Depends on the person. That's the sort of very nice offer that is likely to make me feel super inadequate and like I am being adjudged a slob. I say this from experience.
(Doing the dishes/cleaning the kitchen isn't so bad if, say, you've just shared a meal and say, "Hey, you go relax a little, I'll take care of the dishes.")
And yes, I *am* getting a little anxious just thinking this through hypothetically.
And yes, I *am* getting a little anxious just thinking this through hypothetically.
I will admit that I tend to think, "yes everything is cluttered, but if you try to clean than I won't be able to find anything." So an offer of cleaning, while very nice, would make me nervous as well.
1: This seems like a very normal reaction to me, even though one can see that such an offer could be a kindness.
My daughter offered, a few times, to help me organize and donate the DE's clothing and other stuff that was going to the AHF Out Of The Closet stores. There was no way that was going to happen, I got all sorts of twitchy about losing something that might have deep meaning to me or her. As it was, there was one skirt with embroidered art by SF artists back the 70s that I found and saved. The rest I got rid of.
Otherwise, I'm with Di & Nick. Don't mess with my stuff unless it's a washing of the dishes you just used or that sort of thing.
"Let me warm up the bed" may or may not be welcome.
We were on holiday once and my mum had my keys. She came round and left bread and milk for us for our return, and also cleaned the bathroom. I didn't know whether to be grateful or embarrassed.
Cleaning up a kitchen or doing the washing up seems normal if you are in someone's house. Taking it further than that might be odd.
If you offer to help, you just get a polite refusal. So don't make an offer, just do it.
This post inspired me to go do the dishes in my mom's kitchen.
I think the overall welcomeness of such a gesture probably varies wildly, depending on the slovenliness of the potential recipient, the degree of intimacy in the recipient's relationship with the potential cleaner, and the rarity of time spent together.
I don't think I have much of the reaction in (1) though, mainly because I am not very ashamed of what a slob I am. People who want to be in a clean kitchen can go hang out in their own kitchens. People who want to hang out in my kitchen can suck it up.
She came round and left bread and milk for us for our return
A friend of mine went into our other friends' house just before they got back from a big trip and long plane trip. He fried them a plate of bacon and left, such that it was still warm and on the counter when they got home.
I think that was awfully sweet, Stanley. And I think perhaps that it applies best to partners you're living with - after all, um - they probably know what a slob you are already (or not), so it's not going to be a surprise. Though, I admit that I tend to get sort of competitive about cleaning; if my partner cleans the tub then I feel the need to do the sink, etc.
Just before ms bill and I got engaged, we stayed at my parents' house while they were visiting Ireland. My mother had met ms bill once, my dad hadn't met her. When my parents returned, we met them at the airport and drove them home. We had cleaned the house, cut the grass, washed the car, and had cooked dinner for them. Ice instantly broken with ms bill - my parents couldn't have been more delighted. There was a lot of "You're our guest, you shouldn't have done all this" directed to her, and "She's a guest, how could you have let her do all that " directed to me. Strangely, nobody assumed/inferred that I had done anything.
Sometimes when I feel like somebody I know is really overwhelmed with the serious decisions facing them, I'll post links to some shoes they could potentially buy.
11: While that's nice, I guess, it would make me terribly nervous unless accompanied by an explanatory note.
LB, no one who means you harm would leave you bacon.
I tend to get sort of competitive about cleaning
This is me. I'm fairly neat, but I put off cleaning for as long as hygienically possible so when living alone I tend to end up wallowing in filth. But if someone else starts cleaning, I'll be damned if they're going to have that over me.
I want everyone to know that I am feeling a little overwhelmed and would not feel at all weird if you came over and cleaned my bathroom.
Ok ordinarily I would feel weird, but now that the issue is out on the table between all of us, I think I can get over that.
It is a crowd where people are in and out of each other's houses a lot. The only real mystery would be figuring out which of the many people it could have been had actually left the bacon.
Anyone who wants to swing by and clean my apartment should feel free to do so on the condition that they clean the whole thing. None of this clean a patch and then leave it to stand in stark contrast to the rest of the filth so I feel guilt and shame and all manner of horrible feelings and don't you dare suggest I just clean the rest myself. That's not how it works.
I tend to get sort of competitive about cleaning
Who are you freaks?!
I am right up there with apostropher on towel folding, though.
16: Not necessarily so. That's an elementary ploy mentioned early on in the Assassin's Handbook.
21: "None of this clean a patch and then leave it to stand in stark contrast..."
Yeah. I discovered recently that the linoleum in the kitchen isn't dark gray. Now it's white for a short time and then it's white with gray footprints. It looked better before I got ambitious with the cleaning gear.
You'd have to know someone really well, and have a really good read on whether they've made peace with needing this kind of help, before you offer it. This is one case where I think the behavior is really pretty strongly gendered. Women of pretty much all ages will very commonly regard it as some sort of passive-aggressive insult and indication of judgment (cf. Di's opening few comments), and will especially tend to suspect other women of this. Far fewer dudes would object, I think, as we're generally not bombarded from an early age with the notion of our being homemakers and most of us are frankly relieved to have someone else pitch in*.
(* Some of us, by many accounts, are even raised not doing chores at all? I find this unimaginable but apparently there are like, dudes who can't work a washing machine because their mother always did it for them, or something? I want to think that's urban myth, but depressingly, I suspect it might actually be true in some cases.)
Of course, all bets are off if it's an extreme kind of "particularly overwhelmed" like "home with new baby" or "undergoing chemo."
I could have written 17, so perhaps there's a hidden subcomponent of being competitively clean - will also wallow in filth if left to own devices. (I'm very neat, but not very clean.) I think my reaction to someone cleaning for me is somehow related to say, Di's - it's about not wanting to have someone else deal with my filth (that I've probably left too long). However, I have to admit that lately I've been learning to let someone else clean for me and it's kind of nice. Instead, I organize.
I think that if I had just had a baby and was still exhausted and sleep deprived, and a very good friend came over and said "Go lie down and rest" and then did dishes or laundry, I'd be very grateful.
MY BF's parents clean when they visit. I appreciate it up to a point-- not when they big him about the pile of papers on the desk and not when they use an ammonia based cleaner on a picture frame.
His Mom is good at organizing stuff though, so I do appreciate that some.
Women of pretty much all ages will very commonly regard it as some sort of passive-aggressive insult and indication of judgment (cf. Di's opening few comments), and will especially tend to suspect other women of this.
I guess I have good friends because this is making me laugh and remember the time my friend cleaned the inside of my microwave.
6: If I were in a similar situation, I don't think that I would want anyone else making the decisions, but I might want someone there with me for the company.
My friend, who lost her baby last year and has another baby due pretty soon, just moved into a new place and was complaining about people helping out her partner with stuff, but not offering to come over an help her clean the mouse shit out of her cupboards. So I offered, but then she backed out at the last minute. I think for non-embarrassment reasons though. Perhaps I will still be able to get over there some time before the baby is born.
Yesterday was the first anniversary of his birth. So next Thursday is the anniversary of his death. Depressing.
Oh Natilo, anniversaries are shit. How has the pregnancy been? My friend whose baby died last April is also pregnant again (thank god) and the whole thing seems like a massive exercise in doublethink.
It's actually been pretty okay. No serious problems that I've heard of. And it was instrumental at shaking them out of their depression. We were pretty worried for awhile there. Pregnancy is technically full term now, so hopefully everything is going to work out. They're doing it at home this time, as the experience at the hospital, post-partum, was exceedingly vexing. And it's a girl this time, so that's been a comfort, in terms of not being exactly the same as the poor little fellow. We hosted the shower last weekend, which went pretty okay. I mean, irritating things happened, but nobody burst into tears or screamed at anyone, so I counted it a success.
31: Not me. Other people around then would have been a distraction and annoyance. I never did get any checks in the "Plays well with others" column.
(My son did some company-keeping earlier in the hospital and that was helpful 'cause he understood all the medical aspects and could hear what the docs were mumbling when I couldn't. But that was mostly waiting around, not doing anything with some objective in mind.)
33: Yeah, some anniversaries are exceedingly sad. I go for the "wallow in it" theory, and do so until I get tired of my own repetitive thinking. The "Don't think about it" technique doesn't work for me at all.
I tend to go with the "wallow in it" approach as well; avoidance is no good, might as well think and brood and be private with yourself on the matter until you decide to brush yourself off again, not that thinking and brooding is over, but for now, okay.
On the cleaning front, hm, I'm roughly with those who say it feels like a rebuke, unless it's just dishes.
It's also a bit amusing that people seem to have different notions of what should be clean and what can be let go: my brother has a thing about bathroom mirrors. Does your bathroom mirror have some smears or perhaps toothpaste spray here and there on it? Dear brother will be out with the windex by the end of the day. It's difficult to mind that; it does look better without those little specks on it.
This thread is reminding me of the section in Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions (about being the single parent of an infant) and how one of the most loving and wonderful things a friend did for her when she was exhausted and at the end of her rope with a newborn was to come over and scrub the bathroom.
I'm with everyone who says that this is an extremely context-dependent definition of "helpful," though. There are people I wouldn't mind have cleaning my bathroom, but I can count them on the finger of one hand.
I find this unimaginable but apparently there are like, dudes who can't work a washing machine because their mother always did it for them, or something?
Huh, well, when I moved out I had to learn how to use a washing machine because at home I'd always washed my clothes by hand and hung them out to line dry. YMMV.
40: You had a line? I had to wear mine around wet until they dried out on their own.
40: The machine was easy. Figuring out which of the many mysterious chemicals on hand would clean clothes without eating them and which would produce clouds of toxic gas was more fraught.
The DE had a habit of transferring cleaning supplies from their original cardboard boxes into plastic containers of different shapes and colors and then never get around to labeling them. Why bother, SHE knew what they were. (It's an amusing memory now, not so much last December.)
Yeah. I discovered recently that the linoleum in the kitchen isn't dark gray.
We have tiles in the kitchen that are just a bit textured, mimicking their having been cut from stone or something. So of course dirt gathers around the texturing, but I'm pretty sure they also have some shading there as well. You can never be quite sure if you've gotten all the layers of grime off.
I was grateful when apo came over and gave my mom a sponge bath.
and then never get around to labeling them
I do this with dried herbs and spices. I don't know why people can't tell that that is oregano, and that is basil, while that is obviously cumin.
And why people can't determine which jar is the quinoa and which is the sesame seeds is beyond me.
I discovered recently that the linoleum in the kitchen isn't dark gravy.
Try as I might, I can't not read this sentence this way.
Due to some major work commitments, I have cleaned nothing beyond dishes and kitchen counters for 3 weeks. Lots of recovery to be done this weekend. I may need to dip into the Xanax.
Once upon a time, a certain someone took it upon himself to organize all of my books while I was at school, in order to make their arrangement more aesthetically pleasing and helpful to the time-pressed academic. Finding no particular theme among my books, he ordered them by height and width on all the shelves. And it was pleasing aesthetically. But it was useless to me, as my primary organizational principle was to remember where a book should be by where I had last put it.
(I also remember where citations are by how far they are in the book; this became obvious once I purchased a Kindle and found it much harder to track what had happened where in a story. Apparently, I'm made of memory palace, or my memory is actually in my fingers.)
So my office is to be left alone. Organizing and cleaning the rest of the house? Cannot imagine the circumstances under which I would be displeased.
If what I need is a single item, like an oven, cleaned very, very thoroughly, marijuana works very well.
I have a 2-story, 4Br to clean. Amphetamines would probably be the only shot.
51: Ooh, I keep forgetting to see if I can get some.
Yeah, amphetamines work too.
49: My second year at Last Chance Community College, I was allowed to move from an office with no windows to an office with windows. The switch happened over the summer, though, while I was visiting the barren northern outpost that is home to Stuffwhitepeople Like University. As a result, my dean took it upon himself to personally move my office, with all its books and files, from one room to the other.
"I knew I would either be a hero or the worst person ever for doing this," he informed me. It was easy to call him a hero, because since the demise of my research career, none of my crap has had any organizational system whatsoever. He's also just a swell dude.
(I also remember where citations are by how far they are in the book; this became obvious once I purchased a Kindle and found it much harder to track what had happened where in a story. Apparently, I'm made of memory palace, or my memory is actually in my fingers.)
Me too. And I never think of bookmarking anything until too late.
Anyone who wants to passive-aggressively clean my house is welcome to do so. Go ahead and judge me, as long as you really scrub the hell out of the kitchen floor.
55: Ancient history, babe. You're the only one for me, now.
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Just watched the Wim Wenders Pina Bausch movie. OMG. Please please please let it come somewhere in the Boston area in 3D. !!!!
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... heart Wim Wenders.
Hope you all enjoyed that deliberate, suspense building pause.
Seriously, I think this might be the best Wim Wenders film I've seen. And this coming from someone who couldn't possibly love 1. Berlin and 2. Bruno Ganz any more than I already do.
I have a maid. one of the fraught topics to begin with is that someone else will be in your house cleaning your bathroom all the time! well, husband x found this fraught. various branches of my family have always had loyal retainers/live-in help, so I thought it perfectly normal. it went very much against the grain of husband x's modest oregon upbringing to do this, but we originally hired someone just a few weeks before girl x was born, so I was hard to argue with.
the thing that is difficult and important is to teach your children to treat this person with respect. our previous maid was with us for 9 years, we had a huge blow-up, and she retired to the philippines to the house we built for her there (as we planned.) she used to yell at the children too much; this was part of the problem. our current maid is a lovely, thoughtful person but shy and self-effacing. my husband caught the girls talking to her in a completely inappropriate tone the other morning in the rush before school and we had to have a big discussion about it. it is the single biggest selling point of narnia that we can afford this. I am too sick to run the household and have a job too. plus, I'm telling you: everything is perfectly clean all the time, except for things that are my own fault: piles of mail, etc.
I'm sad because my stupid arthritis problems mean I can never dance again, something I'm good at, and which I enjoy very much. :-( [I call front-page poster's right to ignore emoticon ban]. I guess I can do like my sister, take a ton of painkillers, dance anyway, and then suffer the consequences.
Rheumatoid or osteo? A good friend has psoriatic arthrits, whic I gather is akin to Rheumatoid since both are autoimmune rather than wear-and-tear varieties. There's a whole range of options being just straight-pain killers. Immune suppressants, biologic drugs, and so on. of course ther all present their own risks. Still, given what you've shared as of late, I'd be carefull about concluding you need massive doses of painkillers. You know, perhaps, that physical pain can be a somatic symptom of depression and you don't want you body seducing you down a path that you might not choose under different emotional circumstances: Or you might! not meaning to sound prescriptive. Just, hey have you considered...
64: What kind of arthritis? I have psoriatic arthritis (so bad a couple of my vertebrae have auto-fused) and like Di said there are a whole host of options to treat it. There were a bunch of things I thought I'd never be able to do again, but the drugs I'm on have let me do basically all of them.
it is the single biggest selling point of narnia that we can afford this.
De gustibus, but I really have to cast a vote for the talking animals, particularly the swashbuckling mice. Those little fellas are adorable.
And, you know, the allegorical lion.
(Aside: I wonder whether I never suffered the stereotypical progressive's hysterical disappointment and disillusion with C.S. Lewis cough Neil Gaiman cough because my parents were relaxedly candid about the Jesus part.)
oh yeah, aslan of course, I thought that went without saying. and the fauns. rheumatoid. my immune system went and ate all my cartilage and I was using it. seriously, it's the war of all against all in here, I'm telling you. I hear you di, my psych says maybe after I do this I'll feel physically better too. well, it's making me feel worse now, so, you never know. maybe I'll find a unicorn.
and high heels! I shouldn't be wearing them? do you know how many fucking amazing shoes I have?
Cold. Always winter, never Christmas.
To the OP, most of my time in my doctoral program was pretty much like a constant low-level (sometimes not-so-low-level) depression, brought on by poverty, overwork, living situation, loneliness, and more poverty. I went without gas in my kitchen for a really long time, like well over a year, that I've now blocked out. I cook every single day. It's what I do. But the gas bill was something I just couldn't stay on top of. I've always been messy, but in my quarters in Park Slope that easily turned into something like squalor. If someone had offered to come over and clean my apartment, I would have torn their head off and shit down their neck, though.
I think that's the big difference between something happening, like, wow, you're so stressed, or you were sick and need a hand, and depression+poverty, which makes it feel condescending. My roommate from my last apartment helped me clean and pack up in my previous one, and, because she doesn't own any things, has never lived anywhere for more than a year, and responds to depression by cleaning the house and going to yoga, she just understand why the back of my closet had stuff I hadn't seen or cleaned in six years. It was really nice having her help at the time, but I think she was so traumatized by it that she continues to bring it up in conversation. I'm sure she understands that what she's bringing up is six years of bare survival, pain, and fear of intimacy. Why do I fear intimacy? Because people, once they get to know, can't believe how fucking awful you are, and bring it up all the time.
If you're referring to, like, being at your girlfriend's house and she's just got to look over these papers for work but there are dishes in the sink and you're like, "I'll do them!" that's just nice. The people who really need someone to come in and take care of things, because they'll never ever get on top of it, should really spring for a professional who won't shame you about it for the rest of your fucking life. "Remember that time when you were so depressed for all those years and you stopped really seeing the place you lived in and rarely took out the recycling and stopped paying your bills and...?"
74.2 "she just understand" s/b "she just didn't understand"
we had to have a big discussion about it
i think it's a good thing creating a job for the maid or paying for her house, but on the other hand for your children it would always have some corrupting influence, having servants, doesnt matter do you lecture them or not on the matter
if the child is of the school age, why not allow them to have care of their things, of their room, and make them responsible for the some collective share of the household chores, preparing the breakfast/dinner, taking out the garbage etc two adolescent girls could be perfectly capable of doing such things
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I see the Obama re-election committee, sadder but wiser, without optimism but only a pragmatic moderated (I'm still banned) moderate modesty, is gearing up over at the EotAW.
Jill Stein, Massachusetts, Green. Vote for not evil.
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Thanks! I didn't know they were back.
74.2 Also, "I'm sure she understands" s/b "I'm not sure she understands." Wow, how passive-aggressive am I today?
Like the fit2fat2fit thing, I do think it is important for the cleaner-helper person to be someone who has lived in a too-dirty place at some point in their lives. Being told by someone who has always been "good" in some way that they cannot believe you can stand your life makes you want to kill yourself, or them.
that she continues to bring it up in conversation
This!
I have never had someone offer help who didn't then feel compelled for years on end to keep discussing how many shoes I have or how the cheese grater somehow wound up in the TV cabinet or how maybe I should be on Hoarders hahahahajustkiddingbutnotseriously. I have (had) some seriously shitty friends over the years.
Sometimes I find myself thinking AWB and I are like the same person. And then I remember she is really fun and I am kind of a fun-hater.
Yeah, and then there are the subtle suggestions ha ha that you haven't really changed when you have. But ha ha you must have cleaned up a lot before I got here / oh how long will that "working out" thing last really / etc. Like my mom, I find it so annoying how people behave when I try to make a change in my life that it makes me want to retreat to old ways. I think I've told the story here before about how my mom once lost about 15 pounds, and then some really thin guy at church noticed and said, "Good for you! Keep up the good work!" So she went home, made a big plate of nachos, muttered "fuck you," and gained it all back in a month. I'm not quite as bad as my mom, but condescension makes me incredibly stabby.
Also, I apparently decided that the way to cope with my current bout of anxiety was to buy a TV.
82: I am fun in short bursts. Most of the time I promise I am incredibly lame.
83: "I find it so annoying how people behave when I try to make a change in my life..."
Precisely how should they behave? Pretend not to notice at all? I mean, 15 lbs down does tend to be visible even on a very large close relative of mine. If I want to encourage him without risking his having a nacho attack, what do I say?
Or is this one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations? If so, I won't play that game more than once.
Or is this one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations? If so, I won't play that game more than once.
Yes it is. Most people like it to be noticed, some of us hate it to be noticed. There's no pattern and there's no way for anyone to know what sort of reaction or absence of reaction will result in rage and hatred.
86: I always say something that might or might not be weight related. Something like "you been working out?" or "you look great now that you've got some decent clothes."
88
How about "You look different, have you put on weight or something?"?
88: Yeah, an off-point compliment indicating "I've noticed something's changed in a good way, but I can't pin it down" lets someone who doesn't want to talk about it ignore it, and someone who wants strokes for the weightloss to get some graceful bragging in by setting you straight. But if you can't do that gracefully or it's too phony for you, probably best not to say anything.
I knew a guy who could strike women dumb with an opening gambit of "Hey Skinny!" The plausible levels of irony are befuddling.
88: "did you finally get that thing removed?"
90: Ah! I can do off-point in a good way. "The docs got that whole tumor out and you're back at work already?"
74: I have perhaps told you this story, but my dearest friends in Chicago never saw my apartment because some part of me is certain that if people saw how I live, they would always secretly think of me with horror and pity. It was to the point that they apparently had a parlor game of trying to imagine my apartment.
Dating has led to slightly better conduct. Long distance dating, to slightly worse than better. I do have the irrational sense of being wired differently than tidy people, like it's not something I could change.
95: Aw. Smearcase understands me. I could easily live in a giant pile of laundry and paper.
Oudemia is secretly a cat! Or at least, I'm pretty sure that's my cat's dream world.
88: "Wow, our band teacher sure was right when he said you'd be hot someday."
97: Ha! No, I need way too much affirmation. I am a filthy little puppy. Excuse me while I go roll in some offal. I'm good, right?
99: My cat needs constant assurances of love. But she's a strange cat-dog hybrid, complete with fetch.
I am the person who will help you clean. I am a mostly-slob who is pretty good at cleaning. Like, I will clean for 8 hours straight until everything looks good. I have seen it all. I have dated and been related to many people with varying problems (mostly depression and/or ADHD) that made them unable to keep a clean house, to the point where things got so bad that eventually they needed to call in reinforcements. The prospect of moving out of her semi-hoarded and very messy/dirty apartment was so intimidating to my sister that she stayed there for 5 years even though she really wanted and needed to move the entire time. Eventually I flew out and together we got the thing cleaned and packed and her into a new place.
I often find that helping get a place from bad to okay is mostly a question of giving commands and being there. At some point people get to that point of overwhelmed where they look around and they literally can not think--it's just like the shit shuts down when you try to think about solving the problem. So my job is to work myself, and give orders. Now clean the stove with a sponge and this cleaner until it looks good. Now separate these books into piles of give away and keep until you are done. Now sweep.
Those people who offer to help clean but then talk about how horrible the place was before the cleaning are the worst. I know many of them. It's like, DUDE. Do you not understand that that makes the person feel worse? Even if you are traumatized, keep that shit to yourself.
I should hire myself out as a consultant.
I am damaged in my sense of what counts as unacceptably messy by the combination of (a) best friend and former roommate who is an incredible, incredible packrat; (b) another very close friend whose place is always incredibly, perfectly immaculate and who would always rather have you go over to her (perfect) place than go over to your (imperfect) place; and (c) a grandmother whose house was possibly even more immaculate than friend b's is.
Is it more normal to be in constant danger of being eaten by your piles of stuff, or to maintain a state of pristine perfection? When I visit friends with piles of books and used teacups all around, I think it's cozy. But for my own place there is always a tension between cozy and: You aren't going to walk away while there are still crumbs on the table, are you? Why is the floor in your utility room so grubby? ARE YOU JUST DISGUSTING OR WHAT?
This is not to say, by the way, that we do not have weird piles of things. We do. The tops of dressers and other cupboards are all little clutter-worlds of mystery.
And the top of my oven right now is shamefully besmirched! But I would rather sit here than fix it. My grandmother would NEVER. I cannot even imagine.
OT: You know how spaghetti squash turns into ribbons when you scrape it? Apparently, there are pumpkins like that and it is hard to make them into a jack-o-lantern.
104: CA's mother is like this. You seriously have to watch your wineglass because it will be washed, dried, and put away if it sits for 5 minutes.
Or maybe she is just taking away my wineglass.
I also decided that I would stop feeling jealous of people whose houses were immaculately clean. Because the level of stress that things being slightly out of place/slightly dirty must cause you that you go to the lengths you do to keep it looking perfect, is not a thing that I want to deal with. In short, everyone has issues. The end.
I often find that helping get a place from bad to okay is mostly a question of giving commands and being there. At some point people get to that point of overwhelmed where they look around and they literally can not think--it's just like the shit shuts down when you try to think about solving the problem.
This is the core of my slovenliness -- that if the place gets past a point, I can't conceive of what I would do that would make it better. (And why I can successfully clean kitchens and bathrooms: the tasks seem more defined somehow.)
Living with Buck has helped -- he generally keeps the place tidy enough that I'm used to fairly tidy as a norm, and if I need to clean up without him I've learned to fake it by pretending I'm him, and just cleaning random items without thinking too hard about it, and then if I do that for long enough it works. But it's not natural for me.
Someone like you acting as a foreman would be very helpful.
I once read about a Dutch woman who married an American, came to the U.S. in the '50s and stunned her fellow housewives with her exacting housecleaning habits, including slipping an oiled goose feather through big old-fashioned keyholes to catch the invisible dust and dirt therein.
My mother was never one of the best housekeepers around here, which meant that other people's kids would come over and play with use since they couldn't play in their perfect homes.
When she was dying she couldn't clean even up to her own standard, and that embarrassed her. There were certain people who she didn't want to have visit for that reason, which made me sad. Hopefully she really just didn't like them enough and wasn't really worrying about appearances.
In her book Cultural Misunderstandings Raymonde Carroll (a French anthropologist who taught at Oberlin IIRC) uses this very example as an example of French-American differences. According to her, between good friends in France this kind of housecleaning offer, completely uninvited, would be quite ordinary and gratefully accepted. Or even more intrusive offers of help.
Americans are incredibly protective of their own autonomy and personal space, and this includes resenting unsolicited advice.
That's too bad, because most Americans could stand to lose a few pounds, get a new haircut and maybe change their household linens more often.
Someone should have mentioned Quentin Crisp by now.
One piece of cleaning advice that I got from somewhere on the internet or other that I have found very helpful is to divide the house into 4 important zones, i.e. kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room. Whatever is the most essential to get clean. Get a timer. For 15 minutes just clean whatever strikes you as needing cleaning in the first zone. do dishes, pick up trash, put dirty clothes in laundry, scrub toilet. Then when timer goes off stop what you're doing and go to the next zone. Repeat. After 1 hour take a 15 minute break and just sit there, eat a snack, surf the internet, whatever. When the timer goes off just start again.
If you do this for several hours things will improve. I find that that, for a lot of people, gets over the frustration that comes with not getting something "done" that causes them to just stop and give up.
This cleaning advice brought to you by someone who had to learn how to clean as an adult, having grown up with a maid. And who is a natural slob. Systems are the key.
113: It would be oversensitive of me to take this as a targeted personal insult, but I plan to anyway.
115: "Systems are the key."
Yeah. For a while last year I was confusing strategy with tactics and getting nowhere. The goal was clear, I had rearrange my life to be able live alone. After that, I started with "Get this place clean and organized". That didn't help much.
Breaking that down into "Kill the mutating monsters growing in the sink" and then "Kill the science experiments in the fridge" and then "Do the same for the freezer" and so on worked. I just kept breaking things down until I hit something specific to do, and if I found I needed a tool I didn't have, I made another job, like "Get more bleach".
There's nothing new about this, it's what I've done forever when solving problems in other areas, I just never had domestic management as my responsibility before.
In our house we have "five minute clean ups." We set the timer for five minutes and everyone has to clean the whole time. It can motivate getting a surprising amount done very quickly.
The trick to clean is a big basement so you can toss all the dirty crap downstairs.
119: My son and his friends did that and every time they threw down a bag of garbage they could hear the rats rustling around.
That is a whole different level of denial than I was thinking of.
Not that I don't appreciate attempts to lower the bar.
I could have written every word of 110. I just get paralyzed around messes and avoid, avoid, avoid.
I think I love you all after this thread.
I don't want love. I want a clean basement.
That sounds like the teaser from the worst holiday special ever.
If you have to use bleach or other strong chemicals, you need to change into your grubby clothes. This is a major disincentive for me and keeps me from cleaning the bathroom as often as I would like. (I actually use fairly natural toilet bowl cleaner, but the politics of cleaning the bathroom in my place are fraught.)
resenting unsolicited advice.
The problem is that a lot of advice is expressed and interpreted in ways that imply criticism of one's competence or character. Like with advice about cleaning, often there's this implicit message that you're just lazy, otherwise you would have figured this out yourself, or learned it from experience. But 115/117 are right, there totally is non-obvious technique for these things. Moving house is another example... professional movers are amazingly fast, and it is obviously a learned skill, not just some natural talent.
"If you have to use bleach or other strong chemicals, you need to change into your will create some grubby clothes."
Fixed. From experience with auto battery acid about 55 years ago.
I think battery acid is too strong to clean the toilet.
130:Pumice stick. The pumice-infused sponges, and everything else, ain't worth a damn.
Not on toilets, but everything else in a bathroom surrenders to those micro-fiber thingies.
Note:no mention of soaps or cleaners. Don't matter. Hot water and muscles are what cleans.
Fun benefit of cleaning: found a breakup note Rory wrote to a boy. So damned mature and compassionate. I'm proud, and glad at least one of us has her romantic shit together.
If you found the mature note, that means she did not send it.
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Deploying my crack rationalization skills, I have decided that I have met my grading goals for the weekend.
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You could always decide you really need to clean the house. That's how I used avoid doing assignments.
Crack rationalization: "My dopamine levels are really low right now, so just this once..."
Crack rationalisation: "My mom has been working too hard and could use the sick leave while her spine heals..."
Crack Rationalization: Philly doesn't deserve a nice bell.
Crack Rationalization: Those other gangs are wearing 'em that low, I guess we should too.
Crack Rationalization: The Ring is mine because I want it and I've carried it a long way.
Meh. She wrote it. That alone is awesome. She did break it off and they are still friends.
You will all also be shocked to here that my recent shot at a second chance was ill-advised.
So it's okay if there are actual spider-webs in my house? Thank god.
This place rocks. But I had to Google to understand Frodo's.
As long as your dwarfs are accounted for, no worries.
It's Dwarves, please. This is Middle Earth, we are talking about.
Yeah Bilbo--if that is your real name--it's like we didn't just discuss this.
You will all also be shocked to here
I have been enjoying the similarities in the stories posted http://actuallyyourethe47percent.tumblr.com/
142, 149: I was definitely shocked to there.
I have a feeling that what some here count as messy, slovenly housekeeping is of an order a level or two above my own practice. It's a bit like listening to a "OMG, I am so fat!" ... "No, I'm so fat too, more, as much!!" ... conversation. Jeepers. It makes me nervous about my cobwebs. There are no crumbs on my kitchen countertops, anyway, I tell you what.
Trust me, by my standards, you're almost certainly doing fine. Snowdrifts of dog hair, oddly sticky areas of the kitchen floor, rugs purchased specifically for the stain-hiding virtues of their patterns...
Trust me, by my standards, you're almost certainly doing fine. Snowdrifts of dog hair, oddly sticky areas of the kitchen floor, rugs purchased specifically for the stain-hiding virtues of their patterns...
The dust made me spell dwarves wrong.
151: Not to worry, I've opened the Overton window for you. Though the cats do keep any spiders above head height so I don't have to deal with those at all.
God. Now I'm kind of slapping myself around about this, though. I should get the dust mop out and reach up to those webby things in the corners of some of the rooms, which are kind of yucky. It's not like I haven't noticed them. I blame Stanley, mostly, because the bathroom is a sore spot for me. Alright, Stanley! I know about the bathroom!
Good point about the cats, Biohazard. I'm taking a break from cats after 20+ years of cat house-sharing, so that's probably why there are these spider situations under some of the small plants stands and endtables.
Cripe. I do have a vacuum cleaner. Maybe I should get that out to do more than just the rugs. Whenever I do go nuts on the floors and corners and around table legs, the results are marvelous. So there you go.
I've mentioned this here before, but the greatest TV show ever was America's Funniest Home Videos because in the background you could see how most Americans really lived. Cops took it a step further.
Cops took it a step further.
In its way, Cops was kinder. You knew the person holding the camera wasn't neglecting to help someone who would otherwise be unassisted and because fewer people to a shot to the nuts.
That was probably supposed to be "took a shot to the nuts."
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I will never tire of these.
"Yo mama's pudgy, face it."
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Lee got mad at me as soon as the new kids went to their grandma's because she "can't live" with this level of non-pristine house. There's more to it than that, but I'm basically going to lie in bed and sob now and a lot of it is about how she thinks I'm a bad person for not only prioritizing childcare over putting away laundry but I don't even know how to end this sentence. She's doing almost no parenting and being horrible to me and I thought we'd resolved it all but now I'm afraid we're ruining these kids lives or something and I feel pretty much ruined myself. Fuck.
111: admit it flippanter, you are currently harboring a crush on this hypothetical dutch wwII bride.
also, hi read! I knew you would have something to say on that subject. I could cook dinner for everyone as an 11-year-old, so it's not as though I an unaware of this possibility. also, 8-year-olds can also direct water-buffalos in wet-rice cultivation, I have seen it myself. I solemnly promise that by the time my children are teenagers, they will be able to take out the trash.
I'm sorry, Thorn. Little kids really do strain relationships. Things are pretty tense here a lot of the time as well. The good news is I'm sure you aren't ruining any kids' lives; they're amazingly resilient and probably mostly oblivious to the stuff between the two of you. The bad news is eventually you're going to have to have the "hold up your end of this deal or leave already" conversation, and that carries the same caveat as pulling a gun: you have to be ready to follow through.
Thorn. Listen: you are not ruining these kids' lives!
I'm not a parent, but I'm pretty sure prioritizing them over putting the laundry away is completely appropriate and right. Can you say that to Lee? Maybe not right now. But judging from everything you've said here, you're not doing anything wrong. Breathe, dear lady.
Oh Thorn, I am so sorry to hear it. I wish I had something more useful to offer than sympathy. From everything i've read, it sounds like you have been doing an absolutely amazing job as a mom, and I know your little one appreciates it. I hope so much for you that Lee is just overtired and will regret saying unreasonable things that mad you feel sad. You definitely do not deserve that.
The bad news is eventually you're going to have to have the "hold up your end of this deal or leave already"
conversation,
If only it were that easy. Sucked ass when I did it, and I more or less had dibs on the kid.
I feel so petty now for having been thinking about clearing away the stacks of magazines around here, and wiping away any cobwebs, as though that's the magic ticket to clarity. I'm not a parent.
Thorn, if you check in here again, Apo is probably right that you need to have a serious talk with Lee about mutual expectations. Please don't let yourself take all the burden.
Lee is just overtired
I'm sure she is. And you're exhausted too, which is all just like underbrush waiting to turn any spark into a forest fire. But. It's only just barely possible to live in a really clean house with a preschooler. Add any more children to that equation and it just isn't going to happen any more than you're going to be able to live in a calm, quiet house. A house full of children is only a few steps above a house full of wild animals.
You need a weekend away. Maybe by yourself, even.
so sorry thorn! I promise you are not the ruiner of anyone's lives. if she cares that much about laundry she can fold it herself. you should know that everyone around here truly admires what you're doing and is constantly impressed with the levels of love and energy you're putting out there for kids who aren't permanently your own, while all of we parents on the board have gone through periods when we felt making a single peanut-butter fold-over was the hugest imposition ever. you can't do it all alone; do you have friends whom you could get to just take the kids to the park for an hour while you do something relaxing? and yes there is a bigger relationship issue but right now probably some rest would help you the most. unfolded laundry and clean messiness (piles of stuff; no rats) are the last things you should be worrying about. you are awesome! no one ever keeps it together all the time either.
162, 164: You're not doing those kids any harm at all. Look at how far Mara's come since she's been with you.
Lee, I don't know what to say. You love her, which means she's probably reasonable and decent to you when she's got her head straight, but she's got to understand that even if she's not prepared to pull half the load, she can't give you a hard time for letting housekeeping standards slip.
The older two kids are probably temporary, right? There's a months-not-years plan for them to get back to their parents? Could you maybe talk her through sucking it up and doing what's necessary while they're there, and the two of you can revisit what she thinks she can handle, fostering-wise, beyond Mara?
What Apo said. Also, taking your frustration out on strangers sometimes works.
Oh, I'm not taking all of the burden, but she's insisting she's already tried hard and is just incapable of any change. So if I want her to come to family dinners "with those brats who chew with their mouths open," well, that's me being a demanding bitch and pushing her too far. Et fucking c.
I'm doing a great job with these kids, I think, but legally and practically I can't do it alone. If we broke up now, the state would take Val and Alex and find new homes for them. Lee could still adopt Mara, but I don't know if I'd even have grounds to have any visitation rights to her if Lee and I weren't together at the time of adoption. So there's that.
She's depressed, I guess, and her own adoption and abandonment history is raw, but I'm having a hard time being sympathetic. She wants the kids gone ASAP even though she's the one who said yes to taking them in, I guess because she didn't think it through at all. With how she's been (and she was like this a bit when I was home with Mara, though without the rage) I can't imagine trying to parent another child, which is sad in that it turns out I'm decent at it and I'd like to do more.
I've just done all the stuff foster prents are supposed to do, gotten involved in their schools and created relationships with their family and helped the kids feel valued and nurtured and heard, and yet we're on the verge of ruining all that if Lee pulls the metaphorical trigger and puts in her two weeks' notice on them and I hate that. The kids don't know how much she's bothered and certainly their families don't.
Oh wow, Thorn, that sounds super shitty and stressful all around. What others said above.
Thorn, you are awesome. Let that thought comfort you.
What Rob said. When you're feeling bad, just think about the difference about how Mara was evaluated when she came to you and how she is now; in a year of caring for her, you've probably changed her life trajectory already. Things are hard now, but you've done an amazing amount of good.
Those kids, every one of them, is so, so lucky you came into their lives, Thorn.
She wants the kids gone ASAP
There are so many issues involved here, I want to suggest that she (and you) not push the panic button yet.
I'm afraid I not totally clear on the specifics, but Val and Alex are expected to be temporary, is that right? If Lee really can't handle it, can she at least wait long enough for a humane transition period for them?
Roughly what LB said in 171.last.
Plus I love Lee and the house we bought and want to spend the rest of the foreseeable future in it with her. So that may mean giving up on having kids other than Mara, but I'd like to avoid damaging the relationship more than we have to in getting there.
To the topic at hand, we had a cleaner here for four hours Thursday and it was wonderful. I'm trying to take advantage of local friends, but they typically either aren't used to little kids and can't handle much or have little ones of their own, in which case piling on three more seems excessive. I'm being open in saying I need help, though, and seeing what comes through.
I'm going to get out of town in a few weeks and have to ask peep if he's free November 13. If the kids can stay with their grandma again, I'll get a hotel room and have the night before to myself. If not, I can't really do that to Lee now and so I'll just have to travel for the day.
The alternatives for V&A are that their parents stay on their good trajectory and can regain custody in a few months; their parents hit a major snag or it looks like reunion will take a long time, in which case Lee claims she'll want out; or Lee givesup at some point and we ask the state to find them a new foster home. Lee is supposedly counting on and okay with option one. She'd prefer they just never come back after their night away, she says, but knows that's not an option andwouldn't be healthy for them or Mara. (I think anything short of returning to their parents would be bad for Mara, but I'll just have to spin whatever happens.)
I don't regret any of what I've chosen to do and all the kids who've been part of our lives are better off for it. I know that, but that's why I'd like to stick with this.
Well, hang in there. Every so often, a well-timed Xanax will keep you sane.
Wow, yes, what I need are friends with Xanax! Or time to go see the doctor myself, I guess. That's the best idea yet, though.
You know, I'm going away over Thanksgiving, my date has fallen through, and I have Xanax... And I don't mind kids.
You know, now that I think of it, a great state program would be a "parents' night out" overnight program for kids in foster care. Some super fun place with slides and ballpits and whatever else entertains kid. Foster parents would get a voucher for one night a month. And it would be done so awesomely that the kids would look forward to it as much as the parents look forward to a whole night off. There would probably be ponies.
We're allowed to use other foster parents as respite, where we pay them what we'd be paid and they take the kids for a few days. We've done it for other families. Weirdly, we're not expected to pay the kids' relative even though it's the same scenario as far as giving us a night off and having them stay somewhere different and presumably more fun.
Our state is also more lax than a lot of others and would let us leave the kids with my parents or trusted friends for a night, except we haven't done that and probably won't since nobody has three spare beds and the time to deal with it. I may try to get someone to stay here at the house so Lee and I can get away for a night in December, but that's thinking too far ahead at this point.
Thorn, this is all so far from anything I've experienced that I have nothing practical to add. All I can do is wish you, Lee, and all the kids well.
Aggh Thorn, I'm so sorry to read that. Good luck. And what Apo says.
I personally find having a cleaner come (at least) once a week is among the most worth-it expenditures in my life, close to the top of the list. I've made career choices and sacrificed on other expenses to maintain that. It's better than therapy, you can pay someone to magically take away an entire zone of shame, guilt, unpleasantness and anxiety! The house just stays clean.
Of course, as the attentive reader will recall even with a quite clean house -- and a quarterly pest-control service! -- I still had a recentinvasion of rats, so the universe is out to fuck with you no matter how high you build your walls.
yes, hiring people to do things with money makes problems go away. that's why people like money so much. we are trying to be zen about whether we're about to be evicted with no notice, but husband x wanted plaintively to know "what would we do?!" we would hire every single mover I know and call in every chit ever and they would come and pack the place up instantly, and then we would rent a huge self-storage place, and then we would move to a hotel, and I would find us a new place. we would sell the excess furniture in my (wait for it) furniture store!
thorn, like everyone else I am not in a position to give you advice but just wanted to reiterate that you're doing something amazing, that you won't always feel this overwhelmed, and that you and lee can almost certainly work things out even if you're both going through a tough time now. god willing the parents get their shit together; stranger things have happened. you have bravely chosen almost the most difficult age of children to deal with: mobile enough to make trouble but not old enough to reason with. but you are an awesome person who is a blessing in these kids' lives, and everything is going to be ok.
Thorn: respite care immediately. It is a life changer. You cannot do it without respite care.
For my daughter, she started receiving respite care about two years ago. It benefits her and it benefits us. Tremendously. No one expects you to go it alone.
Ive lost a serious relationship bc she simply couldn't imagine living the rest of our lives like we were living them without respite.
You are doing a great job. Do not beat yourself up if you have to step back. It is ok if your partner cannot handle as much as you. Design respite for her. Design respite for you.
You can navigate this if you give yourself and her the freedom to say " I need a break."
Thanks, Will. I've designed in respite of sorts for her (that she gets to go out of the house most nights so she's not annoyed) but she clearly needs more. Yesterday that meant I took the kids from the time I got back from Mara's last speech therapy appointment at 9 am until I dropped them off at 3 pm, but that's what led to Lee being mad about how I haven't been putting my clean clothes away and so on. I know I need breaks too. We'll talk to our worker.
I'm hoping last night's fury was something she just needed to vent and that doing so will make her feel better, but we'll see, I guess. Thanks for all the support here, which helped so much when I was feeling miserable and overwhelmed.
I think needing breaks is like hydration. You have to do it before you feel it.
Totally agree with alameida in 170. Hopefully it helps to know that stupid arguments and nastiness are completely normal in parents of small children. It doesn't mean it's any less horrible, but I'm sure most of us who are still married have been through some crappy times, and I don't think I know many mothers who haven't at one point thought that being a single parent would be a fuck of a lot easier. I know the whole legal situation makes things harder for you two though.
Also, make sure you keep in mind that you have had Mara living with you less than a year - most couples do not acquire more children within a year. Adjusting to new roles as parents takes a long time I found, far longer than I thought it would.
It's horrible to feel like you are working hard and doing your best and then have someone else tell you it's not good enough. I hope things are calmer today.
on the original topic I once cleaned my sister-in-law's kitchen while I was staying there with my then 6-month-old. I think it was a somewhat helpful houseguest thing to do but it was also a passive-agressive criticism of their filthy kitchen, so...
thorn, it sounds to me like you need the respite too. what these kids need in their life is grown-ups who feed them and keep them safe and treat them with kindness and respect; it sounds like you are doing great on that front. when you said that you were repeatedly getting the question of whether there would be breakfast again tomorrow like today it was really heart-rending. everyone blows up and acts like a dick sometimes, lee might be fine today. but if there's a priority question it ain't folded laundry (that's already clean!!). she said yes to this too and she had to have a reasonable idea of what was involved. but if you need to say 'oh fuck this' and cry for a while that's OK too. it can make you feel better. (I say this and I know it's true but I haven't been able to cry in this stupid project, except about my kitten. bah.)
I'm hoping last night's fury was something she just
needed to vent and that doing so will make her feel better, but we'll see, I guess.
I hope so, too. But I also hope you will remember that understanding why she blew up and forgiving it does not mean you should convince yourself that it wasn't a big deal or that it was okay. It was awful and you did not deserve it. I hope you two can find some quiet space to work through it.
I'm hoping last night's fury was something she just
needed to vent and that doing so will make her feel better, but we'll see, I guess.
I hope so, too. But I also hope you will remember that understanding why she blew up and forgiving it does not mean you should convince yourself that it wasn't a big deal or that it was okay. It was awful and you did not deserve it. I hope you two can find some quiet space to work through it.
also, i am having an uncontrollable crying can't get out of bed day today.
198: That sounds like even less fun than my morning of the thorough scrubbing of the cat pans and their water fountain ritual. I can tell you it's not made any easier with lots of help from the beneficiaries of the maintenance.
201.9999... Put that in your OCD and smoke it.
neb is nothing if not subtle. like the one red thread worked through a restrained twill pattern.
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What are you supposed to do when you responsibly cook a bunch of meals ahead of time for the upcoming week, and they're all piping hot and in their tidy little pyrex stoarage jars and still very damn warm, and I just want to go to sleep? It seems terrible to put so much warm stuff in the fridge. It seems not so bad to let them sit out for 7 hours, but there is chicken and cheese in one of them.
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Set them all in the sink and fill it with cold water.
Well, it doesn't hurt the food, right? It just uses extra energy because the fridge works harder. It's valid to weigh the energy use against your need for sleep.
And the food will give off moisture, creating condensation. Honestly, I'd just toss paper towels over everything and containerize it in the morning.
I'm fishing for permission to do exactly that. Thanks!
And then set a warm bottle of Pedialyte just outside the grasp of your crying infant, as you scurry off to sleep in a pile of gold-embroidered sheets.
Why not put it in the fridge now? The stuff already in there might warm up a little for a short time but that's better than leaving food out, no?
Oh, just the energy wasted requiring the fridge to cool hot stuff.
NO NO NO! don't get food poisoning! you are leaving the food out at precisely the optimal temperatures needed for bad bacteria to develop, and the later refrigeration won't kill them. put gel ice packs under them or set them in a bow of ice, but please don't leave chicken out overnight. too late, probably.
and feel better, di! sorry you're so down.
It's quite amazing how much cleaner the place looks if you clean the skirting boards. In terms of the return of cleanliness on the investment of time, it's well worth it.
Di, I hope things are ok! Remember that you are loved!
Hmm, is that annoying like, "Cheer up! Smile!"? I don't mean it in that vein, anyhow.
Not at all annoying, Paren. Much appreciated.
Di, I took a break from here yesterday but also want to say that I hope things are better today than yesterday for you. For what it's worth, you're one of my parenting inspirations and so it helps to know that you have horribly sad days too, though of course I wouldn't wish them on you.
Lee and I haven't really resolved things, but I'm thinking most of her horrible stuff was just a catharsis. It's not going to work for us to get through the week fine and then have her unload in a totally hurtful way every weekend, but we'll figure something out. We sort of unexpectedly got to visit Mara's family for the first time yesterday afternoon and that was amazing for all of us. I'm hoping that will knock her into a different level of awareness about the kind of care and love kids need and deserve or something. We'll see.
