To be sick of the mess!

[Jambalaya76]

The house is constantly a mess. 2 kids, a husband and a dog. I'm always tidying up after everyone. I get tired of it so leave it a couple of days then boom, it's like a bombs hit the house. As it is never tidy, it's hard to clean. There are days when I will tackle one room and go to town on it. Everyone says how lovely the room is. Never stays that way. I'm sick of the dust, the stuff. I just want to throw everything away and clean. Husband is rubbish at fixing things. When something gets broken it's just left. It really gets me down. We have a beautiful home but it's messy and it gets in my head! I work, husband works, kids are both under 10. I just want to take the week off work and tackle the problem but need my annual leave for the kids!!!! Argh!!!! Anyone else suffer from this problem and how do you get round it?

The obvious answer is get rid of the 'stuff'. If everything has a place then nothing is getting dumped anywhere. Anything that doesn't go in a 'place' or hasn't seen the light of day in 6 months, bin/freecycle/whatever. Including broken things that your DH doesn't fix. Get rid. And the broken stuff

Have a look on Pinterest cause there is tonnes of really awesome storage/decluttering ideas. I'm sure if you get your DC involved too with ideas for their rooms, they'll be more inclined to put their stuff away.

Start a new rule that nobody is allowed to leave any room without taking something with them that belongs elsewhere. Unless your kids are under 3 they should be helping to keep the house tidy

Declutter and minimise. After decluttering then sort out your storage.

Everyone pitches in. Put rules in place about tidying after use.

Why isn't your husband doing his part and how old are your children?

Read Marie Kondo.

Get yourself a cleaner for a couple of hours a week. You will have to tidy, but because someone else is coming in you keep on top of it. The kids can help load and unload the dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer, or help hang stuff out. They can certainly take their own things up to their room and put it away.

1. Family meeting. You tell them things are now changing. EVERYBODY is now responsible for keeping the whole house tidy. That means if mum leaves a mess in her bedroom floor, little Johnny gets to point it out and say “mum you need to tidy up after yourself”.

2. massive declutter. Pick a week where either you or DH or both have annual leave. And the whole family goes through the house room by room and gets rid of a shit load of stuff. And tidying and reorganise each room as you go. All together. It’s a family affair now. The only way you can get everyone else to take responsibility for keeping the house tidy is by making sure they have an investment in it. That means they have to do the ground work to get it sorted in the first place. They won’t be happy having worked hard to tidy and then seeing dad chucking stuff at his ass.

3. get a family planner. Write out all the chores. Assign them to each person. Rotate it each week.

YANBU. My dog and my baby create utter carnage and my husband isn’t much better. Have to run around tidying every 2-3 hours! Do you have enough toy boxes etc to dump toys in?

I feel your pain op.

We have what I call 10 minute tidy ups in our ghouse and it's amazing what you can get done in 10 mins when all hands are on deck.

I often do a power hour and whatever gets done in that hour is it. It really helps to keep on top of the house before my big clean on a Sunday which can take hours.

The organised mum method is quite good for staying on top of things.
I’ve got a little check list so DH can have a look and see what needs to be done (not that he does it very often !! ) makes it much more manageable for me.

www.theorganisedmum.blog

Started off great with the above then I got fed up of being the only one doing EVERYTHING as per usual so now I’m back to the same old shit tip. I might give it another room.

Get rid of stuff. Sell it, charity shop it, freecycle it, recycle it, tip it. Put aside a whole day to actually deal with getting rid of it.

Then in a month do it again

• Marie Kondo
• Be ruthless
• For stuff you aren’t sure about, stick in a box, seal with the date and put out of sight. (Not for stuff like out of season clothes and xmas decks) If in 2 months you haven’t opened the box then tip it, unopened
• don’t buy so much stuff

If your dh is a gatherer of old shit like dead batteries and 5000 nail clippers I remove stuff very gradually. He never notices

Oh and if your dh is likely to object and be on “high alert” for you throwing away his old shit precious items - don't draw attention to your decluttering

I agree with organised mum.
Look it up on instagram.

declutter

have storage for everything

be realistic about your lifestyle - and what needs to be grabbed or accessible quickly, every day and what isn't.

The organised mum is ace. Give yourself as many weeks as you need to do the bootcamp.

It takes just as long to put things away properly than to chuck them on the floor. Husband should tidy up after himself, kids every night before bath.
Once you go to bed in a clean and tidy house, the workload gets so much lighter.

What works for us is cleaning half the house each every week. I concentrate on my half, so I can do it thoroughly if I want to, and everything gets done to my standard once a fortnight but I don’t feel totally responsible.