Coping with Adult Child's Chaotic Household

[LaurieS]

We seem to have two complete filing systems.. his and hers... you'd think after 30+ years of marriage he would have learned my way.  But I do have him using the squeegee after showering.. so I'm one up on most women

[Pooh]

I struggle with pretty much all of it.  I have had to teach myself how to clean, and how to set up routines, and budget and pretty much every aspect of non-chaotic adult living.  It's simply not something I ever learned or was able to do, despite my mother making many efforts to teach me organization. Which actually was part of the problem, because it became a battleground issue.  There's some OCD in there, and a bunch of ADD, and  I have to break down the steps that for other people are just intuitive as well as do a lot of work to correct my underlying thinking errors.  I depend on checklists and chore charts to deal with it all.  All this despite the fact that I crave order, and am quite good at it at my job, although filing escapes me, unless I'm setting up a customer's document library.   The self help and websites have been invaluable, and I totally credit Flylady and Pam&Peggy for the encouragement and teaching they offers people like me.  I started following Flylady about 10 years ago.  My home isn't perfect, but I wouldn't have a tenth the order and peace I currently have if it weren't for what she provides.  It's not just the specific explanations about how to clean things and what to focus on, but all the gentle encouragement and help in overcoming perfectionism.  She currently has 628640 people receiving her daily emails, and thousands more who bought her book and use her website, so clearly there are a bunch of us who struggle with these things. 

About hoarding:  it's a continuum.  The people you see on Hoarders are living in level 5 squalor (see squalorsurvivors.com if you're curious what the different levels consist of) and quite often have serious problems with OCD and anxiety.  (Many people consider hoarding to be a subtype of OCD.)  I'm a level 1 hoarder - that means I have lots of stuff, and a relationship to my stuff that makes it very, very hard to get rid of things that other people would purge without a thought.  I was, at one point, at level 3, and actually got evicted for my mess.  A person can actually have hoarding tendencies, but be able to keep their stuff tightly controlled or containerized, and be able to pass as a "packrat" or "collector."  It's all about the relationship they have with the items, and the way they think about the process of acquiring, using and discarding.  It's kind of like how someone can have an eating disorder, but be a normal weight and not binge or purge - again, it's all about the relationship that person has with the food.

I hope that was useful.  I absolutely recognize that, unless this is actually a problem for a person, they'd have a very hard time understanding what's so difficult about just keeping things clean and organized, and probably view it as laziness, weakness or lack of caring.   For many, many people, it's none of those things at all.

Elsieshaye, I just want to say I really appreciate this post.  I have a hard time understanding this situation, because I am not in it.  This post gave me some great understanding for people that struggle with this.  Thank you.

[sonrisa]

I commend you for wanting to help. It is taking a lot of your time and it also can be very frustrating and unending. Is this how you really would like to spend your time? My DIL and DS, were both unemployed for years with young 3 sons. Their house was a complete wreck to the point that there was dog poop on the clothes on the floor, very disgusting.  Somehow they could not find the time to clean it.

My middle grandson who was 5 at the time would freak out at the poop and messes. He was always washing his toys etc.  Very sad.  It came to the point that I could not even walk into their place. If I did I would be an emotional wreck knowing that my grandchildren lived in that environment.  It made no difference to them.  What they finally did when people did visit them is just to visit outside. One day one of my grandsons hurt himself by kicking a ball inside the house, CPS came to investigate. I thought, aha, they will see the condition of the house and encourage them to do something about their environment. They wrote a report stating that the house was filthy, but not dangerous.  After that, I knew my frustrations were in vane.  I stopped entering their home. 

Your DD may be saying that she does not like the condition of the house because this is what you want to hear.  The condition of the house may not bother her.  She may also get extremely stressed out when you visit as she feels she needs to please your expectations.  Clearly, not a win-win situation in terms of bonding.  Would it be better for you if you saw your DD family in other environments other that their home?