To be mildly irriated when people say ''don't worry about the housework...''

[poshsinglemum]

(accidentaly posted in relationships!)

Concentrate on your dc instead.

Lovely idea if dc didn't generate the kind of housework that cannot be left. Unlike the old days it's no longer about dusting a few corners is it?

Newborns bring poo stained baby gros, reusable nappies have to be washed and milk-stained bedding has to be dealt with.

Whilst weaning there's all the cooking, blending and cleaning thrown food off the floor and high chair.

Toddlers generate more mess than I ever thought possible. My carpet is heinous and I hoover every day at least. Nothing stays tidy.It's carnage.

I don't mind a bit of mess and I don't want a show home but I don't want to live in squalid filth. It's not like I can just leave that wee and ground in cheese to fester in the carpet.

I guess my point is that I can leave low level housework like polishing but I cannot afford to do no housework and just concentrate solely on palying with dd. I would enjoy being a mum so much more if it wasn't for the drudgery. A cleaner is the answer I think.

Oh yes this annoys me too.

It's a nice idea, and I don't mind a bit of clutter but real mess makes me stressed.

I think what they mean is that your priority should be your baby, not the washing up

the infuriating thing about being told this is that it too frequently comes out of dh's mouth. i've never known him 'worry about the housework'. pah. a cleaner makes a world of difference.

The priority must be baby - that's why I want her to have clean clothes and bedding, a nice tidy bedroom and a house that dosn't resemble something out of "how clean is your house!"
I kind of know what they mean but really- that wee patch on the carpet is getting really smelly!

YANBU, and it's more important to have a clean house when you have young DC, cos they are always putting stuff in their mouths etc.

The thing is, a cleaner is only the answer if they come every day, at approximately 7pm, for about 4 hours.

Sorry to burst your bubble! It sucks!

my standards are much lower than yours, sloany, i'm ecstatic with two hours a fortnight! mind you, got rid of all carpet downstairs once we started weaning ds. that helps a lot.

I have a cleaner, everything looks lovely on Monday afternoons then depressingly shit by Tuesday teatime. I don't know what the answer is!

YANBU. I'm not naturally domesticated but don't want my kids to live in filth, so I clean up their mess while it's fresh and easier to clean up (and so that I don't have to stare at it all day). It's amazing how houseproud having kids who will eat crumbs off the floor or drink dirty water out of the sink actually makes you. My house is far from a showhome, though. There's a balance to be struck, isn't there.

24 hours!?! Our lovely cleaner comes on a Tuesday morning and I enjoy a clean, tidy house until approximately 4pm when the older two get home from school; squalor by Tuesday evening.

Well the answer to the weaning mess is a dog.

But then you have to deal with the housework that a dog generates

YANBU - this annoys me too. I hate to live in a mess, and my god does my toddler make a mess.

I'm not sure how much a cleaner helps, I mean that is only a couple of hours a week. What you need is more like a housekeeper to clear it all up as you go along!

The worst line in all of it when people say 'a bit of dust won't kill you'. Well actually for those of us with asthma it's fairly crucial to keep the overall dust levels down. Plus I cannot stand looking at dusty furniture, drives me insane.

YANBU at all.

We have no dishwasher. I spend a lot of time doing dishes, and the more you cook nutritious food for dc instead of relying on junk, the more time you spend washing up all the pots and utensils. It takes forever. I can't just leave it or we'd have no cutlery, no saucepans for the next meal, no beakers for DS. I am constantly nipping through to tackle a few dishes while DS watches TV and DD goes in her baby gym ... I would far rather be playing with them but we'd be screwed come the next mealtime

And the laundry: if we didn't prioritise that nobody would have anything to wear that wasn't covered in poo, baby posset or spaghetti sauce. There would be threads on here by my neighbours, speculating about neglect based on poo-encrusted popper vests.

And the floors: wee and so on cannot be left, as you rightly point out.

Bleugh. Maybe I'll buy a lottery ticket this week.

I have 2 DC now 2.8 and 14 months, I had a cleaner from halfway through my pregnancy with DD (PFB) until DS was about 9 months and TBH it's things are much cleaner and tidier without her than with her. It's so easy to leave things for the cleaner to do.

A 'do it now' and 'a job done improperly is better than a job not done' are my new mantras. A cleaner will probably not really help, unless you get her to do stuff like polishing, cleaning skirting boards, deep cleaning jobs rather than 'weekly' stuff.

I don't worry about the housework, I do enough to keep the kitchen ticking over and make sure there isn't any food around and that clothes are at least washed and dry.

But mostly the house is a mess and we get our clothes out of the laundry basket.

Just don't care. I have a cleaner once a week so that is how often things get vacuumed/the bathroom gets cleaned.

Much better things to be doing.

Nope. I disagree with you. Tho YANBU to think it. Freedom of thought and all that.

From the very begining the dcs' naptime has been my-time. Housework can wait unless there's a very good reason, like we're going on holiday tomorrow and I want things that are in the laundry basket.

Some housework can be done with the dc, either around them or with them. I do more than I would like after they have gone to bed - it's quick then, but I wd rather be spending that time with dh, so we will oftendo it together.

I couldn't care less about having a tidy house. As long as we can walk around without treading on stuff, can find what we want and can clean when it's convenient, that's fine by me.

And I do dishes once a day after supper.

Standards slipped? Certainly! But that's because they proved to be less important than dc and my sanity.

it's stupid, isn't it? Like - ok, if I don't do the landry, what will we wear? What will we eat off if the plates are festering in the sink? How much cat hair should I let build up on the carpet before I hoover?

I fully admit to cleaning the bathroom less often etc now I have kids, but some stuff HAS TO BE DONE. Platitudes or not. It just has to.

Actually I've heard that some american families eat of disposable plates to avoid washing up. Is that true? I suppose it's an answer but an ecological nightmare!!

Don't worry about it

And on that note DH is a saint and quietly getting on with the housework downstairs whjile I mumsnet. So I'm off to help

You're so right OP. I think people say this to warn about the (very rare IME) danger of being excessively houseproud and ignoring/limiting your kids because it's so vital to you to have a spotless cream sofa. There are people like that but it's not most of us, is it - and like you say, you can't just ignore the housework or "just leave it" for more than a day or so.

In fact if you do, it makes life a lot harder - if you haven't done the basic keeping up with the dishes, laundry, tidying and so on, that means you can't really cook, eat, have anything to wear or for your DC to wear, etc. It's a lot more stressful and more hard work if you live in a constant mess.

That's not housework! Laundry, cleaning wee and poo off the floor, making sure the house is not filthy is not what I (given that I'm one of the people who have said that people are a bit too hysterical about it) consider housework. That is vacuuming, dusting, changing sheets, deep cleaning bathroom and kitchen, washing floors.

I have a cleaner - she comes once a week. I don't vacuum in between times unless it's really dirty. Sometimes I do sweep the floors. I wipe the sinks round and rinse the bath. But I don't consider that cleaning as such. The house is untidy in between the times she comes but it's not filthy. By any means.

The answer:

-laundrette
-paper plates
-convenience food
-50 hour a week childcare so kids dont have as much time to mess things up
-only let kids drink water
-re-use teacups/teaspoons
-take kids to cafes to feed them
-strip kids to underwear in the house so clothes dont need washing
-dont buy toys that have multiple 'bits'
-move to India and get a 40hr a wk maid

or basically live with the fact that, as a mother you will ALWAYS be in the wrong no matter how you allocate your time

OK I will try not to start foaming at the mouth about this.

YANBU.

Many people think the clean, tidy and organized state of my home must mean I am neglecting my kids. This is usually because they haven't worked to get things under control and develop an easy system for cleaning as they go. It really ain't hard, I promise.

Also, children need to play on their own sometimes! Which means mummy can clean. And children need to learn to clean. Which means they help mummy with things they can manage according to their age.

On the other hand, a to-do list is never more important than a child. (Most of the time) I put down my work when my children need me to be fully present. I still don't relish these interruptions but respect them. I try to prevent them by having routines so my children know what to expect - for example, I hang up the laundry at the same time each day, after which I read to and feed them baby, then put him down for a nap during which I spend time with my older child. We go out daily and have fun. When we return, I break away to do a few more daily tasks while they relax.

Of course, the housework is never completely done, the children probably don't have enough one-on-one time with me, I certainly don't have enough 'me' time. But that's life with small children.

It is one of the big reasons I will have no more children. I can't STAND the mess they make. It does my head in. My house is a tip at the moment. I do a massive clean up now and then and it looks lovely, but the speed at which it descends is frightening. And we have a cleaner, FFS.

The domestic drudgery is one of the reasons I MUST work and not be at home all the time picking up and cleaning up. I would actually go mad if I had to be in my house all day, I think.