How clean is your house?

[stellabella22]

I've been getting super stressed with the state of our house lately. I have two dc (one a baby) and never seem to get the time to do a deep clean. I tidy and hoover daily. Kitchen and bathroom are always wiped down after use with anti bac spray. Dishes are washed, clothes are washed and ironed but that's about as much as I can manage. I can't remember the last time I dusted or cleaned the windows inside (we have a window cleaner for outdoors). Skirting boards are grubby and don't get me started on the garden.

I get really overwhelmed with it. Dh and older dc don't help much. Ds will keep his room relatively tidy but it's me who does the majority.

House is very cluttered too. I often have 'clear outs' as in sorting things out and bagging them up but then the bags just sit there because I don't make time to take them to charity shops or the tip.

So tell me, how often do you properly clean? What is your house like in terms of cleanliness and do you have any tips for keeping on top of it? Yh

What Hbh17 said

I have a cleaner once every two weeks - they do the bathrooms & kitchen and whatever else they have time to do - dust, hoover skirtings etc. we hoover daily - have animals, do the basics such as washing up, laundry etc. If I notice anything I try and do it then and there.

my windows and skirting boards and corners and back of things are really bad and I don’t have any little kids. I keep on top
of routine stuff and my oven is sparkling but they seem like big jobs. I think it’s Xmas stressing us all. I’m starting to convince myself no one will notice, Xmas creates a mess anyway and it will be there waiting in January. We all have enough to do in December. Sounds like you’re doing great to me x

I have 2 DC and i WFH.
Things I do daily: tidy up, hoover, dishes, kitchen countertops
Twice per week: bathrooms refresh
Once per week: dust, mop high traffic areas

I honestly cannot remember the last time i cleaned the oven. Or the windows. Or steamed the sofa. Or cleaned the kitchen cabinets. And so on.

I have diagnosed OCD and get very upset when my home is not clean or organised. It generally looks like a show home and everything has its place. I can spot something out of place a mile away. I clean daily (toilets, vacuuming, Polish etc) deep clean weekly (oven, wash sofa, use the carpet shampooer) or fortnightly as a minimum.
I work full time and I generally exhausted, but not keeping the house spotless is equally stressful. I wish I could be more relaxed about my home.

It doesn’t matter how clean other people’s houses are - any set of randoms are going to be on a spectrum of absolutely filthy to bleach clean and everything in between. You need to cut yourself some slack and remind yourself that cleaning isn’t the default job of the one with the vagina. The other adults who live in the house must take equal responsibility.

I wouldn't describe ours as a show home but it's reasonably clean.

We have a cleaner who comes weekly. This frees us up to do more of the "deep clean" kind of stuff. I have an app which reminds me to do chores on a rotation, so for example one week it might be cleaning the windows and wiping out the insides of the kitchen cupboards; the next week it will be something else like dusting the blinds. I like this approach as it means we pretty much manage to stay on top of things.

I see it I do it.

while the pasta was boiling yesterday I cleared the kitchen window sill, wiped it and replaced some items. Took less than the 10 mins the pasta took.

I hate cleaning. Downstairs is usually decent although there's always toys scattered around the living room because as soon as I tidy them away my toddler pulls them out again. Upstairs is generally a mess but visitors never go upstairs so it doesn't worry me too much.

I'm the same as you OP, I am very house proud and I can't leave things. I do have high standards but u can't help it. I also have a baby and an older child and DH. I clean/tidy/laundry everyday. Change bed linen weekly, clean bathrooms twice a week. Big jobs I will tackle one at a time and try to do one every weekend. I'm on Mat leave atm but hired a cleaner for when I go back to work as I simply won't have time and don't want to spend my entire weekends cleaning. It's relentless.

Please try and chill out most people's houses aren't visitor ready 24/7 let alone cleaning inspector with white gloves and a magnifying glass ready.

Ours is clean but we have four animals so if we don't keep on top of it, it gets grim pretty quickly - three indoor cats and a dog make a surprising amount of mess 🤣

I hoover daily, sometimes twice a day, as they shed and get litter on the carpets. Bathroom and kitchen are wiped down after use, dishes washed regularly and floors swept daily too.

I find it's much easier to do "little and often" than to wait and do loads on the weekend or something.

Housework is the bane of my life. I've got disabled DC and they just make so much mess (and break everything, and extra laundry). My DH does a lot of the childcare and all the cooking but is so bloody messy, I swear he causes as much mess as the DC.

I wish I did as much as you, and I don't have children!

I do the bare minimum. Everything gets dirty almost as soon as it's cleaned so I just don't aim to achieve, for example, a clean floor all the time. Food prep and eating areas are cleaned everyday and dishes are cleaned and put away. Also the same with clothes, but the windows, floors, furniture, lights, garden are basically ignored. There'll be time available to you when your DC are grown up and left the house. It sounds sounds trite, but I used to like a clean house too and it took surprising effort to change my outlook. I don't have clutter at all which helps though.

My skirting boards and windows aren't too bad, but then I don't hoover and tidy every day, or constantly wipe bathroom surfaces - this is a criticism on your part, OP. Tidying probably good to do with small children, if you hoovered 2-3 times a week, cleaned bathroom say once a week with a couple of wipes inbetween, you should have time to some the other things occasionally - if only a couple of windows at a time.

It sounds like you're doing loads. I was getting wound up about the state of the house regularly but I've solved it a bit by using a robot vacuum cleaner and an app to schedule cleaning which lets me just keep on top of it all. The structure of knowing that everything is on the schedule and all I have to do is my list keeps me sane.

If you clean daily, and have kids, do you have a job as well? I'm always slightly amazed when people say they clean daily- where do you find the time? I suspect it's only possible if you don't have a job to go to. The best I can manage with 2 kids and a full-time is one thorough clean a week ... which is fine in my book. I don't get anxiety about it

My house sounds similar OP. Please ignore the 'just lower your standards' or 'just learn to ignore it' comments. I received a lot of those when I was struggling and it really didn't help at all.

A few things that did help me to keep on top of everything was:

• A "things that don't belong here" sack. So a bin bag or similar, go around your house and clear all floors and surfaces of things that don't belong there. Then take them to one place (I use my bed) and sort them into piles for each room they go to. Once you've got everything in piles, go put them all away. I swear cluttered surfaces breed mess and dirt and the constant visual noise really stresses me out. *Target one room at a time for selling/getting rid of stuff. But do sell/get rid of stuff. *Focus on having just a couple of rooms that are clean/clear/tidy. I find so long as I have a couple of rooms that are clean and clear of mess, I'm able to handle the other rooms being less than ideal. *If you're able to keep things tidy (as a family), get a cleaner either as a one of or monthly and just ask them to do the jobs you're struggling to get around to. If this isn't an option, speak to your partner and ask him to take the kids out of the house for 2hrs (or however long you need) so you can target these specifics tasks without distraction.

Also OP, I specifically picked natural woods for my doors/skirting (as opposed to painted) specifically to help hide the dirt/dust. If you ever renovate a house and find you're someone who gets stressed by seeing dust etc then I can massively recommend my solution 😅

This, this, 100% this.
Why do people want their homes to look like a show home all the time? A home is lived-in. It needs to be clean enough to be safe, and your home being tidy can make you feel much better.. but anti bac spray everywhere? Deep cleaning? Absolutely not.

I’m a SAHM with school age children and yet I am a devil for getting the washing put away and putting off clearouts.

when I had one small baby my house was spotless but my OCD was in overdrive at that point so it wasn’t actually a good thing.

when I had my next, things really started to slip and it was hard going.

you sound like you’ve got a good balance tbh.

I do as little as I can get away with - would far rather spend my time doing other things, I find cleaning unbearably boring.

I work full time (as does DP) with a three year old and my house is the same - surface clean and reasonably tidy but do not look under or behind things. And our bedroom is a cluttered hell of all the junk that needs sorting. My partner does all the cooking and I do all the cleaning, but he gets a set time to do that whereas I have to fit all the housework into everyday life? I am realising I got the worse deal. I can kind of keep on top of things if we have no weekend plans and he takes our child out, but if we're busy it all goes to pot.

At some point over the Christmas break I really need to clean under the sofa and under our bed, because they are truly revolting.

Dusting I do weekly when I hoover because I’m asthmatic. En-suite gets cleaned every 1-2 weeks (by 2 weeks it’s a biohazard though) and main bathroom sometimes less as that’s only used by guests unless I have a bath. I always rinse toothpaste out of the sink and squeegee the shower screen after use though and throw some toilet cleaner under the rim every few days. I wipe the front of the kitchen cupboards down occasionally as they’re gloss and show the dirt.
window cleaner does outside windows, can’t remember the last time I did the inside ones!
i rarely get chance to do cupboards etc, last time I did one was this time last year!