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".

We stopped having people round 🤣

Our house was messy when our dc were little and our bathroom which was overdue being replaced when we moved in 20 years ago was only done last year. Our bathroom fitter said it was the worst bathroom he’d worked on🫣🤣

It has literally taken us 20 years to have the time and money to do the work on our house.

It’s only a small house too but I don’t care anymore. It’s ours and it works for us. Maybe not for ds1 who has the box room but he’s at university so not here much.

Things will get better and easier as the children get older.

Skethylita hope things go well for you and your family x

Cleaning every day is the only way to keep it nice. So kitchen , a wipe round bathrooms and a hoover everyday ( mop every other of you have wood floors) I also touch up walls etc quite frequently ( and have had it all painted with wipeable paint in high traffic areas such as the hallway)

i used to feel this way but I’m much more organised now.

make a list so when you get a mo you can go straight to what needs doing!

We have no shoes in the house, it’s cultural and was the way I was raised, a lot of dirt can be walked in to a house this way. I have a robot vacuum which goes off on its merry way often. We only ever sit at the table to eat, very occasionally we will eat dessert or a snack on the couch but it’s very rare, again it’s just an absolute no no from my childhood. I was out with a friend yesterday and she was saying how her kids from when they were teenagers eat their dinners in their rooms another friend has said this and I was really surprised it was allowed.

You need good storage and to regularly get rid of stuff you do not use.

I felt the same way about our back garden. Big mud patch where the penalty spot was in front of a toy goal. Smashed up flowers from the football. Kids grew up. Now I have a beautiful garden with a lovely lawn...and no one to play in it. Enjoy your family now in a messy home, you will enjoy a neat and tidy house later.

I sympathise op I feel like that.

Two small dogs, three of us at home but it's just constant. It stays pristine for a day then everyone comes home. The drudge seems relentless.

We have a living room and a kitchen downstairs and no dining room so it's always neeeding a tidy as we are always in the living room.

Hoping to move next year but it's dependant on a lot of things.

Ours is a dump. An upstairs flat thst was meant to be a stop gap but 20 years on still here. Raised 3 kids in a 2 bed plus boxroom and no internal storage. It never looks tidy or clean. Too much stuff,not enough room.

I get it. Thing is, a show home type of house only really became a thing in recent years? Before that, we viewed our homes as places to shelter, gather and rest from the outside world. Interior decor has only become a thing because we no longer have to worry quite so much ( though many still do have to of course) about basic survival. But this attitude to our homes seeps in to our psyches and we can feel an internal pressure to have this perfect home. I used to suffer from it badly. Now, I can no longer be bothered to care about how it looks to anyone outside of the family coming in to it. I do the best I can and with a job and ageing parents, two teens, a dog and a cat… I no longer put pressure on myself. There are two types of people, I read somewhere recently… those who see dirt everywhere and those who just don’t. Not sure if that helps in any way, but pay attention to that inner pressure to show a perfect home to the world. It really does not matter.

drpet49 why would you post something so clearly smug and unhelpful? Shame on you.