howard spent a fair amount of time in military and then SHIELD so;
headcanon - he picked up a lot of military habits; military corners, drill sergeant mannerisms etc; that he passed onto tony
tony stark keeps his surroundings obsessively compulsively clean and organised, because as a kid, his father couldn’t stand the sight of mess and made damn sure that tony was aware of it
as an adult, this manifested into an anxiety tick for Tony, and he could often be found scrubbing a spotless counter-top at ass o’clock in the morning by various team members
it drove Pepper insane because every morning he would hustle her out of bed so that he could straighten out the sheets and fluff the pillows
sometimes he would snatch up bowls and plates as people were eating on them without truly knowing what he was doing, and start cleaning them
the dishwashers were all routinely tinkered with and upgraded, but scarcely used
on one memorable occasion, Natasha found Tony cleaning his clothing by hand; scrubbing out the bloody spots from a fight that ended hours ago