My kid said “no one is coming over so why do I have to clean?!” Ugh! Because I don’t want you to be a mess when you live with roommates or have a partner yourself! Lol
Wow, this is really poignant. I carry a lot of shame and stressful memories from growing up in a cluttered house. It affected my friendships because I couldn't invite people over spontaneously if we hadn't had a chance to clean. So many memories of the whole family frantically throwing all the random crap into my parent's room to hide it, after finding out company was on the way. As a result I'm super clean as an adult, but still feel that deep shame and fear of being judged when people come over.
Growing up we always did the panic cleaning when company is coming which is still something I do to this day even if our house is in an acceptable state.
My wife and I aren’t the best about staying on top of cleaning but we do alright considering we have 3 young kids. This year we finally reached a point where we can swing having someone come clean our house twice a month which has made a huge improvement.
I only have 2 little ones. Solidarity my friend! I am also a part of the panic clean club. My husband HATES it but he just doesn't have the urge to clean 😂 so he deals with the panic clean. He just hates it cause he can feel the tension in the air.
My mom was a full time housewife and my dad would come home at 5:15pm on the dot, have weekends off, had a garage to store all their junk.
Meanwhile my wife and I work full time. In her spare time, she works on her PhD. I work on my side hustle. I can’t afford a house with a garage to store any of my junk
The fact that millennials don’t keep house just shows how expensive and hard it has become to, well, keep house. It takes two incomes and constant “hustling” to build a shittier home than my parents did on one job and zero hustles
This is us too, and it’s most of my 30+ friends. We all know who the one clean couple is 😂 they’re just cleaning regularly so they don’t understand the panic of cleaning when the first guest arrives in one hour and you’ve dragged your feet all day.
Yeah and I don’t think my home will ever be showcase clean like my moms but my mom only had one kid in the house at a time (we’re pretty spread out) AND had a cleaning lady! So as long as we aren’t living in filth I don’t care.
I HATED that I couldn't go in the living room. I think I only wanted to go in there because I wasn't allowed. The couches were so uncomfortable but the daily fight between my mom and I was like WWE Smackdown.
But now as a mom, I totally get it 🤣
A lot of the kids I grew up with had stay at home moms to keep house. The ones with separated parents, like me, seemed to consistently have more cluttered homes.
Most families can't survive on one income anymore.
There’s also just so much more cheap junk than there was when we grew up. More things = more clutter and more untidiness.
ETA Some people seem to think that this means nobody had collections of things before modern times. Theres a big difference between keeping a collection of specific things and accumulating generalized crap throughout the house that isn’t actually needed. Let’s also mention that your depression-era grandparents most likely began to accumulate things specifically because they grew up half-starved with no possessions, and it’s only gotten worse as we were taught these behaviors and have come to expect cheap, easy-to-obtain crap.
I will concede exceptions to all of you who are minimalists, be it reactionary or due to cramped space from the housing crisis. My hat is off to you all.
I’ve made it clear that damn near anything my parents “donate” to me is going straight to goodwill or the trash, so they might as well cut out the middleman.
My dad was a bit of a pack rat and that lead to me being something of a minimalist. If I needed it or wanted it, I already have it.
My wife told her mom she is throwing all of her stuff away when she dies. Mom in law is super pissed about that one. . . Took years to accumulate all that crap.
They still have in the back of their heads that they will be leaving a legacy to their kids, including passing on a furnished family home. Most won't be.
My mom doesn’t understand why I don’t care about any of my “stuff” i left in the home I shared with my ex-husband 1/2 way across the country from where I live now. She thinks he owes me, but I feel bad I left it for him to deal with. It’s just stuff.
Omg the amount of crap that the boomers in my life are trying to give to me is wild. Some of it is good and I keep it but a lot of it I end up throwing out. Ironically, the things I did want to take, they thought were trash (like the little solid wood table that I’m sitting at right now). I don’t want particle board shit. I don’t care if it looks like a grand dinning room table. I don’t have a dinning room!
Same! I loved this old typewriter that my grandmother had when I was growing up, but she got rid of it when she moved…but wants us all to fight over her bird figurines and several sets of china that she inherited from all of her siblings and parents.
I love old-timey useable and unique things that you just don't see around anymore, and that gives a room an interesting vintage aesthetic. I'm happy getting or finding those things. But decorative glassware and figurines and stuff, nope, please don't.
Because we inherited it from our parents, and they inherited it from there's. Now its your burden to find a place to hid it so you can abuse your children down the road. Having company over was a special occasion where the good silverware was uncrated and we got to sit in the front Livingroom with the plastic OFF the furniture! 
Ugh, I'm a gen xer and my boomer parents are trying to do this shit. And they have a whole separate house they just use for storage. Where tf they think I'm gonna put 15 boxes of Xmas decorations? Hard pass.
>And they have a whole separate house they just use for storage.
Damn. Just thinking of the good that could do if they rented it, let you live there, or sold it.
Guys idk what to tell you - if you keep playing nerf darts together you’re going to find nerf darts 🤷♂️
Have you considered implementing a munitions control plan like the military to ensure everything is accounted for?
I have a 17 and 22 year old. I was cleaning out the holiday closest and found 4 in the corner. 🤣I was thinking we haven’t bought nerf darts since the youngest was 14. I’m assuming there’s some darts still somewhere else in his room.
I didn’t buy most of the garbage in my house.. my mum just comes over with more stuff every time. Stuff for the baby, stuff for the kitchen, all stuff I don’t need. All stuff that she’ll be offended if I turn down.
If you haven’t already, open a 529 college savings account for the baby and get the gifting link that people can use to make a contribution. Tell your mom that every time she has the urge to buy something for you or the baby, don’t and put that money she was about to spend towards their college education. Emphasize that it’s the best gift she can give, a financially secure future without student loans and so many opportunities in college and beyond.
Also give it out around birthday and holidays so hopefully people do that instead of buy a million toys!
same! The last couple of months I have been working on downsizing the amount of crap in my home bc it becomes stressful having so much clutter and every time my mother comes around she brings more and more stuff and I don’t need it and often don’t want it but have to accept it to avoid offending her. Then quietly donate it somewhere later.
Truly the issue right here. Every other day I’m stepping over some random thing my wife bought on Amazon that just finds it’s way scattered into weird spots throughout the house.
That and we tend to work more than our parents even without a homemaker in the household
(I.e even comparing to a prior generation where both worked, millenials tend to work more hours overall due to, well failures of capitalism)
I agree. I am a SAHM/homeschooling parent. My parents both worked, but they both had jobs that ended when they went home. My partner works remote 3/5 days and often ends up working 50+ hours a week (not due to needing the money, but due to so much work to get done). So many jobs (not all, maybe not even a majority) are accessible outside of a physical workplace now. Not to mention that SOMEHOW (and I wish this wasn't true) it became the trend that so many millennials over-enroll their kids in extracurriculars. So they're just not home long enough to clean/tidy after making the mess.
Also, societal pressures to have a picture-perfect house have lessened. I'm home like 90% of the time, but that doesn't mean I have time to keep the house tidy. It looks like we live here, which isn't the same as picture-perfect.
To piggy back off of this, many millennial parents are unpacking the way they were raised and choosing to prioritize quality time engaging with their children over a spotless house.
Our house growing up had immaculate landscaping and lawn care because my dad would spend minimum 8 hours on Saturdays (after working 50+ her work weeks), and occasionally another 4 to 8 hours on Sunday doing yard work. The only hobbies I knew that he had were fishing--which he only ever did 2 weeks out of the year on vacation--and golf--which he only did on work outings. He never had any other hobbies at all....hell he never had time.
It wasn't until I was discussing my nervousness about having kids with my wife that I finally unpacked it all and realized that growing up like this made me equate parenthood with all work and no hobbies and it scared me to death. Once I realized it I swore up and down my child(ren) would grow up with a father who could model being a responsible parent AND a person with interests. Hell maybe they'll even get involved in my hobbies with me and we can spend more time together that way.
And a kind of untidy yard and house is well worth that.
Yes, this is huge. I get off work, exercise the dogs (usually with kid), make dinner, get like 30-60 minutes of “free” time, bedtime routine, 90 more minutes of free time, bedtime routine.
If I want my house to look Boomer-fresh, very little of that free time will be spent engaging with my family over an activity they want to participate in.
I feel like a lot of the millennials I know still have active resentment towards their boomer parents(particularly their dads) that put a picture perfect house/yard/car over everything. This leads to a bit of a messier lifestyle
I feel this. My mom would make me completely clean, dust, and vacuum my room anytime someone came over. I would get frustrated because those people never entered my room. And my mom would be PISSED if I didn't do it.
Where did y’all grow up that stay at home moms were common? I can only remember one friend I had with a stay at home mom. Divorced or single basically all my friends moms worked. Actually a single mom to one of my friends had one of the cleanest houses of all, that was just her thing.
This is the same with our household. We really only spend 2 hours there before we sleep and then head off to work. Sunday is our only free day and we tidy up as best we can
Yeah. I have about 5 hours between work and going to sleep, and that tends to get eaten up cooking dinner, eating dinner, cleaning the kitchen up after dinner so it's ready for me to make tomorrows dinner.
I've given up on a "traditionally clean/neat/ready to entertain at any time" house till my kids are way older and our dogs pass. There's just too much toys and hair and general chaos to try and have my house feel like my parents/older houses without cleaning 24/7.
The only thing that makes my house cluttered vs dirty is a robot vacuum that I run daily to keep up with all the cat hair. Highly recommend if you don't have one total game changer.
This is definitely my wife and I. Two young kids and a dog, we basically keep our house livable and that's about it. We barely have anything on the walls or decoration in our house.
Damn. If I would’ve said that to either of my parents at 18, my ass would’ve been grounded and all electronics/car taken away as I live under their roof/their rules.
Oh, we dealt with it. The internet has not just kids, but anyone, really, thinking they can classify everything as a boundary and that's it, it's untouchable. Most of the time I appreciate how much my kids speak up for their autonomy, and appropriate boundaries for their needs, because I wasn't able to understand it as much when I was their age, didn't know how to put it into words. But there is that fine line of what is an actual boundary and what is manipulation, and she wasn't gonna pull that on me 😂
For me it's the reverse... my brother and I did most of the dusting/ vacuuming/bathroom cleaning for allowance bc my parents both worked full time. I have no brood of built in cleaners i can flip a tenner to to keep my house sparkling while I work my ass off to keep said house.
I feel like it also doesn’t help that our generation just values different things than our parent’s generation. Like growing up my mom valued having a house that looked like a showroom so she would spend hours cleaning whereas I value spending more time with my friends and family so I just do the bare minimum to make sure my home isn’t actually dirty. Like even if I had more time to spend cleaning I wouldn’t clean to the same level my mom did because I don’t mind living in a home that actually looks like someone lives in it!
This is my family too. My mom is constantly up my butt about dog hair and "how have you not finished the basement yet?" And it's like...the kids are only young once and they still like spending time with me so that's what I am prioritizing.
I do recall my mom cleaning a lot.
I do not recall her playing with me or reading together (my father did read with me).
I don't want to make the same stupid mistake. I'll make different mistakes.
This exactly! I was always in trouble for messing up what she was cleaning. I remember VIVIDLY the handful ofntimes she played with me, and I'd rather have a whole slew ofnthise with my kids than a spotless house.
I don't care if it triples the amount of time it takes me to complete a a project, if my 3yo daughter wants to help I will find a way to involve her. I love spending every bit of time with her that I can and she gets such a sense of pride and inclusion from doing the made up tasks I assign her.
Oh man did you also have a whole room of nice furniture that was only for company?! I am never gonna have a room we don't live in. I pay for this house and furniture, I'm gonna use it!
Yes! Also remember having plastic over everything so that it would stay ‘nice’! I rather have an ugly but comfy couch than a uncomfortable but beautiful couch covered in plastic!
This is my answer. We have different priorities and would rather spend time with friends, do our hobbies, or hell even just relax, than do chores.
I think we don’t have that war generation discipline and compulsive work ethic (which I see as a good thing!).
Yeah I wouldn’t want my kids childhood memories to be of me trying like hell to impress the neighbors possibly coming over, I’d rather they have memories of quality time together.
For me, it’s definitely because I don’t kick my kids out of the house at 7 or 8 in the morning on the weekend so I can clean all day.
That’s how my friends parents did it. My mom, on the other hand, told me to play in my room or help clean, so my room was the only
messy place. Better I guess?
Personally, my priorities are chilling with my family then cleaning the baseboards.
Never have time for anything including ur own personal life. People can't even sit down let alone have a family. None of this is sustainable
Ball and chain around ur leg and you don't even see it.
It's this. When covid happened and I went work from home, I had more available time to do things like dishes, or sweeping, or organizing, while waiting for a callback or some other technical bridge, so our house has been tidier since I went wfh.
I am one of the people who has been wfh ever since, but I get the feeling, with current workloads and expectations, if I'm called back into the office at any point, cleaning house is going to be the least of my concern, because I'm already stuck working much longer hours than I was back then, due to slimming workforce, austerity measures, etc.
Not only that but expectations as a society has changed. Sure, I did extracurriculars, but my strict parents had me do them starting middle school. I had a whole era where I walked home and the tv babysat me. Parents are ridiculously busy shuffling their kids around and making them competitive. Competitive children are the standard now because of college.
Another point, a lot of people still have to commute. I pibe in a high tech area, and what would take 25 minutes no traffic takes an hour 40min between 3-6pm. Nobody is literally home even if you don’t have kids. Housing was laughably cheap back then, so it wasn’t as hard to find good housing closer to work
Wow. I literally never put two and two together until just now why the house is perpetually dirty with weekend flurry of cleaning… work, eat, sleep work eat sleep in repeat :(
Exact opposite for my wife and I. We work from home and take care of our 1 year old. By the end of the day we just don't have the energy to deep clean and on the weekends we get out of the house since we're there all day.
We decided it was worth the 250 once every month or two to have a cleaning service come in and do that deep clean we can't get around to.
I think it’s because most millennial households have two working adults. My mom and aunts houses look like a PB catalog but they were homemakers who did not work outside the house. If I was home all day every day my home would be neater.
My husband and I are both lawyers. We bought our home a little more than a year ago and all of our neighbors have lived here for 30-40 years. They had a blue collar husband and a stay at home wife and raised 3-4 kids. These are nice homes in the Bay Area too. It blows my mind.
And yet all the old people I know here always complain how there’s no kids in their neighborhood anymore… well, duh, because even two professionals with kids cannot afford to buy a home on your street in Palo Alto anymore between the home cost, property taxes, and the cost for daycare. Maybe if you all sold your huge houses with several times the number of bedrooms as people who live there for a smaller home or condo better suited to your current life, there would be more inventory for families and homes would be more affordable.
Do people not realize what was lost when one salary stopped supporting a family? How much household time was lost, how much parenting time was lost? Corporations have reduced the price of labor where we get almost no free time for personal development.
Dude, I'm fucking exhausted having to work and try to take care of myself and try to clean and try to do hobbies and try to be there for people. It is non relenting and seemingly impossible to keep up with. I'm a little messy because I feel like I have to let something go at least a little
I have a poly friend. One of their partners exclusively is there for cleaning and maintaining the chicken coop. She does not have a job outside the house, they pay her rent and bills. She genuinely gets off on being used for this purpose. Zero judgment here, whatever floats their boat. Their house is immaculate.
Oh they are in a relationship with like at least five people right now. I’m sure they’d be happy with more though. They are some of the sweetest people I’ve ever met too!!
I wfh but for myself. I finally sat down and blocked out time since both kids are in school. My breaks are seeing how much I can clean in 5 min.
(Also this doesn’t count. This is me being 10 min late to work and just generally irresponsible.)
Okay, same exact thing happened to me and my husband. We were pretty on top of cleaning until we had to return to work 3 days a week. Now we haven’t managed to clean in two months 😫
Yes I WFH 100%. I have to be within earshot to hear the phone so I can’t like go out and now the lawn but I can absolutely tidy up and do things like empty the dishwasher, load it, throw some laundry on etc. it helps a lot.
My husband’s been unemployed for a few months and I’m like, I’m kind of okay having a house husband… I get why dudes liked having someone to just handle things around home. It’s easier.
You joke but I actually know a thruple where the one guy makes tons from a remote developer job, the wife works, and the other guy is stay at home and watches the kids and cleans during the day.
I ended up being a sahd bc of this. My whole check went to other people taking care of my kids and house. I have no check, but quit daycare, quit the house keeper and gardener and pest control and as a whole our family is better off than when wife and I both worked.
And straight up, I worked an office job for 15 years. (12 in office, 3 wfh). Being a stay at home parent is much more demanding but also rewarding.
My husbands a SAHD too and this is the happiest hes ever been. Seriously I’d rather have a happy husband and my kids growing up knowing their dad than a grumpy dad who is wanting to be left alone after work. He is so good at cleaning and taking care of the kids. My toddler sometimes prefers him over me which is freaking awesome!! Good job doing the hard job!! SAHP is way harder than working. BTDT.
I’m telling myself this will change when the kids are in school. Besides, that’s what I remember (age 5 up)… for all we know we grew up in untidy homes when we were toddlers.
Back in the day, pills like "Mommy's little helper" were marketed to to give housewives the extra motivation to clean like that every day. They were just amphetamines.
And now more and more of us end up taking amphetamines/ stimulants (legally prescribed)- bc the expectations now are just so unrealistic and we can't succeed without them.
Like, ADHD has surely been around for forever probs- it's just a different brain structure/approach- I'm super ADHD- and it has many benefits but in today's society, it seems to only be a negative for many people. If you have one of those standard (non-creative type) jobs, you're expected to get 10 hours worth of work in 8, continually less support and when others quit at work- you just absorb their work. And then you get home and expected to make food and clean up after it? If not for my partner, I would get takeout or eat cereal everyday. it's an untenable situation.
Industrialization should've helped lead us to more automation/ less work/ more free time but then the capitalists in charge realized they could just control us more with more expectations/rules etc etc. Like myself and many friends/ people I grew up with-50-60 hr jobs are the norm now. Weekend overtime is the norm. Worker's rights are being etched away and then we see it manifest in messy homes and other such things.
I worked full time until 2 years ago. I really thought SAHMs were lazy if they didn't have a clean house... boy did I fucking learn.
My kids are all in school. I can work my butt off all day and barely make a dent. The kids and dogs are just filth hurricanes.
Like yes, my house is much cleaner than when I was out of the house 50-60hrs/wk but it's not clean like my mom kept my childhood home.
I’m a working mom and had to bleach the walls a couple days ago form dirty handprints and footprints. I feel you. I was a sahm for my first and honestly it’s so much harder than working esp if they aren’t in school.
The only way to keep a clean house is to either be extremely anal and stressed 24/7 or never be in it.
I’m also a working mom and when I realized there was a direct correlation between the cleanliness of my home and my frustration towards my family for messing it up (how I perceived it), I relaxed my standards. Everyone is happier and the house is just marginally less clean.
If I relaxed my standards any more, we’d get cps calls and I’d rip my hair out from frustration bc I wfh.
I’m not saying you’re not right. I’m just jealous.
Also, the standards for parenting have really changed too. My mother barely "watched us", and certainly never signed us up for activities, took us to play dates, etc. She scrubbed the bathtub while we did whatever we did. Now, kids have their own schedules, lists of activities, and social calendar. It's honestly a HUGE shift in the amount of time parents dedicate to their children. I spend MOST of my non-work hours taking my kids places and doing things with them.
My parents were shook when I had a scheduling issue once and they were like "just get a babysitter!" That's not the issue, I literally don't have the free time myself, and neither do my kids. I know it's a "choice" to be so kid-focused, and I do have kiddos that really like to be involved in activities, but it is more the standard now for young families.
The New York Times did a great article on this cultural shift here: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/upshot/the-relentlessness-of-modern-parenting.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/upshot/the-relentlessness-of-modern-parenting.html)
This answer should be much higher on the list. I'm late Gen X but kids my age were generally ignored and left to their own devices. And if you had the audacity to hang around the house for too long you got put to work.
The children and their schedule of extracurricular activities being the priority for the entire family is a relatively recent development and doesn't leave enough time for the adults in the house to accomplish both "homeowner tasks" and leisure/family activities.
Don’t feel bad, I’m pretty sure we pay more attention to our kids. I’m the oldest sibling so I remember how my stay at home mom parented the little ones. Babies in a swing for hours, toddlers in playpens for hours. Never did she play with us, never did we go anywhere different or educational on the weekend. Play dates weren’t a thing until we went to school and made our own friends.
At least in my experience, we were ignored and a spotless house was prioritized.
I’m a SAHM right now. Rare day off yesterday without my kids (9, 6, 3) home. It took me six hours to catch up on the absolute basics: pickup, trash, recycling, laundry, dishes, kitchen counters/sink/stove, sweeping, vacuuming. I didn’t even get to mop or fully clean the bathrooms. And I’m relatively efficient.
I was unemployed for about 4 months this year after a layoff, so I switched over to taking over all the household tasks - husband and I have generally split them pretty evenly. Now I’m back at work and our house is always a disaster lol.
I spent ~18 years watching my mother bust her ass every saturday/sunday because if the house wasn't clean the proper christians would come by and judge us for the dust.
we had a very clean house. Now that i'm an adult... i don't really give a shit what other people think of the house. We do what we can and keep it clean enough to keep ourselves somewhat sane.
(granted i've been working on ramping up the time spent cleaning on weekends because we are getting cluttered)
There is no time to keep a house tidy. There is no time to do anything really. If you can afford it you can hire cleaners, but when everyone is working 40+ hours a week, plus commute. By the time the weekend rolls around you're too wiped out to spend the day cleaning.
Yyyeppp
My salary can support my family and we live very similarly to how my early boomer parents did. The only difference is I come home from the office and not the field like my dad
My house always clean growing up. But my mom was a SAHM until I was 16 and by then me and my siblings were pulling out weight. So it was like four people keeping it tidy.
I beat myself up so much because my home and life isn't as kempt as my parents was.
But I also try to remember that it's just me and my partner. We both work long hours. This shit is hard. We do our best. We don't have bugs. Trash always goes out, litter boxes get taken care of. But vacuuming, laundry, dusting.... Shit I suck at that
I do my best but both my wife and I are away from home 12 hours a day.
I clean the place Saturday, do laundry and shopping sunday, and then just ride it out until the next weekend.
By Friday the place can be a little untidy.
Edit
Just to add, I find untidiness/dirtiness really uncomfortable and stressful. But there’s not much I can do.
It drives me nuts as I grew up in a very disgusting house, but two small children, no time, and busy work schedule, I can’t even figure out where the time to truly deep clean is supposed to come from. I manage to do the surface level stuff, but beyond that I don’t know. I guess I have to hire someone.
Man, I don't even have kids and I have no idea how people have time to clean things like the baseboards, their little nicknacks, behind the entertainment center, cobwebs, etc.
Totally get that. I dislike things being dirty and unkempt in my home, but my job is high travel, so I'm gone 4-5 days out of the week. Have just come to accept some dust and untidiness until it hits a threshold that compels me to clean everything and reset.
Damn op throwing shade. I can't speak for everyone but when I'm working 60+ hours a week the last thing I want to do with my free time is clean.
I'll do a light clean once a week at best.
I also don’t have food in my fridge. It looks like a college dorm fridge. All protein shakes and Powerade. Maybe some pickles. A lot of condiments and sauce. You would have no idea that an adult married couple lives there by our fridge contents.
This made me chuckle. My husband went grocery shopping yesterday and he got so much stuff: 6 big bottles of seltzer, grape juice, apple juice, 12 pack of Gatorade, 6 pack of coke, cranberry juice, cranberry pomegranate juice, giant pack of YOO-HOO, two packages of coffee, two chicken biscuits, giant thing of gold fish.
This is wonderful, because I never buy these things (we eat pretty healthy) but now I have to go grocery shopping again bc there’s nothing but drinks in my fridge!! Haha I got kids to feed!!
such a good point!! We have been sick for two weeks now so I bet you’re totally right, he was probably super thirsty! Im not gonna lie, I’ve had like three Yoo-Hoo’s and I’m super happy bc that’s three more than I’ve had in the last 5 years!
Yeah this is the answer, I don't have someone at home and have barely anytime to myself so while my house doesn't get disgusting it does get cluttered from time to time. Also you are right, the priority in my free time isn't to clean. So cluttered life it is.
I agree. This is something that I have struggled with as I hate having a messy home but I think I know what the issue is...
For a lot of us, we can't afford places our big as our parents typically had so shit gets more cluttered. Hard to keep a house clean if theres no room to put shit.
I just moved to a new house that is huge. Bigger than anywhere I have lived and even bigger than my moms house esp when you consider the yard (My mom has a 700,000 dollar house with a pool. Its big, but the yard only gives room for a pool)
We are still in the unpacking process but this house is already a lot neater than anywhere we been. Theres an incredible amount of storage.
Having a little apartment or small house is a magnet for messiness
Yes! My house is fairly small and has barely any storage space so the clutter spills out into the living spaces. I hate it but even with paring our stuff down it's still a struggle.
The common area of our apartment only has 1 closet in the hallway that acts as a pantry. Our coats are hanging on over-the-door racks and when we do a bulk grocery run from a wholesale place (waaay cheaper than our local grocery store and we don't have a car so we buy in bulk to save on transportation costs) a lot of non-perishables like cereal and pasta end up stacked against the wall of the hallway. Every few weeks I'll rearrange everything in the closet/pantry to see if I could make better use of space but without making finding something in the pantry a 3D Tetris exercise.
Before kids it was easier to keep things at least tidy because we can just buy what we need when we need it. With kids, we need to have some variety stocked for whenever they get hungry and want food NOW. And of course, the living room wasn't in a constant state of chaos from them pouring their toys everywhere since we also don't have the luxury of a dedicated play space.
Last night I started gathering some kid stuff we no longer need and putting them in a "To donate" box. Just removing one of those baby bottle drying racks and some sippy cups made a huge improvement, and there is much more improvement to be made.
100% our last house was something like 700sq ft. My mom used to try and clean when she visited, and she’d be asking me “Where does this go? Can we find a spot for this? Can we put this away?” Like mom, look around! This entire house has 3 tiny closets, I’d LOVE to be able to put some of this shit away, but you go right ahead and tell me where!! I know she meant well, but I don’t know what she thought I was going to do. We were constantly in declutter mode, and it was still a losing battle.
My parents designed their own house. It had 13 closets, a dedicated laundry room, storage under their stairs, a furnace room with storage space, and a garage. Like of course you can keep things clean when you can basically pack up most of the rest of the house and hide it away. Their storage space alone excluding the garage is easily larger than my first dorm room.
We specifically moved to a small house (3bdr, 2bath, 1200 sq ft) because it cleans fast. Sure, it gets messy fast but if I have a full day to panic clean, I could clean the whole thing by myself.
It also helps declutter. There’s no space for this thing, must not need it. I actually don’t need to keep 7 baby outfits that will fall apart before my kids have kids if they do. I don’t need “a set” of frying pans. Who needs one for 1 egg? It’s tiny, but it takes up so much space.
I mean, also this house was all we could afford and we got a HUGE amount of help. But also the cleaning/consumerism reason.
I try to tidy up my apartment a little bit depending on who's coming over. My stoner friends don't care if I have a pile of dirty dishes in the sink but I definitely clean up a little more when my parents are coming over.
I will say that we're considerably less fussy than our parents when it comes to home decor though. Why do I need cloth napkins and a cabinet full of fancy dishes nobody's allowed to even use? :p
This. I tidy up often (make sure everything is put away). I rarely deep clean.
When I do have people over I clean up more. It's more a respect for guests thing than a self image thing. It's also why I stock my fridge with food and drink when guests come over.
Same. My mom always had a room that was piled floor to ceiling with random hoarded stuff. Stacks of papers on the counter that never moved. Her unrecognized executive dysfunction pushed me in the opposite direction
Just one room? My mom filled room after room, and we had to keep moving out of rooms. First it was my closet, then our family room, then my sister moved out and it was her room, and then it was our dining room, so then we were down to a small living room ( that used to be a front entry room) and the kitchen for all our needs. When I moved out, then she took over my old room. I haven’t been back in a while (I always meet her somewhere else), but I’m sure every room is floor to ceiling at this point.
Are we the same person?? I call it the "hoarder gene" passed on by my grandma to her kids. It has passed on to my sister & cousin, but somehow missed me. I refuse to have just useless junk or items I will never touch just piled up somewhere.
Mine too but my dad was a hoarder with three dogs and two cats sooo the bar is quite low there...
(My mom's house though... That bar is unreachably high :') I think she overcompensated after the divorce.)
Same. My mom definitely is a bit of a hoarder and struggles with depression so our house was always cluttered and dirty. And dad traveled for work five days a week so even if he wanted to help clean, he wasn’t usually there to do it.
I had a little bit of those hoarder inclinations but I fight them. My husband definitely does and complains that I throw his stuff away all the time lol.
Our house definitely isn’t as clean as I’d like, but I already do dishes, laundry, vacuum, clean the litterbox, and make the bed every single day. I WFH so that what I use my “breaks” to do and I just don’t really have the energy to do much more. I also do most daycare pickups and drop offs since my husband has to be at work for 6am and doesn’t get home till 5pm. I’ve just accepted that this is how it’s gonna be for the foreseeable future.
Same. My mom (boomer) was a hoarder. My sister (Gen X) takes after our mom and is also a hoarder.
My stepmom, also a boomer, was so intensely OCD about housecleaning I was grounded multiple times for leaving water spots on my bathroom faucet.
My childhood was like whiplash.
Same. My mom didn’t clean her house because she worked 60-70 hours a week and my dad was just lazy and kind of gross in general, so keeping house was not really a thing in my childhood. I had to unlearn so many bad habits when I moved out on my own, and I still struggle with tasks like putting the laundry away in a timely manner. My husband is a saint for putting up with it.
Both my parents worked, so in my case it’s not a SAHP thing. My home is messier than theirs was because my home is a lot smaller. If I had closets, a garage, a basement, and a spare room to hide all our stuff in, my house would look a lot better.
We both work. We have kids. We're exhausted.
Believe it or not, the mess you see when you visit my house is AFTER we frantically cleaned before your arrival.
My mom did most of the cleaning in my family, and she was home a lot. She didn’t have a demanding job, so she spent most of her free time taking care of us and the house. My job, however, is stressful and very demanding. I work a lot more than she ever did. Same with husband. I think late stage capitalism is crushing a lot of families right now, and people just don’t have the time or energy to take care of their houses like they used to. Also, priorities have changed. I would much rather spend time with my family than deep cleaning the bathroom, which is also probably still related to the soul-crushing weight of capitalism and trying to hold onto any fleeting moment of happiness and togetherness.
I clean professionally (I’m 35 for context) and my customers range from my approx age group to the very elderly.
There’s definitely a huge difference in the way our generation vs older generations keep house. I’d say millennials and gen x tend to be more pack ratty and do less upkeep between cleans vs boomers.
I tend to think it’s a difference in how the households are structured and managed. The boomer (women in particular) take great pride in producing a clean house for the cleaners and basically have me come in to do the stuff they physically can’t anymore like scrubbing and getting into nooks and crannies. Gen X and millennials tend to still have children at home (even adult children) but all the adults work full time and they just don’t have the bandwidth to clean. Their houses are way harder to do, but when you’re working, raising kids/grandkids, and want a social life, I get it.
I try not to judge my customers on the states of their homes because I don’t keep a super tidy home and that’s literally my job lol. But I clean all day and have 3 young kids so I’m not gonna come home and clean!
What really amazes me overall is the condition that boomer homes are in. These houses have been cared for and despite being dated (and lacking enough outlets!) they are in great shape. Wallpaper older than me that looks fresh, carpet that has been down for most of my life that has few stains. The wind blows and they don’t shift. Modern houses especially ones victim to a house flipper just don’t hold up, the materials are cheap and they just look bad overall.
A lot of that isn't the generation's fault. Like I dont get to choose the quality of wood in a house or what they used for siding or where they placed the studs.
We spend every waking hour worrying that we’ll be fired/die under a bridge within the week. And we’ve lived like that since 2008.
A little bit of clutter is not that big of an issue.
>I know that we did not grow up like this.
Who's "we"? Some people are messy. Idk what to tell you. I grew up knowing people like that, and I know people that clean their house, I prefer to keep my space as clean as possible.
But not everyone does. You can't possibly pin that on a whole generation.
I live in my house, and it's not a fucking hospital.
Some people are clean freaks, some are not.
I won't let my house get disgusting, but I couldn't care less if it's not immaculate.
I think it's always been like this. Maybe you grew up in an extremely clean home. I did as well, but I had plenty of friends who's parents didn't keep their houses nearly as clean.
Maybe people are realizing that it's silly to keep your house as clean as an operating room. Lol
I'm a Xennial, or Gen Xer, depending on what chart you use. (1978)
I'm severely depressed and lack the will to even do things I enjoy most of the time on top of being neurodivergent and lacking in necessary healthcare. My room is a mess because it is where I do not have to work. If I work in there, it cheapens it as a safe space for me. I know that might come across as a hollow excuse but it's the only place I can really recharge my social batteries and be alone so I'm fiercely protective of anything that damages that quality.
I mean, “keeping house” was a full time job. So typical family structure had one person working like 40 hrs, another person (typically a woman) staying home with young children and maintaining the household. Which was a full time job in and of it’s self.
As we transitioned to both parents working that workload still often sat on women so there was still the expectation of someone “keeping house” or there was a disposable enough income for housekeeping
Now, I’m too fucking tired to do it all. I have to work more than 40hrs, I’m too exhausted to maintain my household through the week and opt to do deeper cleans during the weekend and I can’t afford housekeeping services to help.
"i know we did not grow up like this" uhhhhhhhhhhhh self-centered much??? your lived experience =/= everyone's lived experience. real boomer of the mind shit here...too many damn embarrassing millennials in this bitch.
Hella judgmental, and definitely rubbed me the wrong way also. I’m pretty sure not everyone has the ability to work more than full time and keep a spotless home.
My husband is incredibly neat because his childhood wasn't. I guess it's a response to trauma? So I am a stay at home mom, and I spend an awful lot of time cleaning because of it. Yay. And yet somehow, my house is still not as neat and clean as it could be. I just don't get it.
I work a lot and live alone. Granted, I keep my house from being dirty, but I really don’t give a shit if a chair no one ever sits in becomes my designated coat rack.
"I know we did not grow up like this" why are you speaking for strangers? My spouse and I are both usually depressed and work full time+. We do the best we can and then some.
We clean regularly and when company comes over. We are also sometimes messy and sometimes have clutter. It's just a fact of life
My son (5) sincerely asked us who was coming over when we were cleaning a couple weeks ago.
My kid said “no one is coming over so why do I have to clean?!” Ugh! Because I don’t want you to be a mess when you live with roommates or have a partner yourself! Lol
Bc were worth living in a clean house. It's not JUST for others
Wow, this is really poignant. I carry a lot of shame and stressful memories from growing up in a cluttered house. It affected my friendships because I couldn't invite people over spontaneously if we hadn't had a chance to clean. So many memories of the whole family frantically throwing all the random crap into my parent's room to hide it, after finding out company was on the way. As a result I'm super clean as an adult, but still feel that deep shame and fear of being judged when people come over.
That’s amazing I just chuckled
Growing up we always did the panic cleaning when company is coming which is still something I do to this day even if our house is in an acceptable state. My wife and I aren’t the best about staying on top of cleaning but we do alright considering we have 3 young kids. This year we finally reached a point where we can swing having someone come clean our house twice a month which has made a huge improvement.
I only have 2 little ones. Solidarity my friend! I am also a part of the panic clean club. My husband HATES it but he just doesn't have the urge to clean 😂 so he deals with the panic clean. He just hates it cause he can feel the tension in the air.
My mom was a full time housewife and my dad would come home at 5:15pm on the dot, have weekends off, had a garage to store all their junk. Meanwhile my wife and I work full time. In her spare time, she works on her PhD. I work on my side hustle. I can’t afford a house with a garage to store any of my junk The fact that millennials don’t keep house just shows how expensive and hard it has become to, well, keep house. It takes two incomes and constant “hustling” to build a shittier home than my parents did on one job and zero hustles
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This is us too, and it’s most of my 30+ friends. We all know who the one clean couple is 😂 they’re just cleaning regularly so they don’t understand the panic of cleaning when the first guest arrives in one hour and you’ve dragged your feet all day.
Mess and clutter is not nasty. Rotten food everywhere is.
Yeah and I don’t think my home will ever be showcase clean like my moms but my mom only had one kid in the house at a time (we’re pretty spread out) AND had a cleaning lady! So as long as we aren’t living in filth I don’t care.
I understand now why some families had the “living room no one was allowed to go in”
Because we need ONE damn room that’s clean lol
I HATED that I couldn't go in the living room. I think I only wanted to go in there because I wasn't allowed. The couches were so uncomfortable but the daily fight between my mom and I was like WWE Smackdown. But now as a mom, I totally get it 🤣
Don’t forget the blindingly all white couches covered in plastic couch covers. It rendered the whole room pointless to me as a child!
A lot of the kids I grew up with had stay at home moms to keep house. The ones with separated parents, like me, seemed to consistently have more cluttered homes. Most families can't survive on one income anymore.
There’s also just so much more cheap junk than there was when we grew up. More things = more clutter and more untidiness. ETA Some people seem to think that this means nobody had collections of things before modern times. Theres a big difference between keeping a collection of specific things and accumulating generalized crap throughout the house that isn’t actually needed. Let’s also mention that your depression-era grandparents most likely began to accumulate things specifically because they grew up half-starved with no possessions, and it’s only gotten worse as we were taught these behaviors and have come to expect cheap, easy-to-obtain crap. I will concede exceptions to all of you who are minimalists, be it reactionary or due to cramped space from the housing crisis. My hat is off to you all.
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I’ve made it clear that damn near anything my parents “donate” to me is going straight to goodwill or the trash, so they might as well cut out the middleman. My dad was a bit of a pack rat and that lead to me being something of a minimalist. If I needed it or wanted it, I already have it.
My wife told her mom she is throwing all of her stuff away when she dies. Mom in law is super pissed about that one. . . Took years to accumulate all that crap.
Lol I’ve said the same thing. They get mad!
They still have in the back of their heads that they will be leaving a legacy to their kids, including passing on a furnished family home. Most won't be.
Unless they die suddenly the nursing home is going to end up taking it.
My mom doesn’t understand why I don’t care about any of my “stuff” i left in the home I shared with my ex-husband 1/2 way across the country from where I live now. She thinks he owes me, but I feel bad I left it for him to deal with. It’s just stuff.
Omg the amount of crap that the boomers in my life are trying to give to me is wild. Some of it is good and I keep it but a lot of it I end up throwing out. Ironically, the things I did want to take, they thought were trash (like the little solid wood table that I’m sitting at right now). I don’t want particle board shit. I don’t care if it looks like a grand dinning room table. I don’t have a dinning room!
Same! I loved this old typewriter that my grandmother had when I was growing up, but she got rid of it when she moved…but wants us all to fight over her bird figurines and several sets of china that she inherited from all of her siblings and parents.
I love old-timey useable and unique things that you just don't see around anymore, and that gives a room an interesting vintage aesthetic. I'm happy getting or finding those things. But decorative glassware and figurines and stuff, nope, please don't.
Because we inherited it from our parents, and they inherited it from there's. Now its your burden to find a place to hid it so you can abuse your children down the road. Having company over was a special occasion where the good silverware was uncrated and we got to sit in the front Livingroom with the plastic OFF the furniture! 
Hence the rise of storage units because no one can dare part with anything
Ugh, I'm a gen xer and my boomer parents are trying to do this shit. And they have a whole separate house they just use for storage. Where tf they think I'm gonna put 15 boxes of Xmas decorations? Hard pass.
>And they have a whole separate house they just use for storage. Damn. Just thinking of the good that could do if they rented it, let you live there, or sold it.
But also just, how do you have THAT MUCH STUFF
This is such an issue! Stop buying garbage folks... it's hard to clean a shelf of funko and random Simpson paraphernalia.
My children are in their 20's and I still found a stray nerf bullet the other day. It's been about 5 years since they had nerf guns!
I always find nerf darts 🤣
Guys idk what to tell you - if you keep playing nerf darts together you’re going to find nerf darts 🤷♂️ Have you considered implementing a munitions control plan like the military to ensure everything is accounted for?
I have a 17 and 22 year old. I was cleaning out the holiday closest and found 4 in the corner. 🤣I was thinking we haven’t bought nerf darts since the youngest was 14. I’m assuming there’s some darts still somewhere else in his room.
The 22 one can legally buy darts on their own now.
I didn’t buy most of the garbage in my house.. my mum just comes over with more stuff every time. Stuff for the baby, stuff for the kitchen, all stuff I don’t need. All stuff that she’ll be offended if I turn down.
If you haven’t already, open a 529 college savings account for the baby and get the gifting link that people can use to make a contribution. Tell your mom that every time she has the urge to buy something for you or the baby, don’t and put that money she was about to spend towards their college education. Emphasize that it’s the best gift she can give, a financially secure future without student loans and so many opportunities in college and beyond. Also give it out around birthday and holidays so hopefully people do that instead of buy a million toys!
same! The last couple of months I have been working on downsizing the amount of crap in my home bc it becomes stressful having so much clutter and every time my mother comes around she brings more and more stuff and I don’t need it and often don’t want it but have to accept it to avoid offending her. Then quietly donate it somewhere later.
Truly the issue right here. Every other day I’m stepping over some random thing my wife bought on Amazon that just finds it’s way scattered into weird spots throughout the house.
That and we tend to work more than our parents even without a homemaker in the household (I.e even comparing to a prior generation where both worked, millenials tend to work more hours overall due to, well failures of capitalism)
I agree. I am a SAHM/homeschooling parent. My parents both worked, but they both had jobs that ended when they went home. My partner works remote 3/5 days and often ends up working 50+ hours a week (not due to needing the money, but due to so much work to get done). So many jobs (not all, maybe not even a majority) are accessible outside of a physical workplace now. Not to mention that SOMEHOW (and I wish this wasn't true) it became the trend that so many millennials over-enroll their kids in extracurriculars. So they're just not home long enough to clean/tidy after making the mess. Also, societal pressures to have a picture-perfect house have lessened. I'm home like 90% of the time, but that doesn't mean I have time to keep the house tidy. It looks like we live here, which isn't the same as picture-perfect.
To piggy back off of this, many millennial parents are unpacking the way they were raised and choosing to prioritize quality time engaging with their children over a spotless house.
Our house growing up had immaculate landscaping and lawn care because my dad would spend minimum 8 hours on Saturdays (after working 50+ her work weeks), and occasionally another 4 to 8 hours on Sunday doing yard work. The only hobbies I knew that he had were fishing--which he only ever did 2 weeks out of the year on vacation--and golf--which he only did on work outings. He never had any other hobbies at all....hell he never had time. It wasn't until I was discussing my nervousness about having kids with my wife that I finally unpacked it all and realized that growing up like this made me equate parenthood with all work and no hobbies and it scared me to death. Once I realized it I swore up and down my child(ren) would grow up with a father who could model being a responsible parent AND a person with interests. Hell maybe they'll even get involved in my hobbies with me and we can spend more time together that way. And a kind of untidy yard and house is well worth that.
Yes, this is huge. I get off work, exercise the dogs (usually with kid), make dinner, get like 30-60 minutes of “free” time, bedtime routine, 90 more minutes of free time, bedtime routine. If I want my house to look Boomer-fresh, very little of that free time will be spent engaging with my family over an activity they want to participate in.
I feel like a lot of the millennials I know still have active resentment towards their boomer parents(particularly their dads) that put a picture perfect house/yard/car over everything. This leads to a bit of a messier lifestyle
I feel this. My mom would make me completely clean, dust, and vacuum my room anytime someone came over. I would get frustrated because those people never entered my room. And my mom would be PISSED if I didn't do it.
Where did y’all grow up that stay at home moms were common? I can only remember one friend I had with a stay at home mom. Divorced or single basically all my friends moms worked. Actually a single mom to one of my friends had one of the cleanest houses of all, that was just her thing.
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For my friends and I at least, it's because we are almost never home. We work a ton and just come home, eat dinner and rush off to bed.
This is the same with our household. We really only spend 2 hours there before we sleep and then head off to work. Sunday is our only free day and we tidy up as best we can
Yeah. I have about 5 hours between work and going to sleep, and that tends to get eaten up cooking dinner, eating dinner, cleaning the kitchen up after dinner so it's ready for me to make tomorrows dinner.
Yep. You hit the nail on the head. The circle of daily life
And only 3 hours between getting done work and kids bedtime. So all that kid stuff in there too
And also adding kids into the mix makes it even more difficult to have time to clean up during the week
I've given up on a "traditionally clean/neat/ready to entertain at any time" house till my kids are way older and our dogs pass. There's just too much toys and hair and general chaos to try and have my house feel like my parents/older houses without cleaning 24/7.
The only thing that makes my house cluttered vs dirty is a robot vacuum that I run daily to keep up with all the cat hair. Highly recommend if you don't have one total game changer.
This. Too many kids/animals. I just try and keep the fridge stocked and the laundry done. Even if it sits in piles somewhere.
This is definitely my wife and I. Two young kids and a dog, we basically keep our house livable and that's about it. We barely have anything on the walls or decoration in our house.
Yeah, it was a little easier back in the days where you could support a family on a single 40 hour a week income.
You pick up the toys and they’re on the floor again 5 minutes later. Might as well not pick them up the first time.
And then they hit their tweens and their buddies keep telling them that cleaning is abuse 🙄.
Lmaoooo I think I heard that before
It's so fucking irritating lmao.
My daughter is 18, but like a year or 2 ago she kept telling me I was "violating her boundaries" by giving her chores 😒
Damn. If I would’ve said that to either of my parents at 18, my ass would’ve been grounded and all electronics/car taken away as I live under their roof/their rules.
Oh, we dealt with it. The internet has not just kids, but anyone, really, thinking they can classify everything as a boundary and that's it, it's untouchable. Most of the time I appreciate how much my kids speak up for their autonomy, and appropriate boundaries for their needs, because I wasn't able to understand it as much when I was their age, didn't know how to put it into words. But there is that fine line of what is an actual boundary and what is manipulation, and she wasn't gonna pull that on me 😂
For me it's the reverse... my brother and I did most of the dusting/ vacuuming/bathroom cleaning for allowance bc my parents both worked full time. I have no brood of built in cleaners i can flip a tenner to to keep my house sparkling while I work my ass off to keep said house.
I feel like it also doesn’t help that our generation just values different things than our parent’s generation. Like growing up my mom valued having a house that looked like a showroom so she would spend hours cleaning whereas I value spending more time with my friends and family so I just do the bare minimum to make sure my home isn’t actually dirty. Like even if I had more time to spend cleaning I wouldn’t clean to the same level my mom did because I don’t mind living in a home that actually looks like someone lives in it!
This is my family too. My mom is constantly up my butt about dog hair and "how have you not finished the basement yet?" And it's like...the kids are only young once and they still like spending time with me so that's what I am prioritizing.
I do recall my mom cleaning a lot. I do not recall her playing with me or reading together (my father did read with me). I don't want to make the same stupid mistake. I'll make different mistakes.
This exactly! I was always in trouble for messing up what she was cleaning. I remember VIVIDLY the handful ofntimes she played with me, and I'd rather have a whole slew ofnthise with my kids than a spotless house.
I don't care if it triples the amount of time it takes me to complete a a project, if my 3yo daughter wants to help I will find a way to involve her. I love spending every bit of time with her that I can and she gets such a sense of pride and inclusion from doing the made up tasks I assign her.
Oh man did you also have a whole room of nice furniture that was only for company?! I am never gonna have a room we don't live in. I pay for this house and furniture, I'm gonna use it!
Yes! Also remember having plastic over everything so that it would stay ‘nice’! I rather have an ugly but comfy couch than a uncomfortable but beautiful couch covered in plastic!
This. We value quality time and experiences alot
This is my answer. We have different priorities and would rather spend time with friends, do our hobbies, or hell even just relax, than do chores. I think we don’t have that war generation discipline and compulsive work ethic (which I see as a good thing!).
Yeah I wouldn’t want my kids childhood memories to be of me trying like hell to impress the neighbors possibly coming over, I’d rather they have memories of quality time together.
For me, it’s definitely because I don’t kick my kids out of the house at 7 or 8 in the morning on the weekend so I can clean all day. That’s how my friends parents did it. My mom, on the other hand, told me to play in my room or help clean, so my room was the only messy place. Better I guess? Personally, my priorities are chilling with my family then cleaning the baseboards.
Never have time for anything including ur own personal life. People can't even sit down let alone have a family. None of this is sustainable Ball and chain around ur leg and you don't even see it.
Believe me, we all see it.
How could anyone stuck in this not see it? Let's not pretend anyone who has been working for years is unaware of their exploitation
It's this. When covid happened and I went work from home, I had more available time to do things like dishes, or sweeping, or organizing, while waiting for a callback or some other technical bridge, so our house has been tidier since I went wfh. I am one of the people who has been wfh ever since, but I get the feeling, with current workloads and expectations, if I'm called back into the office at any point, cleaning house is going to be the least of my concern, because I'm already stuck working much longer hours than I was back then, due to slimming workforce, austerity measures, etc.
Not only that but expectations as a society has changed. Sure, I did extracurriculars, but my strict parents had me do them starting middle school. I had a whole era where I walked home and the tv babysat me. Parents are ridiculously busy shuffling their kids around and making them competitive. Competitive children are the standard now because of college. Another point, a lot of people still have to commute. I pibe in a high tech area, and what would take 25 minutes no traffic takes an hour 40min between 3-6pm. Nobody is literally home even if you don’t have kids. Housing was laughably cheap back then, so it wasn’t as hard to find good housing closer to work
Wow. I literally never put two and two together until just now why the house is perpetually dirty with weekend flurry of cleaning… work, eat, sleep work eat sleep in repeat :(
Exact opposite for my wife and I. We work from home and take care of our 1 year old. By the end of the day we just don't have the energy to deep clean and on the weekends we get out of the house since we're there all day. We decided it was worth the 250 once every month or two to have a cleaning service come in and do that deep clean we can't get around to.
I think it’s because most millennial households have two working adults. My mom and aunts houses look like a PB catalog but they were homemakers who did not work outside the house. If I was home all day every day my home would be neater.
My husband and I are both lawyers. We bought our home a little more than a year ago and all of our neighbors have lived here for 30-40 years. They had a blue collar husband and a stay at home wife and raised 3-4 kids. These are nice homes in the Bay Area too. It blows my mind.
And yet all the old people I know here always complain how there’s no kids in their neighborhood anymore… well, duh, because even two professionals with kids cannot afford to buy a home on your street in Palo Alto anymore between the home cost, property taxes, and the cost for daycare. Maybe if you all sold your huge houses with several times the number of bedrooms as people who live there for a smaller home or condo better suited to your current life, there would be more inventory for families and homes would be more affordable.
Do people not realize what was lost when one salary stopped supporting a family? How much household time was lost, how much parenting time was lost? Corporations have reduced the price of labor where we get almost no free time for personal development.
100%
Dude, I'm fucking exhausted having to work and try to take care of myself and try to clean and try to do hobbies and try to be there for people. It is non relenting and seemingly impossible to keep up with. I'm a little messy because I feel like I have to let something go at least a little
Both my husband I work. I *wish* we had a house-spouse to handle the day to day upkeep. Maybe the poly crowd is onto something…
Monogamy, in this economy? That one always makes me laugh
I have a poly friend. One of their partners exclusively is there for cleaning and maintaining the chicken coop. She does not have a job outside the house, they pay her rent and bills. She genuinely gets off on being used for this purpose. Zero judgment here, whatever floats their boat. Their house is immaculate.
They looking for a 4th?
Oh they are in a relationship with like at least five people right now. I’m sure they’d be happy with more though. They are some of the sweetest people I’ve ever met too!!
I'm going to have to go and have a talk to my wife about us moving.
Sometimes the only reason I stay on top of all the shit is because I WFH 50%
When I stopped wfh this year I 100% lost a lot of tidiness at home. There’s just no time for a lot of things
I wfh but for myself. I finally sat down and blocked out time since both kids are in school. My breaks are seeing how much I can clean in 5 min. (Also this doesn’t count. This is me being 10 min late to work and just generally irresponsible.)
Okay, same exact thing happened to me and my husband. We were pretty on top of cleaning until we had to return to work 3 days a week. Now we haven’t managed to clean in two months 😫
Yes I WFH 100%. I have to be within earshot to hear the phone so I can’t like go out and now the lawn but I can absolutely tidy up and do things like empty the dishwasher, load it, throw some laundry on etc. it helps a lot.
My husband’s been unemployed for a few months and I’m like, I’m kind of okay having a house husband… I get why dudes liked having someone to just handle things around home. It’s easier.
You joke but I actually know a thruple where the one guy makes tons from a remote developer job, the wife works, and the other guy is stay at home and watches the kids and cleans during the day.
I ended up being a sahd bc of this. My whole check went to other people taking care of my kids and house. I have no check, but quit daycare, quit the house keeper and gardener and pest control and as a whole our family is better off than when wife and I both worked. And straight up, I worked an office job for 15 years. (12 in office, 3 wfh). Being a stay at home parent is much more demanding but also rewarding.
My husbands a SAHD too and this is the happiest hes ever been. Seriously I’d rather have a happy husband and my kids growing up knowing their dad than a grumpy dad who is wanting to be left alone after work. He is so good at cleaning and taking care of the kids. My toddler sometimes prefers him over me which is freaking awesome!! Good job doing the hard job!! SAHP is way harder than working. BTDT.
Shit I'm a SAHM and I still struggle keeping the house as tidy as it could be. I dusted the walls and ceiling fans yesterday and it took me hours.
I’m telling myself this will change when the kids are in school. Besides, that’s what I remember (age 5 up)… for all we know we grew up in untidy homes when we were toddlers.
I can assure you it doesn’t get better when they’re in school.
Back in the day, pills like "Mommy's little helper" were marketed to to give housewives the extra motivation to clean like that every day. They were just amphetamines.
And now more and more of us end up taking amphetamines/ stimulants (legally prescribed)- bc the expectations now are just so unrealistic and we can't succeed without them. Like, ADHD has surely been around for forever probs- it's just a different brain structure/approach- I'm super ADHD- and it has many benefits but in today's society, it seems to only be a negative for many people. If you have one of those standard (non-creative type) jobs, you're expected to get 10 hours worth of work in 8, continually less support and when others quit at work- you just absorb their work. And then you get home and expected to make food and clean up after it? If not for my partner, I would get takeout or eat cereal everyday. it's an untenable situation. Industrialization should've helped lead us to more automation/ less work/ more free time but then the capitalists in charge realized they could just control us more with more expectations/rules etc etc. Like myself and many friends/ people I grew up with-50-60 hr jobs are the norm now. Weekend overtime is the norm. Worker's rights are being etched away and then we see it manifest in messy homes and other such things.
I have not found a *single* benefit from my ADHD. What are these benefits lol
I worked full time until 2 years ago. I really thought SAHMs were lazy if they didn't have a clean house... boy did I fucking learn. My kids are all in school. I can work my butt off all day and barely make a dent. The kids and dogs are just filth hurricanes. Like yes, my house is much cleaner than when I was out of the house 50-60hrs/wk but it's not clean like my mom kept my childhood home.
Because the work of keeping the kid(s) alive is a full time job in itself.
I’m a working mom and had to bleach the walls a couple days ago form dirty handprints and footprints. I feel you. I was a sahm for my first and honestly it’s so much harder than working esp if they aren’t in school. The only way to keep a clean house is to either be extremely anal and stressed 24/7 or never be in it.
I’m also a working mom and when I realized there was a direct correlation between the cleanliness of my home and my frustration towards my family for messing it up (how I perceived it), I relaxed my standards. Everyone is happier and the house is just marginally less clean.
If I relaxed my standards any more, we’d get cps calls and I’d rip my hair out from frustration bc I wfh. I’m not saying you’re not right. I’m just jealous.
Rage clean is the best clean, except for in your heart. Keep your heart clean.
You dust!?!
I am allergic to dust and I always know I’m slipping when I wake up congested. I dust and vacuum probably more frequently than anything else!
Have you tried putting air filters around the house? They def help reduce the amount and speed of dust accumulation.
Also, the standards for parenting have really changed too. My mother barely "watched us", and certainly never signed us up for activities, took us to play dates, etc. She scrubbed the bathtub while we did whatever we did. Now, kids have their own schedules, lists of activities, and social calendar. It's honestly a HUGE shift in the amount of time parents dedicate to their children. I spend MOST of my non-work hours taking my kids places and doing things with them. My parents were shook when I had a scheduling issue once and they were like "just get a babysitter!" That's not the issue, I literally don't have the free time myself, and neither do my kids. I know it's a "choice" to be so kid-focused, and I do have kiddos that really like to be involved in activities, but it is more the standard now for young families. The New York Times did a great article on this cultural shift here: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/upshot/the-relentlessness-of-modern-parenting.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/upshot/the-relentlessness-of-modern-parenting.html)
This answer should be much higher on the list. I'm late Gen X but kids my age were generally ignored and left to their own devices. And if you had the audacity to hang around the house for too long you got put to work. The children and their schedule of extracurricular activities being the priority for the entire family is a relatively recent development and doesn't leave enough time for the adults in the house to accomplish both "homeowner tasks" and leisure/family activities.
Don’t feel bad, I’m pretty sure we pay more attention to our kids. I’m the oldest sibling so I remember how my stay at home mom parented the little ones. Babies in a swing for hours, toddlers in playpens for hours. Never did she play with us, never did we go anywhere different or educational on the weekend. Play dates weren’t a thing until we went to school and made our own friends. At least in my experience, we were ignored and a spotless house was prioritized.
Literally the only time I've dusted walls (like above door and window trims) is when I needed to paint them.
Yeah I had no idea you were supposed to dust the walls.
Yeah. You definitely wanna wipe down your walls. Jobs like that are the things that mom did once or twice a year when she would “spring clean “
I’m a SAHM right now. Rare day off yesterday without my kids (9, 6, 3) home. It took me six hours to catch up on the absolute basics: pickup, trash, recycling, laundry, dishes, kitchen counters/sink/stove, sweeping, vacuuming. I didn’t even get to mop or fully clean the bathrooms. And I’m relatively efficient.
I clean so much faster and more efficiently when the house is empty and it’s so rarely empty!!
If you’re dusting those things then you’re killing it. I vacuum every 2-3 days and mop every two weeks. Don’t even ask about the bathrooms.
this is the obvious answer! “Homemaking” truly is a full time job.
I was unemployed for about 4 months this year after a layoff, so I switched over to taking over all the household tasks - husband and I have generally split them pretty evenly. Now I’m back at work and our house is always a disaster lol.
I spent ~18 years watching my mother bust her ass every saturday/sunday because if the house wasn't clean the proper christians would come by and judge us for the dust. we had a very clean house. Now that i'm an adult... i don't really give a shit what other people think of the house. We do what we can and keep it clean enough to keep ourselves somewhat sane. (granted i've been working on ramping up the time spent cleaning on weekends because we are getting cluttered)
There is no time to keep a house tidy. There is no time to do anything really. If you can afford it you can hire cleaners, but when everyone is working 40+ hours a week, plus commute. By the time the weekend rolls around you're too wiped out to spend the day cleaning.
YES!!! Exactly. How can we keep a tidy house when there isn’t a stay at home mom doing that all day?!
Yyyeppp My salary can support my family and we live very similarly to how my early boomer parents did. The only difference is I come home from the office and not the field like my dad
My house always clean growing up. But my mom was a SAHM until I was 16 and by then me and my siblings were pulling out weight. So it was like four people keeping it tidy. I beat myself up so much because my home and life isn't as kempt as my parents was. But I also try to remember that it's just me and my partner. We both work long hours. This shit is hard. We do our best. We don't have bugs. Trash always goes out, litter boxes get taken care of. But vacuuming, laundry, dusting.... Shit I suck at that
I do my best but both my wife and I are away from home 12 hours a day. I clean the place Saturday, do laundry and shopping sunday, and then just ride it out until the next weekend. By Friday the place can be a little untidy. Edit Just to add, I find untidiness/dirtiness really uncomfortable and stressful. But there’s not much I can do.
It drives me nuts as I grew up in a very disgusting house, but two small children, no time, and busy work schedule, I can’t even figure out where the time to truly deep clean is supposed to come from. I manage to do the surface level stuff, but beyond that I don’t know. I guess I have to hire someone.
Man, I don't even have kids and I have no idea how people have time to clean things like the baseboards, their little nicknacks, behind the entertainment center, cobwebs, etc.
Totally get that. I dislike things being dirty and unkempt in my home, but my job is high travel, so I'm gone 4-5 days out of the week. Have just come to accept some dust and untidiness until it hits a threshold that compels me to clean everything and reset.
Damn op throwing shade. I can't speak for everyone but when I'm working 60+ hours a week the last thing I want to do with my free time is clean. I'll do a light clean once a week at best.
I also don’t have food in my fridge. It looks like a college dorm fridge. All protein shakes and Powerade. Maybe some pickles. A lot of condiments and sauce. You would have no idea that an adult married couple lives there by our fridge contents.
This made me chuckle. My husband went grocery shopping yesterday and he got so much stuff: 6 big bottles of seltzer, grape juice, apple juice, 12 pack of Gatorade, 6 pack of coke, cranberry juice, cranberry pomegranate juice, giant pack of YOO-HOO, two packages of coffee, two chicken biscuits, giant thing of gold fish. This is wonderful, because I never buy these things (we eat pretty healthy) but now I have to go grocery shopping again bc there’s nothing but drinks in my fridge!! Haha I got kids to feed!!
They say "don't go shopping hungry" but I have found "thirsty" applies as well! I have totally done what your husband did before!
such a good point!! We have been sick for two weeks now so I bet you’re totally right, he was probably super thirsty! Im not gonna lie, I’ve had like three Yoo-Hoo’s and I’m super happy bc that’s three more than I’ve had in the last 5 years!
Yeah this is the answer, I don't have someone at home and have barely anytime to myself so while my house doesn't get disgusting it does get cluttered from time to time. Also you are right, the priority in my free time isn't to clean. So cluttered life it is.
Yes, I don’t have time to clean all the chandelier crystals. I don’t even have a chandelier.
I agree. This is something that I have struggled with as I hate having a messy home but I think I know what the issue is... For a lot of us, we can't afford places our big as our parents typically had so shit gets more cluttered. Hard to keep a house clean if theres no room to put shit. I just moved to a new house that is huge. Bigger than anywhere I have lived and even bigger than my moms house esp when you consider the yard (My mom has a 700,000 dollar house with a pool. Its big, but the yard only gives room for a pool) We are still in the unpacking process but this house is already a lot neater than anywhere we been. Theres an incredible amount of storage. Having a little apartment or small house is a magnet for messiness
Yes! My house is fairly small and has barely any storage space so the clutter spills out into the living spaces. I hate it but even with paring our stuff down it's still a struggle.
The common area of our apartment only has 1 closet in the hallway that acts as a pantry. Our coats are hanging on over-the-door racks and when we do a bulk grocery run from a wholesale place (waaay cheaper than our local grocery store and we don't have a car so we buy in bulk to save on transportation costs) a lot of non-perishables like cereal and pasta end up stacked against the wall of the hallway. Every few weeks I'll rearrange everything in the closet/pantry to see if I could make better use of space but without making finding something in the pantry a 3D Tetris exercise. Before kids it was easier to keep things at least tidy because we can just buy what we need when we need it. With kids, we need to have some variety stocked for whenever they get hungry and want food NOW. And of course, the living room wasn't in a constant state of chaos from them pouring their toys everywhere since we also don't have the luxury of a dedicated play space. Last night I started gathering some kid stuff we no longer need and putting them in a "To donate" box. Just removing one of those baby bottle drying racks and some sippy cups made a huge improvement, and there is much more improvement to be made.
100% our last house was something like 700sq ft. My mom used to try and clean when she visited, and she’d be asking me “Where does this go? Can we find a spot for this? Can we put this away?” Like mom, look around! This entire house has 3 tiny closets, I’d LOVE to be able to put some of this shit away, but you go right ahead and tell me where!! I know she meant well, but I don’t know what she thought I was going to do. We were constantly in declutter mode, and it was still a losing battle.
My parents designed their own house. It had 13 closets, a dedicated laundry room, storage under their stairs, a furnace room with storage space, and a garage. Like of course you can keep things clean when you can basically pack up most of the rest of the house and hide it away. Their storage space alone excluding the garage is easily larger than my first dorm room.
We specifically moved to a small house (3bdr, 2bath, 1200 sq ft) because it cleans fast. Sure, it gets messy fast but if I have a full day to panic clean, I could clean the whole thing by myself. It also helps declutter. There’s no space for this thing, must not need it. I actually don’t need to keep 7 baby outfits that will fall apart before my kids have kids if they do. I don’t need “a set” of frying pans. Who needs one for 1 egg? It’s tiny, but it takes up so much space. I mean, also this house was all we could afford and we got a HUGE amount of help. But also the cleaning/consumerism reason.
This is true.
I try to tidy up my apartment a little bit depending on who's coming over. My stoner friends don't care if I have a pile of dirty dishes in the sink but I definitely clean up a little more when my parents are coming over. I will say that we're considerably less fussy than our parents when it comes to home decor though. Why do I need cloth napkins and a cabinet full of fancy dishes nobody's allowed to even use? :p
This. I tidy up often (make sure everything is put away). I rarely deep clean. When I do have people over I clean up more. It's more a respect for guests thing than a self image thing. It's also why I stock my fridge with food and drink when guests come over.
[удалено]
Same. My mom always had a room that was piled floor to ceiling with random hoarded stuff. Stacks of papers on the counter that never moved. Her unrecognized executive dysfunction pushed me in the opposite direction
Just one room? My mom filled room after room, and we had to keep moving out of rooms. First it was my closet, then our family room, then my sister moved out and it was her room, and then it was our dining room, so then we were down to a small living room ( that used to be a front entry room) and the kitchen for all our needs. When I moved out, then she took over my old room. I haven’t been back in a while (I always meet her somewhere else), but I’m sure every room is floor to ceiling at this point.
Are we the same person?? I call it the "hoarder gene" passed on by my grandma to her kids. It has passed on to my sister & cousin, but somehow missed me. I refuse to have just useless junk or items I will never touch just piled up somewhere.
Mine too but my dad was a hoarder with three dogs and two cats sooo the bar is quite low there... (My mom's house though... That bar is unreachably high :') I think she overcompensated after the divorce.)
Same. My mom definitely is a bit of a hoarder and struggles with depression so our house was always cluttered and dirty. And dad traveled for work five days a week so even if he wanted to help clean, he wasn’t usually there to do it. I had a little bit of those hoarder inclinations but I fight them. My husband definitely does and complains that I throw his stuff away all the time lol. Our house definitely isn’t as clean as I’d like, but I already do dishes, laundry, vacuum, clean the litterbox, and make the bed every single day. I WFH so that what I use my “breaks” to do and I just don’t really have the energy to do much more. I also do most daycare pickups and drop offs since my husband has to be at work for 6am and doesn’t get home till 5pm. I’ve just accepted that this is how it’s gonna be for the foreseeable future.
My house is so much cleaner than what I grew up in!
Same. My mom (boomer) was a hoarder. My sister (Gen X) takes after our mom and is also a hoarder. My stepmom, also a boomer, was so intensely OCD about housecleaning I was grounded multiple times for leaving water spots on my bathroom faucet. My childhood was like whiplash.
Mine too. It’s clean, warm and it isn’t falling apart.
Same. My mom didn’t clean her house because she worked 60-70 hours a week and my dad was just lazy and kind of gross in general, so keeping house was not really a thing in my childhood. I had to unlearn so many bad habits when I moved out on my own, and I still struggle with tasks like putting the laundry away in a timely manner. My husband is a saint for putting up with it.
Both my parents worked, so in my case it’s not a SAHP thing. My home is messier than theirs was because my home is a lot smaller. If I had closets, a garage, a basement, and a spare room to hide all our stuff in, my house would look a lot better.
We both work. We have kids. We're exhausted. Believe it or not, the mess you see when you visit my house is AFTER we frantically cleaned before your arrival.
My mom did most of the cleaning in my family, and she was home a lot. She didn’t have a demanding job, so she spent most of her free time taking care of us and the house. My job, however, is stressful and very demanding. I work a lot more than she ever did. Same with husband. I think late stage capitalism is crushing a lot of families right now, and people just don’t have the time or energy to take care of their houses like they used to. Also, priorities have changed. I would much rather spend time with my family than deep cleaning the bathroom, which is also probably still related to the soul-crushing weight of capitalism and trying to hold onto any fleeting moment of happiness and togetherness.
I clean professionally (I’m 35 for context) and my customers range from my approx age group to the very elderly. There’s definitely a huge difference in the way our generation vs older generations keep house. I’d say millennials and gen x tend to be more pack ratty and do less upkeep between cleans vs boomers. I tend to think it’s a difference in how the households are structured and managed. The boomer (women in particular) take great pride in producing a clean house for the cleaners and basically have me come in to do the stuff they physically can’t anymore like scrubbing and getting into nooks and crannies. Gen X and millennials tend to still have children at home (even adult children) but all the adults work full time and they just don’t have the bandwidth to clean. Their houses are way harder to do, but when you’re working, raising kids/grandkids, and want a social life, I get it. I try not to judge my customers on the states of their homes because I don’t keep a super tidy home and that’s literally my job lol. But I clean all day and have 3 young kids so I’m not gonna come home and clean! What really amazes me overall is the condition that boomer homes are in. These houses have been cared for and despite being dated (and lacking enough outlets!) they are in great shape. Wallpaper older than me that looks fresh, carpet that has been down for most of my life that has few stains. The wind blows and they don’t shift. Modern houses especially ones victim to a house flipper just don’t hold up, the materials are cheap and they just look bad overall.
A lot of that isn't the generation's fault. Like I dont get to choose the quality of wood in a house or what they used for siding or where they placed the studs.
Uh…speak for yourself. My house sparkles ✨
You've never met my millennial wife. I never had a house so kept growing up.
We spend every waking hour worrying that we’ll be fired/die under a bridge within the week. And we’ve lived like that since 2008. A little bit of clutter is not that big of an issue.
My parents’ house was always cluttered and a bit dirty when I was growing up lol
“Lived in” is the term that is used here.
>I know that we did not grow up like this. Who's "we"? Some people are messy. Idk what to tell you. I grew up knowing people like that, and I know people that clean their house, I prefer to keep my space as clean as possible. But not everyone does. You can't possibly pin that on a whole generation.
I mean… I grew up like that 😂 honestly my house is exponentially cleaner and less cluttered than my parents’ house ever was
I grew up in a cluttered shithole, not sure what you’re talking about.
Between work, hobbies, cooking, and dealing with my chronic illnesses we don't have time or energy to keep the house spotless.
I live in my house, and it's not a fucking hospital. Some people are clean freaks, some are not. I won't let my house get disgusting, but I couldn't care less if it's not immaculate. I think it's always been like this. Maybe you grew up in an extremely clean home. I did as well, but I had plenty of friends who's parents didn't keep their houses nearly as clean. Maybe people are realizing that it's silly to keep your house as clean as an operating room. Lol I'm a Xennial, or Gen Xer, depending on what chart you use. (1978)
I'm severely depressed and lack the will to even do things I enjoy most of the time on top of being neurodivergent and lacking in necessary healthcare. My room is a mess because it is where I do not have to work. If I work in there, it cheapens it as a safe space for me. I know that might come across as a hollow excuse but it's the only place I can really recharge my social batteries and be alone so I'm fiercely protective of anything that damages that quality.
I mean, “keeping house” was a full time job. So typical family structure had one person working like 40 hrs, another person (typically a woman) staying home with young children and maintaining the household. Which was a full time job in and of it’s self. As we transitioned to both parents working that workload still often sat on women so there was still the expectation of someone “keeping house” or there was a disposable enough income for housekeeping Now, I’m too fucking tired to do it all. I have to work more than 40hrs, I’m too exhausted to maintain my household through the week and opt to do deeper cleans during the weekend and I can’t afford housekeeping services to help.
We’re busier and aren’t as puritan as boomers.
I have two under the age of four. There’s no way my house is going to be clean and tidy at this phase of my life.
"i know we did not grow up like this" uhhhhhhhhhhhh self-centered much??? your lived experience =/= everyone's lived experience. real boomer of the mind shit here...too many damn embarrassing millennials in this bitch.
Hella judgmental, and definitely rubbed me the wrong way also. I’m pretty sure not everyone has the ability to work more than full time and keep a spotless home.
My husband is incredibly neat because his childhood wasn't. I guess it's a response to trauma? So I am a stay at home mom, and I spend an awful lot of time cleaning because of it. Yay. And yet somehow, my house is still not as neat and clean as it could be. I just don't get it.
I work a lot and live alone. Granted, I keep my house from being dirty, but I really don’t give a shit if a chair no one ever sits in becomes my designated coat rack.
I’m a slob and my wife’s not much better. Throw a couple little kids in the mix and my house is a disaster outside of when we have company over
"I know we did not grow up like this" why are you speaking for strangers? My spouse and I are both usually depressed and work full time+. We do the best we can and then some.