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 is my favourite thread ever on MN. I grew up like this, without much money though. Bloody hated it and now live in a clean, warm, very small new-build. Lower middle class definitely the life for me!

Also, for @DressingRoom , I dream of the day I can have a boiling water tap fitted! Seriously though, that sort of upbringing really doesn’t suit ALL children. Some actually want clean clothes and someone bothering to sign school trip forms. I did, and I saw a good few when working as a teacher.

No, I dislike that very austere, operating theatre style of kitchen. We have plenty of stuff out on our kitchen tops but everything is nice and clean.

whatkatydid2013
You sound like my type of mum.

We also let DC choose what they're wearing and don't care about the odd paint mark or mud stains on the knees. Why would I want to waste money when there's perfectly decent clothes there to play in?
Mine have never left the house in a tutu and odd wellies though, although they've definitely chosen a Christmas jumper in spring once because it was in the clearout pile. Any parent knows that once something is earmarked to leave the house it's the bestest most favouritist, out of the world most amazing item in the universe. 😂

I think it's more about how you grow up than wealth. My mum and granny both kept a messy house. They were both academics, and neither prioritised housework (my granny used to say it was a feminist issue - why should women be tied to drudgery?). As a result, I think my idea of what's normal is skewed, and piles of papers and dust is ok - I don't really see it. At best it's bohemian, at worst it's pretty chaotic.
Having had two generations of women above me who were paid as well as their male partners and did no more housework than them made that very normal for me.
We have a big old house (mostly paid for pre-kids when I was earning the same as my DH) and maybe that makes it look less squalid. I suspect I chose the style of house because that's how I grew up. But mostly I think it's about what you're used to.

My parents were fond of ambitious renovation projects and I grew up in a cloud of brick dust. I can't work out if we were working class or middle class, i think we had a foot in both camps. But all the disruption made me hanker after peace and order, and as an adult I'm now living in my third new build. I have a cleaner and the place is spotless (most of the time).

I'm a member of David Lloyd and a big yoga fan, so can I claim to be slightly posh though?! But I also like Spanish all-inclusive holidays (sorry).

Can I asked the people who are messy/untidy, but clean, don’t you get fed up with lifting up, moving, all your stuff to Hoover / Dust / anti bac?
I get fed up of sliding the microwave over to right 20 inches to wipe underneath once a week.
I hate to have to move piles of cups / homework / letters , etc. as well.

I clean under the microwave once in a blue moon!

Otherwise fairly salubrious, between my efforts and the cleaner's. The cleaner doesn't do the kitchen: that's my job. She does floors, skirting boards and bathrooms.

My American xDH thought that almost all British homes were squalid.

I am a bit messy. But when I clean, I tidy up. Th problem of course is that 10 minute later it's a bit messy again because I'll have messed up the pillows, dropped some clothes on the bed, left a cup on the side table etc... . But luckily it takes a little longer to get dirty.

DH is tidy. But not clean. So he'll tidy things into piles or whatever but he doesn't actually do cleaning so it's all a bit pointless in my mind.

Having said that, I consider myself clean but I seldom move the microwave!

There are loads of people here saying “I’m poor and messy and therefore this is no signifier of wealth”.

I’d like to say that we’re comfortably off and quite tidy!) I even have washable rugs. Gasp. (I grew up in a similar economic setting too so this isn’t some class thing).

I don’t have any dogs, my skirting boards are average, I change my bed fortnightly, and I don’t have a single book lying sideways on top of other books on my bookshelf. I also don’t really care for horses and pictures of horses, although my daughter has recently made a PowerPoint presentation on why I should buy her one.

I’m an aberration and there are only 2 explanations:

1. switched at birth
2. I’m actually poor and I just don’t know it.

Just remembered a family I knew who came from money, you wouldn't have known at all from how they dressed or their car. They both spoke extremely politely which really made them stand out.
Their house was a 4 bed double fronted Victoria terrace in a private road. It gave 'stately home library' vibes in that it didn't feel cosy/homely. Floor to ceiling shelving with books, but very few possessions and not much furniture. A few artifacts from their extensive travels (if you commented on the nice plate on the wall you would have got the whole history behind the region it was bought).
Their kitchen was woodchip wallpaper painted in dark green with wooden units that had been there probably since it was built. Obligatory pine table where you ate/drank everything, I don't think taking a cup of tea out of the kitchen was permitted.
No chaos whatsoever, they were the type that ate meals on the dot every single day. They invited me for breakfast one time and the woman was very excitedly raving about how much juice she'd extracted from 2 oranges.
Lovely people but very stilted view on the world. I was doing my A levels at the time and they just assumed I'd be applying to Oxford and when they asked where my parents were travelling that summer and I replied Turkey, they very helpfully suggested cycling trails in Cappidocia. My family were going to Marmaris 😂

Cappadocia before anyone corrects me.

No corrections from me... just a little pootle around Google for 'Cappadocia'.

I only tidy and clean things where it seems to really need it. So my hair may go unbrushed, because it doesn't really do any harm, but I always wash my hands in case I spread bacteria or viruses around.

Similarly, I'm good on food hygiene, but I'll let dust pile up for ages because it doesn't really seem to harm anything.

For some people there seems to be a morality about it, and a need to have things spotless.

@CloudyAgain bloody autocorrect, I'm not going to try again 😬

To be fair I've witnessed people in Spain mop the pavement outside their front door!

Ha probably my bosses wife and his friends wives. They live in Bath but love to hang out at Babington

I need more information about the pine tables! Do they have a set of farmhouse chairs to match or is it a hotch potch of different chairs?

I am messy and not rich or posh but I do have a pine table.

They bloody do if you have enormous Victorian with original sashes in London😁. But actually the main issue is muddy dogs whose mud turns to dust when dry.

Perhaps at the bottom of it is this.

If you have a cleaner (or believe that cleaning is the work of 'other people' due to the way you were raised) then you know you don't have to do the dusting yourself. Seeing a thick layer of dust doesn't make you think of work you have to do, so your eyes pass over it.

If you have to do the housework yourself, then sitting down in a scruffy room is just living in a To Do list. So you just get on and do it then enjoy the cleanliness and peace of mind.

I'm not sure it is Bristol. Aside from the stories of people living in actual squalor, I think some people just have different thresholds of what bothers them.

My house is fine for me, but I'm not washing the skirting boards weekly and removing all my books from my bookshelves to dust every 5 seconds. I'm sure there's mumsnetters out there who'd be appalled by this because their bookcases are curated with a handful of books and ornaments but minimally displayed to facilitate dusting and regular antibac wiping. I honestly couldn't care less about doing that, just like I'm not polishing the photo frames every week.

@girlswillbegirls 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"

I don't think that's generally true, though -- lots of people on the thread have said they're not wealthy or 'proud' of not bothering, or concerned about what their house looks like; it just looks like what it looks like, it doesn't bother them enough to live differently, and they don't regard cleaning as the kind of moral issue some people on here do. I mean, cleaning just isn't something I want to spend my time doing. It doesn't take up any of my mental space, and I don't have a concept of 'visitor-ready', which I think must contribute to the high levels of loneliness that seem to be evident on here. I can't imagine that refraining from having people around to your house unless you've spent considerable time cleaning it in advance is that conducive to a social life.

I think there are tidy and messy people in all classes. I am reasonably well off lawyer, private schools etc, big house, could not care less what people think but I like a very tidy and efficient house and life.

A hotch potch of different chairs, otherwise people might think you've bought the entire table and chairs from somewhere like FurnitureLand

Oh gosh, I have a friend who fits this description to a tee!

She is very posh in my opinion - privately educated, parents live in a huge house ‘with land’ somewhere in Aberdeenshire, ponies, ski holidays every year etc. Her husband works in finance and she was a lawyer but stopped working when she had her son.

They live in a big, rambling Victorian villa. It’s not dirty but it’s always chaos - piles of wellies in the front porch, books stacked higgledy piggledy on the ottoman, newspaper kicking about on the sofa, dogs everywhere. The house is full of lovely, interesting things and if you ask where she got them it’s always something vague like ‘daddy’s family used to import silk rugs from Asia and this one had been knocking about in an attic for years’. She has proper art on the walls, every room has bookcases, big fireplaces with roaring fires in winter etc.

She has a 4yo son who is lovely and very polite, always bending your ear about something he has just leaned or his latest interest. Last time I was there he was showing me his collection of birds nests and egg shells and wearing a pink fair isle jumper he had apparently inherited from an older cousin. He has mad ginger corkscrew curls which are lovely and actually very well kept, so if nothing else she must be managing a curly hair routine!

She even has the pine table in the kitchen, and the aga with the whistling le creuset kettle 😂 all her pans are le creuset too but ancient and well used.

Shes actually lovely, truthfully - no airs and graces, and she’s the kind of person who always has time for a chat, very kind and empathetic. She doesn’t stand on ceremony at all and I definitely think there’s a kind of casual confidence that comes from growing up monied and knowing that everything you have is quality. Last time I saw her she was giving a bath to an egg-bound chicken in the kitchen sink and didn’t give two hoots (clucks?) about how messy it was in there (I had popped by without warning because I was dropping something off and she seemed delighted to see me, no embarrassment about the breakfast things still being on the table late morning and straw from the chicken coop on the floor).