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?

I wonder what all the men are doing in these houses with their slovenly, dirty, beautiful wives.

I'm a Brighton boho mum too with 3 messy kids! Except I'm missing a lot of the other good stuff, no fancy house, no piano, pretty average uni education, messy house, no cleaner
I'm like you but just... worse 😂
I don't care what anyone thinks either though, I do think it comes from a comfortable middle class up bringing.

Apart from the money and the coolness this could be me.

• i’m always in a mess, usually complete with dog hair.
• my kids are always in a mess of their own choosing, usually covered in mud.
• I take them travelling every school holidays either in the UK or Europe. We have a camper, this summer we took a road trip through the alps to Croatia and back up was amazing.
• my house is usually a mess, clean but very lived in.

My house is an old farmers cottage and not beautiful but I do have an awesome garden and outlook… if a bit messy. I just have always thought time is precious and I’d rather spend it doing things with the people I love as you’ll never get it back then cleaning and tidying and caring whether people think I’m wearing the right clothes, or have done my make up. Every opportunity I get on a nice day I will drag my family to the beach.

In my experience if you are wealthy and "Posh" you can get away with looking scruffy with equally scruffy looking children and having a messy house, however if you are poor and not at all "Posh", live in social/council housing, and look scruffy with scruffy looking children then the attitude towards you is very different!

Indeed, but contrived…

This is me minus the wealthy bit.

RubyBoozeDay · 18/10/2023 13:54

I always think of Paula Yates and Bob Geldof, and their 3 children - a cluttered but classy house, kids almost feral, (although secretly had a very reliable nanny) Paula always stylish and quirky, rockstars popping round for a drink, kitchen suppers with famous people.

And look what happened there.

when you add fame into the mix the arrogance becomes self protection. Its a different world of tit for tat. For Paula she had the world at her feet but was punished for daring to be Icarus. There was a special type of punishment for women as someone in the media recently fantasised about publicly lobbing excrement and walking a woman through the streets whatever the public shaming of the time putting that women’s life through hell she was in the ducking stool but came back for more because she dared to leave Saint Bob she was thrown to the wolves. There are plenty of Rockstars with open marriages who swing that on paper are happily married decades it survives because they get to sleep around but perhaps not fall in love. When she said filling stadiums and your ex is filling pubs its a fame top trumps in that world sounds ghastly measuring where your popularity polling constantly. If u want to see Ego to the extreme play the Fickle Fame game.

"I get a new car once about every 6 years and I drive it into the ground"

Jesus Christ @SerafinasGoose, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with this, but please don't do this. Cars should live much, much longer than 6 years. Learn and proper servicing and maintenance and you won't destroy a car in 6 years.

OMG I so know what you mean 😃!!! I most envy their laid back attitude and gorgeous house! I hVe this daydream right now that when we move our house will be newly done up therefor cleaning will be so much easier … I doubt I will ever achieve the laidback-ness though no matter how much cashmere I would own 🤣. My mum always says it’s the work pressure that stresses me out. I’m thinking it may be generics.
I love to be friends with these mums though. I feel all relaxed around them. A new perspective I suppose…

Yeah maybe it’s not being so cool but just not feeling responsible ALL the time

I don't think it's a status thing, it's purely confidence. I despair of my friends who constantly worry what people think of them. Why? You just need to be happy in yourself. The last couple of generations of my family have been poor so it's not money.
I grew up with, and still have, passed down furniture which is much more beautiful than IKEA crap, I have five kids (quite accidentally) but I have never claimed benefits and they all pass down clothes because I would rather buy a classic than a brand name which is outdated within months. My house is a tip but I like to think it's clean although messy....and I am happier that way. I cook meals from scratch (creatively because I never have everything in a recipe ) which is much cheaper than buying chilled ready meals. I WFH unlike many of my friends who seem to assume I don't really work. What I don't do is scour social media to see what is fashionable this month and rush out to buy it, I don't change my furniture/ wallpaper/paint colour every year. My children are not dressed in the latest Nike trainers or MK ( I am actually not even sure what is the latest thing! ) And they don't all carry iPhones/earbuds and go to nail bars. ..oooh and I drive an ancient landcruiser as opposed to leasing this year's model. Believe me, it's a far more comfortable relaxed lifestyle than having to afford everything new and shiny all the time, which we call 'the Essex lifestyle'..which in turn makes for a happier, more laid back personality. I can afford to welcome friends anytime to my messy house because I'm not ashamed of it. Some people might feel sorry for me because I don't have the trappings of 'Essex'..but I really don't care. 😁 ..and as a BTW I think I am more comfortable financially purely because of this lifestyle.

@Tatslookawful So true, very contrived.

Ghost dresses they can’t be bothered to iron, little girls with tangled hair…

@Evilwitchwhoroams I agree. We recently moved out of furnished rental, and I could never have afforded to furnish from IKEA in total, plus I don't like it much. So we trawled the charity shops. Turns out people don't want old brown furniture, so we god a large solid wood extendable dining table with 4 chairs for £30, a 60s Welsh dresser for £50....I could go on, but you get the gist. I was shocked at the cost of simply things like beside tables if bought new. £100 each for flimsy MDF crap painted in white. Nothing matches, but it's all good quality.
I grew up in a sterile environment where everything was pristine. My folks weren't in any way well off, so a lot of it was looking after things. We had the same 3 piece suite for 20 years. My mother still has kitchenware I remember from 40-odd years ago. These days, it's so throwaway, and I do wonder at these people with more money than sense buying cheap, painted tat at hugely inflated prices when there's all this stunning wood furniture being practically given away.

I also wonder at people not looking after what they have. Cleaning and maintaining things does increase their life. My mother goes a bit far, by getting all the removable bits out of the washing machine and cleaning down after every wash, but it works. She has probably extended its life by about 5 years. I am not the pristine sort, but I keep that ethos of making things last. That's the real, old fashioned working class way. You got the best you could afford when you could afford and looked after it. You had grandma's old side cabinet even if it didn't 'go' with anything because it was good quality and people with little money don't throw away useable stuff because it's not the 'right' colour. Your eldest child was expected to look after their clothes because they would be handed down to the next one.
These boho parents might no be as clean as they should be, but they don't appear to be anything like as wasteful as the aspiring middle classes. And that is how they keep hold of their money. Their kids don't have new clothes every fortnight. They don't throw out old wood furniture because it isn't fashionable.

Brown furniture is so unfashionable now you can pick up really beautiful and good quality pieces for peanuts in charity shops and auctions. Transporting it can be a faff though, and it doesn’t suit every house.

This is a different slant on the the topic but I wholly agree with it.

I hate todays throwaway society. I have a friend who redecorates her sitting room EVERY YEAR. She keeps the same couch because it cost a fortune (DFS, overpriced), but once a year she strips the wallpaper, puts more up, paints all the bits not wallpapered, buys new curtains, coffee table, side tables and tv stand, new rug, new lamps and ornaments.

She did it twice in one year a while back because she changed her mind and "couldn't stand" it for another 6 months.

In saying that, I guess some of it maybe comes down to the old "buy cheap, buy twice" and the Terry Pratchett (I think?) story of poor guy having to buy boots at £10 and replace them every year. Total cost over 10 years, £100. Rich guy spending £50 on boots that lasted 10 years, total cost £50.

But I digress; there's been a lot of good points made on here and I do agree that a lot of it is secret code for "I'm rich, so I can be as scruffy as I want etc etc and it doesn't matter." Agree that working class families would be hauled over the coals for some of the things that these affluent families get away with.

Also agree that some of this may be natural / unintentional, but some is horribly contrived.

@MatildaonMain that's true. We were lucky in that places round here deliver. And I get it doesn't suit all houses, we live in an Edwardian semi with dark wood floors (not anything like as posh as it sounds, but we love it) which is lucky as it does suit, but to be honest, we would probably have bought it anyway as buying new would be very expensive. Beds are a different matter, though. Old beds are too heavy to get upstairs, but Argos do decent cheap beds. Good job the wardrobes were built in, though, as I wouldn't have fancied lugging a wardrobe upstairs to be fair. And there is the worry of floors supporting heavy furniture.

Yes, the Vines 'boots' theory is very true. Something else Pratchett' said was that the very rich can afford to be poor and stomp around wearing old clothes. As you, and many others say, they don't get the same level of judgement.

I do think a lot of the bohemian thing is contrived to give the 'earth mother' effect, and frankly I wonder if their houses are infested with mice and fleas as well. But the other 'old money's side of childcare is being too posh to look after your own kids, packing them off to boarding school and Nannies in the holidays. Reminds me of that Downton Abbey episode where one character says to Dowager Violet Crawley, ' I thought you would be the sort who saw your children washed and dressed for an hour every evening' and she replied, 'yes, dear, but that hour was exhausting!'

I'm a lady who lunches and botox girly but my closest friend lives in a naice red brick in Notting Hill and she's a barefoot, kids with curly hair in dungarees, where's expensive but made to look old clothes etc. She's fab, her husband is too.

There's a distinction to be made between messy and neglect though. Matted hair, worn out clothes and dirt is not the vibe

@TravellingT 'There's a distinction to be made between messy and neglect though. Matted hair, worn out clothes and dirt is not the vibe'.
I agree

@TravellingT i have a friend exactly the same. Kids all dressed beautiful in that old fashioned style Caramel baby brand, very barefoot family though.

I am from a very large and poor Irish family - outdoor loo, three to a bed, adults not sufficiently literate to help with homework, just about enough food.

I now live in bookish chaos a crumbling Victorian pile with a long haired scruffbucket child. It’s not wealth, confidence, expecting someone else to do it or upbringing (my upbringing script was ‘fit in at all costs and expect nothing — nice things and university are only for rich people’), it’s that time is finite, and tidying the house comes a distant last to all the other things I want to do with my time. If people, by which I mean women, have internalised the idea that housework is ‘their’ job because they have a vagina, or they equate a clean house with morality, more fool them.

I’ve loved reading this thread. So interesting!! I’ve been trying to think if we have these kinds of mums in Australia 😂 none that I know but it’s been such an interesting read.

I do like this thread too. It's very interesting.

I hope I don't offend anyone with this question: for people here saying they have a cluttered house but clean. How are you able to clean if everything is messy?

I genuinely like to know. I'm reducing the amount of stuff in mine since watching the minimalists documentary in netflix a year ago. I do think having very little around is the way to go. My house is pretty minimalistic now and so easy to tidy/clean.
For everyone who claim having a messy house so they can enjoy life, it's actually so much easier not having the mess around. So you just switch on the Robvac if the floors are all clear. They key is having little but useful/nice quality. Cleaning itself is very quick then. And seing my home always decluttered and clean affects really positively my MH. And so much more time to enjoy life too.

girlswillbegirls
Baskets and bins.
I'm not messy a la wealthy rich family with curated boho aesthetic. I'm going for the 'it isn't terrible and there's other things I enjoy more than dusting bookshelves' look.

Put a basket where the clutter dump areas are, lift it up to clean, return, sort when full.
Toy bins for DC toys downstairs. At the end of the day, they all go in a toy bin or basket out the way and I can sweep the floors.