When someone welcomes you to their humble abode for the first time, the kind thing to do is be open-minded and non-judgmental. You may not love the rug they chose for the living room, or you might secretly be noticing that your home is more spacious. But as long as they’re a courteous host, you can keep your criticisms to yourself!
But what are we to do when we arrive at someone’s house and find a litter box that hasn’t been cleaned in a month, dirty dishes overflowing in the sink or a concerning amount of weapons on display? Redditors have recently been sharing the biggest red flags that one might find when visiting another person’s home, so enjoy scrolling through and be sure to upvote the things that would send you running for the hills too!
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Boxes of classified documents sitting next to the shitter
A sad parrot in a small, dirty cage that is never let out. Birds are so smart and live so long. It's cruelty. I hate people who keep them cooped up, ignored, and don't change their water.
You can also recognize parrot neglect by their feathers. When they get depressed they pull out their own feathers and have bald patches. A lot worse than the normal seasonal changes.
No books.
I dated a guy that laughed at me for buying a bookshelf because “who the f**k reads books.”
Edit to add: I truly didn’t mean to offend digital only readers. I read ebooks and I listen to a lot of audiobooks; I’m not Laura Ingalls Wilder over here living in a little house on the prairie. The comments that are snarky or trying to point out that I am old or that I’ve never heard of a library are also red flags.
I'm a voracious reader and have an embarrassing number of ebooks on my Kindle (started using it in 2014). But I also have 4 large bookcases full of beloved volumes that I periodically read because they're old friends. Very rarely will I sell or trade them because they were chosen with care, and they speak of who I am and what shaped my personality, from my childhood onward. They're my life's narrative.
No hand soap in the bathroom
Oof, this one, if there isn't any cleaning substance for your hands, that's just extremely unsanitary. I edited my comment because it seemed some people misunderstood. I'm emphasizing that while my family has incorporated hand sanitizer more into their lives recently, we haven't abandoned soap—everyone still uses it daily, lol.
i don't know if it counts as "see", but family members yelling/fighting while I'm there. Like what's happening when you DON'T have a guest over??
Yup. Visiting my 50 yo sister. She has ppl renting rooms from her. My sister decided to verbally attack me for about 30 mins while her renter hid in her room. I won't be back. EVER.
Children's bedroom doors with locks on the outside and bathrooms with doors that don't lock. I was honestly horrified to find them installed when we moved in to our new home.
Edit: To clarify, these were latch and ring, padlock, locks.
extreme pet smell/mess/signs of fleas is a huge one for me. Trash piled beyond the trash can, taking over the cooking/eating surfaces
Dog c**p on the floor in the dining room. Overflowing litter box.
A wall of crosses. Creepy af.
What kind of crosses? They sell crosses at furniture stores. Are we talking true crucifixes? Even then it’s probably just a collection.
Never any clean towels. One time my ex knew I was staying over, and he had absolutely no clean towels — gave me a T-shirt to dry off with.
Dirty bathroom. Dirty toliet. I get that someone's house can't always be immaculate but if I see grim in the toliet, gross, that is a total red flag!! Especially if you invited me over and still didn't clean your toliet.
My son played sports with a boy who I would give rides home to a lot. One time I couldn't wait to get home to pee and asked to use her restroom. It was so bad I didn't go and just waited till I drove across town to get home. 😫
Once upon a time I went to hangout with a friend of mine at his college apartment. Honestly the apartment itself wasn't too bad. But when I asked to use the restroom the horrors became prevalent. The toilet had poo splatters all over it and there was literally a spider living in the open hole. I asked where I should pee at. And he said the sink because the bath is where he would poo.........
Not having pillow cases on the bed. You know those sheets and blankets are filthy then
Roaches... and bedbugs
Zip ties, duct tape, a balaclava, and nitrile gloves, all in a plastic bag.
Nothing wrong with being into anime and having merch. But if I notice a lot of posters and figures of characters that are very young and childish looking particularly ones that are clearly meant to be sexualized I'm gonna ask a lot of questions
Filth. Piles of dirty dishes, nasty stove tops, disgusting floors, heaps of dirty laundry, mountains of trash.
I would imagine anybody who has old uncovered food lying around. Anybody who is willing to leave old uneaten food uncovered in their home screams unsanitary.
I cleaned a house once that had been foreclosed. It belonged to a fisher/angler. He had gutted all his fish on the counters and never cleaned. There was years of blood I had to scrub from every surface you can imagine in a kitchen, along with roach feces. Roach feces looks like coffee grounds and can and will cover furniture in high traffic areas. Also check crown molding in kitchens. Dead bugs will drop like an exorcism.
Expensive PC and everything else is broken and rundown
That doesnt work when its a progammer, tho - my pc is clearly my most priced posession, but i cant work without a workstation that costs more than a car.
Girl I went in a few dates with told me she’d let me come in next time bc her place was messy and didn’t want me to see. We went to her place after our next date - she asked me to wait outside while she tidied up a bit first - and her rabbit cage was in the middle of the floor and it had thrown s**t out of the cage all around the floor. She had several full garbage bags in the corner. I don’t remember the other details but it was filthy. This was after she had cleaned and also done a quick tidy. I’m not exactly Martha Stewart but the s**t just laying on the floor was too much for me.
Really makes you wonder what she found unacceptable to leave out and had to clean up before you entered, yuck.
Neglected children or pets, filth, broken furniture/appliances, evidence of extreme hoarding, evidence of drug or alcohol abuse, really inappropriate 'art'...you'll know it when you see it.
For some years I cleaned houses to earn a little extra. One client was a podiatrist. The decor clearly showed that it was not just a career, but a fetish. His wife seemed fine with it, though.
When it's extremely messy. I can understand a moderate amount of disorganization, but when I have to jump over piles of dirty clothes and trash, that's when I know I need to leave.
House hunting and the homeowner was home at one place when our realtor was told he'd be out. He was pissed off we were there, but let us in and kind of hovered in the background while we looked around.
There was barely any furniture and trash all over the floor. The walls were hung with about a dozen professional wedding portraits -- all with the bride's eyes gouged out. Then we saw the fist-sized holes in the walls and we got out of there.
hopefully the bride managed to escape and get a restraining order against him.
no soap at the bathroom sink. look, i’ll scuff at my hands with that dehydrated yeti toenail of a Dial bar curled up in the corner of your shower if I must. but damn..what’s it take to Irish spring your a*s down to the DG and buy a little aloe-scented pump action for a buck?
MLM inventory for their “business” or they buy a lot of MLM stuff. Minus a normal amount of Tupperware.
I think signs of alcoholism can be problematic, but not necessarily. But if my kids want to play at other kids homes, this is a red flag.
"Sorry I had no time to clean before your visit" when the place has obviously not been cleaned in like a year. Yikes.
They’re messy. Not like, clothes lying on the floor, but moldy dishes and trash all over the floor. I’m a bit of a neat freak, so that would drive me up the wall. If it’s due to mental health and they’re at least trying, I can empathize a bit. If it’s because they’re just lazy or make excuses they refuse to attempt to work on… no.
Moldy dog poop inside, the outside garbage bins in the living room, 4 metal NYC garbage cans in the kitchen
Smell of not properly ventilated place, a huge mess and unclean surfaces
Live laugh love.
It's just outdated to me, but I'm not put off by it. Folks are too sensitive.
Note: this post originally had 44 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
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Apparently, having depression or an executive function disorder now makes you a "bad person" who should be avoided at all costs. Of course animals and children need to be protected, but this community and society in general are so two-faced when it comes to matters of mental health. When people say that mental health matters, it so often seems to really mean "Mental health matters so long as you behave acceptably, respond in a way that I find pleasing, and generally isn't any inconvenience to me"
I think it depends on what kind of relationship you have with the person, and also plenty of other factors. Some people have depression and some people are just filthy. I used to have a close friend whose house was disgusting, in general, like dirty clothes and banana peels under furniture, rotten fish leftovers in the oven, assorted mummified good in the fridge, dirty plates all over the place, four or five rubbish bags piled in a corner in the kitchen... They (my friend and her husband) were not depressed, just too lazy to clean. We stopped being friends for other reasons, but I won't miss going to her house for coffee at all.
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Apparently, having depression or an executive function disorder now makes you a "bad person" who should be avoided at all costs. Of course animals and children need to be protected, but this community and society in general are so two-faced when it comes to matters of mental health. When people say that mental health matters, it so often seems to really mean "Mental health matters so long as you behave acceptably, respond in a way that I find pleasing, and generally isn't any inconvenience to me"
I think it depends on what kind of relationship you have with the person, and also plenty of other factors. Some people have depression and some people are just filthy. I used to have a close friend whose house was disgusting, in general, like dirty clothes and banana peels under furniture, rotten fish leftovers in the oven, assorted mummified good in the fridge, dirty plates all over the place, four or five rubbish bags piled in a corner in the kitchen... They (my friend and her husband) were not depressed, just too lazy to clean. We stopped being friends for other reasons, but I won't miss going to her house for coffee at all.
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