To ask what people mean when they say ‘leave the housework’…

Do you not have an able bodied husband who is capable of hoovering, pulling hairs out of plugs, washing up, etc?

If your MIL pulls a face, tell her there are two grownups in the house, and unless she thinks there's a house fairy who takes care of all the 70,001 stupid little things that have to get done, her son is equally responsible for anything she finds amiss.

Basically, tell her to save her pulled face for your H. Or roll up her sleeves and muck in..

It's really rude of her to pass any kind of remark or make a face.

Get a cleaner (preferably one who changes sheets and washes dishes).
Keep the public rooms downstairs tidy but don't so much about upstairs.
Look back in 10 years and be amazed how much you could do when they were little and wonder why you seem to have even less time now then remember you've hosted 3 'gatherings' this month none of which were for your friends so you've had all the prep-work but none of the fun plus you've attended multiple concerts of school children performances plus the usual round of pre and post school activities plus you've been sorting out the garden at the weekends and you work longer hours than when they were small because this is suppose to be the easy stage and for the first time ever you look back at the baby stage and think how easy it was when nobody rlse had any expectations of you beyond keeping a small child alive and doing some housework.

Sorry, got abit distracted there. Cleaner, that's what you need.

I genuinely don’t understand how I can do my housework in just a few minutes a day. In ‘a few minutes’ I can hoover one room. So over a week, I can hoover most rooms- but not all. And I still won’t have done any mopping, dusting or cleaning bathrooms. Please explain what you mean as I would certainly like to just do a few minutes a day.

Yes, but the thing is, what you do count as a 'clean' kitchen and a 'clean' bathroom?

I'd say that for basic hygiene, you just need to wipe down worktops and the hob in the kitchen, stick a bit of bleach down the loo and give the washbasin/bath a quick wipe. Those things take 30 seconds to do on a regular basis. You don't need to be polishing mirrors and taps, wiping smudges off cupboard doors or scrubbing down walls, though.

Clean clothes? Yeah, you and the baby need some. Doesn't mean you have to iron them, though. Also doesn't mean that the sky will fall in if a pile of clean washing doesn't get put away for a couple of days.

By all means give the floor a quick wipe if you've got a crawling baby, but you don't need to be slogging away with a mop and bucket. Basically, by 'leave the housework' they mean 'it really doesn't matter what the place looks like, as long as the bare basics are done'.

Yet if I skip a few days hoovering, don’t wash up immediately and leave hairs in the sink she pulls a face when she comes in.
Then you have a MIL problem. My MIL always says "I came to see you, not to check the dust on doorframes" if i apologise for the squallor.

I don’t need a baby to operate on that level!

I had minimum daily cleaning that I never skipped on. One wash, dry and put away every day, plus hoovering, wiping down kitchen surfaces. Bathroom clean weekly. Beds changed fortnightly. Shopping weekly.

Basically the rest got left unless I'd had a good sleep and was feeling particularly motivated. Then I'd maybe mop, dust etc. cupboards skirting board and that sort of thing didn't get done for ages!

I would leave stuff like tidying, or less important cleaning. I would try to keep on top of dishes and laundry etc. but I didn’t bother ironing or dusting.

I think it’s just something people say, in a kind way, so new mums don’t feel like they need to do a full clean with a baby that’s a few days old.
I just did the basics like gave kitchen and bathroom a quick clean, did a quick hoover, I didn’t dust or clean the oven.

This. if she 'pulls a face' or gives any other suggestion that she's judging, tell her she's welcome to push the vacuum round, wash up or pull hairs out of the sink.

You've been too busy/tired to do it, so if it bothers her, she can sort it. Job done.

Tell your mil to get her son to pull his weight .
If you can afford it get a robot vac .
Again if you can afford it get cooker liners , it makes cleaning the cooker much easier.
Aa pp said only wash bedding , towels, adults cloths when needed not out of habit .

I would saying that not having your MIL living rent-free in your head as a kind of super-ego figure should be your first step. Or give her a mop and the Hoover as soon as she comes in. If there's an MIL, presumably there's also a husband, so he does half? Is he sitting about worrying about his mother's expression in relation to how recently he's vacuumed?

Personally, I virtually never do any housework. We have a cleaner who also changes bed linen and ironing. DH does the cooking. I throw on an occasional wash, bake bread, and garden.

Until the baby’s mobile, the state of your floor is neither here nor there.

For me it was not minding how tidy things were, lots of quick and easy meals (including ready meals), no ironing, making sure the sink, toilet and kitchen counters were clean but not so worried about anything else.

The first few months were pretty full on, so we lived in a declared state of emergency until things settled. I frequently went out to the shops only to to discover the baby had spat up down my shoulder or something.

@PinotDragon ‘s list is good.

This used to really annoy me when people said it when my DCs were born. It was as if housework was a silly, optional hobby of mine which could easily be dropped. You can stop doing some things for a while, but they don’t go away and you eventually end up with the house in a state, which is depressing. The last thing you need when tiredness and PND is depressing enough.

Instead of being told not to do stuff, women with new borns should be told that someone will be doing it for them. I am sure that most women have enough adults around them who would be capable of taking over the housework. And yet, they usually don’t. At least not in this country nowadays.

I think it’s the calm down your standards. Don’t worry if the beds not changed, the floor doesn’t need mopping every week, hoovering every day (apparently it’s a thing), changing towels after a shower.

A bit of dust and muck won’t hurt anyone, but raw chicken is a hazard!

The things I left were hoovering stairs, cleaning windows, dusting high and low, anything resembling 'deep cleaning' tidying up of anything that wasn't in the way, sorting cupboards, keeping on top of the low use areas like spare room, ironing (never resumed this! Very liberating.) Cooking more elaborate meals, we ate a lot of cold foods. The things I did was keep the babies clothes and equipment clean and the kitchen and bathroom and hoovered the sitting room.

I couldn’t leave anything. I’d hate it. Only Takes a few minutes when you do it everyday.

The windows can be left, the skirting isn't going to cause an international incident, pillows don't have to be karate chopped (or whatever is the trend at the moment, I don't really care), bedlinen doesn't need to be ironed (DP took that notion on when his DD was born - she's now 14) - you just need

Clean kitchen surfaces
Washing up so you can always find a mug for tea and a plate for sandwich you're going to eat one handed/you can get the kettle under the tap rather than have the sink full of stuff 'soaking' (festering)
Clean bathroom sink/toilet/bath
Bins emptied
Vacuum cleaner pushed around (preferably by somebody else)
Clean clothes
Clean bedding is the only one I would still want of the things other people are saying to leave, as sleeping in the smell of sour milk isn't that much fun.

We hoover once a week (then use the hand held for quick hoovering specific messes). I have 3 dc and a dog (he doesn’t moult much - we vacuumed more when we had cats and their tumble weed fur).

Probably hasn’t occurred to her to tell her darling son to do more/all of the housework. That would help standards.

Different people have different ideas of clean though

If you are vacuuming every day or washing sheets and towels more than once very few weeks , then you are doing a lot more cleaning than many people who don't get ill from a little dusty

You don't need clean outer clothes every day u less baby sicked on your T-shirt

The deep corners of the house can go a year without being unhygienic , same for the windows and doors ( expect perhaps the toilet door handle )

So I’m wondering whether people actually mean it

Your MIL doesn't mean it. The rest of us do.

In which case you’ll just carry on as you were 🤷‍♀️