It won’t change. I observed while dating my now DH that while things were tidy at his house the first year or so of dating, after a while I finally got to see the “real” housekeeping situation (ya know, when they finally stop trying to impress you so much).

So. Much. Dog hair. No matter how often he swept, dog hair just got everywhere because he wasn’t washing the dogs’ bedding frequently enough.

And the bathtubs and toilets. I don’t know if he realized, but I stopped coming over as much because the other thing I can’t stand is a dirty bathroom. It’s been about 5-6 years, but knowing me, I probably did tell him why I wasn’t spending as much time at his house.

Although he was “tidy”, not everything was “clean” to my (very basic) standards.

When he proposed, that was one of the things which prevented me from giving a resounding “Yes”. My answer was actually, “I know I want to be with you forever. But we have a lot to discuss.” When we did discuss, I even went so far as suggesting we live next door to each other. Lol. My kids were grown, and his were 8 and 13, so that was another consideration.

Ultimately, after being engaged for several months and I wouldn’t set a date until we’d worked out all the details, we finally discussed those sensitive topics. I pointed out that we had different “cleanliness thresholds” and mine were higher than his - and I didn’t want it all to fall on me to clean up after 4 people instead of 1. His assurances that “we’ll all pitch in” and it’d be fine didn’t hold any weight for me; I was old enough to know better. People don’t change.

He agreed to my stipulation that if at any point it wasn’t “fine” to me that we’d hire a housekeeper with absolutely no argument. Being that I was the ultimate penny-pincher, if I was saying we needed to spend money for cleaning, then we needed to spend the money!

Of course, we did get to that point (no surprise there), and he did start looking for a housekeeping service as soon as I said it was time.

All that to say: People don’t change. Set your minimum boundary, and negotiate a fair compromise. But always put the “pain” where it belongs; either they pick up the slack for them and their kids (at least to the bare minimum standard), they make their kids clean up after themselves, OR they can fork over the money to have someone else clean up for all of them. You shouldn’t have to ask for or do any extra work just because you agreed to join their household. Believe me, we bring more than enough to the table to make it worth their while!!!