I'm married and unfortunately for my poor wife I have some kind of hole in my brain that doesn't allow me to notice or care about things being tidy or organized. I'll often get asked why I didn't pick up the trash that was in my path through the apartment or if I noticed the garbage is getting piled up.
I will always do chores when asked, I have no objection to handling the necessary labor of managing a household. The problem is my wife doesn't want to have to ask and I want her to be happier.
I often will try to motivate myself to take stock of each room I'm in before i leave and try to leave it cleaner but after maybe a day or two it's out of my mind. I just don't get any dopamine from things being clean and it's hard to form a habit.
Before I lived with someone else I basically never cleaned until it was severely impacting my daily life, did a big clean that took like an entire weekend, then just let it get just as bad.
How does one break this kind of behaviour? Some kind of shock therapy? Am I a lost cause? My current plan is to write a list of chores and things to check after work before settling in for the night but I'm skeptical as it's not the first chore list I've made.
Rule 1: NOTHING belongs on the floor except for furniture. Things go on things on the floor, things don’t go on the floor.
Rule 2: Make your bed. Starting doing that has made a huge improvement to me looking around my apartment
Rule 3: Don’t leave dishes around or in the sink. Either put them in the dishwasher asap or wash them.
Rule 4: Just wipe down surfaces occasionally. Kitchen and bathroom counters? Bleach sprays and wipe down, for kitchen basically every day, for bathroom like every week. Similar goes for coffee tables, desks, anything that just builds up gunk over time
“Clean your room” is literally the one correct statement he’s ever made
That's his hook. He gets you to join his room-cleaning cult, and before you know it you're listening to his three hour long lectures and agitating to "clean" all of society. Don't fall for it.
Which is why you should literally never read or listen to a thing he says and just listen to me telling you to clean your god damn room
After my messy hoarder girlfriend moved out and then I had a roach infestation (not related to anything me or my roommate did) I’ve become a little bit of a clean freak tbh, and I will sometimes get in a hyper focus where I will clean for like 3 hours and won’t be satisfied till my entire apartment is sparkling
Don't fall for it. Someone like you is at prime risk for recruitment by Jordan Peterson. His room-cleaning cult does exactly this, tries to get people to feel good by keeping their living areas tidy, like good little fascists. Once they've got you trained, you then start making bigger "cleaning", culminating with cleaning all of society of undesirables.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what does an empty one mean?
keeping their living areas tidy, like good little fascists
lmao I dislike Peterson as much as everyone else on this site, but cleaning your room isn't a sign of fascism in itself.
“Clean your room” is literally the only correct thing Jordan Peterson has ever said
An obsession with orderliness is indeed a tell of the authoritarian personality. They get freaked out by things that aren't exactly in order. That's why they want everyone to have their papers, to have a 100 foot border wall, and why Peterson's message of "clean your room" resonated with so many fascists. It empowers them. Orderliness and cleanliness are super important to the authoritarian personality, it's why hygiene is given so much stress and disease metaphors are always used to describe immigrants.
That's the thing about the alt-right pipeline. They're very sneaky. They appeal to where you hurt, where you feel inadequate. They offer a quick, easy solution. Once they've hooked you with the reasonable-sounding pitch, you're in a cult-like environment where you get love-bombed with affirmations. Everyone is really happy you cleaned your room, now you just need to take the next step, which you also get love-bombed for doing. You don't realize you're in it, until one day you're marching with tiki torches.
Ok but you should still clean your room though. Dont take meditation advice from sam harris and dont take homemaking advice from jordan peterson but still do both of those things probably
Sounds like ADHD. You should consider getting that checked out if you haven't.
The secret I found to solving this was to just build up a few cleaning habits bit by bit.
You don't have to force yourself to care about cleanliness and organisation, and you don't have to spontaneously clean up the whole house. You just need to build a few little cleaning habits that will manage enough of the cleaning to make it more manageable for both of you. If you learn to take care of enough of the cleanliness of the house, your wife will appreciate the change and will take care of the rest.
I got into the habits of:
- Cleaning the dishes after meals and putting the clean and dry dishes away before lunch and in the evening before bed
- Sweeping the floors once every couple of weeks when they're dirty
- Tidying up clutter from floors, the coffee table, the kitchen bench and a shelf in the corridor that acts as a kind of buffer space where we put things before they go away.
- Cleaning the bathroom mirror when it gets dirty and occasionally the windows.
- Taking out the garbage and recycling when it's full.
By doing this a lot of the work of organising the cleaning is sorted out.
My partner notices the other stuff that needs doing and does it or tells me to do it. She never complains about cleaning anymore because things are manageable and kind of even now.
Building these habits was a simple, bit-by-bit process.
I started with the dishes - the bottleneck in the dishes was that clean and dry dishes were crowding up the rack and not getting put away, so I decided to put them away before lunch and before bed (or other times if I missed these). Whoever didn't cook has the job of cleaning away dishes after meals. This became a sort of automatic thing - if I saw dishes clean and dry I'd quickly put them away.
Then it was clutter. I picked a shelf in the corridor where I would put clutter that was out of place - on tables or floors or wherever. I'd put things there, then every now and then I'd clean up that shelf by putting things back in their place.
For the floors, I moved the broom and the dustpan and brush to a really accessible place. Then when the floors are dirty I grab em and give the floor a sweep, especially the kitchen and lounge where we spend the most time. Sweeping the floor of a room takes like 2 minutes.
For the bathroom mirror, the glass cleaner is underneath it with a squeegy thing. I like the mirror being sparkly clean. So I squeegy it when it gets dirty.
Then it's the bins. If I put something in the bin and it's full or overflowing, I change the bin bag and put the old one next to the front door to take out the next time I go out.
Evenings before bed, I do things that need doing. And voila, clean house. Kinda.
If you do any of the cooking in your couple, I recommend starting with the dishes.
One of the better posts. People are very different in how they notice stuff (and if you notice a lot then you won't notice the trash really). Also in how that makes them feel.
How does one begin to notice shit that needs picking up? The answer to "why didn't you pick up the trash off the floor?" Is always 'what trash? I'll get it now'
Where you raised by horders?
Your floor shouldn't be cluttered with shit. It should be pretty clear all the time.
Maybe start with just looking down at the floor clean and try to keep it that way.
In all likelihood your the one dropping shit everywhere. Hold on to your trash and than put it in the trash bin in the nearest room. And your wife is eventually going to get over it.
I wasn't ever made to do chores as a kid, so not quite but not much better. As an adult on my own I just never had anyone over.
I will focus on keeping myself from making more mess that's a good idea.
Here’s a really rough rule of thumb:
Alway maximise visible surface space.
This applies for floors, benches, tables, dressers, seating, bedding, and cabinets.
Stuff that can be put away or binned should be put away or binned.
Stuff that can be grouped together should be grouped together.
Dirt, stains, smears, should all be wiped up so you can see more of that surface.
This makes sense. I will try to make a point of doing things before sitting down and starting a game or something after work.
i've named my issue with this male pattern blindness, though it's probably not only dudes doing it we seem to be the main culprits. Treat it as if it's like any other self critique. We got our brains fucked and now expect someone else to deal with our shit, which is bullshit, and we need to get a hold of that part of our thinking and choke it to death
If you're living alone, it's whatever even if bad for your mental health, but when having a partner it's important not to just expect them to do it all. I suck at this as well, am working on it
This is surely just training? Class consciousness took time to gain complete mindfulness of too, you need to develop clean consciousness.
Two suggestions:
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Every time you get up, see if there's a quick thing in reach to do. Going to the kitchen? Grab a nearby plate or cup that may have been left out. Getting up for any reason? Check for any trash nearby.
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Schedule. It'll differ based on your life/work, and how often things need done, but something like:
Sunday: Clean bathroom
Monday: Empty Trash
Tuesday: Clean Kitchen
Wednesday: Laundry
Thursday: Vacuum
Friday: Clean bedroom
Saturday: Clean living spaces
And of course, first week will be a bit rough, but if its something you make yourself get in the habit it of, it should be easy. With the bathroom and kitchen getting specifically cleaned once a week, I find there's not much build up stuff and grime, so it's just a quick sweep, mop, and wipedown, with a little bit of organizing. If you have trouble focusing/remembering to do it, many ways to remind, from setting alarms in your phone, to keeping a checklist.
But I find keeping to a schedule on these things helps keep me from getting in a depression slump I've gotten to in the past of 'ugh, I'll do it tomorrow', which is where I personally start to let stuff slip and pile up, until its a huge stress for me to worry about doing all at once. I know just vaguely cleaning up when its dirty, or cleaning up 'every few days' works for some people, but it hasn't worked for me in the past.
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Oh also the biggest thing I did that helped me keep my house cleaner is I got a roomba. Holy shit, best purchase I ever made. It’s the only vacuum I own and while it doesn’t do quite as good of a job as vacuuming manually with my last vacuum, it goes off every morning at 9:15am vs my vacuuming once a week because I hated doing it. I’m on leave from work rn so I often stop it early because it’s loud, but if you work a consistent schedule just have it go off when you leave for work. If you have pets especially it is an absolute world changer. Freshly vacuumed floors every day is fantastic.
I'm pretty bad about this and so is my girlfriend. Basically we do a big clean every weekend, takes about an hour. Basically, I set a timer, and try to clean as much as possible in that time frame. Try setting 20 minutes at first and see how much you can do in that time frame, you would be very suprised. Work up to an hour. 15 minutes on week nights should easily cover a lot of the clutter or mess though and then take care of things mainly on the weekend.
Inevitably our apartment goes to shit during the week but I generally try to clean dishes and pick up stuff as we go (unfortunately she has total blindness for dishes and just throws them in the sink but what are you gonna do). By Friday though it's a mess and then Saturday we'll wake up and do a clean and that will generally take us to the next Wednesday or Thursday no problem
One thing you can try (I've been meaning to try this on myself) is put up post-it notes where trash piles up, or where other cleaning chores exist. You might naturally forget to do these things, but the post-it notes at eye level should help remind you, and eventually you (hopefully) won't need them.
Set an alarm to break you out of whatever you're doing, and don't go back until you've cleaned something. That's how I get my homework done lmao.
Start with an entire weekend clean, and then as much as it sucks just maintain it. Wash those dishes. Put them away. Same for the laundry, likewise put it away.
The goal is to have a place for everything (that isn't the table or the floor or the chair) and to make sure that once they're no longer in use theyre put away. This is the habit, the daily behaviour you need to encourage, the rest (actually cleaning) comes after. This keeps your surfaces clear and tidy, and allows you to then actually clean and wipe your surfaces come the weekend.
also put things in the bin and empty the bin when it's full just do itThis will go in the making a list category and I will first do the big clean. Thank you
The main issue isn't doing the chores, my wife asks me to do them and they get done. It's being able to see when things need doing on my own.
