Does anyone else just feel so down about their house?

[Grasss]

I feel like I'm probably being a bit unreasonable but this has been getting me down for weeks. I just feel like everyone else's house is nicer than ours. There just feels like so many things to do and no time in the world to do them.

We own our house, it's not in the nicest of areas but not terrible either. It's an ex council house, not the prettiest to look at from the outside.

Inside everything is pretty tidy but it just feels not properly clean all the time. We have 3 kids, one a toddler and me and DH (and a dog!) So it just feels... Not dirty necessarily but not clean either all the time.

I try to have a bit of a full clean when I can between full time work and children but it feels back to square one again within a week. The walls always have some sort of mark on them, dirty hand prints here and there, the bathroom desperately needs doing up but we can't afford it right now.

I go to my friends houses and they all seem to have such nice pristine homes even with little kids and I wonder what it is I'm doing wrong. Everything in our house feels half finished and a bit grubby.

How do people keep show style homes whilst living with multiple kids and working full time?!?!?! I appreciate it sounds very dramatic but it's depressing me at the moment. Everything could do with a good makeover and proper scrub but without the money or time for it I just feel a bit shit about it.

Anyone else feel like this? Like their house isn't awful by any means but it still gets you down and never feels "done".

Sort of… I love my home, it’s a lovely house in a beautiful spot, but my goodness, the cleaning list is absolutely never ending. And it still doesn’t ever feel spotless! We’re on a farm, with a toddler and two indoor dogs, my husband works all the fucking time and I’m a bit pushed for time too with plenty to do. I’m just never on top of it.
I find I’m much happier if I just accept it and remember there are much more important things than having a spotless home.
I did find that I can keep ahead of it a little more by following the organised mum method (I’m sure that’s what it is called!), it’s like a little and often sort of approach. And by being absolutely brutal with clutter, my husband jokes that if something is left alone for half an hour, I’ve either binned it or donated it 🤣

Tough with pets around.
less clutter, less dust - so declutter if and investing in good storage for the rest is helpful. But I do think with pets you need to hoover daily.
re the bathroom - could you do it but by bit? Fresh paint on walls and tiles, new shower curtain, regrouting the bath? Nee toilet seat? Fresh tap? New mirror…

You need to get scummier friends.
I do know how you feel. We have one set of friends who have loads of money, a beautiful house and cleaners who clean a few times a week and a gardener. Of course my house is never going to look like theirs.

Can you afford a deep clean rather than regular cleaning? They would then tackle the bits that need doing more.

we have two cats and two kids (2 and 4 months). The house is always clean enough but only because we have a cleaner every 2 weeks, i hoover everyday and have MINIMAL stuff. The house is very bare but it means there is less to clean and looks in good condition.

Also fresh lick of paint helped massively!

@Disneyblueeyes You may be thinking of Marie Kondo

Yeah it's never-ending and I don't even have kids. I have cats and they make enough mess.
I made a list of all the jobs that need to be done on a less regular basis, divided into rooms. That ended up running to 4 pages of A4. I've printed out copies and made them into a ring-bound book (yeah I'm really weird). I do everything in the spring and then just before my summer holidays and once in the autumn. It sometimes takes up to a month to get through everything. But I also choose a room a month in addition to the 3 major cleans and go through the list again.
There are things on that list like clean around light switches, skirting boards, clean windows etc.
Other more regular jobs just get done as I'm going along but it really is constant.
My lounge looks way better since I got rid of all the furniture in January (some of which I managed to sell) and replaced with new. It looks really nice now. I do think that furniture ends up looking a bit grotty (all of my stuff was 15 years old). It isn't really made to last like in the past. Modern furniture shows its age and doesn't look clean, whereas I find proper antique furniture doesn't. I think I'm describing that badly.
You can't polish a turd is what I'm trying to say.

The bathroom will always look a bit grotty if its old and needs replacing. If you can't afford to replace it now, can you start a savings account specifically for the bathroom. Declutter and sell some stuff if possible and put all of that money into the bathroom account. It will take ages to build up the money but it's the only way really and will need to be done at some point.

We have 4 kids, one a toddler, sometimes a dog, a cat and two adults.
I feel the same, our house is quite nice for how busy it is but my OH is always repainting walls because there's marks everywhere. The skirting boards get battered and although it's clean, it just doesn't feel sparkling clean.
But I've accepted it won't (most the time) then I get fixated on it and become obsessed til I knacker myself out then repeat 🤣

It's probably worth bearing in mind that most people's houses are at their cleanest when they have guests. Your friends are probably running around like blue arsed flies trying to tidy before you arrive, before returning to their usual state! :P

Honestly, I despair over my house and we are trapped here. We live in a 2 bed and have 2 teens sharing a room (boy and girl). The house is tiny and we don’t even have room for a dining table anywhere. All our furniture is mismatched and there are so many things we need to do, such as repairs and decorating, but never seem to be able to find time. Keeping tidy is a nightmare as there just isn’t room for everything

Yes, this. But it’s a constant battle for me as my mindset is “less stuff” but DP has ADHD which comes with hoarding tendencies, and he’s a “gadget life hack” person – so with the baby’s socks, he’s also bought sock-ons to keep them on (don’t work, it’s more stuff to wash, put away, pick up from being scattered everywhere), lots more socks so there are extra pairs everywhere so he doesn’t have to go and retrieve the lost sock, just grab more from small piles everywhere, and net laundry bags to put the socks in to keep them together in the wash – but then doesn’t use them, they just sit on the kitchen counter with the Amazon packaging they came in 🙄🙄🙄

Whereas my office/the spare room, which is my one unshared space in the house, has N O T H I N G. Bed, bedside tables and lamps. My desk, with a lamp and a vase of flowers. Rug, curtains. Chest of drawers in which I keep work stuff I really need. One nice object on top – a beautiful bowl I bought at Leach pottery. That’s it. Nothing to tidy! And less stuff means nicer stuff: I could afford the beautiful bowl because I didn’t spend on Amazon life hacks or Tiger decorative tat, etc.

Our house isn’t pristine in its bones – it’s a fatty fixer-upper covered in peeling woodchip wallpaper, an utter bastard that is simultaneously tough to remove and yet peeled and chipped in places, the highly decorative Victorian skirtings gather dust continuously, the previous owners’ carpets are GRIM. Putting clutter on top of this backdrop looks even worse; I imagine if we had white walls and stripped floorboards we could have a bit more “stuff” but when the backdrop is tatty it only looks OK with zero clutter. Honestly, be ruthless. It’s taken me multiple rounds of KonMari to truly make it click; at first I thought I was getting rid of stuff but I was barely making a dent. Get rid, get rid, get rid. Take annual leave and do it in one fell decluttery swoop and rejoice in the space you gain and the time you gain from not needing to constantly tidy. Cleaning is quicker too when surfaces are clear.

Can I just say? I have devised a method of living that works for me.

Every morning I have my breakfast and read my emails.. post on here.. and then I send myself an email entitled 'Today I will' and then I list all the jobs I want to get done one by one. It really works !

Today (Friday)
Wash out the bins in the kitchen and leave to dry outside
Clean the cat tray
Wash kitchen floor
Wash dog blankets
Put clean washing away upstairs
Clean my car
Walk dogs...

That sort of thing :)
When I have finished those jobs it sort of spurs me on to do more

Doomed to fail. It's the toddler and dog most I expect. Learn to care less.

I feel ya, I think it's quite normal to do this.

I live in a lovely area but I rent a small, 2 bedroom flat for me and my DD.
All her friends live in nice houses, with gardens and I can't help but be so jealous. We both are!
I just wish I had some space, everything feels so cluttered and cramped even though I don't have much. I can't exercise in the evenings because my living room is right outside my DD's bedroom and it wakes her up, I don't even have space for a pet hamster.
But we're happy and healthy and we have more than many. Plus I have plenty of time. I'm sure we won't be here forever... right?!

Try not to beat yourself up about the way you feel OP, see if there's a way to use it as motivation. Maybe trying 'fixing' one room at a time or gather some savings up.

This!! Impossible to find a cleaner who’s flexible to do whatever you need provided you’re paying! Why??? 😩

Are you me?! 6 of us in 3 bed terrace ex council. Nothing looks “nice”. Everything a bit ratty. Nothing really has a home because bad storage. 🤷🏽‍♀️ I just try to make peace with the fact I don’t like it and hopefully can move eventually 😏

OP when you next paint a room use Silk paint because finger prints and marks wipe off much easier than from a Matt paint.

Oh I know what you mean. Our old house needed a lot doing to it and just never seemed pristine. But we just never bothered when DS was young and thought we would wait till he was older. But I didn't really like people coming in.

We moved in the end - to a new build which was newly decorated. We also got rid of a lot of old furniture and unnecessary belongings at the same time and did an Ikea shop for basics.

All our walls are currently white, as it was a new build. That helps too, although I do want to add some colour to some of the walls in future.

I am not suggesting you move - but could you get rid of stuff that is definitely not wanted and maybe redecorate the rooms you dislike the most?

I have 2 cats and 2 dogs so plenty of muddy paw prints to be found. Even when I steam mop the kitchen floor tiles the animals putter patter and makes paw marks again. I can't keep them shut in one room all the time. Add into the mix a teen with.learning disability who runs in and out of the garden all the time. There is only so much you can do. If you look for dirt in your home you will find it. I try not to look too hard. I'm more concerned that everyone is happy.

We have a holiday home in Brittany and there is no clutter there. It is so much easier to keep clean than our home in UK.

When my two were toddlers, and I despaired at the mess, a wise old neighbour said to me: “You can have a palace. Or you can have children. But you can’t have both!”
She was right, and I learned to be more tolerant of the sticky hand prints, dropped food, crayon on walls etc, until they were older.
I am retired now, they have grown up and moved 50 miles away with their own homes, I have that pristine house and new bathroom - and I miss the messy chaos of family life!
Learn to love what you have, OP. A happy family home is a huge plus. The palace can wait.

I don’t have a dog, which helps. I think it’s nigh on impossible to be as clean as I like with a dog - and we used to have one! One necessary thing is training kids from the beginning. You can’t swim against the tide so you need to make them take an active role in house upkeep.

The decor, well there isn’t much you can do if you simply can’t afford it other than save towards it.

You have to remember generally people always have a good clean before visitors and almost definitely isn’t always like that. I can’t keep on top of ours with three kids and I work very part time!
we’re redecorate at the moment and it’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do everywhere to brighten the place up.
have you looked at things like frenchic paint for the bathroom you can make a bathroom look almost new again with some clever tricks, grout pens etc.
having said this I do feel the same, spend a whole day tidying ans cleaning for it to revert back by the end so it’s not just you

I hear you, OP - my house makes me feel so depressed :(
Bought in a panic in the midst of split with Ex and losing my dad - disabled DM moved with us and she was desperate to buy the house we’ve moved to.
It needs so much more work doing to it than I realised - I start a job to improve something and find ten more problems along the way.
so disheartening, and a complete drain on time and money… DM oblivious as she’s not able to help, so I feel completely alone with it all, too

I keep a whiteboard on the fridge with weekly, fortnightly and monthly tasks.
Weekly :
Bathroom
Dusting
Hoovering
Laundry

Fortnightly:
Bedsheets

Monthly (or longer):
Windows
Skirting boards
Sweep outside
Dishwasher deep clean
Washing machine deep clean
Tumble drier filter
Car
Oven
Fridge

Although I have dusting on my weekly list I only do a room or two at a time. The same with windows on the monthly list.
I probably spend two hours a week cleaning on top of the normal stuff like keeping the kitchen clean, dishwasher etc.

It helps me keep on top of it but it is NEVER fully clean and the biggest thing is to accept that you don't live in a show home, it's a living breathing imperfect container for your humans.
If you don't want to clean all the time you need to accept a level of discomfort.

Also I echo what pps said. When you look at other peoples houses you're looking with visitors eyes. I bet the host is worried you'll look behind the bin and see the t bag they dropped there earlier.

Hahahah I have 3 kids, 2 with disbilities, 2 Great Danes and still manage to keep mine semi nice hahaha my downfall is putting my washing away! I need a cleaner just for that!