to think everyone has become obsessed with cleanliness

[palamino]

i have been reading other threads, eg frequency of changing towels/pyjamas/sheets, frequency of cleaning house/bathroom/toys. I must be a complete slob, towels changed weekly, pyjamas changed weekly, sheets every 2-3 weeks, house cleaned once a week. I don't squirt everywhere with disinfectant multiple times each day, if food drops on the floor briefly I would not automatically throw it away, and I have never minded the DCs getting mucky. We are the most healthy family i know, the house never looks dirty or untidy (apart from teenagers rooms-i just shut their doors!!), i am definitely not into this obsessive cleaning lark !!

DM is a borderline hoarder. Growing up, my house was clean but cluttered she has got far, far worse since DB and I moved out, partly because they had a cleaner when she went back to work after SAHMing.

I find clutter distressing. I am not good at keeping tidy but I do my best because piles of stuff oppresses me. I have no instinctive idea how often one ought to do things like mopping, because the cleaner always did it, so I do it when it looks like it needs doing. I dust dusty things. I do like to know that the kitchen and bathroom are hygienic but that doesn't mean bleach multiple times a day - hot water in the kitchen most days and bleach spray once or twice a week, and bleach down the loo once or twice a week. We are in a soft water area so limescale isn't an issue.

PIL have an excessively clean and tidy house. DH's memories of growing up are too full of his mother cleaning and not playing. He has also taken a long time to understand that there is a spectrum of clean - he previously thought "not as-new" was equivalent to "filthy" so let things get genuinely filthy, leaving dirty dishes for over a week, because in his mind one day and one week were the same. So he is an example of how being "too clean" can really backfire.

MIL lives in a clean house without much stuff in it, and has retired. She can still spend three or four hours a day cleaning clean things. I sort of get it - if something is spotless and gets a mark then it is annoying and you want to wipe it, but she is cleaning things which are not even slightly marked. SIL and I despair (DH just shrugs). It means she doesn't have time for anything else. It means that she lets her food get cold while she washes up and wipes the kitchen down.

I think most people are in the middle - sweeping up when they notice crumbs, washing muddy clothes but giving a jumper a sniff and a look-over, leaving breakfast dishes until after tea to save hot water, having two or three cleaning products - and only the very slovenly ("I change my sheets every Christmas if I remember") and the very clean ("I change my sheets after every nap and every morning") actually turn up on cleaning threads.

No one is neglecting their children because of their housework habits.

Unless they have an actual issue with over cleaning or under cleaning.

I think some posters are describing the latter, and clean posters are unnecessarily taking offence. Some people (see MIL) genuinely clean too much at the expense of relationships or health.

I still think there's a wide spectrum of normal, and so many variables (water softness, pets, health, allergies, square footage, materials, etc) that no two households could possibly be the same. Four hours' daily housework in one house could give the same results as thirty minutes' in another.

obsessive anything is a ball ache for the person and the people around them

the anxiety some people face by not have control over their surroundings is immense and rarely spoken about unless it shows up as a particularly debilitating area of disordered behaviour
i think a lot of people hide a real issue under the banner of neat freak

I'm often amazed at how often people on MN (who may or may not lie) say they wash themselves/ their towels/ bedding/ clothes etc. No wonder there is a water shortage!

If you shower 3-4 times a day, and use a clean towel every time, then wear clean pyjamas every night and get into clean sheets every night - then why in fuck do you need to do it all again the next day?? Unless of course your skin falls off at the slightest touch (which, with all that washing, it might!)

All this "feeling fresh" thing is a bit bloody much for me to comprehend, I have to say. But then I was brought up (until I was 7 and we got central heating and hot water on demand!) with an old stove boiler and a weekly bath, shared between 3 of us as there wasn't enough hot water for separate baths, plus Mum had one of those tub washing machines that filled from and emptied into the sink, with a mangle over it. You didn't do extraneous washing with one of those things, I can tell you!

People shouldn't over-use resources, in my old fashioned opinion.

i think a lot of people hide a real issue under the banner of neat freak

This! So true...

Lino or laminate floor might be easier to keep clean but it would be freezing at this time of year. If you choose the right sort of carpet nobody can tell if you haven't hoovered for several weeks or trodden cake crumbs into it as the dirt can't be seen

I like the house to be clean, although I tend to do it once a week. Sometimes run the Hoover round the front room a bit more often due to the DC. But washing jeans, PJs and towels after one use is ridiculous.

We need a certain amount of grime in our lives to build and maintain a healthy immune system. So sod off with your homes that have been sanitised to buggery.

Well right back at you... enjoy your muck

For the sneery sponge post earlier. You don't leave a sponge in dirty water. You rinse out, splodge a bit of Milton on it.. scrunch, hold and then stick it on the sponge rack to dry. Seconds.

Or if you run out of Milton give it a quick blast in the microwave while filling the sink

I am such a loser when it comes to housework.

I feel I spend HOURS on it, yet it is rarely super clean.

Kids piss all over the loo seat every morning (when still half asleep) it seems.

No idea how ling they have been wearing their PJs for, I sniff them when in doubt. I think a week on they'd be very smelly.

I wear trousers for 2 or 3 days. Kids too, yet there is always a PILE of laundry.

I never feel on top of everything, yet I spend so much time being a crap housewife.

Worst of both worlds!!!!

You see I think like everything cleaning expands to fill the time available. I work ft as does DH and we commute 2 hours ish per day. We keep the house in a reasonable state during the week and do one good clean a week. I have summers off and then I do more housework. I must admit when I am at work my priority outside if work is spend time with the kids and doing the basics to get us by.

Those posters saying it is easy to stay on top of I personally disagree. There is a lot to go to keep things going that must be done feeding, laundry, tidying and if you have other activities with the kids there is not a lot if time to do a daily clean.

I remember watching a wife swop programme where a woman took apart her gas hob and scrubbed it from top to bottom each night and other similar tasks that could be done less regularly and she couldn't understand how others would not maintain theses standards. She went to bed at 2 in the morning and was pretty grudging of her step kids and the mess they made. As per normal wife swop it was designed for an audience to tear her to shreds in the name of good tv but I felt really sorry for her for putting such unquestionably high standards on herself.

I'm with palamino
Daily:
Wash load,
Sink full of washing up
Brief tidy and wipe kitchen surfaces

Weekly:
Proper tidy
Clean kitchen and wash kitchen floor
Hoover
Wipe living room surfaces
Clean bathroom

Towels and bedding- only when manky

I'm a SAHM as well and I still think life's too short. There's still cooking to do and watching the kids and toddler groups. I don't know where people find the time either. They must have older kids at school.

Yes mrs devere, it is an anxiety thing with me too.

If I feel anxious about anything, it comes out as stress-about-housework.

It is never bloody ending though!

I may do a Shirley Valentine some day

NC from higher up the thread.

My mw realised my PNA had tipped into PPP when she came to my house when baby was tiny (maybe two weeks or so) and it was absolutely spotless and I wouldn't sit down for wiping/sweeping. She didn't leave the house until she'd booked me in with the doctor.

All this stuff. All of it. It's why so many women say they have anxiety.

Could we not all just wash stuff when it seems it needs it?
Nothing, apart from your very good self, readers, needs washing every day.

Proctor and Gamble are having very expensive Christmas dos on you, my friends.

fatal

Do the people who change pjs every night take 7 pairs of pjs away with them when they go on a week's holiday?

Yes

But I'm sure there will be a name calling thing in there somewhere to go with the child abuser mentally ill list that's on this thread

I asked that question Greythorne and the answer was that they took about 3 pairs and then went to the laundrette.
I think the children would rather have the same pair and not waste holiday time!
I can only assume they would never send their children on school residentials or cub camps!

I find it hard to believe that anyone would wash 28 pairs of pyjamas a week (in a family of four) and not think to themselves 'this is bonkers'.