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

I can really recommend CBT if you haven't tried it already, it really helped me with some OCD behaviours, not all completely gone and you do have to keep working at it but it helped me a lot. It's been really helpful for general anxiety as well and figuring out why I think and feel the ways I do

It's fairly clean, only my oven needs a good scrub.😳

Apart from that, I'm trying to be more organised, as it helps with my anxiety. And it works.

Also a good decluttering is a key for me to keep up on top of things.

You won't die of food poisoning from eating here and the loo is clean. But the bathroom mirror often has a bit of splashing on it, and the shower screen is limescaled.

If I didn't have a robot vacuum the floor wouldn't get hoovered nearly as often!

But hey. Life is for living.

I'm trying very hard to reduce the volume of stuff I own and can totally sympathise with the boxes waiting to go to charity shop (looks a piles of books sitting waiting to go to the little library (book exchange place) )

I'm now singing "How clean is your house" on the melody of "How deep is your love".

(Pretty clean, but not very relevant since I live alone)

Spotless really. I don't do Mrs Hinch cleaning, I scrub my floors and clean the skirting boards, doors, walls etc at least once a week. I have 3 DDs and sometimes I keep to just hoovering and mopping but I prioritise cleanliness. I usually clean in the day with 3mo DD napping or in a sling. Or DH takes the kids and I blitz the house. (He can and would clean, I prefer to do it)

Good storage and a lack of clutter helps. I've got baskets everywhere including one by the stairs to chuck stuff in to be taken up. I tidy while I brush my teeth, boil the kettle, wipe the basins while I wee, etc. I don't keep endless piles of paperwork or letters around, the kids can and do tidy and we reset the playroom and play areas every night.

Thank you I appreciate that. I was prescribed sertraline to manage my OCD and it’s helped…in the sense that now I just feel stressed when things aren’t right rather than it causing me to believe terrible things will happen because it’s not right.

I will certainly look into CBD as OCD can be quite the challenge.

This sounds just like me but you sound even more on top of it than I am at the moment 🤦🏻‍♀️

Sounds clean to me. I'd be chuffed at that level of cleaning. Is it other's judgement you'd be worried about? What are your thoughts when you go round other people's home?

Forgot to say that most families I know have the 'charity shop drop zone' or bags of clothes to pass on or that have been passed on. It's like a rotating door.

I think de cluttering is key. You have to be ruthless. The less stuff you have the easier it is to keep on top of it all. We are all guilty of having far too many clothes in our house so I seem to spend a lot of time on laundry/ironing. My kids are older and I don’t work so do a lot of cleaning. I tidy and hoover daily and once a fortnight or so try to do a proper clean. We live in a big old house and it seems like and endless task some days.

Well today I’ve cleaned the fridge, hoovered, washed the floors, swept, cleaned the surfaces, taken the recycling out, cooked, washed up and done the laundry.

I do small bursts, get rid of anything we don’t need or use,use furniture wipes for quick clean of surfaces or skirting and put things away as I walk around. I don’t feel on top of it either. Sometimes the relentlessness of making all that effort just to do it again the next day gets to me. What can you do though?

In germ season I get very strong urges to scrub everything with disinfectant

My house is lived in. There's me and DS (10, ND) and the cat. Dishes are done, floors are brushed and the laundry is always done. The kitchen and bathroom get cleaned down but I'm not going to allow myself to stress about it. If the dusting needs doing but I also need time to myself, to have a break and settle my mind then the dusting will wait. I'm not someone who overly stresses about my kid's stuff being out around the house because it's unnecessary and this is his home too.
Basically I do the bare minimum to keep myself sane.

I got a Christmas bonus for the first time ever and I'm spending some of it on a one off deep clean while we're staying with family at Christmas. I AM SO EXCITED to come home to a properly clean house!

My house is pretty minging. It's a really old house with tough stone walls, lime plaster, 3 log burners as main heat source. It is a NIGHTMARE to keep properly clean.

We both work ft so split jobs fairly 50/50. All the essential things get done but the really tricky bits (obscure corners full of stuff, high ledges in the stonework, behind radiators etc) is RANK.

DH thinks I'm mental but my bonus, my choice.

(I did also by myself some v lovely shoes and put a bit extra towards Christmas presents, so it's not all gone on cleaning!).

What don't you understand?.....I love cleaning...I find it therapeutic....my house is always clean and tidy and deep cleaned every month.....I'm 58 so I dont don't have young children..and to be fair my 3 GC don't make much mess when they visit ...so its easy to keep my home clean...my house is spotless every night when I go to bed ......I love it.....but I stillwork and have a very full life.....to each their own I say

FFS just have a wee and enjoy the 43.7 seconds to yourself. No man would clean a sink whilst having a piss.

Cleaner comes round once a week and does the bathrooms and kitchen (including floors). All other rooms get done as and when I (or DH) can be arsed. We keep the living room fairly tidy, but not the rest of the house.

both work ft, with one DS7. I work from home mostly but travel a bit for work some weeks ,

not gonna lie, it’s not the cleanest house: but not the worst either

Thank goodness I am not the only one doing that!

🎼How clean is your house, how clean is your house
I really need to learn
'Cause we're living in a world of fools
Breaking us down
When they all should let us be ...

My kids are all grown up and left home now so I have no excuse. I'm just lazy. The bathroom is about 60% clean, the kitchen maybe 70- 75%. The oven isn't too bad and the hob weirdly is the one thing I clean every night. No idea when I last cleaned the bathroom floor- probably the summer. The bathroom basin is ok but the bath is pretty skanky. Hall floor's a disgrace. Filthy. Likewise dining room floor last mopped late summer approx. Behind our bed there are some whopping cobwebs. The dining room table gets a wipe-down every few days so that's not too bad. In my defence I had covid a couple of weeks ago but tbh I've always been slovenly. I only tidy up when I'm expecting someone round. Hubby has finished work so I'm hoping he'll put the hoover round tomorrow.

Overall grime factor in the house in general- somewhere between 20 and 30% , but I suspect most people would say it's more like 50%.

Nobody ever said on their death bed that they wish they’d spent more time cleaning.

@Liz1tummypain why on Earth haven’t you cleaned your floors in months? That’s grim.

I can't be bothered . Dirt doesn't show too much and the dog told me he likes them grubby

@Iwannabeacrocodilehunter Just to say you can access CBT through the NHS and have sessions online, on Zoom, or face to face in our area, obvs could be different provisions elsewhere. The wait is long though, dh waited 6 months recently for help with anxiety, so I'd say if you feel that's too long for you and can afford it to find someone privately. Dh was ok to wait that long and he also wanted the convenience of the sessions by zoom.

I was the complete opposite when I first started CBT, I felt like I needed some help asap (mental health generally was not good then), I was in a bad place and we were thankfully able to afford to find a therapist privately. I've seen her on and off for a couple of years now. As well as the CBT helping with ocd and anxiety, she's an integrated therapist so I also had general counselling working on some of the roots of my anxiety (childhood issues, relationship with mother etc) It really helped me with understanding / piecing together what had caused a lot of my anxiety and behaviours. It gave me the tools and awareness of how my brain works in this cycle that I can now stop, or at least reduce unhelpful thinking patterns and anxiety about things. I tapered down gradually from weekly sessions to 2, 3 then 4 weeks in between and I go back for some if I feel I need to, I have to keep working on things myself day to day but that's how CBT works. If you go to the BACP website there's a search function to find a private registered / accredited CBT therapist in your area. Good luck I know how hard it can be