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.

My house is always messy. I'm a SAHM with 3 kids and a dog. We live in a tiny 3 bed terrace with hardly any storage.

There's always lego, toy soldiers, scraps of paper, school artwork, clothes and crumbs everywhere. If I spend the morning cleaning and get the place spotless, within an hour of the kids getting home from school the place will be a tip again.

Ds2 is the main culprit. He has ASD and is very hyperactive. He can't just sit on the sofa, he has to throw all the cushions off and then pile them all on top of himself.

I'm studying an OU degree, so when they're at school I don't have much time for tidying, I have to study. I'll be finished it in September, and my youngest starts school then too, so I'm hoping I will have lots more time to tidy then.

We're putting our house on the market this week. The photographer is coming around on Thursday. It's so stressful trying to keep it clean. At the moment it looks tidy at first glance but if you open the cupboards the mess just falls out. I plan to have that sorted by the time viewings start!

I’m still working out little systems so that things get straight into the right bins for recycling/ outgrown items etc - I was never particularly tidy but it’s certainly much worse since having kids!
Feels like a light at the end of the tunnel when they start to put away their own washing etc 😇

I can definitely sit down and ignore the mess. I'll happily sit down with a cup of tea while the house is falling down around me.

But I can't sit in the garden if I see some gardening that needs to be done.

I think the difference is that I like gardening and hate cleaning.

I have a lot of respect for people who live uncluttered lives - but I'm not one of them. I open a drawer to de-clutter and end up looking at packets of photo's for a couple of hours and then put them back!! I am amazed in particular by one friend - she has brought her girls up to understand (due to the size of their home) that in order to bring in a whole new generation of toys, they have to say goodbye to old toys (all played with and stored carefully so no missing bits or broken pieces - the Happy town sets spring to mind) these go on e-bay and help towards funding the new fad or phase - including the iPads. Now I would love to be this organised, one out and one in, but I have fond memories of the time spent with the toys and the child and couldn't wrench it from the fabric of our home. Who is right? Obviously not me as I have not a square inch of extra space to add anything into!!

My dh and I used to do debt collecting and we both found that the houses where people were at home all day we're untidier and dirtier than those houses where people worked some or a lot of the time. I think some of it was due to the fact that they weren't home long enough to untidy it. But saying that, three daughters, and an au-pair at home at ours, the house was always clean and mostly tidy.

You're not alone, my house is shocking, messy/cluttered, not dirty, I always keep the bathroom clean, always.
What mine boils down to is literally TOO MUCH STUFF!
We've recently had a wall taken down to begin a complete overhaul and get sorted then dh lost his job so we're stuck with a shit tip and a building site now
I also have a demanding daughter with SEN and am currently undertaking a full time degree, I feel I have no time to do anything about it. It is really depressing living this way.
I have some time off soon while my dc will still be at school so dsis has offered to help me chuck/organise/charity everything. I would honestly leave my house behind and move into an empty one if I could, taking only our essentials.

Hoping if I can get organised then we can get on with building again and the end result will be something lovely that I can function properly in.

I think if you're a sahm then you have more mess as you're in your house using it all day and trying to raise tiny people, if you're out at work all day then you're not there to make any mess.

I feel for people with big families as obviously there's more mess. I have one 5 year old and for some reason he is quite tidy, so I'm lucky.
I'm extremely tidyand organised, but it's because my head is always busy and I can't function in chaos and disorder. I do a little bit every day rather than a weekly blitz. I also don't have a lot of stuff. I give away all unnecessary tat to charity shops. My decor is kinda French farmhouse shabby chic style, so it's ok if furniture is chippy and stuff. Nothing has to look pristine. I don't have awful mirrored furniture that shows up finger prints or white sofas etc. I also use cleaning hacks to seriously cut down on cleaning time.

I came from a large family (plus a menagerie of pets) and there was not a pin out of place nor particle of dust allowed to settle.

My house is also a complete tip. I work full time and am a single parent to a one year old so admittedly there is not much spare time. I feel like I’m always doing something in the house but I never really get on top of it. I’s probably need a solid two weeks by myself to get it into complete ship shape which isn’t going to happen!
It’s stressful when folk pop by unexpectedly and the place is a mess! Most of my friends are very tidy. My mother however, who is also messy, is the one most likely to have a go at me for the ‘chaos’ as she calls it!! Much respect for those who keep a tidy house 🤩

I have always been a tidy person. I hate clutter and mess and even when my children were small, the house was immaculate. We are lucky enough to have a playroom as well, which helps. I’m a teacher, and work 3 days a week, so life is busy.

Ironically, ever since both my children went into full time school, my house has become a tip. This has also coincided with me moving schools. There is mess and clutter everywhere. This doesn’t help my mental health, but I now feel I’m in a bit of a rut (stress, mess, feeling down, not tidying leads to more mess, etc). I simply can’t be bothered to tidy, and my standards have certainly slipped.

I live an a 'shit tip house' as I call it. It's not through laziness either. For example, Saturday i scrubbed the kitchen clean and tidied it. It now has a pile of dishes off tea, shopping I haven't put away yet, clean dishes I washed and dried but haven't put away yet and all I want to do is crawl into bed. I'm shattered :(

I'd live an immaculate home but I don't have the energy to keep on top of it. My living room is spotless though, purely down to not being used haha

*love not live

Your DC's are tiny so you are unfortunately having to live amidst the shit. But fear not, as they get older they don't want to inhabit the same space as you so the shit just moves into their bedrooms......where I find it at about 3:45 each day, usually under the bed!!!!.😀
A builder friend of mine was telling me about a house he's building with sliding internal walls to flex internal spaces. Great idea, then you can just push the shit around I thought!

Mostly toys causing chaos in our house. 3 young dc under 5 here and work from home! Kitchen is never 100% tidy as theres always someone eating or hungry! But im not going to get to 80 amd say i wish i spent less time with the kids and more time cleaning! Dont worry about it!

i live in a mess and im also SAHM. Like you there are always clean clothes for people and food, and basic cleaning of kitchen surfaces and bathroom done..... but apart from that the house is usually a complete state. Have the odd day when its perfectly clean because weve had a massive blitz of it all but that is certainly not every day.

'If your a neat person, your house will be neat. If your messy, house will be messy.'

That only holds if you live on your own.

I am super neat, and hate clutter. When I was single my flat was immaculate at all times.

Now my house is messy. It depresses me. As fast as I tidy it DH and the dcs untidy. DH won't throw anthing (of his) away. We have 25 years worth of car magazines cluttering up the cupboards and shelves, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The dcs have rooms full of toys. They don't play with half of them, but the ILs keep buying them more. I despair.

The other day DH had a go at me because I quote 'the house is a tip'. I lost it. 20 years of living with his mess and stuff and I get the blame. He spent a martyred hour tidying, and giving me 'advice' on how to keep it tidy. I had to go out. I was that angry.

Reading selected bits of this out to my hubby as I sporadically fuss about ours, which is certainly lived in. He said ‘who gives a f**k as long as your kids are happy’ - every now and then it’s phrases like this that help me remember why I married him. Kids will remember how happy their childhood was not how tidy it was, unless it was right at either end if the spectrum.

Our house is fairly tidy. A few toys spill out of the playroom or bedrooms occasionally but overall coats are hung up, shoes put away and plates cleared up. I just do the tidying as it needs it and it works for us. I'm a SAHM with four children. And yes I do find time to play with them!

My house is always a mess.
I hate it, but given the choice, I'd always rather spend my time doing my job or playing with my little boy.
I'm also naturally messy and so is DH. And our house is about the right size for two people and then we added a third ...

My house is untidy. I work 3 long days & hubby works 5/6 days a week. We have an 11 month old & 4 year old. I think our main issue is too small of a house for the stuff we have. But if we had a bigger house it would probably still be messy. Not dirty though gets cleaned frequently but just clutter everywhere!

Toddler makes it hard. SAHD for the last fourteen years and keep things pretty tidy - I think. I tend to pick the house up in the morning for an hour or so and clean once a week. I think if you can get it to a certain tidiness and then stay on top of it that makes it doable.

My house is pretty tidy (I’m all about aesthetics), in fact I’d go so far as to say it looks immaculate. We also have a cleaner every week so it’s quite clean too.
Caveat: if you opened the cupboards, stuff might or might not fall out. I really need to declutter.

I'm a cleaner ... and my house is messy! I hate the fact that I leave everyone else's house really tidy to come home to but haven't got the time or energy to do my own to that standard. I have started doing a drawer or cupboard in the kitchen whilst the tea is cooking or wiping the bathroom down when the bath is running etc. I tip a drawer from my bedroom onto my bed in the morning so I have to do it when I get in so I can go to bed

House can be clean but messy. I am sat on sofa in living room vacuumed, decluttered and dusted last night, but now under nuclear explosion where toddler has tipped all toys out....

Its messy here

Im a sahm

4 dc aged between 1 and 10