To have nothing nice

[Givemethechocolate]

Aibu to think you just can't have anything nice when you have young children.
My sofa has stains all over it, crumbs everywhere. Playdoh in the carpet. Pen on the wooden table. Stuff knocked over and stained. Clothes ruined from stains. No matter how many times I say please he careful, it's not listened to. I know my DS doesn't mean to do it on purpose but it's just annoying when you pay for things and eventually they get ruined.
Anyone else feel the same?

Interesting to hear different views re. a tidy approach not being fun. @StylishMummy - that all sounds really sensible to me. I grew up in a very messy household and we didn't really have rules about putting things away after play, or having designated spaces etc. There were always massive panics looking for homework or books or maths equipment before school. As such, it was a steep learning curve when I moved out and had to manage my own space.

We have 2 boys, and apart from the odd accident nothing has been trashed. We have mostly wooden floors downstairs. They don't wander around with snacks and if they make a mess they clear it up. I disagree with people saying that's no way to live. There is nothing wrong with having respect for your belongings, and for others. Crafty things, colouring etc are done at the table, or on the floor but they are both really careful to be honest. We are sensible, we don;t have lots of valuable things or a cream fabric sofa. There's a balance to be struck!

Our sofa liked under a big throw for years to protect it from crumbs and juice drips
The question here is why are you permitting your children to eat and drink on the sofa? This is encouraging lifelong bad habits, even the adults in our house eat and drink at the dining table.

Friends who allow their DC to eat while playing seem to have far more problems with mess
I just can’t get my head around people letting kids run around with food. Everything is bound to get filthy! I don’t potter round the house with food in my hand so why should a child?

Play dough, paint, pens etc are only used in the kitchen where we have tiles floor and a plastic tablecloth
Sensible. This is what happens in my house too. I never understand why parents complain about kids drawing on walls - for them to be able to do that you must have given them unsupervised access to the pens?

dirty nappies from the night feed on the floor
Omg what?! Why aren’t you putting them into a plastic bag in the bathroom? This isn’t just untidy, it’s unhygienic and frankly disgusting.

@InSpaceNooneCanHearYouScream that's a pretty bloody big assumption. We have tuff trays for messy play, a whole stack of arts and crafts, 16 kallax boxes full of toys and gym mats. My DC can play whatever they like BUT they know DH and I won't tolerate mess for mess's sake.

There's absolutely no reason to live in a slum when you have small children, adequate storage and reasonable standards helped us massively.

Before anyone starts, I'm disabled and both DH and I work full time. The DC know that they have a part to play in keeping the house nice and this benefits them in the long run. HTH

Can honestly say my kids have never broken, stained or ruined anything. There no need for that at all.

We played with our toys in our rooms and ate food at the kitchen table. We also played outside a lot. Had plenty of fun.

Two under fives. All paints /pens / crafty stuff in a big box they can't open
All meals at the table and sticky hands wiped before getting down

Hard floors, no shoes inside

Lots of builders mess but the kids don't trash the place

@Crayfishforyou

yanbu but it gets better. Except in our case, after it got better we got a puppy.....

Just coming along to say the same. Great big muddy puppy with enormous paws and nothing is nice any more, though we love the pup!

We have all the rules suggested above, messy stuff lives in the kitchen only and we have oilcloths

The kids (two girls) still manage to cause damage by doing things we would never have thought of so didn’t have rules about

Some recent examples
Giving a toy a bath and the colour ran
Creating a pulley system up and down the stairs which knocked chunks of paint off
Dancing around in the playroom with something hard that scraped the walls

I mean it’s great they have imagination 🤦‍♀️

All my clothes have puke stains, all I wear is granny knickers (and I am not even 30 yet), my couches are a state, my gorgeous oak table has to have a manky cover on it, my hall floor is always filthy from the buggy, toys everywhere, clothes everywhere, dirty nappies from the night feed on the floor, clothes all over the bedroom floor where I am too tired to do anything except fall into bed, general mess I can never get on top of....I think it's just parenting. I dont know many people who dont have a house like this with kids. I think it will get better, in a decade or so

That is not just parenting! Dirty nappies on the floor and puke stains all over the place, mud and crap and clothes all over the floor....none of that is just parenting.
It will get better...when you clean your house and stop throwing filth everywhere.

Washable sofa cushions. Hard floors. Chill out.

As a kid I remember my grandad (farmer) taking me to see his friend; I had muddy wellies on and was astonished and delighted to be allowed to wear them indoors. My mum liked a clean tidy house. I aspire to the kind of house where muddy wellies in the kitchen aren’t a big deal.

I think it is worse at the minute with everyone spending so much time at home. Even not doing messy activities the general wear and tear on the place when we are spending so much time in it is astounding. I've waved a little white flag until they go back to school/nursery - at least no-one is popping round to see how bad it looks at the minute!

@InSpaceNooneCanHearYouScream

My DM was the same, and I can assure you my childhood was fun. She just didn't want the house to look like a pigsty

It's very possible to keep furniture house in good condition with children.
I bought sofas that cost 2k. I was adamant it must remain clean! I used and still do, use a matching colour throw to cover the seating area. So if anything was eaten on there it wasn't going to be in direct contact of the sofa. I've had the sofas were 6 years now. It's in fantastic condition. It's light coloured too, so you can really see how well it's been maintained.
Any pen Mark or colouring that have happened on the arm rest, I straight away used a product that was given with my sofa, to remove it. It came straight off.
It is a constant battle of telling the children to be careful and mindful, my two older ones are brilliant. It's my third child that is the rebel, my other two never wrote on the wall, or ripped wallpaper. My youngest has done all that and more! Luckily been able to get the pens off the painted wall. The wallpaper, we were replacing anyway so I wasn't too fussed, but only did it twice and hasn't attempted to thereafter.

The thing I found the hardest clean was the damn carpet!!!! Play magic sand, play dough would somehow make it there despite using a floor covering when they use things that are messy. Which is why we went for flooring now, easier to clean.

I had a high pile rug, had to get rid as food would somehow make it there and get stuck under that even the hoover cant pull out.

Keeping things like mirrors clean is a nightmare, there's always handprints on them, the second it's cleaned they feel the need to put their hand print on it.

@hatedbytheDailyMail

All my clothes have puke stains, all I wear is granny knickers (and I am not even 30 yet), my couches are a state, my gorgeous oak table has to have a manky cover on it, my hall floor is always filthy from the buggy, toys everywhere, clothes everywhere, dirty nappies from the night feed on the floor, clothes all over the bedroom floor where I am too tired to do anything except fall into bed, general mess I can never get on top of....I think it's just parenting. I dont know many people who dont have a house like this with kids. I think it will get better, in a decade or so

That is not just parenting! Dirty nappies on the floor and puke stains all over the place, mud and crap and clothes all over the floor....none of that is just parenting.
It will get better...when you clean your house and stop throwing filth everywhere.

Judgemental sod

I agree about the second hand stuff.

I also had bolognese coloured sofas which helped a lot.

@hatedbytheDailyMail

All my clothes have puke stains, all I wear is granny knickers (and I am not even 30 yet), my couches are a state, my gorgeous oak table has to have a manky cover on it, my hall floor is always filthy from the buggy, toys everywhere, clothes everywhere, dirty nappies from the night feed on the floor, clothes all over the bedroom floor where I am too tired to do anything except fall into bed, general mess I can never get on top of....I think it's just parenting. I dont know many people who dont have a house like this with kids. I think it will get better, in a decade or so

That is not just parenting! Dirty nappies on the floor and puke stains all over the place, mud and crap and clothes all over the floor....none of that is just parenting.
It will get better...when you clean your house and stop throwing filth everywhere.

Shall I just tell my 3 month old to stop projectile vomiting? Or should I clean my house at 2am, leaving my baby to scream, waking up my 2 year old. Your baby didnt puke over your shoulder at 3am while you snuck up the stairs after a night feed, no?

Christ. Some people are so up their own arses, judging knackered parents. I am sure you are just effin perfect ye?

Btw. I do my damned best to clean my house. It has 2 kids and a dog in winter. If I spent hours scrubbing the house you would tell me I am neglecting the kids.

People like you make my blood boil.

Did the Sanctimonious Klaxon get blasted? It's amaing how a bit of lighthearted moaning drawns all the 'well I only let my kids eat over the sink and follow them around with antibacterial wipes' lot in.

My sofa currently has the letter K drawn on it. It's a cheap sofa that will need replacing sooner rather than later, and I'm not sure whether it's worth scrubbing off, or kept as a momentum of my gifted and talented 3 year old. Obviously my fault for not locking away felt tips like they're an AK-47...

I used pretty well the same approach as @StylishMummy. Containing the mess is the way to go but I think you have to do it from the start.

All kids are different, mine are outside making a complete mess of the garden right now with mud and sand from their mud kitchen.

Inside they eat at the table or lunch in front of the tv but on the floor which is wood. If it was carpet I wouldn't allow it. They don't eat on the sofa so it's in good condition.

Arts and crafts are done at the kitchen table and it has got pen marks on it but we clean it after every use and it's not too bad.

Play doh is used often in our house either at the table or in a tuff tray. They've only just stopped mixing the colours (youngest is 5) but it isn't in the rugs.

We set boundaries early on, they know to take their shoes off, where to eat, where to do crafts. I don't really care if that's seen as uptight.

Toys on the other hand

@hatedbytheDailyMail

All my clothes have puke stains, all I wear is granny knickers (and I am not even 30 yet), my couches are a state, my gorgeous oak table has to have a manky cover on it, my hall floor is always filthy from the buggy, toys everywhere, clothes everywhere, dirty nappies from the night feed on the floor, clothes all over the bedroom floor where I am too tired to do anything except fall into bed, general mess I can never get on top of....I think it's just parenting. I dont know many people who dont have a house like this with kids. I think it will get better, in a decade or so

That is not just parenting! Dirty nappies on the floor and puke stains all over the place, mud and crap and clothes all over the floor....none of that is just parenting.
It will get better...when you clean your house and stop throwing filth everywhere.

Do you know this gas actually really bugged me. You realise what you just said to me was nasty. You took a knackered mother, with a baby and a kid in lockdown, who sympathised with OP, a woman who is clearly finding things had, and you knocked me, declared me filthy and lazy, for your entertainment. Do you like being nasty and making people feel like rubbish? Does it make you feel better about yourself, makes you think you are better than me. Maybe you smile and think 'well, she is hopeless. I am much better than that' .

You are either a miserable person, or just horrible and lacking in all ability to be nice to someone. Which one is it?

I have nice things, my house gets trashed and it infuriates me but I day dream about my old age when I can have REALLY nice things

Oh give over @BrumBoo. Posters are responding to the OP and there’s nothing earth shattering in suggesting designated spaces for messy play and (gasp!) teaching children to respect their home and belongings. Hardly sanctimonious to point out you don’t have to live in a shithole when you become a parent.

Christ. Some people are so up their own arses, judging knackered parents. I am sure you are just effin perfect ye?

Christ yourself. I'm not judging you, I couldn't give a shiny shit what your house is like. You do you. I'm commenting on you pretending that its the same for everyone, when it isn't at all.

You volunteered the information in a public forum, you don't get to whine when someone comments about it.

It's amaing how a bit of lighthearted moaning drawns all the 'well I only let my kids eat over the sink and follow them around with antibacterial wipes' lot in

Do stop with this nonsense. I wasn't lighthearted moaning and nobody is talking about being ridiculous about cleanliness. It's simply the fact that you don't have to have a filthy house covered in muck and stains just because you have children. Which I imagine you already know and actually agree with, so drop the act.