How tidy do you get your house every day?

[mumtoallbhoys]

I wouldn't naturally be the most tidy person and my husband is probably tidier than average.

Tell me honestly what your standards are? I have 2 kids, 3 and 5. I take contracts, this year through choice I was off for 12 weeks over summer.

I make sure that I do all the cooking (lunch, snacks, dinner but he makes porridge in the morning) and 100% of the laundry. I make sure that the dishwasher is loaded sides wiped down. I wouldn't always sweep the floor or mop more than twice a week. We do have a cleaner who does a weekly deep clean weekly.

There would be a lot of toys everywhere downstairs but I have often run out of steam before I tidy them...

I guess my excuse is that I work full time very long days, so does my DP plus he has a second job and we do full time childcare without help. I'm pregnant at the moment so I'm hoping for some time during my maternity leave to blitz some of the rooms. I'm extremely embarrassed when we have visitors.

@PissedOffNeighbour22 you both work full time with no childcare? No wonder your house isn't perfect and I'm sure your visitors understand. Don't be too hard on yourself!

This is surely a modern thing, that is why one room was kept nice and everything else went to shit was more lived in.

That's a good point - there's something to be said for the old way of keeping the living room closed off and immaculate for guests! The problem is that our place is quite small, so we do really need all the space. Plus visitors tend to move about the house and not be confined to one room!

The only time my house was proper tidy was before we moved in 8 years ago. I’ve never cleaned the skirting boards in the bedroom and they do look a bit mucky but I still can’t be arsed to clean them.

I do the bulk of the housework but my partner will bleach the kitchen sink, grouting and plastic inserts every week or so. He’ll also do a bit of hoovering every so often. I clean the bathroom sink, toilet and shower every day. I Hoover and dust the whole house 1-2x per week. The kitchen floor needs daily sweeping. It’s a lot easier to keep our place clean if the surfaces are clutter free and the house is tidy.

I work full time from home and am mum to a 10year old DD. Also have a small dog.
Once a week the cleaner comes in and the house is spotless for 5 minutes.
Every day we make beds, put laundry in basket, make sure dishwasher is full and kitchen surfaces are wiped. I pick up dog toys before bed. However there is often a single mug left on the side or some pens / paper left out in DDs room. There are also piles of clean laundry waiting to go upstairs to be put away.

Basically we don;t live in a pit but I also don;t reach the cleaners standards on a daily basis!

We wipe the surfaces and tidy the toys etc up every day so it looks tidy. We wash up after every meal but leave the pots on the draining board. We Hoover up most days but there always seems to be crumbs over the carpet regardless. We rarely dust or polish or do the deep cleaning thing that I read about on here.

In short, our house is somewhere in the middle between health hazard and show home.

3yo and 1yo and we work fulltime so they're out at nursery Mon-Fri.

Each evening after they're in bed we tidy away dinner and wipe down the table and worktops etc. Dh runs the dishwasher when he goes to bed. We do tidy away the toys every night, especially in the living room. The kitchen is messier with toys but they're all off the floor at least.

Breakfast gets tidied once they're away to nursery (or while they chill with CBeebies at the weekend).

Cleaner once a week with the very occasional sweep in bewteen.

Lots of mess in terms of laundry, paperwork, general clutter etc. I'm not a tidy person so it's mostly down to me rather than DH or kids.

I have a 9 month old.

I try to have the sitting room tidy right after he’s in bed so I can relax in a tidy room, and I like the kitchen to be basically tidy and wiped down before bed so it’s functional for the morning.

Beyond that… I do what I can. Floors are hoovered and mopped maybe a couple of times a week. Bathroom cleaned once a week (sometimes chuck some bleach in the loo in between).

As far as I’m concerned, mess is morally neutral. It’s not a moral failing for things to be untidy. So I just focus on getting the space functional, to make my own life easier. Anything more than that is a bonus.

@wondering7777 thank you. It does look like a bomb has gone off in some of the rooms though and it's embarrassing. Some members of my family have amazingly clean houses and you'd never guess children and pets live in them. I just wish I could make mine look like theirs do.

We alternate shifts & working days so that we can do the childcare and it feels like I should get more done. My poor DP has been fitting the kitchen for about 4mths in tiny stints :(

Plus visitors tend to move about the house and not be confined to one room! Visitors are ruder than back in the 1930s

We've recently started the Organised Mum Method (I posted about it in Housekeeping in the other day) so for the first time I can reply to one of these threads and say it is clean and tidy and someone could turn up to visit and I wouldn't shit a brick and tell them they couldn't come in cos I've discovered asbestos or something. Prior to this, it was firefighting though, and it stressed me out to no end.

The key with the playroom is to have a 'home' for everything I think. DD can make an absolute mess in about 30 seconds, but we use a lot of fabric storage boxes or large bags where stuff can just be chucked in. She has one for her soft toys/finger puppets, one for building blocks, two for puzzles (which I have decanted into clear bags cos the boxes take us so much space), etc. It only takes about 5 mins to chuck all the stuff in the boxes and the playroom looks tidy again. I've also started trying to get her to tidy one thing before she starts the other - not a massive success yet as she's only 2.5, but she did get a puzzle out yesterday and then say 'I have to tidy up building blocks first!' and started putting them away in the correct box. So maybe we'll get there!

I work ft and dh works ft term time only.

During term time, I aim for 1x load of laundry, I do a big dishes wash (no dishwasher) after my lunch break (wfh) which includes last night dinner/this morning breakfast. Any dishes after this sit stacked til tomorrow big wash. I run the vac round the main floor (lounge, office, my bedroom, spare bedroom, hallways and stairs) 3x per week. I do the attic floor once a week (2x kids rooms and a playroom).

I sweep hardfloors daily. Mop every 3 days (kitchen, utility, bathroom)

I clean the bathroom once a week. Wipe down sink/loo etc as needed throughout the week.

I wipe down kitchen after dishes, then usually sort and clean a cupboard a week.

Dh does the bins (empty internal bins 4x per week max) and puts them in/out for the collection.

I strip and remake my bed 1x a fortnight and kids 1x a fortnight (alternate weeks).

That's about it!

I don't have DC and I'm a total neat freak.

So every morning before work, I make the bed, feed the animals, wash their bowls, sort out the litter trays, sweep the downstairs floors, vacuum, wipe down the kitchen table and sides and make sure the sofa blankets/cushions are all neat and tidy. I also clean the loo/sink twice a week and on Saturdays I'll clean the bathroom too.

After work I get home, feed the animals again and sort their stuff out as above, put on a load or two of laundry and normally run the vacuum again as we have three cats and a dog who all shed.

Every evening before bed I make sure the dishes are washed and put away and that the kitchen is clean. Sofa blankets/cushions are always folded and all the laundry is put away too. Bins and recycling are sorted each evening too.

I work very part-time to DH's full time to Aspergers and anxiety so I do the vast majority of the domestic side. I find it very therapeutic!

Three children including a toddler, a dog, no cleaner, DH works full time and I work part time.
House is clean. Tidy ish. We do most stuff as we go along. At the end of the day all toys will be away, kitchen clean and surfaces wiped etc. Have more interesting things to do in our limited spare time to stress too much about it though.

In short: not very.

Our living aesthetic is "there appears to have been a struggle"

I'm a scurryfunger, (a word I learnt on countdown). This basically means my house is a constant tip unless I have visitors, at which point I run around like crazy stuffing things into cupboards and vacuuming to make it barely acceptable.

I only really clean properly once a week which lasts about half a day before it looks like a bombs gone off again. The main issue is I have too much stuff, with nowhere to put it, I need to start throwing stuff out.

In terms of daily tasks:

Laundry on/load put away
Dishwasher unloaded in morning while I'm waiting for kettle to boil/making a cup of tea, filled throughout day, goes on after dinner
Kitchen surfaces wiped down after using
Very quick hoover/sweep of main traffic areas (so hallways and kitchen/lounge usually). This is very quick though, just a once-over whizz around with the cordless hoover. I might go round quickly with the spray mop too.
Fold over duvets to air beds and open windows to air house
Scoop litter tray
Toilet wiped down (takes literally seconds after I go for a pee or something)

DH and I split this, so takes no more than 10/15 mins.

Then Mon-Thu, around 30 mins on specific rooms (so living areas one day, bedrooms on a Tuesday including new sheets on bed, etc.) and Fridays is 'focus day' which is 30 mins deeper clean on a specific room that rotates every week. This week was bathrooms. Again, we usually both do it when DH finishes work so we can get it done quicker or get more done. Two people going hell for leather can get a lot done in 30 mins!

Then we have dinner (I often use the slow cooker or have batch cooked cos I lose the will to make dinner by the time it rolls round). We don't have anything else to do after DD is in bed house wise, so we have evenings free, which is really nice.

Aside from the daily stuff above, nothing specific at weekends except tidying things like the playroom as we go. Then back to Monday and we go again!

"I feel like I micromanage every element of their life I should at least let them play with their toys and make a mess. DH is much more disciplined he makes them tidy one thing away before they get another thing . To me I need the headspace more than the tidiness, does that make sense?"

I get this OP. I also think the mixing up of toys is an important part of play. Our solution was a 10 minute tidy up of toys with the kids as part of the bedtime routine. Tidy, bath, stories, bed. We didn't count toys as mess or clutter, we just let it go because we knew they'd be packed away at the end of the day. You can prescribe one table or rug where things can be left out, if they are mid-game. We even went further and had a little Montessori-style rug system going. (Though looking round at our chaotic house I find it difficult to believe we managed that much structure!)

Oh and ditch ironing. I haven't ironed in years. Literally.

I live alone now. Finally it’s tidy all the time. Except when dgc come round then it’s like I’ve been transported back 20 years. 😃

I have a 5 year old and a 1 year old and the place is a tip. I've given up. Work is so busy and stressful and I have no energy in the evenings, and we don't have enough storage.

@Ellarain

I clean the whole house everyday. Everywhere is hoovered and mopped. No dirty dishes, laundry washed folded and put away. I keep on top of it so really only takes 30 minutes in the morning before school run. Some cleaning up after we have dinner. I do a deep clean on a Thursday, change beds, clean fridge and kitchen presses, wash all skirting boards and doors, bleach the bathroom tiles, clean windows inside and out. I love my home and I'm happy when it's clean and tidy.

Ahh I used to love it when it used to take me 20 mins morning and evening to clean my house! Now I still try to keep on top of it but just to hoover everywhere or mop everywhere takes me 30 mins at least so if I were to do both through the whole house every day that would be an hour a day just on floors

Ours is a constant battle with tidying as kids love craft (and worse at the moment because of holidays). Tiny bits of paper, glitter, plus latest creations to find somewhere to house..at the end of the day I make them clear up what they’ve been playing with, and I’ll sweep up the art debris. So kitchen is actually swept and all surfaces wiped down daily, lounge hoovered prob once a week as less used. Toilets every couple of days, bathroom cleaned less than I’d like. Dusting once a month. Feels about normal for other family houses I know!

I do wonder how dirty peoples homes get, that things like skirting boards, inside cupboards, doors etc need to be weekly! Those sorts of things to me are maybe twice a year jobs, at most. I have a real aversion to cleaning something that is already clean. The only exceptions being kitchen work surfaces (due to food prep) and the toilet (for obvious reasons!). Oh and bedding I guess is washed before it looks dirty. Everything else is left until it genuinely needs to be done. To me there is just zero satisfaction in cleaning a room that already looks clean. But of course I accept people are different!

I do wonder how dirty peoples homes get, that things like skirting boards, inside cupboards, doors etc need to be weekly! Those sorts of things to me are maybe twice a year jobs, at most. I have a real aversion to cleaning something that is already clean

They won't be clean if you only clean them twice a year so no danger of that