I don’t know why, but I always have this mental image of people who identify as male/masculine to just have their living spaces look like a dumpster (okay maybe its a bit hyperbole, not a literal dumpster, but you know what I mean), while people who identify as female/feminine to be extra tidy? (Perhaps its mainstream media’s portrayal affecting my subconscious?) Is this actually true?
Sorry if this sounds offensive, I don’t mean it that way.
As a single parent, I never stop cleaning.
Ever.
💯💯💯
I’m in my 30s. My parents raised us with old-timey gender roles, expecting the girls to cook and clean and the boys to, idk, get used to being served?
It did neither side any favors. One brother had some very difficult lessons to learn when a way-out-of-his-league girlfriend told him what’s what. They’re married now and he’s pretty candid about how bullshit those gender roles were and how he’d never setup a son for failure by not teaching them basic life skills of cleaning and feeding themselves, nor teach a daughter she has to shoulder it all.
Finding myself in a relationship with a man who plays weaponized incompetence games to manipulate me into traditional gender roles is my nightmare. I got taken advantage of in some of my earliest relationships and I now attempt to vet for it better up front. I can say there are certainly still men who don’t think it’s their job to clean, but I think it’s better with each generation.
IDK if women are any better, we might need a 50/50 bi person for their perspective.
Good for your brother for growing up. Most men raised like that never do.
Women are just as bad. It’s not a gender thing, though there are the old stereotypes you mentioned
My experience is women are very unclean if they don’t think it will be noticed or on display. Cleaning is more for appearances with little influence from hygiene or being organised. Men seem to do it out of necessity only, it’s not the bare minimum, but the state of something can be left longer, like a pile of clothes not being big enough to deal with yet. But there are those that can’t survive without their mothers.
It’s definitely not universally true. I don’t like my space looking like a dumpster and I dated a woman for 13 years who absolutely, positively, would not clean, and didn’t know how to use a garbage can. Would drop trash on the floor and leave it there until I finally got sick of it and cleaned it up. She would leave dishes unwashed and just laying around.
But outside of that experience, most women I know have kept neater spaces than me. As I said, my place doesn’t look like a dumpster, it’s organized and tidy, but I probably sweep less, dust less, and so on. I do dishes daily because they get gross fast if you don’t.
Also it is to be noted that I lived in absolute filth in my twenties and I had to teach myself how to clean and be tidy over time, it took about ten years until I was in my thirties before I was consistent on cleaning.
I’m embarrassed about being a slob. I’m definitely messy and it’s a point of friction in my marriage. (I’m trying to get better but it’s hard to reprogram stuff from childhood.)
I dated a woman for 13 years who absolutely, positively, would not clean, and didn’t know how to use a garbage can. Would drop trash on the floor and leave it there until I finally got sick of it and cleaned it up.
Fuck. I feel like an army drill sergeant now in comparison.
I (male) tend to do more tidying, while my spouse (female) tends to do more cleaning.
I’d say the stereotypes are dated from when men weren’t expected to care for themselves or their home. And I know plenty of boomers and a few Gen X who fit into that, but I don’t see it as common in more recent generations.
We have the reverse. My boyfriend can clean the whole apartment and still leave it looking messy, whereas I only clean when absolutely necessary, but will keep stuff tidy.
With my parents, I see that they try to be equal in the work, but my dad rarely comes up with stuff to do on his own, so my mom always has to ask for every chore. He came from a “traditional roles” family, so probably suffering the after effects from that.
All I can say is that my wife could live in squalor for weeks without batting an eye, but simultaneously believes I’m high strung for not being able to chill if my space is dirty. Tells me to leave it. But we both know how bad it gets if/when I leave it, and it ends up being me who cleans it one way or another.
Neither my wife nor I are very tidy people so our house is usually pretty messy. I (a guy) clean and tidy more than she does but neither of us are great for it.
Anecdotal evidence but on my limited sample of male and female friends and acquaintances whose homes I visited, it doesn’t matter. People range from obsessively clean to very messy, but I didn’t notice a correlation.
Guy here, weirdly I’m pretty good about cleaning up the rest of the house, but my office generally looks like a bomb went off in it.
In my family the stereotype absolutely holds true, men (e.g. me and my dad) are messier than women (my mom). We clean less often and have a higher tolerance for filth. I don’t like that about myself but it takes a lot of filth to get me off of my ass and cleaning.
Funny, it’s the exact opposite in my family. I used to be the one tidying up after everyone else. I absolutely cannot stand messy rooms while neither my mom or sister seemed to care that much. My living room and bedroom are pretty much always spotless.
I’ve known both men and women who had equally nasty living spaces. I think it’s a personality trait that doesn’t depend gender.
Not and n/a, cis woman, too old for this shit. I kind of manage to get rid of any rubbish eventually and to avoid mould but people aren’t allowed in the flat. Somehow I never learnt the necessary self discipline and skills for keeping a space presentable, even though my mum was stay-at-home and kept her household shipshape. She just seems to have forgotten to teach me how to do anything. Is what I tell myself while ignoring that my younger sister has little issue in this regard. In my defense, I have ADHD and chronic fatigue.
If there’s any (any!) magic spell I’d like to be able to do, it’s “Eene meene kidney bean, my flat is now clean - hex hex!” I don’t need money or fame or whatever, just a spell to have a clean living space. I can work from there.
I’m also struggling a lot with that. I’ve found that doing a little each day gets the job done eventually. Idk about you, I kinda have the energy to keep an apartment clean but not always to get it clean when it’s already feral. So if it’s gotten to that point I just try to clean a mess and a half for every mess I make.
I also used to tell myself it’s because of my parents. Which is true but they’re not gonna swing by and sweep the floor. It genuinely only takes a few tries to learn how to clean effectively as an adult and there are tutorials on youtube. And it does get much easier once you don’t have to think about every step.
In hostels, women tend to keep the rooms cleaner than men. However in my personal experience, the filthiest women are much more filthy than the filthiest men.
The extra cleaning in hostel environments could also be attributed to defensive nature, some men I knew kept tidy because kleptomania was around.
I am not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination. The mess my wife can make for just daily tasks is mind-blowing to me.
We have probably a 12-foot long dual sink counter in our bathroom. Her shit fills her side and will make it to my side. I can have all my day to day stuff in a foot square space.
Growing up my sisters’ room was so messy you couldn’t see the floor. My(amab) room however was rather spartan
It actually drives me crazy when people don’t keep their living space clean. It’s way easier to maintain as you go than do those crazy cleanups once every blue moon
I don’t see a reliable statistical difference myself. For my part, I’ve got ADHD that causes shit to simply stop existing the moment it’s sat down, and that ends up causing a lot of clutter
