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.
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:
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.