What do you mean, you live upstairs and your husband lives downstairs?

Clean your freaking house, or hire a housekeeper. What kind of impression of adult responsibilities do you think your kids are getting? They're going to grow up to be total slobs, too. Consider that.

...which is that part of your life has gotten out of your control like drugs, gambling or sex.

I'm in middle of getting out of something similar.

You need to make a clean break. Pull out the checkbook, call a housekeeping company, and spend a few hundred dollars. (If you're worried about losing valuable things, get them to put your stuff into bags and spend an hour a night going through the bags.)

Then *set up a system* and swear you'll never do it again. And look back in two weeks -- and a month -- and make sure that your desk is always clear at the end of the day and your work area is always empty. A place for everything and everything in its place!!

You are wrong..

My father was a total neat freak and my mother was no slob.

Both my brother and I are slobs.

It has a lot to do with personality types. I'm a very strong INTP on the MBTI and INTPs just don't see stuff that sits for more than about 48 hours. We are very inwardly drawn and our urroundings don't matter much to us at all.

http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html

The general style of the home is largely irrelevant. When an object is put aside, not to be returned to for a while, it will lie fully ignored until used again. Objects which lie unmoved for more than about 48 hours usually become invisible to the INTP, until such time as he has a use for them again. For other temperaments whose need for tidiness and order in a house is strong, this lack of concern in this area may seem despairing. For the INTP, however, no problem exists. Corners of rooms, table tops and cupboards may become cluttered with objects, but while they don't move they remain effectively invisible and are unimportant.

You and "your" kids live in "your" part of the house, and he lives in his?

When people marry it becomes their house. He becomes the stepfather of the children.

Anyway, pay a maid.

"You're great with the baby. Think you could be a bit better cleaning the house?"

My father supposedly said that to my mother in 1952 and my family has been paying for it ever since. Six kids, growing up in filth. We could not have friends over because we were ashamed of the house, ashamed of ourselves. There may be satisfaction in cleaning, but it comes with never being thanked for the work and seeing it all disappear pretty quickly, harsh lessons to kids who try to pick up where adults left off.

My sisters and I got out and didn't go back, and live as reasonably clean adults, not neat freaks. My brothers married slobs like themselves and still live the same way.

Call a maid. Call a therapist. Stop thinking of yourselves and think of what your kids are learning.

For a man who is too lazy to pick up after himself to say he will leave if the house isn't cleaned--and won't do it himself to avoid the stress and pressure of relocating his life--leads me to believe the cleanliness issue isn't the real problem.

Divorce and moving out is hard. Scrubbing the floor a couple times a month is easy. Something else is bothering him.

Get couples therapy. Really.

But also, just clean the damn house. You have kids. Set an example.

...or anywhere, for that matter, the cable TV show "Clean House" has the solution (I'm only HALF kidding). See info at the link below. If "Clean House" cleaned your house, at least you'd be able to start with a "clean slate"...

http://www.stylesearchforthemessiesthome.com/index.php?section=home

http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html

The general style of the home is largely irrelevant. When an object is put aside, not to be returned to for a while, it will lie fully ignored until used again. Objects which lie unmoved for more than about 48 hours usually become invisible to the INTP, until such time as he has a use for them again. For other temperaments whose need for tidiness and order in a house is strong, this lack of concern in this area may seem despairing. For the INTP, however, no problem exists. Corners of rooms, table tops and cupboards may become cluttered with objects, but while they don't move they remain effectively invisible and are unimportant.

Just because there's a website about it, doesn't mean it's right.

You don't know everything that you want in this situation, and I can certainly sympathize with all the possible motivators you mention. But you know that, whatever else, you really would like that clean house, wouldn't you? You will feel better in the clean house, and that can put you in a position to explore the rest of your feelings.

Pay for one big cleaning. Make it a celebration, like the Biblical year of Jubilee, let yourself be forgiven and start over with a clean slate.

And from here, I'll tell you a little trick I learned in my LBD education classes: make a Contract. Everybody's on it. Get the kids started early thinking of cleaning as a responsibility. Everybody bargains, everybody compromises and trades so they get a schedule and a list of chores that they had a hand in choosing. They can be traded around if you like. If you have to, write things like "before Mary watches The Office, she will put the dishes away" or whatever. Specificity is a motivator and an argument reducer.

When you or somebody else doesn't want to do what's on the list, The Contract can mitigate the feelings of conflict and annoyance with each other by allowing you blame It: your husband isn't telling you what to do, it's The Contract. You're not saying it's his night to cook, The Contract says so. Yeah, it seems silly, but it really does help.

And of course, what's hard work without rewards built in? Daily self time, of course, weekly family time, and weekly couple time. "If Mary and Bill do such and such every day, they will go out together Saturday night." Then, everybody signs it.

How's that?