No, and I'm not a good cleaner either. When I was working all the time the household chores were done by one DS and the outside jobs by another. Mom used to sneak over and finish DS's job in the kitchen.

I was a feral child. I suck at cleaning, but I'm getting better.

I'm not bitter, but I'm always shocked when my mother can't understand why I don't know how to do the simplest things. Double-U, Tee, Eff!?!?! I didn't learn how to open up the stove top and clean it until I was 31. Yuck, that was awful.

I just have to look at instructions for cleaners and read lots of cleaning how-to's online. It seems really stupid.

We learned how to wash dishes and laundry in home economics, so I know how to do those for sure. I've been thinking about double dishwashers! That's brilliant. It seems so perfectly wasteful, but I've been thinking I'm sort of disabled because of my "upbringing". It would be adaptive technology.

I've learned that scheduling tasks and then holding myself to it is the best way to get on with it. That and I turn on gorgeous music. My latest cleaning CD is Aqualung, but I have a few. Optimism is good!

I totally understand about the hives. I realized about 6 years ago that I was phobic about cleaning and dirt. Phobic about handling filth. I've been fairly successfully re-wiring myself ever since. A pile of laundry would actually make me cry back then.

I certainly didnt and I am a horrible house keeper. Until I was about 10 apparently our house was spotless according to my mother. She did everything and I didnt even have to keep my room neat. Then when I turned about 12 she fell into a depression and the house was a mess from then on. I was never shown or taught how to do anything. I used to ask for chores and she would say if you see something to be done, do it. Then when I tried to do something like wash the floor or vacuum, I never did it well enough so I just quit. At the same time she would be telling me how much she did to help her mother when she was young. She didnt mention she also had three sisters to help out and she left home at 15 to work. Do I sound bitter? Mom is gone now but here I am 37 years married and my housekeeping is getting worse. I would be ashamed for anyone to come in unannounced. Yes I know about flylady and try it some of the time but cant seem to keep up the routines.

I was raised by a grand mother that locked me outside when she did housework and when i got married 50 yrs ago i did'nt know how to do anything. Hate housework,cooking, the whole nine yards. Love the outside work i am able to do though. I read somewhere that if one has'nt been tought different things by a certain age they will never overcome it. Can't give a source though. But it was in a psychology book .
oakleif

No, I didn't learn to clean from my mother. She was immaculate, so I wish I had learned, but I was too busy playing outside. She kinda thought it was easier to do herself, and faster, than trying to teach me or my sister how to do anything. Same thing in the kitchen. It's a miracle my DH and I didn't dry up and blow away when we first got married b/c I couldn't cook and he didn't know much either. No, the most I ever learned was from a team of maids I had once and each one took a different task--one did all the sinks, commodes, tubs, etc. while another did all the dusting and another all the floors, etc. I had lots of knick knacks and they cleaned them every week! I thought you cleaned those suckers about twice a year!

Yep learned from MOM but I don't clean like she did either. Mom was big on cleaning bathroom sink and tub with Ajax the old powder can stuff which I hate and don't even allow in my house.

I'm also a better house keeper than mom ever was tho mine not like it once was but not near nothing like moms. As a kid the house wasn't actually dirty prolly because I couldn't stand for it to be.

The one thing I learned from mom is scrubbed floors are cleaner than mopped floors but I take that a step further and use one bucket for rinsing out rag then another for cleaning the floors.

My DD asked me to post this. I was not a good house keeper,but she insists DH and i taught her how to do things right and she was'nt lost on what to do when she got out on her own. Sometimes her house is cluttered but it is clean and usually not cluttered.
oakleif

When i was young, I mean i'm remembering like age 3 to 7, my Mom was a whiz at cleaning. Our house was small but always clean and tidy. She could spring clean a closet in one day. She'd take everything out of the closet, wash the floor and walls and have the closet re-organized and back together in just a day. She regularly washed the kitchen floor. I remember cleanliness and order. However, Mom was greatly stressed and became depressed and alcoholic over the years. She would stay up late crying. I'd hear her. The house fell into a mess. Laundry stayed on the floor of the basement for months. When I needed clean clothes for school, I'd wash them myself. I moved out when I was 18, but now I'm in my fifty's and I find difficulty keeping my own house up. I'm not an alcoholic but I do think I have some depression issues. I was on meds for about a year,it didn't help much. I try to clean . I find decluttering and actual cleaning are two different tasks. I know how to clean and declutter, its just hard to find the time and energy for both. Maintenace is a dirty word for me. I can clean my kitchen one day and two days it all needs to be done over again. I break rooms into areas to declutter,then clean. For example, I was able to polish my dining room floor by doing one-quater at a time. It took four days but it got done. Talk about eating an elephant. . .

I learned bits and pieces from my mom and grandma who lived with us. So I do know how to do various activities. What I missed was any sort of routine or idea of how often these things should be done. (mom had a professional career so was always tired from work. grandma grew up with a maid and wasn't that good at cleaning - though she could tell you exactly what she wanted done!).

I can say that the kitchen was clean every night. Everything else was more like a montly chore, if it got done that often. I think we dusted twice a year. Clean the bathrooms? Something that's done when company's coming. I'm always shocked when I hear that people mop or vacuum multiple times a week!! I can't even imagine doing it once a week!

Mirren - you're certainly not the only one who can't keep up with flylady's routines!! I'll try to do it, might even keep it up for as long as a week... but then I fall off the cleaning wagon and dont' try to get back on for several months at least!

Oh, what a delightful thread! What funny memories it brings up of my mom telling me to clean my room, coming in an hour later, seeing nothing done, threatening me with some mundane punishment. My reaction? Shove it all under the bed. Amazingly she'd appear in my door, broom in hand, walk directly to my bed and rake it all out! Busted. As a grown up I asked how she knew? Duh, she did it too! I really miss her. Normally I'm not a great housekeeper, but our house is going on the market in the next week so it's pretty darn clean right now. The exception to that is our 17 y/o sons bathroom that we refer to as "the Truck Stop" because it is GROSS!

I sorta did! My Mom would clean a little bit of something every night. If it looked dirty, she cleaned/mopped/swept it right then. I don't do that. Unless something gets spilled or broken, I do all of my cleaning on Saturday. That includes washing fan blades, windows, baseboards, walls, everything. I also am more through that Mom ever was. Her walls may get washed once a year!

My only exception is the kitchen. I clean that every night after I make supper.

I think cleaning is definately a learned skill. Another no for learning from mama. Flylady saved me. Not because she tells you how to clean, but because for the first time I learned how to keep a house neat and livable on a daily basis. Really, why can't we all just be taught how to pick up after ourselves? But somehow I never got it.

Now, with my flylady routines, I spend that 15 min. a day "cleaning" and have finally learned that a house isn't something I have to battle. The rest of the family has followed my lead and I'm so glad they won't struggle when grown.

Gloria

My mama taught me well, maybe too well. My mother is an excellent housekeeper and I remember being about 8yrs old and helping her wax our wood floors by hand. Once a month she gave me a toothbrush and had me scrub baseboards. We maintained cleaning during the week. Dishes done every nite, beds made every morning, no messes out before bed, sweep and vac. daily. Saturday morning we dusted everything, cleaned bathrooms, mopped, and waxed.

Fastforward 20 years, i'm OC about cleaning. My hardwood floors are vac. twice a day and mopped once a day. The carpet on my stairs is cleaned every other day. I try to keep everything very tidy and clean. Not an easy task with 2 children and 3 dogs.

I'm quitting my job next week to stay at home with DD and to clean house. I work now but obsess about cleaning while i'm at work so I sleep about 5 hours a nite, work until 3pm, clean until 12 or 1 am. What can I say I love cleaning!

Growing up our Mom always had my brother and I do regular chores. I was washing dishes when I had to stand on a chair to reach the sink. Bit by bit our lists of chores got longer. We had to take care of our own rooms too and I dodged that as much as I could. Even then my native environment was clutter. She would set a kitchen timer in the room and everything had to be done in that time frame. Or I would be stuck there all day, there was no getting out of it. Any privileges were tied to the chores. She didn't like to clean but she did it. At least enough to make it pretty pleasant. Cooking was more what she was into. She was a master at that. I knew other kids' houses were much cleaner and had less clutter, but those moms screamed at their kids all the time.

Despite growing up with chores I believe I had part of my brain turned off all that time. I learned and absorbed nothing because I was convinced I would be rich and have a maid when I grew up. I actually remember telling her that once, when she was gently trying to explain that she was trying to teach me something I would need to know someday. Same with cooking. I was there at the stove with my brain turned off. Now I like to cook. How I wish I had learned more of her techniques.

I did learn the right way to wash dishes but everything else I had to re-learn as an adult. I was amazed when I had my first apartment and found out that things got dirty all by themselves! I thought you had to do messy things to make a place dirty. I had always thought Mom was just wasting our time cleaning things: probably because I never saw them actually get dirty.

I clean now but only a little at a time. The kitchen is kept cleanest: but both I and DH cook and it has to be kept up. No dishes left in the sink, ever. Counters always cleaned immediately after cooking. Other things slide by as much as I dare. Husband is naturally neat so I walk a fine line. If it's in a visible spot is gets cleaned. I don't care about the dust bunnies under the bed as long as no one else can see them. I have carpal tunnel so scrubbing for more than a few minutes gets very painful. Dusting, vacuuming I let go until I can see it. The bathroom sinks are clean and the bed is always made. Beyond those I let things slide.

No, I don't think I've ever seen my mother wash a dish or scrub a floor. Our home was clean until I was five (or so I'm told, I have seen pictures but have no honest memories of this), then we had some issues and Mom stopped cleaning. You could literally have decluttered our floors with a shovel after that. Occasionally Dad picked up the living room slightly, but that was it.

I learned a little about cleaning from a roommate later -- but she was the "scream until it's done" type. Finally, I found FlyLady and have had the most success there. I'm not anything close to perfect, but I'm no longer ashamed to have friends over and at least can offer them a couch that they're not afraid to sit on, a TV screen that doesn't have 'WASH ME' written in the dust, and an always-spotless bathroom. I don't understand the people who say they always "fell behind" the FlyLady routines, since every email she sends out closes with "You are not behind! Just jump back in where you are" but hey, to each their own ;) It works for me, I slip on the routines frequently but have stopped expecting perfection -- mostly clean is a lot better than wallowing in filth!

Can't say I learned much from my mum; she loved to garden and general house cleaning wasn't on her list, although dishes had to be extremely clean. But dad was a Marine sargeant, so we all learned to clean things as soon as we were finished using them. I don't know if being a Marine actually contributed to his attitude on cleaning, but he said it did - and we did have a daily inspection. And there were no 'his' jobs or 'her' jobs: if we lived there, we were expected to clean up after ourselves first and then help someone else.

The main thing I learned was that if you don't ever let anything sit around dirty, then you won't ever have to spend time doing a hard cleaning. And yes, I can still make a bed tight enough that a quarter will bounce :) but I don't because that doesn't have anything to do with cleanliness and not much with neatness -- comforters won't bounce a quarter, but they are faster to straighten each morning.

Wow, this thread has been an eye-opener. I hate to clean, but when I finally do it, I go overboard (or so I'm told). My mother made me vacuum occassionally & I washed dishes at grandmother's, but I never really had to clean at home. I remember our house being clean, but cluttered, and now I can't stand clutter either.

My mother kept an immaculate house. I'm a tidier and my husband is the one who "deep cleans". One thing that has become a bad cleaning that I'm trying to break is using wipes. I guess they are okay for small, quick jobs, but not for long-term cleaning.
The other thing that has helped me in the last year is to get a very light Dysan sweeper that is easy to take off the charger. I vacuum 10x more because it's just not such an ordeal to get the vacuum out and deal with the never-ending power cord! Make a quick sweep through the main rooms and immediately empty the compartment that catches debris and dust. Easy-peasy!