Does anyone else just feel so down about their house?

drpet49 why would you post something so clearly smug and unhelpful? Shame on you.

I get it. Thing is, a show home type of house only really became a thing in recent years? Before that, we viewed our homes as places to shelter, gather and rest from the outside world. Interior decor has only become a thing because we no longer have to worry quite so much ( though many still do have to of course) about basic survival. But this attitude to our homes seeps in to our psyches and we can feel an internal pressure to have this perfect home. I used to suffer from it badly. Now, I can no longer be bothered to care about how it looks to anyone outside of the family coming in to it. I do the best I can and with a job and ageing parents, two teens, a dog and a cat… I no longer put pressure on myself. There are two types of people, I read somewhere recently… those who see dirt everywhere and those who just don’t. Not sure if that helps in any way, but pay attention to that inner pressure to show a perfect home to the world. It really does not matter.

Ours is a dump. An upstairs flat thst was meant to be a stop gap but 20 years on still here. Raised 3 kids in a 2 bed plus boxroom and no internal storage. It never looks tidy or clean. Too much stuff,not enough room.

I sympathise op I feel like that.

Two small dogs, three of us at home but it's just constant. It stays pristine for a day then everyone comes home. The drudge seems relentless.

We have a living room and a kitchen downstairs and no dining room so it's always neeeding a tidy as we are always in the living room.

Hoping to move next year but it's dependant on a lot of things.

I felt the same way about our back garden. Big mud patch where the penalty spot was in front of a toy goal. Smashed up flowers from the football. Kids grew up. Now I have a beautiful garden with a lovely lawn...and no one to play in it. Enjoy your family now in a messy home, you will enjoy a neat and tidy house later.

We have no shoes in the house, it’s cultural and was the way I was raised, a lot of dirt can be walked in to a house this way. I have a robot vacuum which goes off on its merry way often. We only ever sit at the table to eat, very occasionally we will eat dessert or a snack on the couch but it’s very rare, again it’s just an absolute no no from my childhood. I was out with a friend yesterday and she was saying how her kids from when they were teenagers eat their dinners in their rooms another friend has said this and I was really surprised it was allowed.

You need good storage and to regularly get rid of stuff you do not use.

Cleaning every day is the only way to keep it nice. So kitchen , a wipe round bathrooms and a hoover everyday ( mop every other of you have wood floors) I also touch up walls etc quite frequently ( and have had it all painted with wipeable paint in high traffic areas such as the hallway)

i used to feel this way but I’m much more organised now.

make a list so when you get a mo you can go straight to what needs doing!

Skethylita hope things go well for you and your family x

We stopped having people round 🤣

Our house was messy when our dc were little and our bathroom which was overdue being replaced when we moved in 20 years ago was only done last year. Our bathroom fitter said it was the worst bathroom he’d worked on🫣🤣

It has literally taken us 20 years to have the time and money to do the work on our house.

It’s only a small house too but I don’t care anymore. It’s ours and it works for us. Maybe not for ds1 who has the box room but he’s at university so not here much.

Things will get better and easier as the children get older.

Most cleaners will do what you ask in the time they are there. Mine is great, friend of mine who started a cleaning business so I employed her. For me though I want the hoovering, cleaning the bath etc done. I don’t give light fittings and skirting boards a second thought really

Same. We moved 3 years ago with significantly less garage and outdoor storage space. My house is basically an extension of the garage and it makes me so sad. When DS goes to bed, I just go to my room and watch my iPad. It's the only nice room in the house.

I have older kids but find the impact more as they are physically bigger and make more marks on stairs , more impact on floor-boards when playing and have friends over and running up and down the stairs. The toy thing was fine when they were smaller as had lovely woven baskets to shove them into . We have 3 kids , no animals.
Now it’s loads of sports gear and massive trainers with way more mud etc. Way more clothes to wash . We also have an older terrace house and have put on a new extension and it’s a million times easier to keep new area clean. It’s like snow in a snow storm cleaning .
If I was a sahm it would be so much easier as could tackle one room at a time. We both work and are very tired at the weekend, we also have no family support so can’t have the kids minded ever.
What we do is my dh takes the 3 kids out and I paint a room or do the skirting boards (paint) but even that only lasts around 6 months and gets grubby again. One of our problems is the original, old part of the house is quite small so just gets dirty quickly, I constantly clean and tidy but it’s honestly never ending.
Also one of our issues is we have no hallway so you walk in the front door and the stairs is just there (we have a shoe rack), our kids play outside a lot as are v sporty . So the second they walk in the house all the mud and leaves come in (they take their shoes off straight away) and then I clean and they go out again and it happens again . We have a mat , they take off shoes -doesn’t make any difference 🤷‍♀️
painting makes the biggest difference imho. I do this myself as it costs an absolute fortune and the painting bit is easy, it’s the moving furniture and clearing before that isn’t so painters don’t do that prep and it’s more work and you have to buy paint so paying someone hundreds for the just painting part isn’t worth it and we aren’t in the uk so we’d also have to buy the paint. I don’t know , I definitely don’t find it easier now they are older , it’s easier to clean and have that time maybe but there’s far more washing and cooking tbh ..

Some days I am embarassed by the state of my house. It's like yours - ex-council, quite large on the inside, but everything bar the kitchen needs sorting, including floors with holes in them, tatty carpets, a bathroom that just needs ripping out and replacing, the garden needs a massive overhaul etc.

Then I remind myself that I managed to buy this house by myself, without any help, so it needed to be cheap, and managed to furnish it alone, even if almost everything is second hand and mismatched, that the teen helped paint the walls, so of course they're not done to professional standard, and that, having been here a mere two years and in the middle of a financial crisis, things can wait a while.

What do I care if my house is less pretty to look at, compared to others who have been a lot more fortunate in life? I did the best I could with what I had and have. Every month, something gets sorted with the little budget I have and the large jobs will just have to wait until I have more disposable money again.

And then I am proud again.

Definitely doesn't help on an older house

New houses always look great because everything is new

Meh, you've pretty much described my house. It was a complete "doer upper" and it's taken us years to get it even anywhere near "nice". Still not completed after almost 7 years....Covid, pregnancy and other bits have not helped...we both work full time and fit cleaning, DIY and baseline maintenance around this. It's a shit tip but it's our shit tip. Basic hygiene - kitchen, bathroom and changing beds - is maintained everything else, well one day it will be spotless, probably the day we sell!

We'll get the last room (hall/stairs) done in the next few weeks and the first finished rooms now need decorating again (and we still haven't got matching /new/nice furniture in the livingroom and we need this, that and the next thing elsewhere). But hey, we're here, the kids are alive and thriving, so I'll take it!
My kids are the biggest mess makers ever and I just need to deal with that!

My to do list is perpetual! But sometimes I just read that book, go do that fun activity with kids or have the glass of wine instead.

You're doing fine! Embrace it!

I used to love my home. We brought DC up there but now they are adults with their own homes. My youngest DS moved out in August. It's far too big for just DH, me a foster son. It's got 6 bedrooms and a huge garden. We need a 3 bedroom. DH refuses to sell and downsize because he doesn't want to lose his double garage or 3 garden sheds because he's got them crammed full of electric tools (boys toys). I wouldn't mind if he was a carpenter or similar but no he's an accountant. My health is no longer good enough to be constantly clearing rooms. It makes me very frustrated.

OP this might not be completely helpful - but about the furniture you mentioned.....well if you ever feel like sticking some tunes on and getting a paint brush dirty, you can upcycle your furniture and paint it to match! You can get some lovely colours, and if you buy proper furniture paint I have found you don't need to do any sanding/priming/varnishing steps....I am lazy I just slap the paint on and it still looks much better than it did before! You might be short on time - but then again you will be amazed at what 3 hours of painting can do!Have attached pics of my second hand/dump upcycles for inspiration( they were all mismatched wood colours to start off). It took about 7 hours in total, spread on different days, and YouTube has some really fun videos to learn from. You might find it therapeutic!

I hear you. I was there once too. Now my kids are teenagers and at last, I no longer feel the need to keep a home that could be worthy of appearing in a magazine. It’s not worth it. Do what you can and stop trying to follow some kind of imposed standard. It’s your home, not a a show home. As long as it’s full of love and real relationships, that’s all that matters. Be kinder to yourself!

OP you need to advertise for a cleaner that works privately and not for a company.
List what you'd like done and I'm sure you'll get the right person at the right hourly pay.

Im at the sad end of children where three have left home and the youngest is 11. My house is always clean and tidy, there are no toys anymore, beds stay made because no one is here to sleep in them.
I'd go back to it all this second 😞😞

Hello OP. I totally understand what you are saying. My husband and family live in our in laws house and I am sure it'll never ever be totally clean!
We live on a farm and dust is everywhere. The house is very old and everything was done quickly and as cheap as possible when in laws had it (it was pretty derelict when they bought it tbf).
Now we are having to slowly put things right (or at least improve things).
I have 3 children (2 grown up and left), husband and a mad springer spaniel so it's virtually impossible to keep anything clean and tidy.
I used to exhaust myself trying to make it look good but honestly I've had to just lower my standards.
As long as it looks half decent I take that these days.
My kitchen was like the one on the Wickes advert - it was 2nd hand when in laws bought it but we have just had it replaced (at our own expense as in laws we're not interested in updating it even though the hob was cracked, cooker made a terrible noise and items got lost down the back of the broken cupboards it was fine!)
We've still got terrible Axminster carpets (again 2nd hand and you can't wear the darn things out!) One is going shortly and we'll have to save up to get rid of the other one!
It does get better in time though...

I could have a written this post myself, OP! I totally get it and I'm in the same boat. Small house, hardly any storage, can't afford a cleaner or any professional help, and I REALLY don't want to waste every evening of my life meticulously tidying. I do enough to keep my house hygienic but it's never, ever tidy. My mum was an obsessive tidier (think that's why my standards are so high) and to be honest it uses to bug me to no end as a kid that she'd spend hours on housework every evening instead of spending time with us.

I try and tell myself that my children won't remember whether their house was immaculately tidy or not, they'll remember having happy parents and, the memories we all make in it! I always try to remind myself this when I'm feeling overwhelmed or stressed by it all.

My house (downstairs) often looks clean/tidy when people come with 2 young kids. Only reason being 1) previous owners decorated before we moved in so starting from a good base 2) massive toy chests to put all toys away in 3) a husband who is very good at cleaning, putting away etc! We also have white counter tops which sounds horrendous but actually made me get disciplined about wiping them down quickly with each mark. Our upstairs always looks a bit grubby because it wasn't decorated to the same standard/finish.

Yes. We lovingly decorated our house when we first bought it, but that was 15 years ago and it’s looking decidedly tatty now. Most of the time I don’t really notice - it’s when we’re going to have visitors and I suddenly notice the taped-up rip in the dining chair, the kitchen unit missing a handle, the letterbox that has broken and not been repaired, the chipped kitchen floor tiles, the very threadbare old sofa…. We just don’t have money or time to sort it all out, I do what I can but a long-term health condition has got in the way lately. I am starting to do some decluttering though as I think that will really help - with two kids we’ve accumulated a load of stuff over the years. I try to remind myself that I don’t really care what anyone else’s house is like, as long as it’s vaguely clean. My mum always kept our house like a show home and has very strict rules when I was a child, but I loved going to visit friends whose homes were more scruffy and relaxed and where we were allowed to eat snacks on the sofa or run around and play - I certainly never judged them and still don’t.

Well firstly I’d say drop your expectations, and secondly I’d say that while it might be nice to have a clean house, there are many things more important. I doubt your house is as scruffy as you think, but I know for sure your clean homed friends have plenty of problems.

On a more practical level I would

Do a big declutter - get a skip if necessary

Get a deep clean company in and budget for it every six months

Do a schedule for gradually working through the house. If the bathroom is making you miserable could you save up and get it sorted in a year, if not, do a temporary fix as soon as you can, and set a savings target to get it done when you can, and then move onto the next room..