To wonder if everyone lives in a mess??

[user1472151176]

I'm a SAHM and have been for the past 18 months. I have one child at school and one toddler at home with me. My house is always a mess! I'm sure my house used to be tidier when I worked 4 days a week. I genuinely believed my house would be tidier if I was at home all day but it isn't. My days fly past.
I often wonder what other peoples houses are like and if they would still be immaculate if I spontaneously 'dropped by'.
There is always food on the table and clean clothes to wear but I never seem to be able to get on top of it all.
Tell me I'm not alone ?!?!
I do have a DH. He works long hours and doesn't do any housework but he does help with the kids and cooking and gardening and tidys up the front room every night when I put the kids to bed.

I'm with you Chardonnay and MrsDV.

Our house was immaculate when we both worked full time, even with a child a large dog, maternity leave with our second and the house looked awesome. Then came child number two and dog two soon followed and the house has been a bit of a state since. There's literally no fighting it sometimes when the toddler throws everything everywhere, the eldest wants to see all his 700 match attack cards on his floor at once, the dogs help carry random stuff to random places and I work evenings so can't get a grip of it all when they are in bed. We're in a bungalow too so there's no hiding anything. Throw in a clingy toddler that won't even allow vacuuming unless you're holding hands at same time and it's flipping hard!

Mess heightens my anxiety greatly, but I have to grapple with the fact there is little I can do about it right now, and the load will lessen as the kids grow! In the meantime I have spurts of flylady routines, do things like 40 bag challenge to declutter etc but these only help me stress slightly less, the house is still a battlefield most days.

Oh yes. My mum had a very large house that was like a museum - spotless and incredibly tidy.

I seemed to have not inherited her love of domestic order. I'm fact none of us have.

Skirting boards are a job for the DC! They are just the right size to go round with a bucket of warm water and a damp cloth whilst I go round and do other stuff

Mine's a dump. Special thanks go out to my 4 cats and 7yo ds who trash the place like it's going out of fashion, plus I have terrible spd as I'm 8 months pregnant so I'm not on the ball and dh can't keep up. Mat leave in 2 weeks and I hope to summon up some energy to make a dent in it before the baby arrives but I'm not counting on it!!!

Our mess is pretty much all laundry, we have a small house and no tumble drier. This time of year all clothes are dried in the house. I'm currently sat in the living room and can see 4 airers that have to be moved around to get to stuff, this makes the place look really untidy but take them away and it's not too bad, I'd definitely have friends over maybe not the in-laws though

Yep, it’s a mess. I have 8 and 3y/o. I tidy up on sat whilst they’re out with DH but by the end of sun wonder why i even bothered!

Most of the arguments we had in our household arose from cleaning or the lack of it. Who’s turn it was to do what etc etc! Best thing we ever did was get a cleaner once a week for 2 hours. Doesn’t sound like much, but I promise you it was THE best £20 a week investment ever!
Now there are no arguments. We still do chores ourselves but it helps us keep on top of things. Life is so much easier and a lot less stressful. I come home on a Wednesday afternoon and the house is clean, tidy, fresh and inviting.

Ive a 1 and 3 year old and my house is always tidy. I can’t stand mess I just tidy up straight away. There will be some toys scattered about at bed time but they are tidied straight up after kids go to sleep

But things like washing , dishes, hoovering etc is always done every day so I never get behind I tied as I go

Mine's tidy, always. I grew up in chaos so have gone completely the other way as an adult; towels are folded in a certain way in the airing cupboard, pots and pans are washed, dried and put away after every meal, floors are cleaned each night before I go to bed.

However, my defence is that it feels like it keeps my mind 'right' if I live in order and I try my absolute best not to enforce my rules onto others, especially the DC. Their bedrooms are their own and I never fret over them making a mess; we just clean it up once they're finished. I'm relaxed about them using creative and craft stuff and they ride horses, play rugby, cricket and football, so we've frequently got a house full of dirty boots, kits and boys needing to be washed, cleaned or fed and that doesn't bother me one bit. It's more a need for everything to be clean and tidy before I go to bed. I don't sleep unless I know everything's in order, even after New Years Eve parties I'll stay awake an extra hour just to sort it all out.

There are at least a couple of people who've proudly stated how tidy their houses are with toddlers or babies.

Yeah...so was mine when the older dc were 1 and 3 Toddler mess is a piece of piss to clear up IME. Big plastic toys and lego all over that needs chucking back in a toy box. But you have control over where they are and what they're doing 100% of the time.

It's so much harder to keep on top of general tidiness when you have older kids IME. My older 2 have chores and are far from lazy...but they just come with so much more stuff that gradually spreads into bigger areas as they get older.

Nooooooo, @Hefalump! Say it’s not true! I was hoping it would get a bit easy after the toddler stage. Tbf I don’t find the toddler mess difficult, it’s having the time to get anything done with a toddler and a newborn. I used to get the whole flat clean and tidy when DP took dd out to the park or whatever, but now it’s just constant. And waaaay more laundry.

Similar situation... And similar mess! You are not alone op!

My house is kind of a tip and we don't even have kids. It's clean and tidy for a brief shining period every week when the cleaner's just been.

No one has died or run out of clothes yet, so who cares?!

On a side note, your DH doesn't 'help' with the kids, cooking, gardening etc. It is his house and his kids too. He's not a child helping Mummy.

My house is a muddy mess and I hate It, 2 of my children have started wearing odd socks as our lost sock bag had babies and none matched.
It's hard, but one day I will miss these days.

In my 20s I was house proud and my flat was beautiful. Every year I have got older my standards have dropped and I have become lazier / less bothered. Now We live in a mess and our flat looks horrible. No decor, clutter everywhere, damp, stains, mound. Am embarrassed and not happy but feel like I need a fresh start. Not sure why I have given up on having a nice home. Maybe because I owned my flat and loved it but lost it in the recession when my business folded and now rent somewhere I don't consider a permanent home. The stupid thing is it could feel like home if I put some effort in. The mess has taken over now though and like when you put on a lot of weight, the mountain feels too high to climb to sort it all out :(

Mines a mess.. single mum with 1 5 yr old, as soon as it's clean ish it's a mess again x.x

Yes, and when your toddlers are teenagers, they will be even messier, including trashing the garden with bikes, footballs, roller skates, etc, and leading to a selection of cars on the drive. Better get used to it!

I remember reading someone saying about the five minutes before somebody turns up being the best time to get the cleaning done and it's so true! I have four kids and go through times of the place being quite clean and times of it being bedlam, clothes and paper are our enemy here, you seem to take one load out and there's always something waiting and there's never room on the washing line, radiators, clothes horses for everything and always stuff to be sorted and then there's artwork, letters, school letters ... I am always genuinely embarrassed when people come over and start off with 'sorry the place is so messy,' and that's generally after my blitz. I'd love to be one of those people who can clean and have the place spotless but I clean and barely make a dent in it all.

Mine is tidy but that is easy now we are retired. We have our DGD one day a week but she has been taught how to put toys away in boxes and is quite good at that as my DD and son in law also have a tidy house normally. Might be a bit messy during the day but at the end it is all tidied away. I could never live in a mess. Even when I had children living at home it was generally tidied up each day although the childrens bedrooms were left to them to clear up. Now they both have homes of their own theirs is tidy too. All it takes is a few minutes at the end of the day and some storage and organisation and don't hoard clutter. I am brutal about getting rid of stuff. The garage on the other hand is always a tip but that is down to DH and his domain.

No mess here. Can’t bear it...it’s not a ‘soulless show home’ but I keep it tidy, clean. Never more than 10 minutes away from ‘visitor ready’. All it would ever need is a quick shake of cushions, maybe the odd mug/plate cleared away and stray shoe tidied into the cupboard. I’d hate to be caught on the hop 😳

I don't think 'mess' describes the condition of my house atm. We're lambing and we trudge in and out about 20 times a day. Filthy boots, mucky clothes, dirty dishes... I don't have the energy. Plus we've had a flood and there's no heating or hot water. I'm thinking of getting in a specialist cleaner when it's all over.

Untidiness is one thing but dirt is something else.
I know someone who's house is just squalid. And when she casually remarked that she thought showers were over rated, I declined offers of food from her.

A bit of a mess with kids is the natural order and as someone else said we all have too much stuff these days. No way we can keep track of ourselves amongst it all

Mines a tip. I’m a sahm with 4 kids and spend the majority of my day tidying and cleaning. My issue with the house is that’s it’s a 2 bedroom with 6 of us, so it’s cramped and there is no storage in the house! The hoover lives up stairs on the landing. I hate it, I’d love a nice immaculate home :(

Hefalump! Say it’s not true! I was hoping it would get a bit easy after the toddler stage

Nope, sorry! 🙈

My older ones are 10 and 7. Looking around my living room now I can see a discarded trainer, a hoody thrown over the back of a chair, three separate piles of match attax, a cup, trailing wires from 2 I pad chargers, three Wimpy kid books crammed on a tiny shelf, the sofa throws and cushions all backwards and crumpled and half on the floor...none of this stuff was here at 3pm!

By comparison ds3's (10 months) toys are in a contained pile on the rug and will take me approximately 8 seconds to gather and put back in the box!

I feel you! When I worked full time before DS I would do all the cleaning in 1 afternoon a week I had off and it would stay fairly tidy for the rest of the week, and a bit of mess didn't really bother me.. I would come home and do dishes from the night before in my lunch break etc.
Now I'm home all the time with my 1 year old I feel like all I do is clean, tidy and hoover etc and I'm still never on top of it! I'm not sure if it cos I'm at home all the time so I notice the mess more? We're lucky that we have a fairly big living room as it has a big playpen.. toybox.. massive toys in it.. and there is always washing to do, I hoover and the within hours it looks like I haven't hoovered for a week.. its stressful!