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Post by usedtobeneat on Jul 23, 2010 15:07:43 GMT -5
I noticed something yesterday and I wanted to ask if others felt the same way I do about other people's messes. My mother is messy by nature, and now that she's elderly and has trouble getting around she's gotten even messier. My husband and I are staying with her while we get our house back to normal, and my mother's mess was driving me up the wall, even though she said it didn't bother her at all. So, yesterday I spent the entire day cleaning her apartment. It's very neat now. It was really easy, I didn't get that overwhelmed feeling that I get with my own house when I try to clean it now, and I got a massive amount of work done in just one day. Has anyone else noticed that it seems to be easier to clean up someone else's mess than it is to clean up our own?
Granted, my mother's mess wasn't anywhere near as bad as mine, but I have the renovation going on, and I have been gone to my mother in laws for two months except for maybe a total of two weeks (days here and there that add up to two weeks at home) and my 16yo daughter and her boyfriend were the ones who were 'keeping house' so it got even worse than the construction mess. However, my mother is 75 years old, can't get around well, has a cat, and refuses to throw garbage away (yet she will throw good things away - go figure).
Here is what I did at my Mom's house. I got rid of a nonworking printer, stacks of magazines, empty boxes and bags, emptied her ashtrays, threw away all the used kleenex on her computer table. This was only in the livingroom. I gathered up all her papers (which are mainly junk mail, bank statements from years ago on an account that's not even open any longer, and notebook paper with lists and notes etc on them) and put them in a box. Moved the furniture and vacumed. Took the slipcovers off and washed them and put them back. Cleaned off the computer table and put a vinyl tablecloth on it, cleaned the windows and tv and monitor, dusted. You can see the floor in here now. My mom chain smokes and the windows were hazy brown from the nicotine. I cleaned them well, and cleaned the sticky off of everything in here.
I cleaned out the fridge in the kitchen (she got mad over that, because she didn't want to throw away the moldy food that has been in there for months, but I threw it out anyway). I cleaned the stove, the oven, scrubbed the metal things under the eye's on the stove and put them back. Scrubbed the counters, the sink, the microwave and toaster oven, the inside of the fridge and cleaned out under the sink which was literally packed with only a small garbage can and the rest were old coffee mate and coffee cans full of grease and oil. She didn't want them thrown out, but they went anyway. I scrubbed the dried on cat food off the kitchen table and moved the old books that were on it into a box in her closet, after I cleaned the cat food off of them. Then I swept and mopped the floor and scrubbed in the corners where the dirt was packed in. It's neat and clean in there now.
In her bathroom I emptied the litter and cleaned the pan, I scrubbed the toilet and got all the dirt off of the bottom outside of the toilet, and scrubbed the sink and tub and shower walls and washed the shower curtain. I cleaned the mirror and scrubbed the floors and threw away all the empty hairspray and deoderant etc cans that she wanted to keep that were stacked up on the back of the toilet. It's clean there now too.
In the laundry closet I cleaned off the shelf over the dryer which was honestly full of nothing except some old junk mail and used fabric softener sheets and dryer lint. There was two years worth of dryer lint that she had just stuck up there. All that is gone and I washed the shelf off and put mine and my husbands clothes up there for right now, folded neatly. I cleaned off the shelf above the washer as well and put her laundry stuff there. I wiped down the washer and dryer and cleaned behind them as best I could and did the little strip of floor that was in front of them.
Then I cleaned her room, which was easy because she only has a bed, a bedside commode and a chest of drawers in there. I folded and put away her clothes, changed her sheets and washed them and her blankets, picked up her clean clothes off the bottom of her closet and and hung them up. I cleaned those windows too, but they were ok because she only goes into her bedroom to sleep and doesn't smoke in there. I vacumed in there as well.
I don't really know why I'm posting all the things I did here at her house, except to show how much I did here and to say how simple it was for me to do it, but washing a load of dishes or sweeping my own floor is so overwhelming. It did get me on a 'cleaning spree' and I'm hoping that I can bring some of that to my own house. Has anyone else experienced something like this? Being able to easily clean somebody else's big mess but get overwhelmed when it's your own?
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Post by def6 on Jul 23, 2010 16:19:37 GMT -5
It is always easier to clean up others' messes. We can somehow see through the stuff and get it cleaned...hmmm, strange phenomenon.
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Post by eagle on Jul 23, 2010 16:59:18 GMT -5
We're not attached to other people's things the way we're attached to our own things.
When Hubby & I de-cluttered MIL's house before she came home from the hospital after her stroke and amputation, it was a breeze. Nothing meant anything to me personally, so it was easy as could be to toss things into recycle without a second thought. Moving things to make room for her to safely move about the house was a simple no-brainer and we had no difficulty whatsoever eliminating obstacles.
I guess the difference was, she gave us permission to do what needed to be done and wasn't there to object to any of our decisions.
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Post by usedtobeneat on Jul 23, 2010 17:20:20 GMT -5
But, I wasn't throwing away "things" at my mother's house. I was throwing away actual garbage that she didn't want to get rid of. She doesn't keep things that she may one day need or use, she keeps actual garbage. A pair of shoes may break a heel and she will throw them out rather than getting the heel fixed, but she wants to keep empty hairspray cans and coffee cans full of oil and grease. She keeps junk mail but throws away bills that she needs to pay and receipts that she needs to keep. She doesn't want the litter box emptied, she wants to just pour in more litter over the top. I could understand if she had a lot of "things" that she didn't want to get rid of, even if her house was full of them, but this is honest to God garbage. Not just something that most people would consider garbage, but I don't know anyone who wouldn't consider bags of used cat litter, burned out light bulbs, cans of rancid grease, empty deoderant cans, CVS sale papers from three years ago, etc, as anything other than garbage. She has done this stuff all my life. My grandfather was the same way, and we lived with them. When I was growing up, the kitchen and livingroom both had garbage bags full of garbage in them that we couldn't take out. When I turned about 14, I was fed up with it and asked why we couldn't. My mother told me that it was just "too much" to take it outside. One day while she was at work I threw away all the garbage. She got mad, but she got over it. She's pleased now with her apartment since I threw away all the garbage, but boy was she ever mad yesterday.
She also has this thing about bathing. When I was growing up, our bathtub was used for storing dirty clothes. She didn't take a bath, my grandmother didn't take a bath, so therefore I didn't take a bath. When I was about 12 years old I started taking the laundry out of the tub and bathing every night, or every other night, but up until then I took a bath about as often as my mother and grandmother and that was about once a month. Back then, the schools didn't ask questions or report things, like they would now.
I don't know why she is like she is about some things, especially since my grandfather was like that. I don't remember him ever showering. I know that I hate a mess really bad because of how I was raised, so I can't imagine why she still does all of this. She has gotten worse as she has gotten older. I can see how some people hoard things and buy and keep things that they may one day use, but I cannot see how people would want to keep actual garbage. I could see how, because of her mobility problems, it might accumulate, but I come over every day and she won't let me take it out. Now that we are staying with her though, it all had to go. She's even worse about money, but that's a whole different thread. She made great money when she was working, had a prestigeous job, etc, but never learned how to budget or spend or not spend and it's all gone. She gets her social security and pension on the first of the month and by the end of the week it's all gone and she has nothing to show for it except a closet full of cat food, a bunch of new cat toys, some things she's bought off of tv (that she doesn't need) and five cartons of cigarettes. We feed her.
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