To ask how you stay on top of a house with kids?! Constantly behind!

[2lips]

My house is either show home clean or an absolute state and doesn't seem to ever be inbetween. I will blitz and get it perfect and then within days it looks like a nuclear bomb site and I feel miserable and stressed and overwhelmed until I end up snapping and blitzing it and the cycle repeats. The blitzing takes days. I just want to stay relatively on top of it and not constantly feel behind or guilty putting off the blitz.

Do you work full time?
Have a partner?

Generally speaking the advice is to get everyone in the house to full their weight including kids, declutter, TOMM, cleaner and/or robot hoover.

I have a cleaner once a week.

By no means are we rolling in cash but she is an absolute essential for me so would cancel other things before her.

We clean and tidy living room and kitchen every evening which helps keep things ticking along.

I feel exactly the same as you. I had a cleaner start last week. I'm hoping it helps. It felt good just to be tidying and not cleaning as well, which slows me down and means less gets tidy.

I've started checking the kids bedrooms before school every morning. I'm hoping that will keep on top of the destruction.

You need everyone to help.

I think there are about 8 people in the world who enjoy cleaning, but generally speaking I would say that most people feel like you describe above and feel overwhelmed by the mess and are constantly chasing their tail to stay on top of it.

I don't think I have ever managed "show home" standard!

This is a common theme on MN

Generally, the advice seems to be –

ruthless decluttering
clean little and often
never leave a room empty-handed

This works for me

To be honest, I don't think it's difficult to keep the house in good order if your partner pulls their weight. Difficulty arises if you live with a slob. In that case, you either (a) tidy up after them and resent it or (b) everything gets in a mess

5 minute room rescues. Set a timer for 5 minutes and tidy the room as much as you can before it goes. This gets you into the habit of sorting the big, visually annoying stuff that gets you down, so that when you walk into a room, it is tolerable.
Also, 5 mins is short enough time for DC to help. I'd do 5 mins tidy away as many toys as possible challenges. Or 5 mins pick up books or dirty clothes from the floor. Also very useful for ADHD teens to help them keep their rooms tidy.

Omg did I write this in my sleep??

A cleaner has saved my sanity, although we could do with a good declutter too.

Consistency, but only a very small amount of time

Never wake up in a messy house.
Never wake up with dirty dishes.

TOOM method for cleaning
DECLUTTER
enough realistic storage
put it away, don't put it down
A dishwasher
get kids to tidy kids as they go - once they finish with something, it goes back where it belong.

10 minutes before bath time to make sure kids toys and bedrooms are tidy
10 minutes before your own bedtime to go round the house and tidy whatever still needs to be tidy, including laundry

You're stuck in a binge cycle which doesn't really work with cleaning when you have people making mess every day. You have to do stuff every day to stay on top of it (the benefit is that you don't have to binge at the weekend instead). Work out what the hotspots are in your house, places that attract clutter and mess. There's some stuff you and your family might spend 15/20 mins doing every day: picking up stuff from doors and surfaces downstairs, a laundry load, whizzing round the living room or kitchen floor with the hoover, a wipe of sink and toilet when you go for a wee.

TOMM is a good place to start, and you can adapt as needed. But essentially if you want a clean house every day you need to clean it every day. That took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out!

We clean once a week every Thursday evening. We clean the house top to bottom in the when we get home from work. If hubby is able to look after kids whilst you get the house in order it will make life a lot easier. Or if you can swap duties

the problem when you do one big or blitz clean a week is that you keep stressing and waste time about the mess, and you are always worried about visitors dropping in.

Keep it tidy
clean no more than 30 or 45 minutes a day during the week - quickly done once you add the laundry, but making the effort not to do more to have your life back

gives you a much more chilled life

It's not necessarily the worst thing in the world to live like that (let mess build up then give it a big blitz); it just depends what works for you.

I do try to stay on top of things, but honestly, I get really downhearted when it feels like I'm CONSTANTLY doing little bits of housework, all the time, multiple times a day, wiping, tidying, picking up, washing up, etc, etc, etc. It can feel like every day is a battle against the rising tide, and it's never, ever done - which is not great for my mental health.

Sometimes I would rather just let non-essential mess go ignored for a few days, have a break from thinking about how the place looks, concentrate on other activities and come back to it when I have a few clear hours. Then: podcast on, hoover out, today I am cleaning.

Clear up kitchen every meal- dishwasher or fairy liquid. Teach everyone how to load/unload a dishwasher.
Depending on ages of DC- put their rooms in order as you go thro the day or chuck their stuff on the floor for them to do it if older than 10.
My dc have spotless rooms through their own choice now.
Delay cooking meals until you have achieved all you need to for peace of mind. If they are hungery they will eventually twig that you only have 1 pair of hands.
Same for dog walking, if everyone in family refuses to do it, I down kitchen apron and go for a leisurly walk with dog and resume cheffing when I return. They work it out eventually.

This is exactly how I feel, if anyone ever wants to pop in it's complete panic. Every time anyone is due to come I end up doing a whole day blitz the day before. It's a lot!

I swear by the Rock the Housework audio guided cleans. I do one most days when I have a spare 20-30 mins. It's amazing how much you can get done when you don't need to think or plan, just follow what someone is telling you!

Look at a room, decide whether it needs 25, 50 or 100 things tidied away, then do that number as fast as possible, no prevaricating, no distractions. Make it a race or competition if anyone else is helping.

Wipe main surfaces daily.

I agree with the guided cleans. They stop you from going overboard and spending more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time.

They are all about CLEANING , not so much as tidying up. But realistically, it takes just as long to put something where it belongs than chucking it in a pile, then waste time going through the pile, then putting it away.

You get used to stay tidy, when the goal is to reclaim all your weekends and spend as little time as you possibly can between work and kids, but having a house always visitors ready. (maybe no MIL ready, but for most people 😂)

I’m constantly moving things back to their rightful place; I rarely go upstairs without taking something up and everything is tidied away at night, I’m slowly getting the kids used to this idea too.

"I will blitz and get it perfect and then within days it looks like a nuclear bomb site..."

Within days is your key word!!

You absolutely cannot leave it for a few days - Unless you tidy up EVERY single day, you'll end up with an untidy house and feel miserable!!

exactly that.

We know and accept it about dirty dishes. You don't leave them "for a few days", it's the same for everything else in the house.

TOMM is good. Or get a cleaner if your budget will stretch. We have a cleaner come once a fortnight and this is enough to ensure it doesn’t descend into too much of a disaster! Blitz tidying once kids in bed. Never leave a room empty handed. Decluttering (this is the bit I’m struggling with). Accept we all feel overwhelmed by the state of our houses sometimes. Acceptance does help.

As everyone has already said:

Declutter! First and foremost. Less stuff means less stuff to tidy, mend, move about the house. Less laundry. Just less!

Clear surfaces mean you can clean quickly and get straight to cleaning instead of having to shift piles of stuff around first.

I’m at the beginning of this process and it’s hard and things get worse to start with – because time is finite so the time you spend Decluttering means time not spent cleaning, and also piles of stuff accumulating while you try to get rid of them to overwhelmed charity shops or Freecycle timewasters, but that’s a one-off.

And yes, everyone needs to be on board. I have just scolded DP for making his lunch then sodding off back to his office leaving on the counter: bread board, bread, bread knife, knife, butter, bowl of tuna, mayonnaise. Who does he think is going to tidy this, a fairy? Is the fridge stuff magically going to leap back inside? He’s of the “don’t do a thing all day then blitz it at night” but fails to see that that causes more work: the next person needing to use the counter has to shove all his stuff aside (or clear up after him), and it’s much harder and takes longer to clear a whole day’s worth of mess where it’s all jumbled than to clear as you go.

My trick on this one was to keep the hall and one room in pretty good condition. So if it's a neighbour just calling for a quick chat, we can stand in the clean tidy hallway. If it's for something longer, I invite them in. If you have two reception rooms, like lots of Victorian terraces do, try making one of them child free so it is always clean and inviting - maybe not often used but a calm place to go to at the end of the day.

Basic mini routines help, like putting a washload on as soon as you wake up and then hanging it or drying it after school drop off, or when you get in after work, then folding it at bedtime.