The pernicious thing about the way the Broken Window theory applies to housekeeping is that after a while some part of your brain wants to see--in an achievement-oriented way--how much mess you can accumulate. It starts to seem cool, laudable, to see how much dirty laundry--dirty dishes, clutter--you can collect. Because the more like things you collect the better, right? (I'm doing good! Look at all the mess I made! No wait, doing bad...) The key is to not turn that corner to where this happens.