To be fascinated by tidy people

I open the windows while I am getting ready for work and leave my bed to air. It takes me about half an hour to shower, dress and put some make up on. Before I go to make my coffee I make the bed. Turn around and all is as it should be, ready to be slept on in the evening. 😊

Agree and you're also not spending time looking for things, stress when you cant lay your hands on something important etc.

Also messy people have a close correlation in my experience with those who are late!

Something else I’ve noticed about messy houses after a play date today- the state of some children’s toys is appalling. They’re just jumbled in a big messy pile and the kids don’t look after them. Toys are left lying about, so get stepped on and broken. There’s no obvious place to tidy things away to and everything is battered and has missing parts. I think it’s so important to teach children to look after their belongings and take responsibility for tidying up after themselves. To genuinely take pride in their bedrooms and care for their things.

We had a child round once who just tipped every toy out of their baskets and didn’t seem to know how to play with anything. My 4 year old asked me when they went home that they not come round again. He found it really stressful everything just being chucked about and not actually played with. Contrast to a little friend he has over to our house regularly who actually plays with everything and helps tidy up before he goes home. He’s welcome any time.

It makes me depressed too but I have a messy DH and messy kids. Despite nagging..

Your last sentence makes me depressed. Paying for a cleaner only to have your house a mess one day later?

For me drudgery is a massive pile of dishes in the sink, rather than just washing up the very small amount after a meal. It’s a ginormous mound of laundry that will take most of the day to get through, rather than small loads often that are dealt with immediately. It’s leaving the house to become a bomb site and then having to waste a day sorting it all out.

I also admire them but cannot be like them. I know what it takes. I just don’t have it in me to be constantly thinking about tidying and clearing up. Coming back from work and not sitting down but hoovering and dusting like some on here. Then on to cooking and clearing that up..

I just have to accept at times it piles up and then I have a blitz.

It’s drudgery and it’s boring. My clean washing sits in my utility for days as I can’t face putting it away. I hate all domestic tasks!

A cleaner once a week forces me to run around tidying one evening. It’s back to messy a day later.

Imo,maintenance of domestic tasks means it’s easier to keep on top off when stains,mes build up
A sticky handmark on cupboard or pile of clothes or messy high chair can be sorted if the baseline is ok
What I mean is a high chair with 1 day food stain is easier to clean than a high chair with months of stains. A 1 day clothes pile us more manageable than a pile that’s amassed over weeks
Wiping an otherwise clean worktop is manageable compared to trying to clean a worktop that’s got weeks of buildups
Thats why little often works, it set a baseline of clean that is easy to maintain

I can understand this. It is drudgery. Being a tidy person, I keep everywhere neat, but actual cleaning is not something I enjoy, I just do it.

Who said anything about it being sparkling? Tidy is different. I clean ( dust, hoover, bathrooms cleaned etc) once a week for a couple of hours tops. I clean surfaces after use but don’t class that as cleaning. I clean the sink ( spray and swish not scrub) daily but don’t class that as cleaning. Kitchen floor gets swept daily but that’s not cleaning . Living room cleared of any cups from the evening and cushioned plumped before bed. But that’s not cleaning. All these things are just unconscious really, as is switching dishwasher on before bed and emptying first thing.

I hear you , OP! The only time my house was sparkling as it should be was when I literally hardly ever sat down and rested. It was not only exhausting, but thoroughly boring, to be constantly physically active doing mundane mechanical mindless tasks.

I've read all the 'do a little bit often/keep on top it/ clean as you go ' etc and I've done it but it's just the same feeling of never-ending mind-numbing drudgery.

I've now accepted it will just pile up to a certain level before I have to spend half a day cleaning it all again. It doesn't get terribly bad, more untidy and dusty than dirty, but it's not the call-in-and-see-my-showroom standard of other people. I admire them but cannot be like them.

I get you, OP, it’s tough! I try to multitask, so when I’m making a cuppa instead of standing around I’ll clear the draining board, wipe the surfaces, check through the mountain of post and get rid, that sort of thing. Or when I’m brushing my teeth I’ll make the bed (ok, not very well if one-handed!), sort the laundry, put my make up away…you might find that doing odd jobs that way helps.

I also find a quick tidy before bed really helps and it’s just my routine now. Check around for the inevitable cups and glasses ‘forgotten’ about by other members of the household, stick in dishwasher, tidy cushions, fold throws, dog toys in basket (I have loads of these dotted around the house) shoes in hall, wipe kitchen, dishwasher on…bed! Takes 5 mins as it’s routine now, but it means everything is tidy when I get up and helps me start the day with a clear head.

I’m not a person who does lots of ‘big cleans’ but I tend to do a bit at a time, when I can, which helps to stay on top of things. Training children to help, even when they’re little, also works…even a little one can carry their plate to the dishwasher and pop it in!

I hate clutter of any kind.

I have 6 photos and 7 paintings out around the house, a couple of pieces of handmade glassware, a set of candlesticks and six jugs along my kitchen windowsill. I keep my books in cupboards.

I am also very lazy, tidying doesn’t have to happen often and cleaning is easy and quick.

We have great storage in the hallway. DH built a shoe rack under the stairs for all of our shoes with a small clothes rail that takes most of our coats. The doors shut, I really hate seeing shoes piled up in the hall

It’s hard when you have a tidy partner and you aren’t. I take a lot of medication and supplements and i can’t walk far without a stick, I also forget they exist etc.. So they live next to me on the sofa (we have two sofas and dh occupies the other one). He hates that as it looks untidy, but I need to see them to take them. I’ve found having a plastic storage box on the sofa is a compromise, I can see them and access them, but they are contained and easy to put away when people come / the cleaner comes.

Being tidy, I don't spend ages looking for things because I know where they are (DH, I'm looking at you). Everything has a place to live - shoes in the shoe rack, coats in the cupboard under the stairs, dirty laundry in the laundry basket etc.

Untidy people are under the misapprehension that tidy people never sit down. It's not true because we handle everything once whereas an untidy person will dump something down then handle it again to put it away. We are just smarter with our time.

Couldn't agree more. I like to be tidy and was brought up to be so but DH is a hoarder and it has taken a great deal of time and effort to be tidy in the past but he is better now - my compromise is to let him have 9/10ths of the wardrobe and drawer space for his excessive amount of clothes. I also behind him, tidying away the items that he puts down and forgets about. Another thing I do, which might help you, @tangerinemagic, is to have a routine for which jobs are done on which days. This is how I keep a tidy home.

I remember playing at my close friends' house when I was small. The two sisters shared a large bedroom and it was very untidy. This was a shock to me as my mother made sure we had tidy bedrooms. We had other friends, who had a girl a similar age to me and a boy a similar age to my brother. The house and all four members were always immaculate. They were extremely welcoming, though - it was simply as natural as breathing to them. The two children were the only children in the entire primary school who came out of school as polished and immaculate as when they went in.

This is just not true though - I have more time to spend on the good stuff because I'm tidy - I don't have to spend hours tidying mess because there's never any mess to tidy. It takes as long to take off a jacket and hang it on a hook as it does to chuck it on the floor, as long to put clothes in a laundry basket as it does to chuck it on the floor. Put the mug in the dishwasher, not on the bench.

I'd like to think my kids had a happy childhood - they lived in a clean and tidy home (not a show home, an actual home), with parents who weren't stressed and miserable because their house was a mess, with plenty of time to go out and have fun precisely because I didn't need to spend hours cleaning and tidying, or looking for things.

I agree. This old chestnut always gets trotted out by lazy people.

I don't need to tidy up because I am tidy.

I am not naturally tidy at all. But I don’t really agree with your comment. Assuming that everyone has to tidy eventually, then a tidy person doesn’t spend less time with their children, they will just tidy little and often rather than waiting until things are a mess and take ages to sort.

I grew up in rather messy, overcrowded and cluttered flats / houses and always wanted to have a minimalist space where everything has a place, hidden if possible.
So now my place is immaculate. I actually never actively tidy up, I don't have to, I clear stuff as I go and it's generally one item at a time.

I live alone and I don't have kids, that helps!

Totally agree with you that the systems have to work. That is always where I had gone wrong before, making the systems too elaborate or 'pretty'.

I have the opposite problem. I got used to tidying up and cleaning after a life with children and then later, just with my husband ( who helped). It made me uncomfortable if things were messy. However, after he died, I ruthlessly downsized and moved to a smaller house.

It's much easier obviously to keep it tidy and clean, but as I'm getting older, and have some medical issues, my energy levels are much lower. I have days when I just stack the pots by the sink and don't fill the dishwasher, when I have several items of clothing lying round the bedroom or the bathrooms need a quick clean and the carpets need hoovering. It bothers me but I am training myself not to bother about it until my energy returns. If you feel exhausted, it's not worth making yourself more so. As soon as I feel better, I whizz round and sort everything out really quickly.

Love this. I think a lot of messy and disorganised people think that’s just part of life and excuse it away with having children, or a busy career etc. Yes, there are times in life when it is more difficult and we all let things slide a bit. But your point about being very clutter free/minimalist, and having good systems/solutions is exactly right.

Tiny things like leaving keys, wallet, post, coins etc on the kitchen table just accumulates. Clutter breeds clutter. We have dedicated zones for things: letter holder, key hooks, coat hooks, shoe storage bench in the entranceway, clutter tray (gives a drop zone when we get home for things like wallet, coins, receipts etc that can be chucked down without it creeping all over the house)

Systems also have to be simple and effective. You can’t force yourself to work with a system that simply doesn’t work. For example, my 4 year old used to have a booklet for his Yoto cards but it was too fiddly for him so the cards ended up a mess. Now he has a simple little wooden box that he throws them all into and rummages through them when he wants to choose one. Yes, the lovely booklet looked nice and organised but in the end it wasn’t actually neat and tidy because he wasn’t able to use it easily. Now his cards are contained, tidy, and he can access them and also tidy them himself in under a minute.

This has been a really fascinating discussion, and it's prompted me to post for the first time.

I struggled to keep a tidy house for most of my adult life until about 5 years ago. My mum was not houseproud in the slightest and TBH, always was a bit sneery about people with 'show homes'. Having my own home coincided with starting my career (as it does with many, I expect), and I struggled with juggling both roles.

Over the next few decades I had many attempts at 'decluttering', tidying as you go etc, but none were ever sustained.

Five years ago, 2 things really changed me.
1, My Dh and I got a motorhome and started to spend 4 to 5 weeks at a time away in it. This was a real eye-opener, in a MH you obviously don't have very much stuff, and any stuff you do have has to have a secure place to be stored as otherwise driving along would be very hazardous. With hardly any belongings, I'd never felt happier; everything had a place, and it was easy to put it back in its place. Because the van was tidy, cleaning was so easy. 20 minutes AM and PM and everything was tidy and clean and we both felt really good about that.

It gave me the impetus to properly declutter ruthlessly
once back at home, to invest in storage and actually think about putting systems in place.

The second thing was that my MIL became very frail and had periods of being very ill. I started to go up to stay and look after her, at one point staying for 2 months.

I realised that everything in her house had a proper place, and that she didn't have anything that she didn't use. She was ruthless about getting rid of anything. Operated a strict 'one in, one out' system. But, it was the systems she had running that really opened my eyes. A special rubber pot by the kettle station for teabags, emptied into the compost bin at the end of the day so no tea drips anywhere. The world's smallest kitchen bin, lined with a carrier bag. Post evening washing up, surfaces were cleaned down and the tiny rubbish bag taken straight to the outside bin.

We got talking about it, and she said that she had learned all of these housekeeping skills from her mother, no one was born knowing how to keep house. It made me realise that perhaps we don't value housekeeping as a 'skill' so much, and expect to be able to just 'do' it, and that our paid jobs are more important.

I learnt from her, and she shared her secrets with me, and I now have a very tidy and clean home, and friends comment on it often.

One of the best things, though, is how freeing it has been. I have so much more free time now, I have several hobbies because my evenings are no longer spent either moving stuff from one place to another, or feeling like I could not relax as the house was a tip.

Just my thoughts anyway.

As someone said upthread untidy people just don’t complete tasks. You have to MAKE something untidy in order for there to be something to tidy up.

I am a really tidy person - it's not something I have to think about as I automatically clear up as I go. And everything always gets put away in it's place. I'm also a massive fan of decluttering! BUT a tidy house with adults only is much easier to maintain than a tidy house with young children! I had an only child and although mainly due to health issues a part of this was because I just couldn't stand the mess! I'm now a granny and after my grandson has visited it takes me several hours to get my home back to the standard I like. Cut yourself some slack and enjoy your children whilst they are young. The house can wait!