of clothes, many of them worn with holes.

Anyway, I’m just venting, because I know that no one in
this home will ever change. In the meantime, I’m looking for a full-time job to supp. my retirement check so I can move out and wallow in my own neatness.
The hilarious, ironic part about our differences is that they don’t want me to move out. They occasionally shower me with presents(new computer, new mattress for my bed, etc) to get me to stay. LOL! Once after returning from an out of town trip, they actually made an attempt to clean the house to make me happy. Well the boys confessed that they were forced to do it. LOL!

Just wondering about my family, though. Are they hoarders, clutterers, untidy, messy, or just plain lazy slobs?
((((sigh))) I love them still.

When I got older and started to find my own identity I learned that I did not like messy, but I simply did not know how to get from messy to organised and nobody had showed me a way (that worked for *me*). I decided to teach myself, and now, about 8 years later I’m starting to get the hang of it. I’ve started to feel good about *my* ideas how to organise and deal with stuff. Sure I still have messes but at least I feel I can handle it.

It’s just such a shame when the messy person gets nagged and yelled at. They will not ‘do as you tell them’ if you can’t respet them. If you can’t respect and accept them as a person including the fact that they are messy, you cannot help them, you cannot inspire them. Don’t give them the feeling they’re not good enough, you only hurt them.
And that is such a waste…

Thank you for this post, it points out the important bits in trying to *help* (not ‘change’) a clutter-person

So to change someone into an unclutterer, we must first make them realize how exactly it benefits them.

Also, I’ve grudgingly learned from my mum that it’s an excellent way to find things – you put things away, remove them from consideration, and hence avoid running around in circles (of course, there are also plenty kinds of clutterbug for whom a neat environment makes it harder to find what one is looking for).

In short, my suggestion is to point out the times when a bit of tidying would simplify some task or problem. It doesn’t really happen on a schedule, which may be still be annoying for some, but could help alleviate some of your frustration.

Best,
Shalin

If you can’t find middle ground, consider sitting down with a therapist or mediator. Having an unbiased third party listen in and provide advice often can relieve stress and make the negotiating less emotional. Also, if you have made previous decisions together about the state of the house and one or both of you are not respecting those decisions, then talking to a therapist can help with those lack of respect issues in your relationship, too.

What I have recognised lately is that I get overwhelmed by it all – it starts small, such as leaving out the printer because I know I’ll need it tomorrow but then bringing out something else, or leaving the dishes until later because guests are here etc Next thing I know the place is a dump and I don’t know where to start.

Another thing I’ve recognised is that when the place is clean I manage to keep it that way for about a 4 days before it goes back downhill.

So this time around I’m doing a few tricks to help me out – I’m doing 20 mins of cleaning every morning between breakfast and lunch. I’m setting the oven timer and starting. 20 mins isn’t much and I can see results. I’m also committing to telling my BF the moment that I start to feel overwhelmed by things so that he can help me get back on top of it all. And he’s telling me that I’ve done a good job when I’ve cleaned stuff up.

I’m not expecting miracles, just hoping to stretch my natural clean time from 4 days to 7 at the moment.

I especially like the point that says don’t overestimate what you contribute. The Happiness Project has a great article on this.

To Jack: yeah, the groups for children of hoarders is kind of a concept. I don’t think there are hoarders here, as much as just “typical middle class materialists” which, of course, is not a diagnosable DSM-IV condition …

But thanks to all for their comments. By the way, did I mention? I do have ADD. I’ve always been obsessively neat and tidy, to the point of Spartan, with lots and lots of lists and accounting systems. My shrinks say, this must be a “coping mechanism,” but I just hate having distractions.

And I think that’s OK. Not everyone is the same. The problem, of course, is how to deal with it if you live with that person.

I think Erin’s strategies in this post are great — the conversation is especially important, as is creating responsibility lists.

But sometimes you have to split up a room or a house and say — this is my uncluttered side, and you can have your side or rooms the way you like it. Then work out a livable solution for common areas such as the kitchen. It’s not ideal for the unclutterers among us, but not everyone wants to change, and we have to live with that.

@Cliff: If you think one or both of your parents are serious hoarders, there are groups for the children of hoarders that might help you deal with it now as well as later. There’s always trade-offs when one saves money by moving back in with your parents, and the overstimulation of your ADD may be something that you have to decide the value of – if you can’t work, and you don’t do well in school, are you saving as much money as you think?

Also, someone can be chronically disorganized and not have ADHD. I am a prime example of someone who used to fall into that category. Conversely, just because a person has ADHD doesn’t mean that he or she will have symptoms of chronic disorganization.

Even if someone has ADHD and is chronically disorganized, he or she can learn how to be organized. I have worked with numerous people who have ADHD and have seen them learn organizing skills and transform their lives.

It’s okay to talk about laziness as a component to clutter, same as it is okay to talk about ADHD and materialism and out-dated cultural practices and all the many different causes. Sometimes people are lazy. Sometimes we come home from work, are exhausted, and choose to sit on the couch and be lazy instead of taking on a bunch of organizing tasks. I do it, and I bet that you have done it, too. I also know that some people I have worked with who have ADHD have put their feet up and shut out the world for a while and delayed organizing tasks. Laziness isn’t the only cause of disorder, but, like I said earlier, that doesn’t mean it is NEVER a cause. It’s okay to talk about laziness, and we’ll continue to talk about it on Unclutterer.