To wish I was this sort of person?

[crispy3]

The person I would love to be has a tidy, homely house that is visitor-ready at all times and is really inviting to guests - somewhere people actively want to spend time. She's also incredibly organised and plans fun activities for her kids on the days when everyone is around (rather than just plonking them in front of the telly). She also cooks them nutritious meals from scratch on a regular basis.

She's not afraid to invite potential new friends over for playdates and coffees and as such has lots of mates. She has a nice put-together wardrobe of clothes that look good.

Instead, my home is often untidy, I look scruffy and I'm incredibly disorganised - I've tried online and paper diaries but never manage to keep them up. I feel like a headless chicken just crashing from one day into the next. I'm always having to pop to the supermarket at annoying times because I haven't done an adequate food shop and we run out of stuff.

When we do get a free day as a family I hardly ever make the most of it because I don't have the energy. I don't feel I have many friends because I worry that people will think I'm desperate if I invite them over when we've only met a few times.

If anyone is like the first person I described, please can you let me know your secrets? Thank you!

No one's perfect and there will be things she struggles with that you don't know about. You're a different person, but you're not in competition. Just keep being you.

I'm like this I think except for the wardrobe but I'm not perfect I have no free time for myself.

My marriage is on the skids and I need to lose a shit ton of weight.

I wish I was married to this kind of person

Actually being this kind of person is too much work

I tidy as I go every day.
Most of the house admin fails to me.
I get no time to myself.
I constantly fucking running round.

I need to be more like you really.

I need balance. So do you I think.

I make lists

I think you may be talking about an Instagram, carefully-curated version of someone who doesn't exist...

I am 80% this person. I am perma-knackered. My mate is 100% this person and she has ADHD, hyperactivity type.

I’m not that person, but maybe try casually suggesting meet ups and see if people go for it even if the house is a bit scruffy/untidy? Park meet ups are another possibility, easier when the weather is warmer, but it was nice and sunny here on Thursday which was a school strike and we met DS’s friend in the park. Low effort and meant less mum guilt when he was on screens in the afternoon when I worked.

The person you describe sounds unbearable
I'd hate her lol
You're fine as you are.

I'm happy just slurping tea and Dunkin' my job nobs, nobody actually appreciates a tidy house ( except the one that does the work)

I have ADHD and I am not the ‘perfect’ person you describe naturally however.. I make a massive effort to plan plan plan! I make myself look at my DH work diary, kids school hols and plan around 3 months ahead for days out (seems extreme but I know if I didn’t we wouldn’t do anything).

I make myself wipe over the toilet daily, tidy away every meal there and then and pots and recycling put away, that way if someone comes round (which I hate and most people know not to 😅) I’m not too embarrassed! I don’t often plan play dates but I always think as long as someone’s house smells nice and it’s not too cluttered then people are happy so I stick out some air fresheners and and declutter.

Clothes.. if I have a busy week I plan the outfit the day/night before and get it out hung up but most days I look like a tramp and that’s ok because.. I’m a natural tramp!!

Its a hard battle especially with my ADHD brain but I just have to really make the effort, don’t get me wrong some days are bad and I live in a pig sty but most are good but it only comes from working my arse off to make it that way.

I think you are aiming for too much. Try to achieve one of your goal first. tidy home? home cooked meal? Activities for kids?
That's the start.

I take loads of drugs.

Joke.

I have one child, no partner (I adopted my son by myself), a good job that fits around school hours, a cleaner, online supermarket shopping (for meal planning), very few clothes/outfits so I don’t have to think much about it. I try to have an hour of quality time with my son a day as much as possible (in between school / clubs / gym / socialising in the playground / playdates).

My child isn’t able to be left with a babysitter in the evenings yet so I also don’t really have a life outside of playdates.

But my time will come.

I just CAN'T master food shopping. I have tried meal planning but it makes me miserable if i don't fancy what I have planned (first world probs I know) so I end up not sticking to it.

People say things like 'i had nothing in so just had a cheese sarnie' but at very, very few points do I have non mouldy bread, cheese, butter and salad in at the SAME time. I'm shit at 'cupboard staples', I can't manage running a biscuit tin (favourites go in seconds, rest go off), always running out of pet food etc.

Of course we are all fed regularly and properly but it's usually last minute/daily shopping and I wish I wasn't this way. Not like this this is any other area of my life.

Is it all just planning and sticking to it?

I’m this person. I grew up in a family that loved to cook so I’ve always enjoyed it. I’ve always been organised too, even as a teen.

The main reason I have time to do the things I do is because I don’t have to work out of the home and the nature of our business means I can do say, 5 hours one day a week while the DC are at school and maybe an hour a couple of days a week if need be and then the rest of the time is totally mine.
I don’t do clutter or hoarding so it’s much easier to be organised and have a clean and tidy home when you don’t have loads of stuff lying around. Cooking from scratch comes down to time. My sister in law works full time so understandably doesn’t have the time to cook from scratch every evening. It also means a lot of housework and organising and admin has to be done during the evenings and week dna so that’s less time available for planning / doing fun things as a family.

It is too much.

I'm burnt out.

For clarity my wardrobe is put together but it's the same thing daily. Trainers or long horse riding boots as I do a lot of walking to get away from everything and everyone. Leggings and a long sleeved or shirt sleeve t shirt for everyday wear.

I work full time and my DH is out of the house daily from 630 till 7. I do basic make up most days. Sort my eyebrows out and put on bronzer that's it. I'm lucky with my skin and I blow dry my hair once a week then put it in a loose bun when it needs doing.

It's fucking exhausting but I feel like I'm in this cycle now

I tried a long time to be that person but then have been diagnosed with ADHD at 40 and it's extremely refreshing to give up expecting to ever be that person.

You bring your own good stuff into the world - focus on that instead...

I do some of this, though I have a cleaner and just ignore things pretty much between her visits — I don’t really have a concept of ‘visitor-ready’, I just close a door on mess. It’s probably welcoming if you like houses that look like badly-curated bookshops, and I like having people for dinner, and will invite new people. (DH mostly cooks.) In fact, all our local friends are newish, as we moved countries in 2020. I love clothes, but have the kind of body on which things look bag-ladyish. I get groceries delivered (supermarket and veg box) — I work flexibly but a lot of hours, and can’t drive, so sometimes pick up stuff from the market on my way home.

My DM is actually that person...

• She prioritises cleaning over most other things in life. No relaxing until everything is perfect

• As a child it was a very restrictive environment to grow up in. There were lots and lots of 'rules' and things I couldn't do because it would mean things would be out of place

• Working full-time, raising a child and keeping the house perfect made her an extremely irritable person who didn't have a lot of patience for me

• I could never do anything right.

I actually adore my DM and there are reasons (trauma related) for the way she is, but growing up around this left me with self-confidence issues and it was just a bit of a tense atmosphere.

I'm not saying all people who have 'perfect' lives are like this but quite often the drive to do everything that's needed to maintain it comes from a place of not feeling good enough...

So do you really want to be that person?

I think you'd find you just swap one set of problems for another set of problems...

I wish I were the sort of person who had servants to deal with all that stuff.

Please don't hesitate to invite people into your home! Friendships and social contacts are so important, just look at all the 'lonely mums' threads on here.
When my special-needs son was small and I felt so isolated one of the class mums chatted to me at the gate and invited me to hers for coffee and it meant the world to me.
She is happily untidy with a far from perfect home and she's not the most chic or stylish person, but her friendship is precious and far more important than an Instagram lifestyle.

I had a friend like this years ago, so it was all before instagram.

She was tall, slim, her hair always looked good. Well dressed, I never saw her in slobby clothes. Her house was always immaculate and beautifully styled. Her cooking was very good and even if she was only making a sandwich it was always done better than some restaurants and presented on a tray with cloth napkin.

She was also super nice. We stayed with her for a two weeks once and it wasn’t an act.

But, she didn’t work and only had one child. Her husband earned enough money and helped around the house a fair bit. The clearing and cleaning just seemed to happen by magic. There was one other thing, she was compulsive about throwing out stuff. I think she tended to buy good quality stuff only once and made it last whether it was furniture, crockery or a coat.

we were there once when her Dd came into the room and asked her mum where a certain toy was. After the girl had left the room my friend admitted to us she had thrown it away.

In all my years she’s the only person I’ve met like this.

It’s really not hard to be organised - the pitfalls of disorganisation always seem far more hassle than just to keep your diary and to do lists up to date.

The secret of looking put together is simply to buy colours that coordinate.

I think that maybe willpower is my issue. I make lists but inevitably they don’t get done because I’m just so tired and then I fall behind. Everyone is tired I know, but perhaps it’s the people who can be bothered to do stuff (and not just collapse on the sofa) who live the life I described in my OP.

Friends don't care if yoir house is messy or what you dress like; friends care if you have wine