As an adult I've returned to various locations from my childhood and found the white picket fences, station wagons, and neighborhood shops transformed into rough, run down, and unsafe neighborhoods. This did not happen overnight. What happened in these places is the same thing that can happen in a business or your personal life. I call it the "Broken Window Effect"
Imagine the perfect "Lake Wobegone" neighborhood where everything is above average. A baseball goes through a window, but the owner decides not to fix it. Then, because the house looks a bit shabby, another neighbor leaves a junked car on the street. Then a bit of graffiti is not cleaned up. Then folks stop picking up garbage from their yards.
The can happen inside a house. One pile on the floor doesn't take too much room, so a few more piles are put around it. Before long, all floor spaces have piles on them. Maintenance items are deferred and junk is not tossed. Years pass and eventually the house is unhealthy to live in, but no one really notices because it happened so gradually.
