Mom Criticized For Having A ‘Messy’ Home After Recording Husband's Return From 7-Day Work Trip
She explained the challenges of maintaining cleanliness while homeschooling her children and highlighted the ebb and flow of tidiness in their home.
Andrey_Popov / Shutterstock When a woman’s husband returned home from a week-long trip, one of the first things he did was praise her for keeping the house in order and clean while he was gone.
However, after sharing the state of her house, many other people were baffled by her husband’s reaction, noting that it was far from tidy and orderly.
Despite the husband’s admiration of the condition of the house when he arrived home, many people believed it was a mess.
The woman, who goes by The Stringy Mama on TikTok, posted a video giving viewers a glimpse of what her house looked like after her husband had gone on a week-long trip.
The sink in the kitchen is filled to the brim with dirty dishes. The living room has toys scattered all over the floor and chairs strewn about. The kitchen table is covered in school books and crafts. By the front door, there is a bag of diapers.
When the woman’s husband walked into their cluttered entryway when he arrived home, the first thing he did was compliment her. Reenacting her husband's return, Stringy Mama said, “Wow, the house looks great! Thank you so much for all you did!”
“He wasn’t being sarcastic… he’s like, ‘I can’t believe this is what it looks like after a week of doing this by yourself.’”
Stringy Mama said her husband reacts like this every time he arrives home from a work trip. “He knows and trusts that I’m doing my best, just like I know he’s doing his best too,” she shared.
“My husband’s expectation when he’s gone and I’m with the kids is that we’re alive and breathing.”
While the woman’s husband may have been satisfied with the condition of their house, many people believed that she could have done better to keep the house tidy.
“At least one of those rooms could’ve been tended to, but A++ for him being positive, I guess,” one TikTok user commented.
“Clean up your crap; it’s not that hard,” another user wrote.
“You need to get your kids and teach them how to help you clean up. Do better, Mom,” another user added.
Thankfully, Stringy Mama and her husband were unbothered by the criticism, posting a follow-up video mocking the backlash they received.
“The assumptions being made gave us a laugh,” she shared.
She claimed that people missed the point of her post entirely.
“I’m not proud of an untidy house. I’m grateful for a husband who recognizes the hard work I put into this family even if you can’t see it from walking through the front door,” she wrote in the caption of her video.
In another video, Stringy Mama admitted that she underestimated how difficult it would be to keep her house neat when she went from working full-time as a school teacher to homeschooling her children.
“The reason I was able to keep my home so tiny when I worked full-time was because I was out of the home. I was living life out of the home,” she explained.
“Now that I homeschool and I’m with my kids all the time, our lives are lived out in our home… we live there, and there’s evidence of that.”
She said that the cleanliness of her home ebbs and flows throughout the day and the week.
While she acknowledged that some people may need to keep their homes tidy and organized at all times for their sanity, she needed time for herself, to work, and to be with her husband during the week for her mental health.
For many people, keeping up with cleaning around the house is more challenging than we may assume.
A study commissioned by Casabella and reported on by the New York Post found that 84% of people have some kind of cleaning routine at home, but two-thirds spend less than 40 minutes in any given room when cleaning it.
72% confessed that they’re not as thorough as they should be when it comes to cleaning.
Photo: Drpixel / Shutterstock
There is only so much time in the day, especially if you work full-time or have other obligations to tend to. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t care about the conditions of your home.
You may only see your kids or spouse for a couple of hours a day before it’s time to go to bed. You may want to get a workout in or finally finish that book you started with such a limited amount of time.
Cleaning may not always be at the top of your list, and that’s okay!
The dirty dishes in the sink can wait. As long as your family is happy and healthy and spending time together, the house will not crumble if things are unorganized.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.