Casual Fridays: Who makes the mess, who cleans up, and how angry are they about it?

I'll fess up: I leave coffee grounds on the kitchen counter when I make coffee. It bugs Greta, but it doesn't bother me. Meanwhile, it bothers me when Greta leaves her shoes next to the stools in the kitchen, and it drives both of us crazy when the kids pile their backpacks at the bottom of the stairs -- then immediately head up to their rooms without their stuff.

This week's study is about household messes. Is it just the messes that other people make that bother us? Or are we sometimes annoyed by our own messes? Maybe the messes we dislike the most are the ones we think someone else should be taking care of.

Yesterday we collected dozens of people's most hated messes. For today's study I combined them into eight categories. You'll be answering a few questions about each type of mess, plus giving some information about the way your household works. Next week I'll take a look at the data and see if I can make sense of it.

Click here to participate

The survey is a bit longer than the usual Casual Friday, with about 47 questions. Even so, it should take only a couple minutes to complete, and it's not nearly as annoying as picking up someone else's dirty socks.

You have until the morning of Thursday, November 8, to complete your response. There is no limit on the number of respondents.

Don't forget to come back next Friday to see the results!

More like this

My responses are going to confuse you, because I'm an older woman living with a male roommate. Not a romantic partner, but a graduate student renting my spare room. He's messier than I am.

I do all the housework. I've been cleaning the house all by myself for decades and I don't see the point of fighting with him over hair in the bathtub or toothpaste on the mirror. I'm acting like a mom, which is a familiar role.

I didn't know how to answer the laundry and computer questions, because HIS computers and HIS laundry are in his room, and I keep hands off.

Your questions didn't distinguish between family and roommates.

I'm living in a dorm, and my roommates stuff is separate from mine. My answers are mostly "not annoyed at all" because I don't have to worry about anyone else's messes.

There is one mess that does annoy me - it's not really a physical mess, I guess, but it annoys me when people fail to punctuate, capitalize, spell, and break paragraphs apart correctly...I guess it just looks messy...

I think the part about who actually cleans up the messes should also have included a category for whoever gets around to it. I put varies instead, though it's not really based upon any rules--I feel like it's usually me that cleans up first.

My current roommate doesn't like clutter, but doesn't seem to notice the hair in the bathroom, the dirt on the kitchen floor, etc. I don't care about the clutter but wish she'd clean up the crud. Figures.

Obviously your survey can't cover all possibilities. I love to cook and have never complained about doing most of the cooking/meal prep in our house. I *hate* dusting and vacuuming, but both my wife and daughter are asthmatics with dust allergies, so guess who gets to do all the cleaning as well?

Side note: The word "file" was meant to be spelled with a "p" as the first letter. ;-)

You missed one. I go instantly ballistic if I'm busy doing something with an essential tool. eg. Pen. I put it down for a second and then can't find where I put it. Drives myself clean up the wall and down the other side.

Probably why I prefer desktop computers to laptops... never lost one of them yet..

By John Carter (not verified) on 04 Nov 2007 #permalink

How about deleting the second comment? Or disemvowelling it? And banning the poster? It's an unpleasant and pointless eruption of bile. Unpleasant to those of us who AREN'T being attacked.

I second Zora's motion to delete the comment by "jc tyler" as it provides no useful contribution to the conversation.

By Michael Chermside (not verified) on 05 Nov 2007 #permalink

jc tyler's comment was deleted. Sorry for letting it linger around so long...

Note that the comments renumber after deletion, so we're not talking about you, Sammy!

I live alone so that might skew the results a bit.

I did live with a romantic partner for a couple years in my 20s and I used to drive him nuts with my mess. I reach a threshold of untidiness and then I blitz the particular space that is annoying me. I never reached my untidiness threshold when living with RP as he used pile up our papers so that the floor and tables looked tidy. The pile of papers never got sorted out.