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I bought an old house 5 years ago. It is 106 years old and first home I've owned. All of the years that I rented I lived in fear that the owner would suddenly kick me out for any reason, or feared inspections, etc. Always scared to death and feeling on edge about that.

I bought this house when I had a decent job. It needs SO much work that no one else wanted it. That's also why it had a very low price tag. I loved it, it's really big - 2 stories and old and comfortable so I'm pretty happy about it and for once locked my doors against the world and kept them all OUT THERE.

I'm a terrible cleaner - I like things clean but I never think about cleaning. I don't decorate. The house is, to me, what it's meant to be - my dwelling. My space. A big box for my stuff. What it is NOT and will never be is a showplace to trot people through, or something I use to try and impress people with. When someone asks to come to my house I'm horrified. That's my first reaction. It's almost like they asked me to take off all of my clothes, or something!

The reason I think is that my house is the most intimate part of me, next to my actual body. It's where I store my things, relax, have all of my private and personal belongings. To have someone come in and look at them is just awful. Plus in the past I've had numerous very bad experiences when I was silly enough to let someone come over and they didn't like things about my home. It wasn't clean enough, wasn't decorated to their liking, etc. Why would I need to decorate my home to their liking?

When I grew up there was a big "living room" in the front of the house - it was the biggest and prettiest room in our home and it was "for company" only. It held the nicest furniture, the best chair for reading, the nicest everything. And we were never allowed to go into it. I had to go in once a week to dust the furniture and clean, but I never understood (and still don't) WHY I had to keep the room so clean when I couldn't use it.

We didn't have visitors to our home very often at all. So my parents paid for and furnished and cleaned and maintained a big room in the house for no reason at all. :\

I wonder, when they bought a chair for that room, should they have polled their friends and relatives and acquaintances to see what colors and what styles those people liked the most? When you think about it, that couch and those chairs and everything in that room were not bought for US, they were bought for other people. That couch belonged to other people. They were the only ones allowed to sit on it, and it would have been devastating to my mother I suppose if someone came to visit and they DIDN'T like the color of the couch (since it was their couch, after all).

I have stacks of boxes in my living room most of the time. I don't currently have a place for those boxes, and I need them from time to time, so it's the most convenient for me to just have them right there in the middle of the floor. Oh well. If you stopped by my house you would be horrified I suppose. And you'd tell others that I'm nuts and I don't keep a special room in my house only for people who drop by. :\

Do you clean? Do you maintain and decorate your home for others? Do you parade people in and out of your home without any problem?

My sister has a house that was built recently and it's huge. It has the exact feel to it that you'd get walking into a museum, or a large hotel. Everything is polished and the most amazing part is that there is not ONE SINGLE thing in sight that identifies people live there. NOTHING. It looks like you just walked into a photo in a magazine. Everything is perfect - like it just came out of the box. Nothing in the corners, no piles of anything shoved in drawers, nothing anywhere. At all. After touring the house I decided that the people living in it must be totally devoid of anything interesting in their heads. There are no projects that are left sitting undone, no books scattered around, no unopened mail, no boxes of interesting anything. It was stone cold. The decorations had no personal meanings. Not like "This is the rock we found when we hiked way up to the top of that mountain. We saved it and put it here on this ledge to look at" Instead all of the decorations (vases and paintings and nick nacks sitting around) were all bought on the same day from a Pier One store and just sat here and there.

I could never, ever live in that kind of house.

The dishes need to be done, the bathroom needs to be cleaned but I'll do that tomorrow. I keep the rest of my apartment clean and I dust and sweep the floors. I need a new vacuum so I don't vacuum often and the carpets are dark so it's hard to see there is dirt on the rug and stuff. It doesn't pick stuff off the rug very well. I live in a apartment so I don't have a yard. The building was built in 1971 so the landlord charges cheap rent because of the age of the building. $650 is a good price for a two bedroom in my area. Lot of places here charge more than that for a two bedroom. It has a little parking lot and each tenant gets one parking spot and each spot is numbered by our apartment number.

oh.....If I had a house, it would be a lot like your house....Mantaining a clean sterile showcase dwelling is unfathomable to me. my decorations consist of silly things...old posters...my own flyer art...various paintings by friends...etc....I am a lot more comfortable in dwellings that look like they have been lived in. Clutter does not shock me at all...messes do not shock me at all...But I am embarrased about other people seeing my clutter and my mess.....I don't like for my place to be messy, but I am VERY bad at cleaning and I live with messy people...and most cleaning that will be done falls on my head....even though I am badly organized and executively dysfunctional and cannot stay on task when cleaning for the very life of me.
My close friend lives in a tiny apartment. It is his nest/burrow/habitat...beer bottles everywhere...stacks of recycling....Piles of everything everywhere...the very specific stuff he collects...nets he has woven hanging from the ceiling...his army dolls posed here and there...his kitchen is unenterable...His bathroom sink is fascinatingly dirty...and to me, his place is charming.

I live in a giant art venue...open to the public several nights a week. We are not supposed to be living here, but it is difficult to disguise because we do not keep our living space clean. It is all my fault....I really need to work harder on it....but it is overwhelming...I am seriously considering getting on ADD meds again, as I feel it is the only way I will be able to manage to keep things organize...there is just too much stuff and to few people to manage it....It really drives me nuts.

OVERWHELMING is the right word!

There's just too much stuff, too much that needs to be done, and even if you can stay on task and do most of it, it seems like it has to be done again almost right away.

The times I've cleaned pretty thoroughly I feel a big sense of accomplishment and that the big task is DONE. I don't plan to even think about it again for a long long time. Maybe a year. Unfortunately that seems to be too long. Most of the tasks are supposed to be done each week or every few weeks, etc. I would have to schedule each one in writing on a board and then do nothing in my life except those cleaning tasks in order to do it "properly".

What a waste of a life. Who lays on their death bed and says "I'm so happy that I spent every waking moment dusting and cleaning. I can now die knowing that I accomplished so much."

After they died they'd just get covered in dust.

I can clean up but never know where to start. My Hubbie is very good. He does all the washing. Probably because he got sick of running out of clean underwear and he helps me get started. He needs to say "can you load the dishwasher?" then I'm fine otherwise I sit there thinking "should I sweep, clean toilet, load dishwasher, wash window, finish reading my book........." I just can't decide which is more important.

I never let anyone other than family into my home. I too am horrified if someone suggests dropping over. It's way to intrusive and I know that they would consider it odd that you cannot see my kitchen bench, dining table, coffee table etc because they are covered in piles of books and papers.

I love my house just the way it is. If it was more conventional I wouldn't like nearly as much

I clean. I like it clean. Not all that clean, I'm too lazy and have other things on my mind. The house used to be cleaner when I had a friend who's allergic to cats and I'd clean really throughly to get up all the hair before he came over, so his allergy meds would actually work.

I decorate for my own amusement, mostly with weird old stuff. Some paintings and prints that I like. There's a lot of clutter. Piles of books, stacks of cigar-boxes full of little gears and motors or fossils or whatever. I let it get out of hand in my office, so there's just a disordered pile of books and boxes in this sort of heap around my computer, but I try to keep it under control in the rest of the house, so if I spill something I can mop the kitchen floor without having to clear up a bunch of stuff, and so I can vaccum in the living room to do yoga on the floor in there.

earthmom,
it all makes sense.
what does it matter how it looks,because it is own house,own belongings,and are not living with anyone else?
Old buildings are also better,because the new ones they build now are supposed to be using thinner more rubbishy walls so noise is more of a problem.
It isn't bad or crazy to have a choice,keep it how want it.


am live in a residential home so have to share with other adults,staff do the shared areas cleaning,am do own bedroom though need a lot of help.
own bedroom,and the home itself is mostly minimal in stuff due to several of us who have regular 'incidents'.
Decorating in shared areas is forced [no choice] because they do it every two years,they know am cant cope with changing the rooms like that so have done it in the same colour,to clean it up rather than change.
Am have a routine of scratching off artex type wallpaper,so the place is in a bit of a mess,but it isnt something that bothers self,no one comes to look at the building do they [apart from CSCI maybe,but thats a different thing altogether] ,its not like are all living in museums.

It's a newish building,supposed to be breeze block,and not the old brick type? very thin walls,can hear everything going on inside/outside,and the windows are old type double glazing,but sound more like a single glazing window left open.the floors are thin,so can hear noise all day/night long.

I often go through phases with being good and then bad or demotivated with house work. Generally my house is clean and tidy and my mum will often help out or suggest that I need to do certain things such as cleaning the fridge or bathroom. I have learnt over the years to look after myself with help and manage for the most part ok.

I have lived in the same house for 20 years. It is 62 years old and has a lot "personality" (ie, not a tract home). The original owners certainly left their stamp on it. We have redone parts of it over the years in order to make it safer, more energy efficient, easier to maintain, and just plain old better-looking. I dearly love it, especially because of the huge yard. I prefer more outdoor space than indoor space.

To answer your questions: Yes, I clean. My husband is a packrat and we have a half dozen pets. If I didn't clean, it would be an attractant for insects, rodents, etc. and I would have to move as I cannot tolerate visual chaos. I'm not a fanatic, I just have to schedule an hour or so a week and do basic things like put stuff away, vacuum, sweep, and brush up the crumbs. Not into fancy gizmos and cleaning solutions. I'm in the "just suck it up and do it for 1 hour" camp.

I mostly maintain it so it doesn't get so out of hand that I become overwhelmed. The only "decoration" is from my few collections that I display for myself. I feel an odd sort of anxiety when others visit, so I avoid it happening. Usually it isn't as bad as I anticipate. Why do they pick the day before I clean, though? I hate to change my scheduled day just because of a visit.

earthmom, at the risk of repeating myself, I could've written your post word by word.

Siblings often become opposites for a reason - because one perfects the parents' methods and the other goes to the other extreme of those methods. Both are ways of continuing allowing parents to be in control (unconsciously). Don't let upbringing control you (in your case, by rebellion). Take control yourself. Once you do, your house won't be like your parents' or your sister's or the antithesis of those but a more gentle dialogue between who you are and how you want to host other people.

I'd start by having one corner that is suitable for, should someone come in on short notice, seat 1-2 guests for about 1 hour and make them feel comfortable. Not a whole living room but a small corner. It can be 2 chairs and a little table near the entrance door, a tiny corner that you like, maintain satisfactorily clean and tidy (you can dust it and tidy it before the person comes, in a few minutes) and which will make your guest at ease. This is what I have.

(Drop, of course, any people who criticize your taste / your house / your choices. Or teach them to respect your boundaries)

The untouchable living room, exactly as you described it, is a phenomenon that I grew up with, because it's a sacred institution in the community I belong to (Ashkenazi Jews). My mother rebelled against the tradition, while her sister perfected the tradition by only allowing into her living room people from a certain socioeconomic level upwards and guests from abroad.

My father says that my mother's side of the family believes "the world was made to keep it clean". Maybe you have Eastern European ancestors?

I made my home the way I want it to be. I don't care what other people think about my home. They can do whatever they want with their own home and I do what I want with mine. It's me who lives here, so I need to be happy with the way it looks and feels. I've never cared about impressing others.

I don't mind getting an occasional visit. It's mostly just my parents who come for visits every now anyway and on a very rare occation someone else comes. I don't feel horrible about other people seeing my home. There are just a few items that I hide somewhere because I consider them to be too personal to share with others. Apart from that, I don't care what people see or think about it. I try to keep them from touching my stuff though.

I would never dedicate any space of my home for a "visits only" area. I use all the rooms on a daily basis and I don't use them the stereotypical way. For example there is a bed in my living room and currently there is a tent in there too and there is an electric piano on my kitchen table.

As for decorations, I decorated my home the way I like it, which is very different from most people's taste. There are maps, globes, animal statues, plush animals, books and toys all over the place and the walls are painted in my favorite colors.

I do keep my home relatively clean, but just because I don't like living in a pile of dirt. My home is far from spotless. There's usually dust and dirt somewhere, but I try to clean regularly. I love a clean home. I just hate cleaning it.

Strangely enough, the few people who have come inside my home were all amazed at the way it looks. I don't know if that's because they expected something less from me or if they envy me for doing what I want with the place without worrying about other people's opinions. I think a lot of people secretly wish they could do something different with their home, but they care too much about what other people would think about it.

earthmom - my childhood was very similar. We had a 'front room' (the parlor, I suppose it would have been, in a former era - this was in the 1970s) which was kept 'for best' and I'd get into trouble if I went in there. The living room where we ate dinner, watched TV and such was out the back and had the second-best furniture.

Really, though, there was this idea that a house wasn't for you to be personal with. My parents had a very few personal knick-knacks from when they were married, but my mother thought that things, significant objects, were a liability because they needed dusting. But the place was scarily tidy. And there were hardly any books, apart from a few war novels of my dad's. And everything was either pale pastels or flowery prints (which freaked me out - I was one of those kids who saw scary faces in floral patterns).

I loved collecting things - rocks and fossils, postcards, then later on I started being the thrift-store pack-rat, and making my own artwork and stuff. I could read by age three, and I acquired as many books as I could. And I loved bright colors. And I was regarded as seriously weird for all those tendencies. I still recall the ruckus when my folks decided I was 'moving up' at age 11 to the second biggest bedroom...and they redecorated it all in pink flowers. And after months of pleading against my mother, who declared pink flowers were the nicest decor a girl could ever have, I got grudgingly allowed to paint it over in blue. (And then it got covered in Beatles posters because that was my obsession, and that was a whole other story!)

I still recall when I went to live at my mother's place for a few months after my divorce, and I went back into that bedroom, and it was plain pale green walls, white woodwork, all white furniture - and the first thing I did was get a bunch of colorful postcards out of my stuff, and some of my favorite rocks from my crystal collection, and put them on the mantlepiece. And she was like 'Oh...what do you need all those bits for?'

My family generally seems to have followed this tendency. You go to my brother's and everything is totally co-ordinated. They redecorate at least every two years, and they won't have anything that doesn't match. And, just to take it further, I've stayed over theirs and they have some incredible luxury bedding you can't actually sleep on because it's encrusted with beads and stuff. And I'm like...excuse me?

I will admit, our place is a tip. I'm still a pack rat, I'm not the world's most domesticated person anyway, and the house we're in now is not one that I or hubby feel very enthusiastic about - it's old, it's damp, it's not where we wanted to be but we were forced to move. So, we've procrastinated a lot about doing much to it.

I don't like having visitors, really. I have had people round (hubby's friends, mainly) who really weren't bothered about the decor as long as we had beer in , but the people most likely to want to visit seem to be the ones who'd 'love to see where you live' and that immediately makes my hackles rise. You know...if you're visiting, don't you want to see us? And from experience, people want the 'grand tour', whereas if I'm over anyone's home I would never dream of wanting to go gawp at their bedroom unless they invited me. I had my mother up here once, actually, and that was a nightmare from start to finish, because our 'scrubbed clean from top to bottom' was her 'living in filth like pigs'. Also, she was a fanatical hair-picker-offer, and we have a white cat, and with the best will in the world we cannot keep everything totally hair-free....and the motherbeast started making comments about the advisability of a one-way trip to the vet. That was a few years ago, and since then I've been a little paranoid.

I'm sitting at the computer in a spare bedroom that's chock full of books, art materials, CDs, more books, plus an amp, a mic and four guitars, three of which are actually playable. The decor includes some of my collages, postcards, peacock feathers, statuettes, beady dangly things and about a hundredweight of Nirvana posters. There's no way anyone could fit a bed in here, let alone sleep in it. Yes, we're sort of recognizing that we do need a clearout about now...but it's getting round to it. There are about 90,000 things in my life more interesting than cleaning, unfortunately...

The salient feature will often be a huge LCD TV filling one wall.

Last edited by ManErg on 29 Apr 2009, 4:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

Right now I am kind of obsessing on adding and not subtracting so I am focusing on making the outside of the house look really good, from the house itself to the lawn, to the trees in the yard. Everything. I am going to paint the trim of my house to match the grey areas in the bricks (which are mixtures of reds and greys). I need to do something about the middle too. Someone put siding that looks like real wood there and I'm not sure what to do with it. Maybe I should paint it grey and a sienna red in the middle, with a complimentary outside plaque of some kind in a shade of grey or black to give it some pizzazz, We'll see.

I just had a forty year old tree removed, it had a fungus. I didn't have the stump removed so I might make it into a planter instead and plant zinnias in it. It's already somewhat rotted out because of the fungus so now all I need to do is scoop some and voila! a hollow space inside to plant things. Cool.

I need to get vinyl replacement windows, I want them to be grey like the paint and maybe black or sienna shingles so everything is coridnated in a nice, complimentary package. I want people to look at the outside of the house and feel a sense of balance and inner peace and "whomever decided on that color scheme has excellent decorating skills". I like compliments on that sort of thing.

I put some Scott's turf builder on the lawn and might reseed with rye grass. ( I hope it doesn't get too tall. Tall Fescue looks like weeds to me) I want grass that stays really low and is easy to mow. I've already replaced several lawn mower blades.
I plan to plant some more peonies in the front flower bed.

As for the inside, I go with minimalization. I don't want a lot of clutter. I want something that is easy to keep clean and since my area is so windy and dusty, it gets into the house and it's hard to dust a lot of stuff so I like things to remain uncluttered.
I don't buy "stuff" and try to save money.

My house is a work in progress. I need to get the bathroom partially remodelled and something done with the floor and the countertops in the kitchen. The kitchen sink needs replacing too.

Yes, I clean. Whatever and whenever I am able. I can't stand clutter.
There are very few potential "others". However, I try to keep common areas clean and presentable. "Decoration" is something I pretty much reserve for the garden.
Again, there are hardly any people to parade in and out. But in those rare cases, it is not a problem. My house is more or less functional, with fringes of mess. Certainly could be worse, and I'm glad it's not.

Yes, I clean. I grew up in chaotic dysfunction, and I take joy in the simple
process of being able to help myself to a clean towel, from a neatly
folded stack of linens, or to put on a nice clean nightgown at bedtime.
I maintain my home for myself, and if others don't like it, oh well!
As for decoration, I decorate with things that have meaning for me.
For instance, I have hung pictures of beautiful scenery, torn from old
calenders, over my desk. One wall of my office is taken up with the
current story board for my writing projects. I have books everywhere,
but neatly arranged on shelves, or neatly stacked. My bed has a pillow
for me, and one for my cat. I recently bought a sofa, because I felt
badly when my only friend came to visit, and all I had to offer her was
an uncomfortable counter stool. I hardly ever sit on that sofa, but it
looks nice, and my cat loves it.
I waited to buy a cover for my bed, until I could find one that I loved.
I think that is the key to making a home for oneself. I once read
somewhere, that when decorating, you should make a rule that you
never bring anything into your home unless you love it.
I read this book, "Diary of a Mad Housewife." Her husband took pride
in buying expensive things and then scattering them around the house.
I found that pathetic. The things he purchased had no history, told
nothing about him except that he was a poseur.