How do you all cope with the Mess - the unfinished 'projects' laying around the entire house - the clutter, my dear god, the clutter!!!
I've been reading through the forums a lot these past few days and I'm just trying to see how I can possibly move forward and make some sort of progress with the state of our house.
My Spouse (F) and Myself (F) have been married for just over a year - having never lived together previously - and I'm just at my wits end with the mess. I've always been a tidy-ish person, not to the extreme but I've always kept things to a minimum - no clutter and always able to actually SEE all the surfaces in the house lol.
It's at the point now where I just do not know what to do - I'm literally overwhelmed with clutter & mess and don't even know where to begin with it - DW has made it clear that she doesn't want me to sort through anything and throw it away without her being there - but I just KNOW that if she is here when I do it then nothing will change - things will just be 'moved' to another area - only then for 'new mess' to creep in and replace the old!
Our garage, outside work shed and office are all so messy that you can barely walk anywhere in them without tripping and breaking your neck - despite promises to get them organized it just never happens!
I just want to go round the entire place with trash bags and throw everything that we don't need/use away but this caused a HUGE argument!
How the hell do you all deal with this? My teenage kids have become like slaves too - Wife insists they don't have enough 'responsibilities' around the home (they definitely do) and this has also caused heated debates in the past - I don't think that they should have to take responsibility for the things that DW can't be bothered to do! For example - DW wanted chickens - we got chickens - novelty has now worn off and it has somehow now become the kids' 'responsibility' to feed/water/clean them....
Same when DW cooks dinner - OMG there was a pan left in the kitchen sink for 5 days!!! Eventually I caved and had to do something about it - but if I cook dinner then I have to clean up my mess too - which is fine with me but I take issue with cleaning up after DW. There has also been WAX melted onto our kitchen floor for 3 MONTHS - from a bout of candle making - promises to sort it out but never does - I just don't want to become an 'enabler' and run around picking up her mess - I don't think that's going to be helpful to anyone.
TL:DR - Wife is messy, won't do anything at all about it and I'm having a silent breakdown because I can no longer cope with it - but refuse to be an enabler and clean/tidy up after up constantly.
Sorry for the rant - think I just needed to get it out without there being an arguement lol.
Your living my life, Set up boundaries NOW, it only gets worse
Submitted by c ur self on
I had to fight getting emotional reading your post...I married my wife almost 8 years ago. She had severe add and mild hoarding, loves a mess....Can't throw hardly anything away, leaves cups on the table so I will see them and do it...I was just like you, cleanish and usable!.. Co-dependent people will make a slave out you...I retired from my job after 37 years at age 56, so I could manage the home...I was going to hell emotionally, while she was just fine...People like our wives are professionals at controlling others..."People who can't control themselves, will alway live to control others" She brought a cat here and I instantly became the care giver....Your desire to not enabler her lack or responsibility is right on target...I suggest you make a written list for her of what is going to change to bring the home back into a place you can survive in...Keep your world small, my wife has all these great idea's but as long as someone else does the work...Like your chickens....
I wouldn't even give her the list unless we were setting in front of a good counselor, because if she refuses (which I bet she does) and gets emotional and angry, (tries to place a guilt trip on you) and you get angry nothing will change and nothing will get accomplished....You've got to handle this wisely, calmly and quietly but stand your ground...Or you will always be the bad guy...If she isn't willing to meet you half way and be responsible in the home, then that will tell you about her commitment to doing the work it's going to take to have a healthy marriage....I'm sorry if I sound negative I understand about mental illness, but I also understand what the effects of her life is doing you and the kids....
Blessing friend! ...Above all things......Guard your heart from anger and bitterness....
I wish someone would have told me this 8 years ago.....
C
Ruminating the who messes-who puts in order's
Submitted by NowOrNever (not verified) on
C you wrote
Co-dependent people will make a slave out you...I retired from my job after 37 years at age 56, so I could manage the home...I was going to hell emotionally, while she was just fine...People like our wives are professionals at controlling others..."People who can't control themselves, will alway live to control others" She brought a cat here and I instantly became the caretaker
You remind me of my stint in Alanon, a long time ago, and of something that can be going on in the messing havingproblems-solving problems cleaning and putting in order
Alanon is for people living with someone who has an addiction, who havent yet understood that if they're the caretaker in that relation, they're what one book I used to read called the Patsy or the Supplier. That they have a dependency, too, an addiction, to Saving, Making things right. At least that is what the sessions showed me. That I was codependent with the (then, in my life) alcoholic who was codependent with me (and not only with the bottle). That we were both, not just he, in the throes of a mutually reinforcing back and forth. As you say, in codependency, yes there is controlling going on. An addict needs an enabler...it's the addiction itself that demands it. Lord, it was a surprise that I once I took a good look, was Volunteering to be his god of a kind, exerting my Powers, to explain, clean up the messes, call work when he was too drunk to work, read him the riot act...which he loved because he could do the crestfallen thing of apologizing, tolerating me mollifying me, waiting me out until I subsided while keeping our world running...and falling off the wagon again because he knew somehow that I had hallucinated myself in to believing that I was his Fixer God...so he knew I would be there to clean him up, fix what broke, when down he went again.
C mess/cleanup as expression of codependency. Yes indeed that can be under it. Yes indeed. That's one thing that I'm spooked about, as I deal with the tendency to physical chaos in that house. Yes I need to stick to my own knitting, take care of what I need for me in our space, and not slide down the tube of physical enabling. yes, I do, thank you.
You remind me of something that I at least dont think of often, which is that in codependency, two have to play that addiction/supply, child/parent game. And both, not just the Patsy enabler cleaner upper, are into power and control. My lightbulb back when was that once I dug into myself, looking at what then I was getting, identity wise about being plugged into being caretaker of a substance addict (alcoholic son of an alcoholic father) it was the hallucination that I had godly powers. His weakness and falling apart "proved" I was real and powerful, and that what I was doing (fixing him..hahaha on me) was worthy. What a hallucination. Meanwhile, my life wasnt very fruitful in serving others or in growing. I was using him to feed my addiction to proving that I was worthy and powerful.
you did it with a few of your bottom lines. Thank you for sending me to check myself on this in the present. Yes, it can be under this messmaking/putting in order. Maybe that's what has been such a struggle for me over the issue... I know that I cant be his mother, that to be his fixer god is an illusion.
Oh, yes, mess
Submitted by NowOrNever (not verified) on
Wishing you well, Silently. In my case I'm a DW, mine is a DH. Oh, mess. Well for us its a peculiar world. I don't think he sees a lot of the mess... Its just stuff that he puts down, tears off the package wrapping, throws it on the floor or on th spot that I'm using at the moment to chop vegetables (lol, you'd think he'd notice the knife, if not the onions) and goes on, with the papers and shards left behind as he moves on. But G help me if I move his stuff.
There's something in that: if I need not to trip on things, not to have so many piles of things that I cant carry on what I need to do, well, he's got his own, I guess, need to drop things and let them lie, immediately coat any empty surface with stuff. He's got some need that I can't fathom. He certainly does it like..a ritual. Empty space? Fill it. There's a need that he has, something that I cant see
Silently, I'm talking seriously... Why should he be like me? So I'm between recognizing that, and things getting so abandoned and chaotic that there are no clean dishes and we have a sanitation issue. Not a pathetic neatnick insisting on prissy cleanliness, a sanitation issue.
First of all, dont feel bad because the mess shocks you. You're all right the way you are. In my house, we're probably going to have both mess and straight areas... If, that is, I'm tough enough and persistent enough to insist on boundaries, and to do the cleanup. . But it makes me sag at the energy expenditure, because he doesnt see his mess until it literally trips him or he loses something he really wants in it. Not ragging on him. Its partly a perceptual issue. And his own habitual ways. Which I give him. i've got my own.
Guess who cleans, at our house.
I'm working on this. I wont be his mother. yes, boundaries. But the mess isn't easy. He doesnt see it until it inconveniences him. So. messes exist, where I dont clean, until they get bigger, and are there until dealt with, to him, they're not there until they intrude in his life
My jury is out, about what the dropping, spreading and mess making about. I've read the literature. I've read people with ADHD write about it. Some say, leave my stuff alone. Ok, and thats what we're doing. But what about my stuff, our space, what about my well being?
Some of it is neurologically connected, but I'm no specialist. He doesnt have to be like me. But I'm not his servant
dont feel bad for needing physical order. Hers wont be yours. Wishing you well
Somebody once said that that the physical world was the workshop of the soul. I dont think that's true for my DH. At least at home. Which is where I spend most of my time with him.
volunteering to be the 24/7 caretaker wont work. You'll both resent it. In my case,I'd get too sad to go on.