To say yes, I CAN have a tidy home and a DC?

[VincentIsGodly]

My house is never a mess, and I take pride in organisation and I'm a bit of a classic decor lover... I love it.

DS1 is due in November. I'm getting varied comments about never being able to keep my house tidy once DS arrives. Similar to this, I have a lot of people laugh at me and make snidey comments when I dare mention (after being pressed), about birth plan, of which includes natural birthing strategies with gas and air as an aid. Because how dare I have a single plan

Bit of background. I took on a DC of 1 week until he was 4 months old a few years back. It's a personal, family issue, but my house was not a mess. It was trickier but also therapeutic.

I have never, ever dared mention cleaning or anything to anyone. If someone has a messy house, so what? Maybe instead of cleaning to a photo standard, they watch a box set etc. It doesn't bother me and I don't think any less of anyone who isn't exactly tidy.

However, I'm quite sick of friends and family coming over and making comments of how I'll be joining them and their messy houses very soon.

Yes, sometimes things won't be so great but that's fine! I have a tiny baby. But, I'll still make the effort as I did looking after an infant before.

Yes, birth plans often don't go to plan. That's no reason not to have an idea of what I want, is it? I won't put myself down if it goes tits up. My body is amazing regardless.

AIBU here to tell people straight next time? It's turning into more than the odd comment.

My house was always and still is tidy. It's possible to keep it like that

Re birth plan - I stuck to mine until emergency c section

I got a very refluxy baby who screamed and screamed and screamed. I now have a DS (7) with ADHD. As a toddler he was a veritable tornado..He is a treasure but I have had to lower my house proud standards by several miles - or abandon my one hour a day down time with DH. If so find you can carry on as normal, great. If you can't, it will probably bug you (it does me) but remember your mental health comes first. Dont feel bad if you find you need box set time more than dusting!

It depends a lot on the child you get particularly as they get older.
If you have been up half the night for years, if they need constant watching, if their play is at the messy toddler stage for years and you are dealing with meltdown after meltdown (and you know the hoover sets one off), your priorities tend to change.

Like others have said. It's the pickup walk and dump stage which begins at 12-18 months and lasts till they move out

You will either be exhausted and frustrated and have a tidy house or learn to pick your battles. Personally I go with the latter till I can't stand it then it's mass family tidy and ranty mum!

I am completely with you on this. I have 4 children, 19, 16. 14 and a 17 month old. Every single morning, by the time my teenage boys have left for school, my home resembles a bomb site! However by keeping on top of stuff like laundry, ironing hoovering etc, I find it never takes long to spruce the place up again. I think it has much to do with the individual, how good at multi tasking, personal choice and level of standards. When our home is messy, I often smile to myself as it's the mess my whirlwind children have created and in it's own way, it's quite lovely. I have often have child number 3 bring bowls abc glases down the morning after just after I have finished the washing up, but at least he brought them down unprompted. As long as you enjoy maintaining a tidy home then it's good for you. If it were to make you anxious or stressed, then I'd work out what needs to be done and what could be left for s little longer. My 17 month old helps wash up, Hoover, polish, and cook. He loves helping me and to be fair he's been helping since 11 months and sees it as a big fun game. (Just keep the toilet lid locked. The other day, I went to take a pee, and found a football inside the loo!!
As for your birth plan. I thought the whole point was a focus. Nothing is set in stone, but go for it. You sound very like my sister who has been nicknamed Mrs Bucket from the sitcom. But the truth is, I'm envious of her gorgeous house and so are many others. We are different. My home is covered from floor to ceiling with evidence of children. In fact dh and I often joke about getting a one bed flat as a hide away 😝. Be a mum for yourself and your family. Trust yourself and remember far too many people show too much opinion into others lives, but they don't mean any harm.

It's possible people say it's not to make themselves feel better about their own messy houses. Mine isn't perfect any more becausr I can't always be bothered sometimes I choose relaxing over cleaning. My friend is a childminder with dc of her own her houses is always immaculate she won't relax until it's clean.

Both times my birth plan went out the window but I still wrote them.

It sounds like you are the sort of person who will always have a tidy house.

The thing is that once you have kids you might find your priorities change. There are only so many hours in the day and you might prefer to spend more time having fun / making a mess with your children rather than constantly cleaning.

Look at it this way - you're probably not going to die and think "I wish I'd spent more time cleaning"

If you can keep your home in a state that makes you feel happy and functional then great.

It might be the case that banging on about how tidy your house is might seem like you have slightly misplaced priorities to some people.

Well, congrats and good luck with the baby OP and don't worry you can always get a cleaner if standards slip

When DD was a newborn she wouldn't sleep other than on me or DP for the first few months, so it was incredibly hard to get anything done, so the house was pretty messy for a while. When she got to about six months, she was in a good routine of a nap for a few hours in the morning, and I'd often clean in those hours- which is far more than I ever did when working full time, so my house was then cleaner than it had been pre kids. I'm fully expecting that once I go back to work after mat leave it will descend into chaos again, and from reading these posts it will get worse once she's walking But then I'm not naturally tidy really. I sometimes wish I was- I do envy other people when they seem to effortlessly keep a house clean and tidy at the same time as working and having kids- but then I guess it's not effortless, I'm just a bit lazy! It wasn't something I even thought about before DD was born though, so the fact it's obviously quite important to you probably means you will manage it just fine.

Birth plans are good for setting out preferences as a starting point. After a difficult experience with DS1 with a "go with the flow" approach, I had quite a lengthy one for DS2 to help me with the anxiety. It wasn't my optimum ending, but clearly setting out the conditions that I laboured in most of the time (G&A, active position over a birthing ball despite monitoring and SPD) meant that it was generally a positive experience and free of the baggage of my previous experience. A lack of birthplan would have resulted in reliving flashbacks of being beached up uncomfortably on the bed as the default monitoring position.

Tidiness. I'm naturally untidy. I can somehow decimate a room by walking into it. DS1 is very much like me. It's a losing position!

If you've got naturally tidy habits, then that helps. I'm currently finding a 6 and 4 year old chaotic for household management. Nothing is out of reach. Lots of small bits. Lego, train track, small cars... the baby toys are largely out of the way, but we are at peak clutter with toys being of a broad age range. Things like Duplo are still actively out because they build buildings to go with the train track. The playroom floor has become a plastic urban jungle, yet still it permeates the rest of the house...

If I had more willpower then I would have more exposed floorspace. I try to involve the DCs in some of their own self care, and it's definitely more effort to a long term goal than effective in the short term. The reality is that as a double act, they have more powers of destruction than I have for restoration.

That doesn't mean that you have to tolerate my shit tip standards, but children do add to the effort required to maintain an orderly house.

What is cleaning to photo standard?
And what is classic decor?

I had two sections and my house is tidy. Like my foof.

I bet you look at toddlers having tantrums in Tesco (oooh, wasn't that nice and alliterative, everyone?) and think "Well my child will never do that". But they will. They so will. With knobs on.

I think the whole house-tidy thing is misrepresented. There's generally time if you make time. It's true that your priorities might change though, in which case you won't be desperately trying to clean so much as relaxing and thinking fuck it.

My house isn't all that clean but that's because I get stressed seeing the kids mess it up if I've spent all night on it and I don't want to be that parent. You choose your battles I guess.

It's totally possible but you'll have to really prioritise it. IMO if you care that much before the babies even born that your starting threads about it then you'll probably manage it. However maybe you should be looking at why this is so important you and what you think a tidy house says about you that is so important. Maybe you should watch a box set and chill out every now and then.

*Baby's not babies

You absolutely can have a tidy house, it's all a question of priorities.

It wasn't important to me, I was much keener on getting myself and DS out of the house everyday and relaxing when I got the chance. No medals for spotless surfaces in my world. But at the same time I understand it's beneficial for many people's mental health, so that's not to be sniffed at if that's the case for you.

About the birthing plan, it's great to write it, just be prepared for it to be thrown out the window from the get go. My waters broke and I didn't go into labour in the specified time. After that it was intervention after intervention until a crash Caesarian under GA.

And I didn't have a problem with that, because even as I penned my NCT dream water birth, I knew it was likely to be a work of fiction. If is been very attached to the plan, labour would have been a more traumatic experience.

It wasn't important to me, I was much keener on getting myself and DS out of the house everyday and relaxing when I got the chance. No medals for spotless surfaces in my world. But at the same time I understand it's beneficial for many people's mental health, so that's not to be sniffed at if that's the case for you.

Definitely true on doing what's best to benefit mental health though for me it was to do less housework and more getting out.

I tend to think fuck it whilst the kids are awake and then have a tidy once they have give to bed - or one of us reads bedtime story whilst the other does a quick tidy.

It's nice to have a clean kitchen & bathroom. But don't stress the small stuff.

Totally agreed that it's about what you feel you need to be happy. It's definitely much calmer whenever it's clean and tidy - but on the other hand I have been known to get quite irate if I feel like I'm the only one doing it.

Since DH and I both work, a cleaner once a week is what saves my sanity - it's the best £ I spend all week - extravagant but totally with it!

Also a friend recently pointed out to be that you could never imagine a man feeling bad about getting a cleaner!

Keeping a house tidy with a baby is easy. Keeping it tidy with preschoolers is certainly not so easy but it depends on your priorities and also the personality of the children (some are more "active" than others).
Personally, I decided that I would rather play with my children than be Mrs Mop. You can have a tidy home when they are older or have left home but you will never get back the time you didn't spend with them when they were young.