My house is cluttered, so I call that "clutter squalor." I also have emotional squalor in the form of baggage and stinkin' thinkin' about taking care of certain things, like paperwork and other people's messes. I also have hoarding squalor, as I keep far too many pretties and just about every other non-filth item that comes through the door.
There is very little physical squalor that could be called filth. My dd isn't good about closely watching her little dog, and she isn't fully housebroken, so there is a rare accident. It gets cleaned up as soon as I notice it, as in immediately and thoroughly. I am good about keeping old/expired food out of the fridge, but it does get away from me sometimes because my kids clutter up my fridge organization and shove things (mainly leftovers and opened jars of things) to the back of the shelf or put them on the wrong shelf so I think we are out of something instead of getting it used up.
I also have financial squalor that mushroomed from the emotional squalor and has become further compounded by the accumulated paperwork clutter. I save most paperwork, but haven't had it in an organized system since moving to this house several years ago. It had begun to snowball on me before that, though, as I ran out of filing cabinet space and started storing it in boxes. I don't have an easy answer for why I have kept all of it, nor why I think I need to keep it. I can write pages on the thought process behind it, and have done so a little on different threads on this site. I'll spare you from trying to reiterate or consolidate it here. I don't completely understand it, but I'm close. That understanding hasn't changed my mind about my reasons for keeping it. That lack of change weighs on me.
I have had short periods of time when I would allow people in my home. Not now, and not for more than a total of a couple years in the past 3 decades. I have and continue to do a crisis clean, and shoving things in other rooms, when repair people or someone else has to come inside. That shoving things business makes the entire decluttering process so much more difficult.
I don't know why your mother would resist your offer to throw away obvious garbage such as used tissues and rotten food, other than in her mind, she might have thought it was *her* mess and she would deal with it when she was ready (as you said), instead of having it thrown away on somebody else's schedule (yours). I think it's possible your mother may have had some guilt, fear, resistance, avoidance and some decision fatigue, among other things that I would have no way of knowing.
Some of what you describe about her reaction to you sounds a bit familiar. If it was anything like what I have experienced on occasion, it's not so much being tired of making decisions about things, it's resentment about immediately feeling overwhelmed about having to make a decision about something in response to someone pressing me about it. I feel badly that there is a mess. For instance, when one of my then-teen or grown dd would ask what I wanted done with this or that, or if I wanted her to throw away or put away something or other, usually those offers would come out of the blue. They might ask late in the evening when I am tired from work and trying to relax, or while I am busy working on something else and don't need the distraction about describing where to put something or going to find out what it is they want to know whether to throw away.
I feel badly that it's obvious to her I haven't taken care of whatever it is, that I know I should've already found a home for and put up, or thrown out. I appreciate the offer of help on some level, yet I resent or am irritated by the timing of the questions/offers. I also immediately recall the many years of them making huge messes, dodging cleaning their own messes or find ways to get out of helping out with the daily chores that belong to everybody. I'm not talking about when they were small children. They were really good about helping back then. I think hormones do something to some kids' willingness to help out.
Please, understand I am not blaming them for any of the mess, not even the messes they made. I simply didn't like the how, when and why behind the few times they took the initiative to come to me about the mess. The dynamics involved in our thwarted attempts, both mine with them to get the messes cleaned, and theirs with me - it's a lot to attempt to explain. In fact, I am experiencing the "me with her" stage right now with my youngest teen dd. She is very messy. I am very perfectionist, among other things. It's a struggle.
How's that for a convoluted answer? I could explain more in depth, but I really need to get back to my paperplay (I've renamed it, to make it seem a bit less nasty).
I wanted to address the questions you asked about hoarding non-filth things as opposed to not cleaning things that are really dirty, and I sort of tried to start doing that but rambled off in another direction. I am not really sure what you are trying to figure out. I know you want to gain insight into your mother's interaction with you about it. I will try to get back here and reread it, and give it more thought.
Now, you encourage me to keep working at reducing my clutter of things that should've been tossed years ago, and I will encourage you to go scoop the litter box and scrub up some icky stuff. Deal?
