How clean and tidy is your home.

[Shithole101]

If you have children. How tidy Is your home? What does tidy actually mean , in my head i always think people's homes are really tidy and visitor ready all the time. I see posts on Facebook and it will say please excuse the mess. When there is no mess.

Then there's tiktok videos with trashed houses that says let's normalise this. And they do a tidy up thicktok/video.

Handful of people on here may know I struggle with keeping on top of my house stuff and there's times it's Been trashed and shamefull. But im thinking it's not good to normalise that.

Some people manage to keep show room looking houses . How do people do that ?

I don't work but still struggle alot so how do people keep their houses really tidy but also work.

It's helpful knowing that there's people in a similar position and OP posting is probably getting self-motivation from it.

Ultimately my house is fairly clean- actual dirt is relatively easy to clean up, so when I flick into "action mode" for housework, it's wiping recent crumbly bits away rather than a deep scrubbing kind of cleaning.
But I'm cluttery. I like stuff. I have things for hobbies. I like stuff in sight not hiding away to be forgotten about. Stuff is cosy and comfortable, but a bugger to keep returning to its rightful place.

Laundry is a bugger. I'm on a break from a catch-up blitz of putting clean stuff away after living out of IKEA bags of clean laundry that stacked up when I had an injured shoulder and was struggling to use my arm, and I've kept one-in, one-out since rather than shifting the backlog.

Homes we see are either hoarder from hell league, insta-perfect or tidied for visitors. We don't often see homes in their natural condition being functional but don't look too hard in the corners. I've got some friends at a similar level as me and we're comfortable with each others levels of housekeeping, but my in-laws probably believe that I'm immaculate because they get the A* clean which takes a week of deeper tidying and cleaning to achieve. I maintain this delusion because there is a benefit to a deep purge every few months and have no self-motivation to achieve it in any other way.

I don't have any hobby's but I get what your saying about putting things away and forgetting about them. My clutter is not nice clutter it's just crap. My kids are going away in a couple of weeks hopefully I will be completely on my own for a few days I think that will be a good time to get stuck in.

I'm going to try get the washing sored through. It's a struggle to find clothes to wear but i think I can do it in a relaxed manner. Abd get the kids to help me put ot away.

And yeah I was just wondering what the true normal is. But I guess it depends on people's situations really

You're not doing me any harm, but what are you doing to help yourself with this. At some point you have to take responsibility for this stuff, yes you have difficulties but no one else but you can sort this, you've been given tons of advice and tips and encouragement, ultimately you need to crack on. Compile a cleaning rota, go to the drs and deal with the issues that make you weak.
You need to take responsibility and crack on with dealing with it.

No I sort it..whites and darks. With four kids I have enough of each.

I have got three kids with SEN so I get that drowning feeling and the house going to shit as its literally keeping head above water energy only.

But.... its not great long term coping mechanism. I think after sole searching I have used this,as a form of self harm, like my house reflects my mind. That hurts the kids. Once they get say 10 they notice they don't live like other kids.

There is a thousand methods to try. Take five things with you evrrytime you leave a room, wash up once a day at least, do a load every day etc etc. But something I know now is that this is only under my control. No one can fix me. Only I can save myself. It doesn't come naturally so I force myself. I set a 30-45 minute timer EVERY DAY at least 4 times,a day and I don't stop until the timer is up. That's my method which works for me. I concously buy only what I really need and I tally up my ins,and outs.

Are we tidy? Nope. Are we clean? Yes enough. Could I get a few hours notice to make one room presentable? Yes. There are standards and there are standards. Would you be able to tidy up if you had the energy and a day alone? If yes then you are fine. Honestly.

Sometimes people don’t have people in real life who they can chat to/bounce things off/ask for a bit of support from.

Yes, but repeatedly, the same issues for years. There comes a point when it's time to deal with it. Take responsibility.

But you have completely misunderstood me . Where did I say nothing had been done ? That there was no improvement? where did I say I'm not doing anything about the things that do still need work ? I also never said there was am issue with just weakness that the gp can fix. Gosh i truly wish it was just a medical reason I really do.

From what I’ve read she is taking responsibility and dealing with it? This thread sounded to me like she doesn’t have many people in real life whose houses she visits to see what the norm is in terms of normal/daily levels of mess and wanted a sense check, that’s all.

Again what harm am I doing you . If you think I'm doing wrong report me.

Honestly the only communication I have is mn . I have ( no one ) in real life its me who has to give out all the support, the safe spaces, coping with things beyond my control. Picking up the pieces. Dealing with special needs children and adults. The knock on effect of dv situations. Keeping my adult kids safe keeps GS safe. Making sure everyone else cones before myself and getting nothing back . Abd that's probably not half of it.

Now if I feel posting on MN about a bit of house work or pile of washing wondering what others homes are like . Feels of help to me. So then be it if it gives me a bit of communication allows me to talk to a handful of people and not sit in silence with my mind raceing or me thinking abut stuff that I don't want to think about. And I find it helpful then does it matter.

I have not Been to anyone's house in years

What this poster said is me. This is my house but again as the poster said I don't stop cleaning and tidying up throughout the day.

Because you start thread after thread on this subject, and pay no attention to the answers people give you.

How is reading about other people's clean and tidy houses going to get yours sorted?

It isn't. You do need to crack on and just do it, instead of writing excuses all the time.

Again you have completely misunderstood my thinking .

My clutter is not nice clutter it's just crap
So throw it away!

I don't even have a wardrobe
Whyever not? Where do you put clean clothes?

My shortest washes are 15 min & 30 min.
I think I have a 45, but I tend to use the hour one
Why? What are you wasting electricity and time for?

But surely if carrying a wash load of wet clothes upstairs leaves you so physically drained and zapped you leave it to go mouldy you have to throw them away that's a medical issue, that's not normal.

This is what I'm saying your not getting it at all . You don't fully understand what my posting is about . I done a long reply trying to explain things and you come back with a reply about my wet washing . Completely ignoring my reason for posting often when it was you that over questioned why I post.

How does reading about my tidy house, or anyone else's, help you, OP?

I don’t like to answer for the OP but I thought it was a general question about how tidy (or otherwise) people’s houses are on a day to day basis, so that she knows whether she’s close to the norm or not.
If you don’t visit other people (friends/family etc) it’s easy to think that the Instagram home accounts are representative of how people keep their houses all the time. Most of us know that that’s not the case, but only because most of us go into other people’s houses fairly regularly.
It’s just general chat. Nothing deep.

The thread feels negative now and I did not want that . It was only ever meant to be a general thread. So I'm leaving it here for now.

@Shithole101 I have seen some of your other threads and the great job you did on the kids' bedroom.

If the laundry is such an issue for you that you are struggling to find clean clothes, then that really need to be the priority. The children (and you) all need to easily be able to find clean clothes to wear.

I'm not sure where you're keeping clothes at the moment if you don't have a wardrobe. At the very least, could you get two laundry baskets or even two IKEA bags per person. One to put dirty laundry in, and the second to put the washing in when it is clean and dry. Even if you then just picked clothes out of the clean washing pile that could be a start?

Well, what did you want?
On this thread, or all your other ones?

Clean and tidy and visitor ready 95% of the time.

3 children, no pets.

I find untidiness very stressful to the point I can't cope easily if the children are home before me and make a big mess (they're not too bad but they don't see it the way I do). I get cross and can't settle until it's the way I think it should be

Which isn't healthy for me or them.

Someone to talk to, I guess. I know it’s hard to imagine if you have friends/family in real life, but sometimes people need to go online for these things.

Nothing absolutely nothing

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/housekeeping

There's enough interest in talking about managing the house to have its own sub-forum!

Housework is an unavoidable part of life and often not instinctive, taught or easy to manage. It's one of the few things in life that we're supposed to "get" and work out on minimal information. There's no shame in driving lessons, or using cookery books and sharing recipes or just about any other skill in life. Why should repeatedly asking questions about managing a home to be in be a bad thing?