Ms. Not-so-clean

[aroraborealis]

I have a high tolerance for clutter, and a slightly less high (but still above average, I think) tolerance for dust and the like, and not a hugely high tolerance (but possibly still above average?) for actual dirtiness, unless it's in the kitchen.

This causes some conflict with my roommate, who seems not to be much interested in day-to-day tidying, but once she hits her limit, she insists that the apartment is a shithole and nothing can be done until it gets clean. I'm not much interested in cleaning things that don't seem dirty to me, so this annoys me. I've suggested getting a cleaner once a month, but my roommates would rather spend their money on taxis than a cleaner. That's obviously fine, but there's no easy solution to me preferring to hire someone to clean and them not having the money to do so.

Anyway, I'm not thrilled about the situation, and now Melissa wants to have a chore chart or something, which is just lame. And it still doesn't solve the problem of inspiring me to clean things that don't seem dirty to me. I mean, if my chore for the week is dusting, and someone dusted the week before, the fact is, I just won't dust because I WON'T SEE THE DUST. Ditto weekly rotations on toilet cleaning, bathtub cleaning, floor mopping... Monthly, MAYBE, but, again, I'd rather hire it out.

I guess I'll try to vacuum and pick up all of my projects that are around the house tomorrow (knitting and other projects tend to populate the space where I usually sit in the living room, but beyond that... well, we'll just see. *sigh*

Comments

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

That's a hard one. Our old house mates decided they wanted a cleaning day so we had one where we all stayed and cleaned. Problem was that we had different levels of how we'd do each thing so expectations were still out of whack.

When Gray and I got a place we hired people to come clean. They come every 3 weeks and we're really happy with them.

[cowgrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, monthly sounds about right to me, too. From your description it sounds like you and I have about the same level of tolerance for messiness. And I feel lucky -- in recent years I've tended to live with people sloppier than me. So, once a month I'll pull out the vaccum cleaner while muttering to myself something like "if I don't do it, it doesn't get done!" :)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm surprised you lack the clean gene. I thought it skips generations, nym