To be fascinated by tidy people

It’s so hard keeping things clean and tidy. It’s worth the effort to start with a drawer, a bin bag or two and go from there.

I think, stuff out is fine but if it’s piled onto dirty floors then that’s not good.

I’ve lived in flats with no storage. I wouldn’t have bikes or pram wheels in the flat. Storage boxes outside, in the communal area or hung up on a wall. That’s where my bike lived.

That sofa should have been removed when the old one arrived. Our sofa delivery people did that with ours.

If the photos weren’t done in situ, then they are very difficult to do in a crowded hallway.

I’ve lost count the promises of Vinted pics and FB marketplace sales that I’ve never gone through with. It just gets taken to the charity shop or recycled.

We’ve lived on a main road in the past also, so the dirt was constant. I cleaned a little every day to keep on top of it.

I think when the problem becomes large it’s hard to solve. Just little steps and keep going every day :)

This is the ideal scenario but when you have toddlera hanging off.your legs you rarely get to finish a task. You might have 5 minutes to have a shower and throw some clothes on, but your hair drying will be interrupted and your towel won't get put away as you rauh to resolve a crisis.
You may just need a cuppa but meanwhile you're also emptying the dishwasher, making a bottle of formula and finding your dh's socks.

It's just a lazy way to insult people who have tidy homes.

I don't know anyone who feels as though they missed out because they lived in a tidy house, but I do know people who were embarrassed by their messy homes and who missed out socially because of it.

IMO you’re either born tidy, or you’re not.

My elder sister was always very tidy and organised.
I certainly was not. But we were both brought up exactly the same,

I have had to learn to be tidier and more organised, but I’ll still never be like my elder sister. She’s the sort of person whose kitchen still looks brand new 7 years after it was installed, everything always immaculate.

Did you not find it a bit soulless? I quite like people’s clutter. Guess I’m nosey.

Yanbu OP. I'm a single mum, I work full time. My cleaning gets done early Saturday and Sunday mornings. Saturday is washing, food shopping, changing beds, bathroom. Sunday is hoovering, mopping floors, dusting and tidying.
I clean the kitchen as I cook.

I have one ds(17), no dh. Yet within an hour of ds being awake, the house looks like a bomb's exploded. His room is a disaster. The sitting room is covered in maths & physics books, phone chargers, games consoles, cups, plates. Crumbs all over the kitchen, sticky knives. The loo is no longer clean. Toothpaste smeared on the wash basin.

We aren't cramped, we have four bedrooms, two receptions and an office between us. Plenty of storage.

I hate nagging. If I ask him to put his plate in the dishwasher he will, or use the loo brush or put his dirty clothes in the laundry bag. But I have to ASK. And he goes to bed after me so mornings can be a 'surprise'.

I've learned to do a quick tidy up before I leave for work. Term time is better because he's out making the school untidy instead. 😁

My home is always welcoming but people have to take the house as they find it - because I do too.

To be efficient, storage needs to be "tidy". No point shoving everything randomly out of the way, it's still a mess

Not really, when you keep the house tidy, it actually doesn't take that long.

The time others are wasting looking for things, or thinking about the mess, or panicking because someone is coming? I am just sitting down having my coffee, or being on MN.

It takes the same time to put things in the wrong place or the right place, that's what people forget. We tend to use more emails than paper nowadays, but it's the same: your emails can be a big mess, and you never find the right one, forget about an important one from school, a change of time from the club.. or you take a few minutes to keep your inbox organised and you save so much time later.

This is exactly what I meant upthread.
It's simply a whole task which is done immediately
Make tea. Put everything away.
It's not onerous or hours of tidying
The idea that you will regret it on your deathbed is so bloody annoying .
No but if I lived in a messy house I would be permanently miserable whilst alive.
I think tidy people have nicer more peaceful lives and are probably calmer parents as a result.
It's like the ho ho ho I have an amazing lovely chaotic life aren't you uptight
Erm nope !

Agree it’s all about the storage

This is definitely me.
making tea for me requires the following …open cupboards, take out cup, take out tea bag from tea bag caddy, close cupboards. Tea bag in cup, turn on quooker tap, fill cup, take out milk, pour in milk, put milk back, stir, rinse spoon, dry spoon and put away.

Cleaners do whatever you mutually agree
Mine hangs laundry, fold and put away clothes. Puts away grocery delivery (I order Ocado when she’s in)

I don’t get rid of things I need. But if I don’t need it or use it then I won’t be rebuying. Do you have an example of an item that you are thinking of? I’m struggling to think of anything

Totally agree with this.
I have four children and our house was always tidy.

As soon as the babies were in bed (6.30pm) the older two helped by putting the toys away, while DH washed up.

Everything was hung up or put away before we all went to bed.

I can't abide mess, but our DC had plenty of toys and games.

OP you need to be organised. Don't leave things lying around. Ruthlessly throw things away that are useless!

Cleaners are supposed to clean, not tidy

OP I’m a tidy person as is my DH. But we hardly ever actually “tidy”. Everything has a place and so it just goes back in its place. Shoes in shoe rack. Dry laundry folded into baskets then straight into drawers. Shopping put away once in the door. My work bag has a place. Everything has a place. I can’t understand untidy systems! For me it’s not about being house proud but needing a calm space around me. It’s much easier to then clean when things are put away. I also have constant daily lists of stuff to get done, including laundry on, admin tasks etc. It comes down to having systems.

OP go easy on yourself. Life with little kids is relentless so rest whilst you can. Mine are all school age now and my house is still chaos (not dirty but it's obvious we all live here!). Genuine friends won't judge your worth in how tidy your house is!

The Tidy People ™that I know tidy all the time. Their eyes rove over surfaces, and they deal with things immediately. They never leave a room without something in their hand. They straighten their cushion when they stand up.

I’ve tried, but it feels like I’m a short step from the lunatic asylum when I’m trying to stay alert and focused like that. I also start to seriously resent my family. And pets.

Full disclosure: I have adhd which definitely complicates the matter because my brain is always focusing on the next thing, and the future. If Tidy Person takes a scissors out of a drawer to open a package of pasta, she will put the scissors back and then close the drawer before pouring the contents of the package in the saucepan.

My adhd brain is focused on the pouring in part, and doesn’t instinctively do those back steps. If you add more complexity - measuring the pasta, or disposing of the wrapper, - it adds up to a lot more mess.

I’ve learned to allow a few minutes to look around and tidy at the end of an activity, And it’s like that scene in Sixth Sense where all the kitchen cabinets are open. I literally have not noticed the scissors, or the drawer, or the measuring container, or the empty wrapper or the 4 stirring spoons and the dropped tea towel until I stop and look, and I’ve already forgotten how they got there.

The key imo is not to try to be a Tidy Person or copy their methods. And for heaven sake never copy their storage systems Clutterbug. If you walked into my house you’d probably mistake me for a Tidy Person, but I have completely different methods to maintain a tidy house (which is a more achievable goal)

I can’t just notice and automatically do - or repeat small tasks over and over and over. I need to create a runway to get my energy plane off the ground, and keep up momentum when I do. I can’t form habits, but I can establish non negotiable commitments.

Basically any time someone’s advice starts with “just” I know it’s probably not meant for people like me

If you’re just trying to fill a gap in your childhood training, that’s great, but trying to force yourself into patterns of behaviour that aren’t in sync with how you operate is demoralising. It can be incredibly helpful to read a thread like this with a curious approach, wondering (without shame) why that doesn’t work for me, so you can figure out what will.

So really you’d need a week off work to start lol.

I grew up in a cluttered messy house and it’s given me life long
mess avoidance issues. My house is tidy and clean the surfaces are always clear and wiped but it’s easy to keep on top of if you see what I mean. Quick wipe after breakfast and dishes straight into the dishwasher then it’s all sorted.

it’s really hard to get on top of once it all gets out of control.

Exactly! It’s silly for the PP to insinuate children will be missing out because your house is tidy, as if to say their needs aren’t being met.

Have a lot of storage
have a cleaner
Do an hour a night both take a room to whizz round
Do a deep clean once year and bag up for charity shop - get BHF to collect
Lot of storage in kids rooms, so can quickly throw toys in a trunk
TBH out the house all day at work and kids at nursery , so not much opportunity to get too messy

I agree with he one touch rule. It just makes sense. I am an extremely tidy person (not a brag, a just am, always have been). I managed to keep my house tidy when the kids were young, mainly because I can’t settle with mess! They’re older now and help out which is great. It is do able. You’ve just got to find the motivation!

We tidy throughout the day and don't have any clutter. It takes no time if there's a place for everything.

No, but you might wish you'd been able to have friends call in, that you could relax in your house knowing it wouldn't give you a heart attack if someone knocked at the door!

I am a tidy person, but (maybe quite unusually?) I became one, it absolutely wasn’t my natural state. As a child my DM used to threaten to get a black bin bag out as a last resort to get me to finally tidy my bedroom - it was permanently a couldn’t see the floor for the mess type situation.

I only finally became ‘a tidy person’ when I met my now DH, who is tidy. When we started dating, as I was clearly on to a winner, he was round my flat more and more regularly, and it just became too stressful having to frantically tidy up (read shove everything under the bed/in the cupboard) every single time he came round, so the lesser of two evils / it was finally just easier to keep it tidy as a more permanent state.

I think the only knack is little and often, put things away as soon as you’re done with them. I 100% recognise that’s a million times harder with kids (and slightly less joyful? Definitely less relaxed…). Have a bit less stuff if you can, and a place for everything. Much easier to be tidy if you have room and a place to put stuff away. But don’t be a martyr to it - I do sometimes fall into the trap of thinking I’ll have a sit down and a rest once all my ‘jobs’ are done and honestly the to do list is never complete, so I’m working on reframing that as a work in progress type thing, and getting more into the mindset of I’ll have a sit down and a rest once I’ve done a couple of things, not all of them.