Are you a reformed untidy person? With a lovely home? AIBU to ask for your tips?

[KavvLar]

This is a shout out to those folk who are not naturally good at housekeeping and tidying, but have cracked it and manage to keep and maintain a lovely home. AIBU to ask for your strategies?

I have had a lovely home very briefly after a massive declutter helped by a professional. Best money I ever spent, and I LOVED it when it was all tidy. I know the upkeep is a huge part of it though, and I don’t know how to approach it.

I end up scattergunning around the house and I can just sense the chaos creeping back in. I need some sort of system to keep it vaguely visitor ready, I know there are loads out there, and I'm willing to try but would love some personal perspectives from those of you who managed to change your ways.

This is an odd way to put it I know but I liken it to weight loss and maintenance. You know when you've lost all the weight and everyone thinks the hard work is over, but the maintenance is really hard if you haven't started to think like a thin person? I need your help to think like a tidy person!

I'm a work in progress - dh was the tidy one, i ws slightly cleaner than him but he was borderline filthy so between us it was mostly chaos.

A big breakthrough on tidying was this realisation:
Pick something up - use - put it back wgere it lives = three jobs.
Pick something up - use - put it down somewhere - put it back where it lives = four jobs.

This is why having somewhere where each thing lives (storage, decluttering) does help. But just putting things straight back there cuts the workload by a minimum of 25%.

Oh sorry - mine's just the standard TOMM method (which you can Google) Mon-Fri with the added days I mentioned (and bathroom dropped from daily tasks). Some of our rooms come with extra tasks, eg the hallway/stairs (which is Wednesday so today!) includes full change of cat litter since that's where it lives (we scoop daily).

My basic wish is ... for them not to make it MORE difficult for me.

This, exactly.

XP does a fair share of houseworky crap, and maintains Normal Acceptable Standards. My standards are the weird ones, but as I don't appear to be able to just get rid of them (and they're preferable to the tics or the counting of the past) I'd rather just work with them.

Which means I'm very happy to maintain a clean and efficient dirty-to-clean pots pipeline trundling along by myself, and XP can find a different chore to do while he's here in the interests of fairness, I just really can't cope with other people leaving dollops of localised chaos around because it fucks with my vibe or whatever and then the chaos starts breeding and consuming everything, and sooner or later it's going to end up at needing to move house again. And XP will find himself on skip duty in this scenario.

'Take three extra seconds to stack neatly and absolve yourself of further washing up responsibility, or end up having to fill a skip' - it's an easy choice to make when it's put that starkly.

F

I feel.relaxed in my sittingbroom

Well it is Halloween after all

Pondering this further, I may have a useful insight!

Scenario A: get up in morning to see last night's pots nearly stacked, sink and draining board clear. I can get straight on with enacting my high standards, and feel satisfied that they're being maintained, and all is well.

Scenario B: get up in morning to see last night's pots variously piled up dirty, soaking in the sink, piled up clean on the draining board. I have to: put away clean pots; go fishing in manky water for soaking pots; deal with the manky water; and stack the dirty sodding pots - and hating every second of it - before I can get even start on washing up following my own standards.

Conclusion: just stack the dirty pots when you first put them down next to the sink. It keeps everything flowing. Chaos clogs the flow. So be mindful never to plant its seeds.

This is being quite a therapeutic thread. Thanks, OP!

Regular sort outs , minimalism , less clutter to catch dust ,

Move regularly so the clutter gets sorted through often ( ok not always practical but it works the best )

Do wardrobe clear-outs onto eBay promise yourself a pressie for your efforts with the proceeds - make sure pressie isn't an object

Have a no buy week once a month and clear out the fridge , freezer and store cupboards , using up what you already have

Love your home - then you are more likely to look after it with love

It is worth noting that TOMM isn't going to work for a total neat freak, because the downside of doing one room a day is that one room is always six days past done. If people come round at the weekend we're still going to have to hoover and straighten up the living room because it hasn't been done since Monday - but it's a much, much smaller job now that the house is at a much higher standard the whole time. But if the satisfaction of seeing the whole house sparkling at once does it for you - and I totally get why it does for a lot of people - then a big weekly clean might be better for you. I found that didn't work for us because it took about three or four hours to clean the whole house and that was so off-putting a prospect that it never got done, whereas little and often feels achievable.

Placemarking! ☺️👍

I don't call myself a reformed untidy person but I'm better than I was. I have recently noticed that if my dc want friends round, the house can be pretty presentable in under an hour. A few years back I would have needed a weeks notice.
Marie Kondo, really helped change my mindset from what can I get rid of, to what do I want to keep. I haven't actually done the whole house yet, but the areas I have tackled are a lot less cluttered and tend to stay tidy. I also buy a lot less things than I did before.
With tidying I have learned to go with what suits me, rather than what other people tend to do. For example once we have eaten dinner, I hate doing any tidying / cleaning. But in the morning I'm happy to potter around for 20minutes tidying up any mess from the night before as well as making beds, putting the washing on etc. So before I leave for work the house is pretty straight.

Try not to be so stressed about it?

I'm being serious - does it matter if your house is a bit untidy? I think we've got into this weird state of fetishising cleanliness (Mrs Hinch) and order (Marie Kondo) when so long as everyone is clean, well fed and loved and cared for, what does it matter if the house isn't like a show house all the time?

Get a roomba (best brand, all parts are replaceable and they last years), and get a braava jet. Run them daily, and your floors will always be clean with minimal effort.

Throw away anything you don't love, use or need. Be ruthless. Being ruthless gets easier with time and practice!

Run dishwasher, washing machine and dryer (If you have them) daily and empty them daily - morning or night, whatever works best for you.

Your best friend is the binman though...you can't tidy clutter, you can only rearrange it...

I am a messy at heart, hoarding scruff, who's in pretty good habits now and I take every opportunity to cheat that I can. Even bought a robot lawn mower this summer so the garden can be neat with minimal effort from me going forward!

Five minute bursts. Pick a room. Set a timer for five minutes. Spend five minutes doing the things that will have the biggest impact. At the end of the five minutes move on to the next room. If you keep going like this a couple of times a week, you’ll get around to the lower impact stuff like cleaning skirting boards, without housework taking over your life. And once overall chaos is overcome, it’s much easier and less painful to stay in a routine of putting things away when you’ve finished with them.

I also think there's a case for knowing your flaws and working with them. For instance, I know lots of people say that post should be either files or chucked as soon as it's open. We've tried repeatedly to do this and always fail. So now we just have a basket that it's chucked in and every week or so I go through it and deal with it. It isn't as neat and efficient as dealing with it instantly but it's much better than having opened post all over the kitchen counter, which is what was happening. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good!

"you can't tidy clutter, you can only rearrange it..."

Oh dear, so true.

Following this thread with interest! I really need to do a major declutter, I think.

Sorry if I missed it OP, but what are your usual working hours?

I work 3 days a week and so I find it easier to do the bulk of housework in one of the mornings during the week that I am off.

When I go on maternity leave I am going to try the Organised Mom Method, or maybe give myself a job or two every other day.

I find it hugely beneficial for me mentally (and for the house) that I have set days for things. No panicking because the laundry is piling up or the bathrooms are looking a bit dusty because I know it will get done in a day or two.

I do spot clean during the week though. Hoovering the kitchen floor which constantly has bits of food on it, giving the loo a quick scrub if someone hasn't cleaned up after themselves etc. Just keeps on top of things.

I resisted reading it but the Mari kondo mindset helped me.

I invite people over for lovely dinners that require me to clean and tidy to do justice to the food and table setting!

And go away regularly - packing and unpacking are great for galvanising energy for laundry and tidying my wardrobe.

I used to be incredibly messy and am a reformed neat freak now.

My friend helped me do the initial declutter and deep clean, which I'm very grateful for! Then I bought storage and organised everything, so everything "lives" somewhere and gets put away after use. Once somewhere is tidy it's relatively easy to keep it clean. I clean little and often - for example the bathroom gets a quick clean everyday, only takes about 3 minutes, so it's just habit now to do that and then brush my teeth.

Every 3-4 months I declutter, I also have a "crap box" (pretty box with a lid) that I shove letters, receipts or anything random in, then sort though it every month or so. Stops it piling up out of control like it did before!

Storage and everything having a place.This means less clutter which means that if things really need cleaning it is easy.
I am just an if it needs it cleaner.So today I am not working,the sun is shining so I can see dust so after mumsnet I will dust and hoover.Done for the day apart from dish washing!☺

HereForTheLineEyes I work school hours Tuesday to Friday. I do have Mondays where I do a lot of the bigger chores but even with that, what I'm doing now doesn't seem to last five minutes. It's the trail of destruction I need to work on

I prefer FlyLady to TOMM. I work from home but after I drop off kids and come back home to work in the am I set a timer for 15 mins and race around-clear away breakfast, wipe down kitchen surfaces, sweep kitchen floor. Quick tidy of living room- put away toys / throw away random bits of paper/ make cushions etc look nice. Lunchtime I do another 15 mins with a timer putting away laundry. Before bed same. Make bed as soon as I get up. Wipe down bathroom every day when I have my shower (literally takes 3 mins with an old flannel to do sink and bath and loo roll to do loo). Hoover and mop when it needs it. Cleaner comes for 2 hours a fortnight. De clutter constantly.

Sounds like halo time, all you obsessively tidy, uncluttered people!

As I sit here I have last weekend's papers around, I will defeat that crossword, the latest Private Eye and a few things to fill in and send off, none of which bothers me in the slightest, the house is relatively clean, last night's washing up's done, I even put some of it away this a.m..
OH can take a week to return the bathroom bin to upstairs, the concept of 'one touch', silly phrase, would never occur to him, people really read books on how to tidy up???? We're retired, have all the time in the world and are quite happy not to be show-home ready, had enough of that nonsense when we were selling!