Those cool, messy, usually wealthy mums

[Shessodowntoearth]

I want to be one 😅
Does anyone know the type?
Usually quite a few kids, at least two, kids are lovely, but generally quite messy/put together in a kooky way.
Houses are beautiful, but messy/disorganised, beautiful pieces everywhere/decoration but with a lived in/messy vibe. The mums are the same, usually seem quite disorganised but chilled out at the same time, generally away somewhere every school holidays and don’t work.
I know quite a few mums like this near me and wonder what this life is like, mainly the having more money. I’d love to be as laid back if people come around, to not care about the mess as the house is so incredible, to not worry if my kids clothes look scruffy in a cool way and to be comfortable in myself. Is this what happens when you come from money?

This whole thread reminds me of "You Should Have Seen the Mess" by Muriel Spark (short story)

I think a lot of people have said that being messy and unfussed about clutter isn’t reserved to rich people so are agreeing it’s not a class signifier. I also don’t know how it’s gone from the OP talking about people being messy & laid back about it to criticisms of people living in filth/squalor.
At any given time we have at least a couple of rooms in a mess usually the living ones. It would not prevent me inviting people round and it wouldn’t occur to me anyone would care about it. They are probably just happy the kids are making a bit of a mess somewhere else. My kids pick their own clothes, many of which are second hand and some of which have paint stains on them but they love them and if they are just playing at home or in the local park why on Earth does it matter? Many people simply don’t get why anyone cares and wouldn’t care what anyone else was wearing as long as it had been washed regardless of what they earned/what class they were (if they even thought about that at all because I don’t think people do that in real life anymore than they obsessively clean skirting boards)
Most people I know are like us. None of them are particularly rich but they are mainly on decent incomes in nice houses and tend to pass a lot of stuff on around the group and kids wear whatever they pick out unless it’s maybe a special occasion you’d expect to dress smartly for. Most of the mums will happily wear charity shop stuff and I am definitely not alone in picking up at school in a coat with a missing button or a jumper with a hole in it or whatever. I wear my old stuff when working from home and don’t change for the school run or popping to a local shop. Surely the majority of people do what’s needed to keep on top of essential cleaning but don’t worry beyond that? I know some people can’t relax in clutter so get why they’d invest more time getting organised but for most people regardless of income/class then why would you do stuff every day that gets undone in 15 minutes by family life and that you can equally do once a week or once a fortnight while keeping your home reasonably clean. Also why worry about young kids being in pristine clothes when they are probably about to do something to get them dirty/damaged. It’s easier to relax about what they are doing if you just let them re-wear such clothes once they have grass stains or paint marks or a small hole and it’s a even easier when they were mostly second hand and cheap/free to you in the first place. What about any of that has anything to do with your wealth (or lack of it)?

My house is reasonably large but messy. I'm messy and the kids are often messy. I never know what's going on at school (or elsewhere in life).

Maybe if I pretend to not care people would think I'm cool and wealthy or even posh?

Hmm...interesting..

In case this is interesting for anyone, outside the UK and Ireland this is seen as the oldest thing. I'm originally from Spain and I would say its unthinkable for anyone from any spectrum of society proudly having a messy house, and say its because "you have better things to do". If you have a messy house over there you keep it very quiet and have nobody over until is tidy and clean.
When I'm over there in Spain meeting old friends they ask me about this fact. I try to explain that there is a thing of "I don't care, I'm wealthy and I'm proud of not bothering, a mix between neo-hippy and this is beneath me". They still don't get it.
In Spain either you clean or pay someone to do it but houses are very tidy and clean. Wealthy or poor, old money or nuovo rich.
more than 20 years abroad but I am still fascinated when going to people's houses and I witness this. The mess and disorganisation. And no anxiety at all, but pride. It's really funny and interesting from a foreigner's point of view.

I would say it probably does.

😂

In all honesty I'm probably a naturally messy person. Being neat and tidy does not come naturally to me. Nor does at kind of organisation to be honest. However, I did make a conscious effort to improve in this area of my life once I had children. It's not fair on them to live in mess and miss out on school stuff because you can't get your shit together. It makes family life incredibly stressful and difficult.

Gosh. i think you could do with a glass of red 😁

There's a difference between dirt and mess though.
My house is messy with stuff all over but it's certainly not dirty. You won't find crumbs etc all over the place but stuff... Yeah...

It’s actually always kind of annoyed me how some posh people (as in this description) seem unable to brush their hair and/or teeth and always just look a bit scraggy. Their kids always have matted hair and messy old clothes, it isn’t cool.

‘Notes on a Scandal’ deals with this brilliantly. The lower-middle class narrator describes cleaning and tidying her tiny flat from top to bottom before anyone comes over. When she visits her upper-middle class colleague’s home, she is shocked at how laissez-faire she is. It isn’t tidy and she finds the children’s socks stuffed down the side of the sofa. The owner jokes that they are slobs. The house is a huge Victorian detached with original fireplace, wine cellar etc. The narrator has bought a new outfit and shoes for the visit. The owner is floating around in some sort of old bohemian frock…

I think I'm quite happy to be described as lower-middle class, and I'll keep my house clean. And I prefer white wine.

I have this in reverse. Our childhood nanny (or childminder as we called her, but she came to our house) was from a very large and poor Irish family. Very small overcrowded house, but absolutely immaculate. She judged us for so many things (coming downstairs in pyjamas, eating breakfast before "having a wash, " our cleanliness, not having our hair 'done' just to name a few.) Her mum used to send us a bundle of hand me downs for me and our nanny would hand them over to my mum and say" I hope you aren't offended, but... ". The bundle was all neat at meticulously ironed, I used to think this was something very special. She obviously was horrified by the hand me downs I was receiving from cousins 😂.

I only knew one properly old money person growing up, and I thought she was really poor. Very old, dark brown furniture, old pianos, curtains that looked ancient. Their house was so incredibly chaotic, but it was posh chaos. Piles of material that the mother was going to make things from, books EVERYWHERE (titles such as History of Hungarian Folk Dance, A Walk in the Hebrides etc) in piles, tools, and about 100 years worth of photo albums. If you had a cup of tea the teapot was just set on top of the stuff, nothing was cleared away,it seemed to permanently live there.

My mum looked after a couple whos house was like that.both published authors. It was so riddled with mice she had to stop going.

And I used to be of the 'I've better things to do than deep cleaning' ilk, until I moved house after ten years. When the furniture was moved I was completely traumitized by the cobwebs and dirt that had fossilised on walls behind wardrobes and bookshelves. I've made an oath to myself that I'll move everything every six months to hoover/clean. I do t want to ever have that shock again!

Apparently we live in a world where people who wear itchy fabrics to shoot fat birds in valleys and have old pubes piling up on their skirting boards are the enviable upper classes.

To summarise:

If you live in a mess you are posh. If you are clean and tidy, you are not posh.

Have I captured everything here?

Yes, pretty much. I am more than happy to not be posh if that means I don't have to suffer crusty sheets and mould in the bread bin [shudders]

That's pretty much an encapsulation of the distinction between upper- and lower-middle class, right there.

The widespread obsession with clean and tidy/ 'visitor-ready' houses is one of the reasons I think Mn as a whole skews LMC. While, weirdly, some of the same people seem far less keen on regular showering.

I am WC and definitely have better things to do than cleaning.

I think some of our perception of this is because we know with them it's a choice. It isn't because there's bills to pay and both parents are working all the hours and it's got on top of them.

Their kids aren't dressed in 'old' clothes that are mismatched, etc, because it's whatever the charity shop had available. They aren't dirty because the electric got cut off and nobody wants to wash in cold water.
Oddly, people are less include to make judgements when you live a certain way through choice. It's OK for your kids to wear the Von Trapp curtains if it's just because you think it's shabby chic. If it's because it's all you can afford, and other people know that, it'll be tutting and calls to the social services.

@MiddleParking I don't have a cleaner, not just because I can't afford it, but if I did, I just know I would clean before they came, which would totally defeat the object of spending the money on a cleaner, lol.

Nancy Mitford has a lot to answer for.

When my granny born in 1920 moved from sprawling house full of books and family heirlooms etc to a small neat east to maintain new build she fretted that she was now “suburban”

I must be an anomaly because on paper I tick many of the posh boxes. I'm privately educated. Live in a large period house. Our DC went to an independent school. We have a cleaner and a gardener. But I still refuse to live in artfully contrived squalor and I wouldn't dream of leaving the house with unbrushed hair and grubby hands.

That seems a perfectly reasonable post, @whatkatydid2013.

I come from the bottom of the working class -- I grew up in a tiny, overcrowded house with no bathroom or indoor loo and illiterate parents, and my father longterm unemployed in the recession of the 80s. We just about had enough to eat (large family, dependent older relatives living with us), but you always knew what day it was by what food there was.

None of this has catapulted me into thinking that worrying about my house's tidiness is a good use of my time. I'm busy.

But why do you think the squalor is 'artfully contrived', @Bookist? Our just is. I can assure you no one is 'curating' it to look attractively bohemian.

My only thought is that it's perfectly possible it might appear so to the type of person whose preference is for an entirely empty set of work surfaces in their kitchen, and who lauds the use of boiling water taps because they reduce the 'clutter' of a kettle.