Im not sure where or how to start, please bare with me. I need some opinions
My mother has been a stay-at-home mother for as most of her life, and for as long as I can remember, she has been cleaning obsessively. However, I strongly doubt she notices how much of an obsession and exaggeration it is.
I wouldn’t really notice how bad her obsessiveness with cleaning was until I started getting older. It has gotten to the point where it genuinely affects my own mental and emotional health. I start to think about everything that has happened throughout my childhood, puzzling everything together, and from there I go down a spiral.
In the mornings, she begins by cleaning and sometimes even does so before even making herself some breakfast. I shall add that we live in a relatively small, decent-sized home (three bedroom.) My brother and I have our own room, my little sister stays with my parents. Now, I say this to emphasize that there really isn’t ever much of a mess, and a house the size of ours shouldn’t be much of a hassle to clean. Besides, no one here really makes a huge mess. I clean up after myself and my own room of course, my little sister also hardly ever makes any mess, so its not like my mom has to clean after her 24/7.
Now, I won’t specify my brothers age, but he’s graduated high school so that should give you an overall idea… he doesn’t clean up after himself, ever. He never makes his own bed, my mother does for him. He’s never, ever, done the dishes himself and mom still does his laundry. I know this has to do with the way we were brought up; mother stays at home while dad goes to work, I was expected to help mom since I was younger (which was never a problem), the problem was that those weren’t the same expectations for my brother, I was expected to clean up his mess too. Anyways, the point for that little back story was to again, give an overall idea of what it’s like at home.
My mother will clean for hours and hours, even if home was already clean. By hours I mean she can go at it almost all day, by the way, she does this every single day. There is not a day where she won’t just rest. I just genuinely don’t understand why she does this. It has lead to arguments. She’ll go on about how we never help her, however, that’s not the case. I feel like even when I do help her, if I don’t meet her expectations or standards, then what I did goes unnoticed, as if I never did help. I could do the dishes, clean the restroom, vacuum, and she’ll find a way to babble about how lazy we are. I mean, if I’m not on my knees cleaning every inch on the walls, then it is not enough for her and we’re “lazy” and “unhelpful”. Sometimes I’ll do something in particular, (i.e: vacuum), and after going to my room to do my own work, ill find her vacuuming again.
Sometimes at night she’ll say something along the lines, “I’m going to clean tonight so I won’t have to do it in the morning”, however, I’ll wake up to her cleaning in the morning again, then dad will come home from work, she’ll make food for him, and back she goes to obsessively cleaning the kitchen and somehow will end up doing so for the rest of the night. To me it almost feels like cleaning is the only thing she spends most of her time doing. I spend some of my nights wishing that she spent more time getting to know us growing up, I feel theres a huge disconnection between us (as a family), as if we never really got to build a bond. I worry this will be the same case with my little sister. I just wish my mom viewed life differently, there is more to life than what she spends most of her time doing (complaining and cleaning.)
It becomes hard to be empathetic when she complains that she has no free time because all she does is clean. Again, she doesn’t work so I find myself thinking that if she hadn’t spent 9 hours cleaning a small home, then she would have much more time to find a hobby for herself, or spend time with my younger sister at least. My brother is hardly ever home, and I when I am home, I spend most of my time in my room, half of the day my dad is at work, and my little sister hardly makes any mess so I REALLY don’t understand all the cleaning.
Edit:
I would like to see my mom do something outside of cleaning, find a hobby, something she enjoys. None of this exists in her world, and it almost seems like she’s totally fine with just cleaning her entire life, which is worrisome. As a college student, it’s extremely draining to be around this sort of space. Some might say I should stop complaining and just move out, and well a part of me wouldn’t blame them for saying so. The problem is that moving out on your own isn’t very easy, as some of you might know…i’m trying. Even if I tried talking to her about what I’m telling you all here, she would tell me “what are you doing here then? Move out” and completely ignore and fail to acknowledge anything else that was brought up. Talking about mental health, emotions or anything of that sort isn’t something that ever really happened in my family. Though my parents always made sure we had a roof over our head and where well fed, they were always emotionally distant. The times I tried talking to them about serious topics, things would just escalate leading me to feel worse. Now I just shut down and I never talk about my emotions.
Im older and now that I’ve realized all these things I’m trying to find a way to work it out because it really takes a toll on my mental health. My brother is very oblivious to these things, he’s younger than me and in a way rebellious. Besides, he isn’t really the type to dwell over these things, so I’m sure they don’t affect him in the same way. Less about me, I just hope my sister doesn’t ever feel the same way I felt like growing up and now. I want her to have a closer bond with my parents, thats why I wish my mom worried less about cleaning, focused more on the simple things in life. Does this make sense?