Not to downplay your legit pain. Buy my parents were the opposite and it was pretty oppressive. Really cared about appearance, and I never had a genuine convo with them in my life.

On the other side of things, my partner’s family has a healthy relationship with dirtiness. They clean up after themselves, but there may be a random unused thing in the corner that’s been there for months. They’re such nicer people.

Edit: let me add that I would be fine with coming to see you at your place. Cleanliness is not that important for me as friendships go.

A friend of mine’s dad is a pretty bad hoarder, they couldnt shower for months as a time as a kid because their dad was keeping an eel he’s caught in the bath tub (and felt guilty about, he’d only ever kill and eat invasive fish)

its more common than you think OP, my own experience with this stuff is similar to yours

I thought one of my good friends was like that in HS. Turns out her parents are just actual hoarders. It’s gotten even worse over the years, I’ve helped clean there a little. My house was often too neat for normal people but somehow never clean enough for the wannabe rich-fuck strivers.

I’m just trying not to become a hoarder myself tbh, when I live alone sometimes it gets bad (not hoarder bad just messy) because I don’t want to be alone at home so I don’t stay home and clean when I have literally any other option.

Honestly depending on how bad “kind of dirty” is to you, my go-to is to just say fuck it and have people over anyhow. It’s either in your control, in which case they’re seeing an accurate picture of how you live, or out of your control and in that case if they can’t understand that your living situation isn’t a reflection of your own personal cleanliness, they can be disregarded

Oh yeah, my mom raised me alone and she has pretty bad ADHD and she’s a bit of a hoarder, so yeah, I grew up in a pretty dirty home.

I was that child and, sadly, I am that parent now.

It was not hoarding per se, just general messiness; dust that piled up on shelves, a kitchen that wasn’t cleaned too regularly, containers with various clutter lying around everywhere. I wouldn’t be too surprised if my parents have ADHD or something like that but they have never been tested for anything.

I’m not claiming that I grew up in the worst, dirtiest home ever but as a child I quickly noticed that it was more messy than other kids’ homes. It definitely contributed to my anxieties and social isolation.

Today I’m not much better myself. There is always clutter lying around. Having three kids in a modestly-sized home requires a lot of cleanup and I simply don’t have the time and energy to get around to doing it all. My partner is always tired and my ADHD is also not making things better.

The result is that we always have piles of laundry lying around aimlessly, there’s usually something nasty fermenting in the kitchen sink and clutter accumulates seemingly by itself on all level surfaces.

I don’t like that it is this way and all the clutter is stressing me but I don’t know how to make it better.

Yes but it wasn’t ‘messy’ per se. My parents have always both been huge animal lovers and my mom especially is the type of person who will rescue & keep every stray cat she comes across. Admirable & certainly the reason why I am also a big animal lover and will go out of my way to buy a bunch of chicken nuggets or something to feed a stray dog I see at a McDonalds or something - but it is a huge reason why I almost never invited anyone over growing up. At one point we had like 8 cats, a dog, like four birds, and a bunch of frogs; and because all the cats were a rotating cast of strays, there were periods where we’d have like two males just pissing everywhere in the house for dominance.

Funnily enough my best friend in HS was the type of person who really enjoyed having sleepovers & since I was secretly in love with him, I would oblige him and literally stay at his house during the school week. Initially my parents didn’t really care because they were never that strict & I was also in the top 10 in my year, but eventually they got pissed that I was spending more time over at his house than I was at home and they were like “just invite him over here! there’s no reason you guys can’t alternate houses”. Motherfucker loved coming over because he had no pets besides an elderly dog but was allergic as fuck to cats. He’d wake up every morning in desperate need of antihistamines because he’d literally beg me to let one of the cats into my room (which was always a no-go for me personally since my room had carpet in it & i refused to have the cats piss in there) so it could sleep in the bed with us. Anyways in case you were wondering, no he did not reciprocate my feelings when I eventually confessed them after waking up many school mornings to him spooning me in bed - typical tragic gay backstory am I right folks.

I mean, a little bit, but my house/room still managed to be cleaner than most of my peers. Mostly papers and books cluttering (I was, and still am, really hesitant to get rid of paper with stuff on it), not clothes, dust (for the most part), food, or dishes.

Funny that you mention women, the dirtiest room I’ve ever seen was a neighbors daughter, and the second dirtiest was the room of an AFAB non-binary during childhood (I knew them as a girl at the time, it’s great that younger people come out earlier these days).

For the most part, its just stuff out of place, which becomes more stuff out of place. It was an endless cycle of things everywhere to somewhat neat.

Pretty common, there’s a Children of Hoarders subreddit you might want to check out

Nah my mother is a real clean freak… I’m the opposite to cope

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I’m 100% convinced my whole family has ADHD. We never had a clean house. My siblings and myself all have been diagnosed. None of us had clean rooms. Even my parents had piles of cloths in their room. They would do laundry but never put it away. The sink was always full of dishes. Nothing had a place, and there was never enough places anyway. I know my at least one of my friends in highschool thought our place was filthy and would talk about it when I wasn’t around.

Today its the same. Over the years they’ve had 4 houses and they all were like that. Their current house is probably the smallest and also the cleanest. Dishes still piled in the sink and overflowing to the counters. Bed still covered in cloths.

For me though, having undiagnosed ADHD until I moved out, it was just normal. It never registered to me as weird. My house is nothing like those houses growing up. It’s not clutter free, but cloths are put away, dishes are done regularly.

messy house > clean house

it has more internal surface area and thus more opportunities for sentience and cognition

I thought that this was the default for any family that doesn’t have full time stay at home “home-makers”.

i honestly think really clean places are the outlier unless youre in a location or economic strata where everyone has cleaners come over regularly.