Think more objectively. What if you walk into a messy house that nobody had cleaned up in while. What would you think of the family? Would you let your kids go over to a house where packing boxes and junk are laying all over?
Of course there are degrees of messiness. But messes don’t improve, they get worse over time.
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While I personally do not like dirt, clutter, and chaos; I would allow our kids to play at another family’s home if we felt that the family was of good character and our children would be safe. I knew a few families growing up that had tons of kids (the stereotypical Catholic Italians, for instance), and often had a messy house as a result, but the families were so warm and wonderful that I would greatly regret not being able to befriend/visit with these people because my (VERY tidy) mother thought their houses were too messy. They were some of the greatest, most generous and caring people I’ve ever known in my life (my exceedingly tidy Germanic mother, not so much).
And messes do not necessarily get worse over time unless you’re talking about compulsive hoarding where things tend to build up over time. Most “messy” people do indeed clean; they just tend to have a longer time horizon than people like you and me.[/quote]
on the other ahnd, its kind of cool when we would go from messy abode to very clean house in 4 or 5 hours o “family clean up day”. it’s much more dramatic than minimal tidyings and has that sort of WOW factor that youre just not going to get if things are generally in order. also it’s very good aerobic exercise to quickly pick up a lot of things strewn around.
