Slobs Who Host

[SongsOfDragons]

Housemate and I have a lovely 2-bed flat (lovely as in we plonked down the deposit as soon as we looked around) that we are slightly house-proud of.

We got a new vacuum cleaner recently - the old one sucked, or more to the point didn't. We got one specifically for pets, because although we don't have any, I have long hair and I moult a lot somehow. We don't clean and dust as much as we should be we can make a fantastic effort.

We don't have much space for tables and seats - we miss having a dining table - but we have enough for small party gatherings for New Year and Eurovision and suchlike.

[blas87]

Pine-Sol for linoleum flooring?

My parents brought up the point that apartments like mine tend to not have "real" material for flooring or texturing in the kitchen or bathrooms, so it's very possible the reason my floor is so dirty is because it's cheap linoleum and cheap fake porcelain.

I do the "hands and knees" cleaning with vinegar and boiling hot water once per week, yet this floor is always just a dirty mess.

[Andara Bledin]

How good is your welcome mat?

I just realized that I have to get proper mats for the front and back doors to keep people from tracking things through the house.

^-.-^

[Greenday]

I used to hate it every time we go to my one aunt's house. Her place was also absolutely disgusting. And it seemed like every family event was there for some reason.

In college, my desk would be somewhat of a mess, but there was always room for plates and cups if I had friends over. Bed was made every day, no clothes laying out. When I had an apartment, I had to share it with four other guys who treated it like their frat house. It was always filthy. Three of them would never wash their dishes and it'd pile up super high until the other guy and his girlfriend cleaned them (I refused to touch other people's dishes unless they were my guest). I always took out the trash and cleaned counters, but our living room was constantly so trashed I refused to hang in there and most of the time I was too embarrassed to have friends over. If I had friends over, we stayed in my room where it was clean.

My mom just kinda forced this into me. I'm not a neat freak, but if someone's coming over, I dust, I sweep, I vacuum, I clean windows, pick up. Living room, dining room, kitchen all are never dirty. Never leave cups laying around, immediately clean after using. A little bit of time each day saves us from having to do huge cleaning sprees.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

A couple we were working with on a project had us come over one night to their place to hang out and they had dogshit on the floor.

Yeah, you read that right. And when I say they had dogshit on the floor, I don't mean their dog had an accident that they didn't see right away. I mean there were multiple piles of dogshit in various stages of decomposition and /or dessication all over their house.

Number one, who the fuck lives their lives stepping around a dogshit minefield in their own home and

Number two (literally) who the fuck has people over to hang out in a dogshit minefield? People with mental issues, that's who. As the aforementioned project progressed, these issues became painfully obvious, too. I'm just saying.

That is beyond disrespectful. That is straight up offensive. Of course, the entire house looked like a bomb went off in there. I guess that goes without saying. But in light of the dogshit, I hardly even registered that on my radar screen.

We stayed long enough to be polite, something we really hardly owed them at that point, and then left. And never went over there again. I left my clothes on the back porch when I came home, needless to say.

[Teysa]

Um ewww! I'll be the first to admit that I'm a lousy housekeeper, but I'm not that bad. If someone comes over, I'll at least make sure they can sit down and eat without undue hassle.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Well, I'm not gonna sit here and say I'm Martha Freaking Stewart. My house is small and we live in it pretty hard and noisy. But it's not dirty. I dont' have bugs (past the occasional so called "water bug" that everyone in the southern united states gets...it's the price of living here, I guess. These things don't go after food...they go after moisture). I might have clean laundry sitting around in baskets or an ironing board out or some project I'm working on in progress lying around, but clutter is not the same thing as filth.

And if someone sees my house in anything less than clean and tidy, I am utterly mortified. I get embarassed if someone sees a toilet ring or a dirty dish on a table. I cannot even IMAGINE having someone over knowing full damn well you have MUMMIFIED AND/OR ROTTING TURDS all over your house.

That, Constant Reader, is fucked up.

I mean, look, I don't work, so I can do a little better job keeping up my house than someone where everyone in the house works or goes to school or whatever. I'm not judging. Before when I did work, I don't know how I did it all. I guess I didn't do it very well. Keeping up a house is a HUGE JOB. And I am essentially a disorganized person. I know it can get away from you.

But shit on the floor?

[blas87]

I'm so bad about putting laundry away. I put away my jeans right away, along with my air-dry clothing as soon as it's dry (the next day or whatever), but the stuff that was dried in the dryer....man, that'll sit in the basket until the next week!

[boringscreenname]

I'm terrible at putting laundry away too. I have no problem washing, drying and folding the stuff. But then it tends to live on the back of our loveseat until I get tired of looking at it and put it away. My husband also never puts his laundry away it just stays piled on the dresser, which sorta irritates me, but it's not like anyone ever goes into our bedroom so it's not a huge annoyance.

[blas87]

Yeah, my basket stays in the corner of my room and since I cycle through the same 3 or 4 shirts a week for work, the pile gets smaller as the week goes on.

[guywithashovel]

I did get some Pine-Sol and do some "on my knees" scrubbing on the kitchen floor. That seems to have gotten it pretty clean, clean enough for now, anyway. I probably shouldn't fuss too much about how clean the kitchen and dining room floors are because I'm going to be laying new floors down in there within the next month. Still, I'll have to walk on them until then.

I don't really think it's that the previous owner "let things go." It's just that this house was uninhabited for approximately one year before I bought it, and if there's anything that can make a mess out of a house, it's sitting empty for a long time. The previous owner apparently went into foreclosure because I bought the place from HUD.

The basement floor was pretty dirty as well. I had swept it several times. I tried mopping it, but each time, the water was black in a matter of two or three minutes. I ended up just having a cleaning service come in to do it.

[telecom_goddess]

A couple we were working with on a project had us come over one night to their place to hang out and they had dogshit on the floor.

Oh god......

I could not live like that in a million years. never never never never never.

[lupo pazzesco]

I just moved in with my boyfriend. He has a cat, who believes the entire floor is her litterbox, but he's actually working on breaking her of this habit. She's gone down to doing so only on occasion, because he's gotten better at cleaning the actual catbox

Now we're just working on training her that this is bad (the usual...if we see her using the rug, she gets her face rubbed in it and swatted).

The smell is slowly coming out, we're going to deep clean the carpet with Resolve, and we have an enzyme cleaner that's going to get the urine crystals from the carpet pads after.

I don't understand how people offer to host and don't at least tidy up the place. I'm not a neat freak fanatic (at least not too badly), but I do tidy up regularly, and have gotten the boyfriend to pitch in, too. It's an adjustment period for the both of us. When we do have people over (His dad and dad's wife came to visit us recently, we cleaned the house up and they were only in the actual apartment for less than an hour, too...).

I've read through this thread and have a driving urge to scrub things now. >.<

[Peppergirl]

I find that when I'm feeling particularly lazy about housework, a good dose of watching 'Hoarders" on A&E cures me of it, and quick!

[Andara Bledin]

I can't even think of offering to host without tidying up, and I, as mentioned, am an indifferent housekeeper at best.

The idea of leaving pet shit on the floor is just repugnant. I may be surrounded by clutter, but I will not live with filth.

^-.-^