BassAlien wrote:
Personally, my flat is above average in terms of tidiness, now that I live alone and have complete control over where everything goes. When I had a house with my ex, her patterns disrupted mine to such an extent that I put only a fraction of the effort into tidying, as the thought of battling against another person's patterns tired me out. Also, I think that as a perfectionist, sometimes it is difficult to start a task for fear of completing a task to a substandard quality.
I have to agree here with your statement when it comes to living with significant others who have no sense of cleanliness or tidiness whatsoever. It is hard to live with someone who is opposite in cleaning habits (maybe not so much as organizational as long as the disorganized mess involves clean things). My ex was extremely relaxed about being clean and it made it extremely hard to coexist when I would try hard to make sure food was not laying around while he watched TV (he was NT by the way). It was like a swimmer trying to swim against a current when it came to keeping up the house chores. I am glad that we are no longer together for that reason alone. It was just too hard to live that way and no, that is not the reason we are no longer together, it was just one of those habits I accepted he had for as long as I could and I am sure he had issues with me as well.