Why housekeeping talk is so hard

I think most of us talk about being "clean or messy" wrong

As a person who enjoys clutter, hates dirt, was barely raised, enjoys cleaning, and has sometimes severe fatigue and pain that limit my ability to do any of the things I want to be doing, I have had a hard time communicating with housemates about cleaning and tidiness. I have also seen friends go through the same thing—not able to communicate effectively with the people they live with, feeling frustrated, misunderstood, and unhappy at home.

I think part of why this happens is that there is usually one question, “are you more clean or messy?” that people use to help choose roommates or prepare to cohabitate with friends or partners. The problem is that this question doesn’t cover any of the practical details of what housekeeping looks like.

I think housekeeping comes down to four factors: goals, standards, skills, and abilities.

Goals are what you want your home to look like, ideally. You may be a minimalist, enjoy a little decor, or want almost every surface packed with knick-knacks. This has nothing to do with cleaning. People can own nothing and never scrub their toilet, or be a maximalist who dusts the knick-knacks and keeps everything pristine. It’s so important to talk about this. I enjoy having a lot of things around, and so no matter how tidy and energized I am, I would not be inherently compatible with a housemate who needs zero visual clutter to feel comfortable. I would not feel comfortable in a home with nothing but furniture in it! I think this aspect has more to do with tidiness and what tidy means to individuals than about cleanliness. Asking someone if they are tidy or messy would not cover this! I might think I’m tidy because I want a functional but busy looking space, and another person would read that as messy.

Standards, to me, have to do with two things: functionality of spaces and actual cleaning (removing dirt, preventing mold, disinfecting, etc.) Are we scrubbing the shower after every use? Once a week? Once a month? Do we consider a table functional if we can scooch some clutter to one end, or is that unacceptable because the whole table needs to be available easily? These are important questions. If one person wants the shower cleaned weekly and one wants it daily, they are probably going to be frustrated with each other, especially if they don’t talk about it. So many people assume that their standards are universal, and see other people as either “gross” or a “clean freak” if they have a different standard. It’s not necessary! People can just be different, and talking about it is the only thing that can help. Shutting down and submitting to the other person or being passive aggressive has never worked, but people try it all the time.

Skills are the things we learn about cleaning and tidying from our parents, or learn on our own as adults. How to scrub a pan, clean a floor, tidy parts of a room. This is where that pattern emerges in a lot of woman + man couples that exhausts a lot of women partners. Men not being taught housekeeping skills, then refusing to do them because their partners “are just better at it.” That is super annoying! Those guys do not understand that those are skills, not talents.

An unfortunate thing is that a lot of people are neglected about housekeeping skills as kids—not taught housekeeping because their parents don’t know how to teach, or don’t know themselves how to clean/tidy, or simply because they don’t think boys need that information. It is a piece of neglect, and I think having empathy for that is helpful. I was definitely not raised with housekeeping skills, because my parents were under resourced. As an adult, I have had to teach myself these things. The hardest part of that though, is that there are a lot of potential housekeeping skills you may not even realize are necessary or available, especially if your parents also did not have those skills.

For example, you will likely know as an adult that laundry is necessary. But only as an adult, I learned about why you might separate light and dark colors, that the symbols on clothes indicate what types and temperatures of washing and drying are safe for them, and how to soften clothes with some vinegar. An adult will likely know that it’s necessary to clear and wipe down surfaces, but how often, and what products to use, are skills you might have to pick up along the way. What needs disinfecting and what doesn’t? How do you prevent mold? How do you keep clothes un-wrinkled and do you even notice wrinkles? How to cook? These are all skills, and I appreciate people who have the patience to point out a missing skill that I (or anyone else) haven’t ever run into before and just lived without. However—once you know about a skill, it’s time to evaluate where that fits into standards and goals and build those skills. So, I have excuses for the men (and others) who don’t know what they’re doing, but not the ones who keep refusing to know what they’re doing even if they value it being done.

Abilities are about what we can physically do, and where our limitations start. It feels so important to me to distinguish this from other factors. I have had people not understand my disabilities and attribute what we both see as shortfalls to standards, and I have had people attribute my standards to my disabilities. It is so important to respect people’s limitations, but also to distinguish standards, goals, and skills from them. If two people have the same standards and goals, then they can work toward achieving those together. They can be creative; they can find ways to support each other in getting the job done. If they have different standards or goals, then the plan for working with or around or just accepting limitations needs to look different. If I want the shower cleaned weekly but can only handle it monthly, that’s different from actually feeling like it should be done monthly and I am meeting my own standard. If another person wants it done monthly and I want it done weekly but can’t—maybe that conversation looks like “can you do me a favor and clean the shower, and I can do something that’s hard for you?”

I actually enjoy cleaning, and it’s been sad to live with people who read my inability to clean as a standard or don’t really care about the difference.

I have really been able to think through this more clearly because my partner and I are pretty compatible around housekeeping. We have very similar ideals—goals, standards, desire for skills and what we wish we were consistently able to do. They are very understanding of my limitations and I am of theirs. We don’t call each other messy when the apartment is a mess, because that isn’t the standard.

“Messy” and “clean” are often described like they’re personality types, but it is so limiting and sometimes insulting to approach them like immutable personality traits. What people consider clean, tidy, or organized varies so much, and can vary over our lives, too. Often people will ask the simple question, “are you more clean or messy?” and then become disappointed with housemates because the answer was based on each person’s assumptions about what that means.

I think it’s much more helpful to break it down into pieces like this.

When my partner and I were planning to move in together, we also considered having a roommate, and having lived alone and starting to think about all this, I prepared very specific questions about housekeeping.

“What does a clean and tidy kitchen look like to you? Is anything on the counter?”

“Are you interested/okay with intentional clutter?”

“How would you want to talk about it if we had a disagreement or someone forgot to do a planned chore?”

I had this conversation with a friend, who gave me detailed answers and asked me questions back. They mentioned that they like having supplies in transparent drawers to not forget where things are; my partner and I agreed that was a good system that doesn’t bother us. Having that level of detail in discussing cohabitation felt so important to me.

I think if people asked more questions like this with an open mind, and really got to the core of what they and others actually want, conflicts could be smoothed out a lot easier.

There is also the entire factor that is moralizing around cleaning—and I personally just want to reject that entirely. It is not inherently better to be tidier. It is not a moral failing to have a dirty sink. It just is what it is. Some things are about health and safety, and that’s necessary, but not relevant to morality. I think that sense is part of a Christian sense of purity and abstinence, personally, and I don’t want to participate in that if I can help it. But outside of baggage about morality, all of this is just preferences and abilities. I think people can work these things out much more often if they can be equally respectful to each other and to each other’s goals, standards, skills, and abilities.

Thank you so much for reading!

I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this! Do you agree with my categories or do you think I’m off base or missed something? What kinds of conversations have you had or wish you’d had with housemates?

You can leave a public comment by clicking the button below, or email me privately at michaelzzaki.writes@gmail.com. If you got this directly via email, you can also just reply to that email!

Thanks again <3

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