Single Men: Yo!!
Great article in the NY Times, "It's Not You, It's Your Apartment."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/garden/29breakers.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&em&en=8fe5465208e08c14&ex=1175313600
I can't TELL you how many times I have dated someone I thought was a decent guy and been totally grossed out by his living standards.
Some questions I have asked myself on dates over the past 20 or so years:
> If you don't have any furniture, where am I supposed to sit? Or is that a ploy to get women into the bedroom, to the one flat surface in the whole place? Lame.
> Eau de Frat House is one of the most depressing smells on earth. I was already in college. I don't want to go back there. Nor do I want to be reminded, as I sit chatting with you, of all the babysitting gigs I had in 8th grade and all the elementary school boys I cared for on those nights whose bedrooms smelled exactly like your entire apartment.
> If you can't pick up your own dirty (and clean) laundry that you've flung all over your dwelling place, does that mean you'll expect me to do it if we should ever decide to co-habitate?
> Your filth-encrusted bath mat : is one supposed to shower oneself clean and then actually step on that? How about the lack of soap at the sink, and towel? I think I just figured out something about your personal hygiene, and I'll be saying "night-night" now! Thanks for a lovely evening!
> When you're over-40, we should be seeing something in your fridge besides beer and milk for cereal. Nothing screams, "I can't nurture myself" like a kitchen full of disposable dishes and utensils, mismatched plastic mugs and a pantry full of canned food dating from the Carter Administration.
> Dear guy on Match.com who has the stuffed animal collection on the couch behind him: that is so so creepy. Please believe me when I tell you: that is so creepy. Ditto, 50-year old single male friend with "Star Wars" pillowcases. It's not ironically hip and youthful, and I don't care if you got them for fifty cents on sale. It's creepy. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi.
> Dude whose tiny condo I could barely walk through because of the extreme filth and mess caused by your "home improvement" projects, I commend your efforts! You're a cool DIY type!
However, when you told me that you had been working on the dining room for about two years, I saw my future if I got involved with you, and in my mind, I backed slowly out of the room. A little bit of chaos, fine. Eternal chaos at home because of your perfectionism and inability to complete a project: not okay.
> Men: frugality is admirable. Living amidst broken, rusting, rotting, crumbling items is not a testament to frugality, independence of spirit, individuality or "character." Is is testament to your total inability or lack of desire to create a home in the truest sense of the word, which is a place not just for the harboring of you and your secret, unconscious desire to be alone forever (!), but a place of hospitality and welcome, of beauty and comfort.
A hot tip for hetero single guys from the perennially single PeaceBang: you know how you guys always say in your Match.com ads that you want a woman who "takes care of herself," and that's a euphemism for "should have a hot bod?" Well, when we say we want a man who isn't a slob, we don't just mean that you should clean your ears, wash your socks and use mouthwash occasionally. We're talking about your home, too.
Some of us don't care so much if you don't make much money, or if you live with family or roommates or if you don't have a nice car or if you aren't the best dresser or if you don't pay for dinner. Those things don't reveal anything particularly disturbing or upsetting. Living in a borderline or downright disgusting home... that's disturbing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/garden/29breakers.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&em&en=8fe5465208e08c14&ex=1175313600
I can't TELL you how many times I have dated someone I thought was a decent guy and been totally grossed out by his living standards.
Some questions I have asked myself on dates over the past 20 or so years:
> If you don't have any furniture, where am I supposed to sit? Or is that a ploy to get women into the bedroom, to the one flat surface in the whole place? Lame.
> Eau de Frat House is one of the most depressing smells on earth. I was already in college. I don't want to go back there. Nor do I want to be reminded, as I sit chatting with you, of all the babysitting gigs I had in 8th grade and all the elementary school boys I cared for on those nights whose bedrooms smelled exactly like your entire apartment.
> If you can't pick up your own dirty (and clean) laundry that you've flung all over your dwelling place, does that mean you'll expect me to do it if we should ever decide to co-habitate?
> Your filth-encrusted bath mat : is one supposed to shower oneself clean and then actually step on that? How about the lack of soap at the sink, and towel? I think I just figured out something about your personal hygiene, and I'll be saying "night-night" now! Thanks for a lovely evening!
> When you're over-40, we should be seeing something in your fridge besides beer and milk for cereal. Nothing screams, "I can't nurture myself" like a kitchen full of disposable dishes and utensils, mismatched plastic mugs and a pantry full of canned food dating from the Carter Administration.
> Dear guy on Match.com who has the stuffed animal collection on the couch behind him: that is so so creepy. Please believe me when I tell you: that is so creepy. Ditto, 50-year old single male friend with "Star Wars" pillowcases. It's not ironically hip and youthful, and I don't care if you got them for fifty cents on sale. It's creepy. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi.
> Dude whose tiny condo I could barely walk through because of the extreme filth and mess caused by your "home improvement" projects, I commend your efforts! You're a cool DIY type!
However, when you told me that you had been working on the dining room for about two years, I saw my future if I got involved with you, and in my mind, I backed slowly out of the room. A little bit of chaos, fine. Eternal chaos at home because of your perfectionism and inability to complete a project: not okay.
> Men: frugality is admirable. Living amidst broken, rusting, rotting, crumbling items is not a testament to frugality, independence of spirit, individuality or "character." Is is testament to your total inability or lack of desire to create a home in the truest sense of the word, which is a place not just for the harboring of you and your secret, unconscious desire to be alone forever (!), but a place of hospitality and welcome, of beauty and comfort.
A hot tip for hetero single guys from the perennially single PeaceBang: you know how you guys always say in your Match.com ads that you want a woman who "takes care of herself," and that's a euphemism for "should have a hot bod?" Well, when we say we want a man who isn't a slob, we don't just mean that you should clean your ears, wash your socks and use mouthwash occasionally. We're talking about your home, too.
Some of us don't care so much if you don't make much money, or if you live with family or roommates or if you don't have a nice car or if you aren't the best dresser or if you don't pay for dinner. Those things don't reveal anything particularly disturbing or upsetting. Living in a borderline or downright disgusting home... that's disturbing.
posted by PeaceBang at 8:15 AM
7 Comments:
Gawd, you are do right! I remember a date from years ago ... the only things I recall were that he had a real arcade unit for "Battle Zone" (which I thought was cool), but the wall of his den at the ceiling wasn't lined with wallpaper border, but with a long bandelero of machine-gun bullets.
Needless to say:
Buh-bye.
I once got fairly serious about a guy who was smart, funny, well-employed, a home owner and cat lover, until the first time I stayed overnight and couldn't figure out what that smell was. I finally realized it was the sheets, which smelled sour all the time from his sweaty nights. Yuck! It didn't last much longer.
And the house was clean, too. It was just the sheets.
When I met my husband, I knew he was The One, partially, because of how he ironed. Seriously.
Now how he saw through my rather cluttered and somewhat dirty apartment to see the domestic goddess I would become (well, sort of if you can overlook a few piles here and there)I don't know. It must have been a God thing.
My roommate was raised by a father who had been raised to two old maids.
So I'm responsible for the cleaning here and anything that might remotely bring down the resale value of this place is heavily scrutinized.
We have a cleaner for everything.
And my own father had military training, so cleanliness was next to Godliness in my house.
So it is ingrained in me to be clean and neat and straightened up. Not to a Felix Unger degree, but still.
On the one hand, yes, you have a point. Disgusting dirtiness is...disgusting.
On the other hand, pig-filthy bachelorhood does not necessarily translate into pig-filthy partnerhood. As someone who hates housework, and doesn't see dirt, I can attest that I'm much more tidy as a husband than I was as a bachelor.
One of my recent "guilty pleasures" is the show "How Clean Is Your House?" BBC America I am pretty sure. With the two proper lady grime detectives. They had a recent one with a 24 year old science teacher who kept an immaculate school lab but whose one bedroom apartment yielded like 120 buckets of dirty water during the cleaning and about 50 it looked like bags of rubbish....Oh and "Spiritual Housekeeping" is a good book too. Beam in the eye and all that...
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