to think that you can either have a clean, tidy and uncluttered house OR happy children but not both?

[GreenTeapot]

Or can you manage both? How do you do it?

I did the flylady once and it did make managing the house easier, by making tasks last a certain amount of time etc... must do that again. Mind you I did end up doing a disproportionate amount of housework compared with DP who hadn't signed up for Flylady.
It's not very womens' lib is it, doing all the housework just to be tidy, when you could be out for coffee with your friends or playing football with the children? (says a lazy old messy bag)
I honestly feel cross that I feel judged if family or friends come over and the house is a bit messy, whereas DP doesn't give a monkeys.
In fact, on reflection, I think that's the way forward, learn to embrace the mess and go out and have a great time. Nobody is ever going to lie on their death bed saying 'I wish I had done more housework'.
The children will definitely be happy, you will be happy and you won't be able to move for rubbish, but in a happy way.
Better go and hoover now....

Thanks for the thread, it's making me feel a bit better about our messy home.
Good tip to do what you can rather than giving up !
And do a little as you go along - all seems good and quite encouraging.
Also embrace the mess and live anyway.
DD has a little friend over at the moment, and they're enjoying playing with the dolls house. (Think I need to invite more people over anyway, and just do what I can)

• Perhaps getting some practice in - Maybe one day her home will be tidier than mine ... though the dolls house has an eclectic style

P.S Tell me more about "the flylady", rowingboat?

Hey mummys
I have to young children and I find it a hell of a lot easyer geting up a hour before kids get up in the morning to do all the housework make lunches and so on, so the time they up and ready to go I have to hole day to do woteva like shoping , me time , then at the end of the day I'm not stressed and kids come home happi. And house still all tidy .

Not a bad idea hm23 - It's trying to tidy and be with kids that's the toughest thing.
Don't think I'd have your discipline though

• Hats off to you

GothAnneGeddes, our washing machine takes big loads and I admit I cram it all in . Clothes looks and smell clean though so it must be okay.

DS is 2.6, I am 7 months pg and a FT teacher, DH is blind to mess. Therefore my house is a tip. It gets cleaned by a cleaner once a week so it is a sufferably hygienic tip and we do have some standards (i.e. kitchen clean and tidy before we go to bed) but I'm buggered if I'm spending any of my incredibly valuable time off doing housework.

It does wind me up that DH never picks up anything though. And nesting is hard when there's clutter.

Crazycatlady, snap! We also have a Cupboard of Doom! And a Drawer of Wires.

yes you can do it. I am the queen of filtration....i keep on top of stuff as i would sink if i let it slip. I have an ironer - massive help!

I haven't read all 22 pages, and I'm sure that someone must've posted this already but, from Phyllis Diller:

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.

My house is clean, and often tidy but not always. I admire, but never understand people who get their children to play with one thing at a time - I have tried that but get 'but mumm-eee, that's the magic spells/pirate biscuits/presents for the party' etc - basically toys all become props in a big imaginative game. I don't really want to stop them doing that. Mine are also excellent at spreading large amounts of paper all over the place, very quickly.

We are organised and have storage, which means we can clean up quickly. But not when the children are actually here, which is a lot of the time.

Arrgh, the Drawer of Wires feral, I can just imagine... Our desk drawers were hideous before I started getting bags and labels out and then binned all wires that DH couldn't identify (which was about 90%)

I have news. Our Cupboard of Doom is no longer. As of today it now houses our washing machine and tumble dryer, and some lovely neat hooks and shelves

LeQueen - the other top de-cluttering tip is to take a single category of clutter item (eg newspapers & magazines, pens & pencils, stray books...) and to go right through your home collecting them all up and then sorting them and deciding either where to store them or to get rid of them.

Often people don't have proper storage or systems for particular categories of possession, and those are the ones that are littered around the house as there is no obvious place to put them away.

I agree, chaos begets chaos and generally people with very messy homes haven't got a clue where to start. The ability to categorise/sort/dispose of is a very specific one, and quite complex. Hence it's good to start decluttering things that are relatively easy to part with - newspapers & magazines are relatively easy to throw away.

The other useful thing to do is to sort cupboards early on in the decluttering game in order to get a grip of the available storage.

I don't have a problem with organised patterns of thinking, and I haven't read anything to suggest the OP does either. Everything in my (small) house has a place and I declutter constantly, ruthlessly, and effectively.

However the problem isn't disposable clutter, it's toys, craft materials and crap the school wants rid of precious memories of educational projects from school. My children are not happy if I bin the lot or insist they don't play with it and keep it on the shelf/in the drawer. So I'm with the OP on this one. There are children who are happiest in an ordered environment. Mine prefer chaos, so it does seem mutually exclusive to me - I can have an organised and tidy house, or happy, playing children but not at the exact same time.

I have very large Ikea plastic boxes for storing discarded craft works of art, and some large portfolios for paintings. And lots and lots of stackable Ikea boxes into which arts & crafts materials are sorted, and stored in a large cupboard out of my sight.

I find the whole tidy house thing very challenging, and yes, even more so with kids to think about too.

Not all of us are NT (neuro-typical). It's not just kids who have slightly differently wired brains, and we don't all have the specific skills LeQueen and Bonsoir talk about.
I'm pretty sure I have attention deficit characteristics, but haven't yet had much support apart from reading some excellent books and going to a support group. My DD has dyslexia which has been more formally recognised. The two conditions are thought to be related and often run in families.

Anyway, That's why I said way back up thread that I think it would be a myth to think I could do the children/home juggling much differently than I do. I think it's pretty much the way things are going to be for us, although tips and encouragement towards getting more organised - and especially towards not giving up can make a difference !

Same here Bonsoir, big plastic boxes for arts and crafts (but mine are from poundshop).

A friend of mine was shocked to see my bathroom. I 've got a big drawer with: wipes, bleach, plastic gloves, pack of disponsible gloves (yes), few sponges, soap refill, bin liners. That means i can go for a wee and then sort the bathroom aswell in 2 min. She was keeping everything in kitchen bathroom so she has to go up and down to clean the bathroom. Why?

She was more at the bathroom bin. I have in it 4-5 layers of bin liners. All i have to do once a week is to remove the full one and there is clean one underneath. Small things like this do help a lot.

Yes, I too have plastic boxes, organised craft supplies, a rotation of projects, multiple bin bag layers, supplies kept to hand, anything can be set up in seconds and cleared away in seconds - but not while they are playing with it. I refuse to clean up around them. We do it when they are finished.