No chance of a second date if your spare room is full of junk

Swiping right, sliding into DM’s, and ghosting are all part of the minefield that is dating in the digital age, but are you being catfished by the seemingly tidy backgrounds in their pictures?

If you’re guilty of having a junk room in your house, you might find that landing that elusive second date is almost impossible, as a new survey shows that over 90% of people said a messy house is complete turn-off.

UK based rubbish removal experts Divert.co.uk know that a house full of mess can leave a bad impression while dating, with 9 in 10 people they surveyed saying they wouldn’t go on a second date with a messy partner.

“Using that junk room in your house for your workspace and zoom dating could be the reason you’re not getting much dating success because it gives the impression that as a partner they will be spending all their time cleaning up after you,” says company spokesperson Mark Hall.

“So before you have that online zoom date, you’re better off making a date with a duster and polish!”

“It’s a deal breaker”

It’s official, online dating has made us picky with our partners now that we are armed with the ability to scan through matches based purely from first impressions.

Hall: “Online daters know exactly what they want from a potential partner and are not willing to waste their time on anyone who does not meet the standards they are looking for.

“And cleanliness and hygiene are often quite high on the list of date-worthy criteria.”

This definitely seems to be the case based on the online poll conducted by on-demand rubbish removal specialists Divert.co.uk, where 90% of 2000 singletons polled said that knowing someone had a messy house would stop them from having a second date.

This has been seen in action on the BBC Three dating show Hot Property, where daters get to snoop around the bedrooms of potential partners before agreeing to a date.

Based on first impressions of people’s homes, those with messier rooms found themselves unlikely to score a date and received much more critical responses from participants of the show.

Sam Gosling, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas explains this behaviour, “If I met you briefly for an hour, I just have a sample of your behaviour. Whereas if I go into your bedroom – that’s many weeks, months, or years of accumulated information, which is often hard to fake, and can be a more reliable indicator of what someone is like.”*

Hall: “You might think you’ve made it unscathed through the first date but bringing someone back to your cluttered room could be giving out all the wrong signals and ruining your love life.

“It’s time for you to break up with your bad habits to clean up the dating scene.”

Tips for dating success

Look, we know that having a perfectly tidy house is not always practical or achievable, especially if you live with other people - even neat-freak Monica from Friends had a locked cupboard full of junk so nobody is perfect.

However, if you are guilty of being a cluttered Casanova, then here are some suggestions of what you can do to improve your chances of getting past the first date mark.

• Have a sort out – Do you really need to keep every single relic of your childhood? It’s best to keep the most treasured items and sell or donate those just sitting around gathering dust.
• Create better habits – Making the effort to put your clothes away instead of chucking them on the floor or taking plates and cups back to the kitchen will quickly help your house to feel cleaner.
• Invest in better storage – If you’re finding it hard to part with a lot of your clutter, invest in storage tubs to put things in that can fit into unused space such as on top of cupboards and under the bed.
• Hire a cleaner – If your biggest excuse for a messy house is because you’re too busy to run the hoover around, then maybe it’s time to call in the professionals for a weekly freshen up.

Hall: “You don’t want the longest relationship you’ve ever been in to be with your junk, so if you’re serious about finding true love, perhaps it’s time to part ways with some of your clutter and give your house a good spring clean.

“At the end of the day, your junk won’t keep you warm at night!”