24-Year-Old Woman Says Her Mom Had No Right To Post Photos Of Her Messy Room On Facebook To Shame Her Into Cleaning
While it can be easy to judge someone for having a messy space, it's more likely that something deeper could be going on.
Facebook If there's one thing that can be quite annoying, is having your parents invade your personal space. For one woman, though, not only did her mother do that very same thing, but also chose to post about it on social media.
Amy, a 24-year-old woman from Victoria, Australia, told the Daily Mail that she was incredibly outraged after learning that her mother, who she lives with, had gone and taken photos of the state of her bedroom and posted the photos online.
Amy's mother posted photos of her messy bedroom on Facebook.
Fed up with her daughter's messy room, Amy's mother decided to put her daughter on blast by going into her room, taking photos of everything, and posting them to her Facebook page. Her mother tried to argue that since she lets Amy live with her, she should be able to keep her space tidy.
Photo: Facebook
"How would you feel if you built this room for your daughter and she treated it like this?" her mother wrote. "She's 24 by the way." Amy, after seeing the photos that her mom posted, was extremely upset and decided to defend herself to the Daily Mail.
Amy acknowledged that she doesn't usually keep her room that messy, and was extremely "p—sed off" after finding out that her mom attempted to call her out for it to a bunch of strangers online.
"The past few weeks I have been down so I do the bare minimum of what she asks," Amy told the publication. "That's the worst it's been in months."
Amy, who works as a hairdresser and dog trainer, shared that the room her mother built for her is completely separate from the rest of the house, and she pays her mother weekly rent and does other chores around the house.
Despite routinely doing most of the washing and cleaning, Amy admitted that her mom never acknowledges all of the hard work she does. As for her bedroom, Amy admitted that it's always been a bit messy since she was a child, but it was never anything too severe.
Photo: Facebook
"I was going to clean after I volunteered and if she waited four hours I would have started it," she said, adding that she chooses to live at home so she can have her family close by still. "The clothes live on the floor ... usually the little couch is full of clean clothes and I never make my bed."
Amy claimed that after her mother constantly complained about her dirty room, she decided to post about it on social media to show her that other people also felt the same way.
"She told me to read the comments and have a good look at myself," Amy explained. "Some people are correct and reasonable. I don't mind if [my mom] wants to do a house inspection once a month ... it's my room not in the main house."
For some people, having a messy room is a direct link to depression.
A 2020 study conducted by BMC Public Health showed a link between messy rooms and depression. Signs of depression may include a lack of motivation, leading to an unkempt space. In 2016 data acquired by ScienceDirect, it was found to be a strong connection between clutter and depression among people who experience hoarding.
"Sometimes when life feels out of control or stressful other areas of your life get affected one being your working or living space," Kimberly Hershenson, a therapist, told INSIDER.
"If you're depressed or overwhelmed with life you may feel you don't have time to clean/organize, you may feel you don't deserve a clean space or you may be so preoccupied with other things you don't even notice how messy your room has become."
Rather than shaming people who may have a cluttered mess in their space, we should instead show compassion and maybe even offer to help that person clean up, especially as you never know what someone could be going through.
Nia Tipton is a Brooklyn-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.