Do you ever feel like your house is fully clean and clutter free?

[polkadotdinosaur]

There’s always something to do! Even when I’m relaxing, I know in the back of my mind there is 3 loads of washing waiting, or the dishes, or the floor could do with a mop… every day!

Working FT. Mystified how anyone keeps an instagram perfect home within a busy life.

Yes, after the cleaner comes!. I don’t have an instagram life, but would be fairly easy for me to make a camera shot’s worth of the room look perfect!

I wish

How many men expand this amount of mental energy on all of this...

Yes the day our cleaner comes. It’s a mental clean sweep

No way! I've always got a list of 100 things that need doing. I only manage to keep on top of the essentials like everyday cleaning laundry etc. Deep cleaning just never gets done. I want to hire a cleaner for a whole day to deep clean the whole house as a one off.

I'm pretty sure my house won't be clean and clutter free until my kids are grown up

No I do not. I'd love it! Always cupboards piled high with crap. Aaargh.

Not since having children.

No. Every surface has clutter on it. I'm at the point of just trying to make sure the clutter is in tidy piles.

I keep my house close clutter free, I need that for my mental health.

There's always something that could do with more cleaning though. I keep the basics under control (most of the time!) and remind myself that life's too short.

My house is awfully untidy and making me feel really depressed. Work full time and no energy when I'm not working.

It helps if I don't go into any bedroom but my own . I open the understair cupboard close my eyes, chuck everything in and slam the door

NOBODY's home looks like Instagram, everywhere, all the time. Photos are staged.

No and I don't really want to live somewhere like that anyway. I'm clean, I'm tidy but i don't feel that everything needs to be perfect.

Decluttering isn’t a one and done effort, it’s a continual process. If you have children there will always be outgrown clothes/toys, art projects, unwanted stuff around. Unless you’re very organised there will often be stuff coming in that has to be dealt with.

I’ve been chipping away at our clutter mountain for a long time, and it’s so much better than it used to be, but it’s still a continual process. I’m also much more strict about stuff coming in these days, and it’s really helped me feel more relaxed at home!

Our house is what I call 'lived in'.

Yes it probably needs a hoover because the cat's fur gets everywhere, there is laundry hanging up to dry, there's cups and plates waiting to go in the dishwasher... but it's functional.

Toys and games are put away after use, beds are made (mostly), and surfaces are kept free of clutter through use of multiple baskets (if the item needs to be put away, into the basket it goes!).

It never looks 'perfect'. I haven't had clean 'perfect' home since pregnancy! DD is now 3 and helps out with putting toys away, clearing the table, putting things in cupboards, and emptying the dishwasher (with help) and as she grows I fully expect her to start doing other jobs around the house like mopping and hoovering (for a bit of pocket money!)

But yeah, I never feel like my home is fully clean and tidy. So relax - let the dishes sit there whilst you have a cup of tea and just try and do bits as you go! And get the kids involved if you can. My DD loves to do 'helping' 😊

No - thank goodness - because then it would be like a show home, ie sterile, miserable, naff & joyless.

No and I never even think about it. Perhaps because I don't waste time looking at Instagram and the fake lives being sold to suckers.

I was really taken aback by a friend once when she said 'I did all my housework this morning and when everything was done, I blah blah blah'
I didn't hear the rest of her sentence as I was thinking housework done? as in all done? I can't even imagine thinking I've done all my housework. There's always something to do!

How often do you do a massive declutter?

Yes but we live in a small house and are very minimal with possessions. I also have realistic expectations for what "clean and clutter free" looks like with a one year old child.

The laundry baskets are never empty because that's not possible. But the house is always clean and everything has its place. At the end of the day things go back where they belong. I do a quick tidy up while my partner washes up after dinner.

We keep a box always on the go for donations and add to it whenever we need to. Sometimes it's filled in a couple of weeks and taken to the charity shop, sometimes it takes a few months. A couple of times a year I'll also do a big clear out where I go through each room and make sure we're not holding onto anything unnecessarily.

We clean as we go. The house is so small that if we didn't, everything would become unmanageable very quickly. I have no desire to move to a bigger house for this reason! I like being able to keep on top of everything.

The absolute essential to keeping on top of things is to be brutally minimal. We have everything we need and love and our little boy has plenty of toys, but we don't own more than we can comfortably fit into the house. Empty space helps for keeping things tidy. It's impossible to dust and hoover a cluttered home and I can't be bothered with all that extra effort.

@coodawoodashooda

Ooo I tend to declutter quite often - definitely seasonally (when it's the changing of the decor time) and probably every few weeks if I feel like we've accumulated further clutter! It's so easy to randomly bring things home that don't have a place, or let things accumulate.

I keep non seasonal decor stored away in the giant plastic tubs in the garage, all labelled up so when I swap out cushions or ornaments it's not adding more clutter for the seasons. Although Christmas is the one time I think I let loose!

Also it's hard to describe "clutter" as I feel like my definitions are driven by my mental state rather then reality 😂

I naturally lean towards hoarder due to mental health issues but I've been ruthless lately and it has helped. By ruthless I've even gone so far as to get rid of large items of furniture to free up room, and I've stopped kidding myself Im going to sell the old clothes and toys on vinted/Facebook/boot sale and taken them all to a charity shop. Every cupboard has been gutted and binned. That's the one thing that has really helped, being honest with myself and knowing the bin is an option.

I have no idea where I've got the sudden burst of energy if I'm honest but something has kicked in, I'm not going to knock it!

Yep, for most of 1997/98. After I split with ex, before DH moved in.

Nowadays not so much.

My coffee table only had my book and a coaster on it... I remember those days fondly sometimes...

Nope. I.live alone,no kids but usually untidy as I'm.a slut where housework is concerned. 🤣