How is your house at this moment in time.

[HadABadDay2014]

Do you feel like housework is never ending.

I don't know how friends and family I visit homes look so clean and tidy, where mine is always messy and disorganised.

I tend to spend an hour or two a day just keeping on top of the house work, but come the evening it looks like I have done nothing.

I reckon if we contacted DIY SOS and Kim and Aggie, they would all take one look at our house and run screaming, far far away.
It's a shit-hole hovel, and my private fantasy is to come round the corner one morning, on the way home from the school run, (so everyone is safely well out of the house) and to find several fire engines and a nice fireman who tells me they're very sorry, but all they could save was our tortoise, the rest of the house has burnt to the ground.
I swear I would dance round the embers and roast taties in the ashes...

All my lower kitchen cabinet doors are off, the hardwood floor is pulled up and we have cardboard to walk on. Everything that was in my bottom cupboards is packed in boxes and moved into the spare room.

Promised to be all fixed before end of next week.
DH and I have moved our tea and coffee supplies, and some breakfast and lunch items downstairs to the family room. Luckily we have a mini fridge down there for milk, so I can escape down there in the daytime, until the workers are gone.

It looks great, after an evening of everyone cleaning and tidying before we passed the stage of no return.

I don't know about right now, but when I get home this afternoon it will look like a show home.

Cleaner comes today.

We have all been down with a bad cold all week so have let the house go to hell. I dread the weekend when we will need to pull it all back together.

Friday is the worst day because Saturday is cleaning day. My 17 year old does the cleaning as her Saturday job. It's always fairly tidy (down to me) but the dirt and animal hair builds up over the week. However we all work or are at school, so it gets ignored until Saturday when my DD does the big clean. We sweep the kitchen daily, wipe the kitchen surfaces more than daily, but everything else gets left until the weekend.

my cleaner comes today.

she is the best. she just gets on with it.
I never do the "tidy up prior to her coming" thing.
and there have been times when I couldn't even give her instructions or what is priority just looked at her, exasperated and said "well, just do whatever"

Mine is the biggest tip ever. In my defence I have a massive throat infection and am on industrial strength painkillers that are making me walk into things and fall over, so the sofa is the only safe place to be.

Everything will just have to go to shit around me until I can bend over to pick things up without face planting on the floor....

Messy

looks round at everything that needs doing before returning to mn and brew

Honestly I don't know how it happens! There's only me, dh and our 16 week old ds. DH works full time Mon-Fri and I'm on maternity leave.

We try our best but seem to be in chaos 99% of the time!

I might hire a cleaner when I return to work!

Everywhere badly needs hoovering, the bathroom needs cleaning and the kitchen floor needs mopping. But I have a 12 day old baby clamped to my boob and two other kids to get to school in 10 minutes. So I'm pretending g the houswork doesn't exist and going for coffee with friends!

Much better than it used to be.

I took a long look at the place a few months back and realized that despite having a roomy old place with heaps of storage, we just had too much stuff. (Clothes that were never worn, kitchen utensils and crockery that were never used, knick knacks from eg deceased parents and relatives that had 'sentimental' value (but who needs scores of them, particularly if they have cracks or chips) etc etc.) So some 90% of our possessions were taking up the storage space and the rest was 'recycled' on surfaces, along with the rest of the day to day detritus.

I've therefore spent a couple of months gradually going through all the put-away things and being really tough on the charity shop or recycling donations. Surprised myself actually because I never thought I would/could be so firm. It's worth it in the long run though. I'm honing down to items of significant value (including significant sentimental value) and clear spaces - which are not only much easier to keep under control but also allow you to actually see what's going on in the house. If in doubt, I take a few digital pictures of something and store it that way for a few months before making a final decision. (That sort of storage doesn't bulk.)

We are still decorating and putting our house together after moving in last November. We have a some things in wrong places and boxes of photos and books that need binning or sorting or giving to charity shops. Ladders and paint in the bathroom. It needs a bit of a hoover and a bathrooms a clean tomorrow and Sunday but it is never a tip. We just do some tidying and cleaning every day.

I'll give you some examples. My mother used to like to buy semi-exotic cooking utensils and give them to me as presents so that she could get the fun of buying but not have the pain of storage. In my kitchen at the moment I therefore have, taking up space, a lattice top pastry cutter, a hand herb chopper, a hand pastry mixer device, ceramic baking beans and so on - none of which have ever been used. (In many years.) They're all still packaged.

I think they shall be on next month's charity shop pile.

OP This bit is so depressing to read, Cleans the bathroom then DH decides he need a bath and a shave ~ bathroom is a mess

Surely he would clean up after himself, and especially leave it gleaming if it's just been cleaned by someone else??

House is a tip. It's my day off so it will be all clean but not necessarily tidy by this afternoon if I can tear myself away from the internet . But within 2 minutes of the teen getting in from college, it'll look like a bomb site again.

Dp is quite tidy and clears up as he goes which is just as well. It would look a whole lot tidier if I had more space (and less stuff).

Joining thread late - but oh, Thornofcamorr, if it's your DH's mum who's picking up DC tomorrow, and DH is 'sitting happily' in the toy filled lounge, why is it you who feels the need to tidy it all away before she comes? The words 'sorry about the mess, your son was sat in here all evening yesterday and left it like this' come to mind....

Very tidy. Main things that help that are:

• we are minimalist in everything. So no excess stuff to tidy. And no clutter to start with

• ceiling to floor built in cupboards. They house all toys and anything else we need to store

• roomba Hoover. Hoovers for us whilst we work

It gets messy with toys etc but at the end of each playtime it's all put away. Ie if we decide to go to the park we will tidy up before. Kids have always had to help even from crawling age ( and just a brick or something!)

Yes walk- I completely agree! He seems to be able to just ignore it all. Very helpful in many other ways and hands on family wise but the general tidying,not so much.

I have just started a new job, done nothing in the hose for a week, the teenagers are alone every evening and the kitchen looks like a bombsite, they are both off college today so when the surface they will be cleaning it. Day off for me today so am going to have to do some cleaning, Im not the most house proud but its disgusting at the moment. Maybe I can afford a cleaner now im working?

An absolute tip. Toys everywhere, carpet needs hoovered (and it gets done multiple times a day as we have a long haired cat and a rabbit!) and there's currently a wet towel on the floor as DD keeps spilling her cup of water everywhere!
I need a shower and DD is naked. To be fair though, it's not usually like this, I've got a migraine and I've had a MC this morning so it's shit all round.

Downstairs is tidy. Upstairs is a mess. Kids need to tidy their bedrooms after school and I need to clean bathroom. Friday is my day off work and I've spent it cleaning. Got to get a cleaner!

Clean but a mess.

The house isn't really big enough but we can't afford to move. There's always toys out and always a pile of washing/ironing to be done.

As long as its clean and not a total bomb site I try not to let it bother me.

I can have it ready for visitors in half an hour if I really need to as its usually toys need putting away and the floor hoovering. Ironing lives in a basket on the fridge and washing in a basket by the kitchen door.

The only way my house would be near show home is if we had a dining room, playroom, utility downstairs and two extra bedrooms, extra bathroom and study upstairs.

Mine looks fine apart from the table in the living room which is covered in detritus from last night's frantic essay-writing. I'll put it away when I get in. And the hall probably needs sweeping as the cats will have used their litter tray by now, but DH will do that when he gets home. Otherwise no probs!

(I've no DC yet, mind. I can't promise it will still be tidy when I do!)

Tidy nearly everywhere apart from the living room which has got tots everywhere