June 8

4 comments

Does she have a cleaning disorder?



I wonder if there’s such a thing as  cleaning disorders.  I have one daughter who will literally argue and throw a fit for over an hour when asked to do a five minute job.  She’s been like this her entire life, since before she was two. She’s 25 now and still does it. I don’t get it. What makes a person willing to fight for hours so they don’t have to clean something up?

I’m not even talking about real cleaning here. We’ve never been able to get her to clean up after herself, let alone help with anything else. Recently, I asked everyone to take 5 minutes to do something everyday and put a lot of small easy jobs on the list. I knew it would be a fight with her so I put “brush a cat for 5 minutes” on the list. I figured that it helped keep cat hair off things and her cat sheds the most. She argued with all of us for over 20 minutes because it wasn’t fair that she had to do something!

She’s a normal young adult in most other aspects but what is this?  She’s very thoughtful and caring. She has a good job.  I just don’t know where I went wrong.

It’s so bad that our last argument has led her to move out.  That’s how bad this is. She was nice and let her friend sleep over because the girl had locked herself out of her house. I told her it was nice of her to offer. But they had put some of my stuff that was on the couch onto the floor. No biggie but then I would have expected them to pick it back up and put it back where they found it. They didn’t.  I got the usual excuse that my daughter didn’t have time because she needed to get to work. I didn’t say anything else but hoped she would do it when she got home from work. Nope. When I got home, it was all still on the floor and I lost it. I threw some of her stuff on the floor. Childish I know but I’ve been dealing with this for over 20 years and nothing else has worked to break through to her.

This is another tactic that can go in the “doesn’t work” file along with hundreds more.  She decided I was disrespectful but could not understand how what she did was exactly the same thing.  I asked her how what I did was any different and she said that she set my stuff on the floor and didn’t just throw it like I did. (Mine was a laptop and papers, hers were clothes.). She never got it. She thinks she was right and I was the jerk.

She packed up her cat and left.  That’s the extremes she will go through to get out of cleaning something up.  I wonder how a roommate is going to feel about her aversion to cleaning anything.  I wonder what she will say when they tell her it’s her turn to clean the bathroom. Won’t it be fun to be a fly on that wall?

You may also like

Will We Ever Sleep Again?
The New Countertop Dishwasher
What’s On The Current Agenda?
Feeling a Little Better
  • That is interesting. I wouldn’t say that I really enjoy cleaning or like to clean, but I enjoy and like the feeling of the house being clean – so that is usually what motivates me to clean. Also, I really don’t like spiders or bugs and if things are dirty, messy, or cluttered then I feel there is more of a chance of bugs or spiders “hiding” in the house. I never really had chores or had to clean when I was growing up but I picked up the habit after graduating college so maybe there is still hope for her yet!

  • {"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

    Subscribe now to get the latest updates!

    >
    %d bloggers like this: