Am I a housework slattern?

[EttaJames29]

Single mum, 5 year old daughter and 17 month old son. We live in a 2 bed flat. I manage to keep on top of the dishes, laundry, wipe the sides down, tidy the toys every night with help from DD and have a quick hoover around but my furniture is dirty, milk splatters on it from DS throwing his cup around, marks from God knows what on the sofa, pen on the table from where DD got a bit over excited with her colouring. Our bed sheets are clean but the beds are never made .. I'm knackered just from doing the basics. Please tell me this is normal with 2 young DC and I'm not a housework slattern?

Nope, completely normal. Unless I too am a complete slattery!

Stealth boast, OP?

That's more housework than i did daily before i had kids. If you're a slattern im a full blown slut.

Not a stealth boast at all my (fairly new) furniture is now grubby and disgusting and I wanted to feel better about it

Thank you for writing this. I’m exactly the same with 3 very little ones.
I always feel totally alarmed by what I read on Mumsnet about the amount of cleaning people do each day!

@Enterthedragons oh, me too!

I'm the same, two kids, two big dogs, my house isn't looking it's best at the moment 🙈

I have no kids and my house sounds like yours! Lol. Clean sheets are a bloody win! I've been know to hide dirty dishes in the oven! (From myself! )

But what I have noticed with my friends with kids is their pre-kids furniture/stuff has slowly but surely been replaced with wipe-down easy clean stuff. They have no pens in the house that aren't wipe-offable. Wet wipes in every room. And big waste baskets seem to be very important.

Again I say: clean sheets are a win!!

Sounds fairly normal to me and we have a cleaner to do most of it. I did discover saddle soap recently though and our leather sofas now look a million times cleaner (previously I’d just wiped them with a wet cloth).

Nah, you're totally normal. My MIL, who worked in community health, told me when mine were little and I was worried that my house was never completely clean and tidy, that her health visitors were always far more worried about families with immaculate houses. It meant priorities were wrong xx

Completely normal, expect this for a good few years to come, my 3 are 13, 8 and 9yrs old and only now am I able to start having nicer things and wallpaper that doesn't get drawn on or torn. I have the odd friend who has kids whose houses are perfect but that's not normal, all my other friends are the same as me. Don't let it get to you, I struggled with this for years and felt embarrassed of people came over, when I look back at photos there was nothing wrong, just cluttered kids crap and not decorated how I like. The kids rooms are a mess most days, but atleast when their older you can keep the public areas of the house tidy, (mostly!) 😂😂

Yep I've heard this from my health visitor, I kept apologizing for the "mess" (baby stuff) when she came to do home visits and she told me the same thing, if there's no toys or living things out then there's something wrong. As long as the place isnt a disgusting mess it's fine.

Same, my mum used to say only boring people have immaculate houses

Sitting in my filth flat with a three year old, come live with me together our home would sparkle ❇️

You hoover daily??

If that makes you a slattern then god knows what I am