to just stop tidying?

[YunoYurbubson]

I mean, what is the fucking point?

All I do is tidy. From the minute I get up to the end of the day, and yet my house is always a shit hole.

Plod around putting things away. Plod plod plod. Plod upstairs with washing. Plod downstairs with rubbish. Plod into the kitchen with dirty cups. Plod backwards and forwards shoveling armsfull of toys and dressing up and jigsaws and lego into the toy room.

Toys.
Craft stuff.
The kitchen.
Clothes - oh the fucking clothes.
I must have spent hours tidying today and I am sitting here looking around and I could weep - there is not one tiny corner of my house that doesn't need tidying.

And the cleaner even came today! For a few brief seconds the carpet must have been clear because he hoovered it.

It is so depressing.

Watching with interest in case anyone has solutions .... do you think it gets to a state of equilibrium eventually if you leave it?

My current best solution is to give up on 'putting everything where it belongs' - there isn't time - and have big baskets in each room to sweep piles of crap into. We can't find anything specific now, but we have found the carpet. Which is progress ...

How old are they?

Seriously, by age 3 or so they are old enough to impose some basic rules on - it does require a level of supervision but nothing too bad - "if you are finished with that, lets put it away now, please, before we get that puzzle out". "Stop what you are doing, you haven't put Mr Potato head away, you can't get that out having left this all over the table!" etc.

Okay so it doesn't have to be too army-like, but it does tend to stop everything getting out and just being discarded.

If they can't put craft stuff away, they dont get to do craft. If they can't put clothes away, toys start getting confiscated, etc.

Get your partner in on it and camp on their arses. If he's a skank too, crack down. Dont just put up with it. And if it gets messy anyway, you go on "strike" until everyone has mucked in and cleaned up. Perhaps dinner doesn't get served or TV doesn't go on until the place is clear. Shouldn't take long if its never too bad in the first place.

If its impossible to implement, there are probably too many toys. (Or too many children!)

i say this to myself all the time.

cleaning my house is a bit like painting the forth rail bridge, especially with toddler ds following me trashing everything i have just tidied up