Housework .. drudgery

[1983mum]

Anyone else work FT with kids and just find keeping on top of housework end the need to spend weekends cleaning washing tidying sorting wardrobes etc such a chore?

I get so little time for myself end this morning after doing x2 kids sports activities and sorting out party present and looking around at fridge, washing etc just literally calculated eh e years until youngest will be 18.

Awful isn't it. Lack of free time and the endlessness of it getting to me.

Have a cleaner 6hr a week but with a large house and garden and 3 kids under 10 quickly is messy etc and kids do tidy but have to be managed to do it.

Argh.

If you’re working full time, then presumably the kids are out of the home (and therefore not messing it up!) then too?

With a cleaner six hours a week, I think this definitely comes down to being set up not to cause the work in the first place. All the “simple” 🤣 things like training everyone to put clothes into the wash basket saves time on collecting them up.

If you’re really struggling with having no free time, you have to limit the amount of child activities you’re prepared to take on.

On the bright side, under 10 is hard, you don’t have to wait for 18! One of mine is 12 and the sum total of her demands on my time this morning has been to text me and ask if she can make a waffle. 🧇 it does get easier before they’re adults!

Yep me...
Work full time
3 kids and a dog
No cleaner
I manage and my home is clean and tidy

Do you have a partner. Do they do anything?

You have a cleaner! What are you doing?

Have a look at the organised mum method.

Sorry that should have said what are you doing that takes up all of your time when you have a cleaner?

Either you have a problem managing your cleaner, or you’ve a problem with the members of your household (and I include any partner in both those statements).

I was with you until I got to the bit about already having a cleaner 6 hours a week!!

If you have a cleaner for 6 hours a week, then presumably that covers all the actual cleaning. so actually it's keeping on top of the day to day stuff that's hard work? The key to this is very much keeping on top of it each day. Put a load of washing on each night, hang it to dry in the morning. Get the DC to fold and put away. If you need more washing than this, then seriously evaluate whether you are washing clothes that aren't actually dirty.

If you're all out during the day then make sure the kitchen is clear after breakfast (so dishes washed or in the dish waster, worksurfaces wiped). At night, before the DC go to bed everyone makes sure rooms are tidy and the kitchen is cleaned away after dinner. If everyone pitches in, this should be 10-15 minutes a day, and then you can sit down once they are in bed.

Thanks for replies

Think the problem recently has been me working 9-7/8pm as job has got v demanding wfh

Then kids do activities most nights 5-6, 8-9 type thing and DH shares this

But weekends DH been doing DIY and sorting garden, so all kids parties weekend sport falls to me, as well as all the washing (usually about 6 loads a week) and it takes all day Saturday to get through plus food shop and light clean

Interesting to hear easier when kids a bit older! Once they can meet friends alone and walk to sports alone will be so much easier !

Shop online!

I don't work full-time but i agree with you. Housework is endless, thankless and thoroughly depressing when you have kids.

I lost all sympathy when I read about your cleaner.

Move to a smaller house with a smaller garden = less to clean.

You're making your own life harder. Kids go to school so are out of the house most of the day so your house shouldn't really be a tip especially of you have a cleaner. If you leave the washing to do over one day then yes it will take all day and feel like a hard task. You or your oh could put on a load a day. You could cut back on the kids activities if you wanted to. If you have signed them up for something every night then yes you will be busy. You don't have much free time but that's down to how you mange your family.

Yanbu op. It must be so hard. I actually only know one couple who both work full time and they are both knackered all the time. To try to get some weekends back, they use a nanny for childcare so that the kids activities get done in the week.

@arethereanyleftatall you only know one couple that both work full time?

Yes. Everyone else, in both my dds classes, so that's 60 couples, one works full time, the other part or sahm. It's just how it is round here. I see it's quite normal though on mumsnet that both work full time, but it's just not my experience. So, I sympathise with the op, I think it must be hard.

Here is one of the great advantages of being single and childfree, You can choose to put things away when you finish with them so no problems of random stuff scattered everywhere.

@arethereanyleftatall in the real world most couples work full time and don’t have a cleaner! Imagine!

Most? Do they? I'm not doubting you, I simply don't know. As I said, it's not my experience, it's clearly yours. I'll have a google.

What it is specifically that's the most stressful?

Can the cleaner do more housekeeping stuff during the 6 hours eg change bedding, put laundry on?

Make sorting and putting laundry away the kids' job - give them pocket money for it.

Get in the habit of tidying every day so it doesn't get left til the weekend.
Kids have to tidy rooms and make beds before they get any screen time.
Living room tidied before they go up to bed.
Kitchen tidy and dishwasher on before you go to bed.

Meal plan, have a 2/3/4 week rota, save the shopping list for each week on your online supermarket. Takes some time to set it up but saves so much time once up and running.
Of use a meal delivery service like Gousto.

Pay someone to do the garden.

From a quick google it isn't 'most'. 60% of couples are both working, but that doesn't include part time work, which I would wager is far higher than 10% of that 60%. Bringing it under 50% and therefore not 'most'.

I hear you OP.
We have two junior school age children, both of us work full time (a few hours at home but >75% actually at work).
We have a cleaner for 4h/wk who changes bedsheets and does ironing.
It’s 10pm on a Saturday night and DH is meal planning. I have done 2x loads of washing and will need to do more during the week. At some point will need to make some dinners for the week.
It is getting easier as the DCs get older and can contribute more but all the house stuff gets done in the evenings and weekends and so it’s sometimes 9.30/10pm before we just stop.

And yes, we do all the usual things of today up as we go, kitchen clean before bed, breakfast thin out the night before, laundry on overnight ready to put out to dry in the morning etc.

Obviously, I appreciate there are others that have it harder.

If you can afford a gardener, you'll get your DH back for part of the weekend and he can share the drudgery. (It rather sounds as if he's picking jobs that get him out of the routine, thankless chores...)