How is your house not a shithole?

[Give0fecks]

Help me. I’m drowning. I just feel so overwhelmed by the never ending mess and clutter and shit everywhere. I spend HOURS everyday tidying and cannot get on top of it.

I have a 3yo and 1 yo, a dog, a lazy husband and we are all at home a lot. So 3 meals a day for the kids and I. Toys everywhere, plates/packets everywhere always on the kitchen sides. Colouring pens, scraps of fucking scribbles, play doh, Breadsticks under the table as the baby constantly lobs food everywhere. Clothes all over the floor upstairs, out of the drawers/ “floordrobe”.

I just cannot cope. It’s not like I leave it and it builds up, it’s just a tsunami wave of mess constantly and I cannot keep up. Everyday the dishwasher goes on, laundry in, kitchen sides/table cleaned, etc and it lasts 3 seconds and it’s like a bombs gone off again.

im not exaggerating that it’s actually causes me anxiety!

This is my house. I have no idea, obviously, so following with interest and hoping the answer isn't an app 😄

a lazy husband

There's your problem.

You are feeding your kids and presumably providing clean clothes so you aren't doing too badly.

You have too much stuff. you have to make decluttering a daily part of your life. Be ruthless. Set yourself a target to get rid of say 20% of your stuff. Each day go through a drawer or a cupboard or a small section of your house and get rid of it. Even if it is just 10 minutes or 5 minutes a day. Do it every day.

NB Houses a LOT easier to keep clean and tidy if you're not drowning in stuff.

My kids are the same age.

After dinner, I bath the kids and DH sorts the kitchen. Then after bedtime we both finish up the communal rooms, 10 mins or so together.

It’s not pristine, but it’s not stressful.

I “speed clean” when 3yo is in school, if baby naps, about once a week.

Otherwise, it’s podcast on and cleaning til 9. I don’t do anything after 9

Your husband needs a kick up the arse for starters. You need to talk to him, tell him you’re drowning and that you shouldn’t have to ask for continual help with small things. Is he the type to leave his coffee much at the sink and walk off? Point this out and tell him he needs to show you a bit more respect and support, finish his coffee, and put the empty much in the dishwasher at the very least… your kids will learn by example so if they see him leaving his shit lying around for you to pick up they’ll follow suit and you’ll end up picking up after three people for the rest of your life.
your three year old is old enough to o start helping. Build it into your routine, when you’re getting them dressed in the morning, ask them to to help you make their bed / put their jammies folded under the pillow or whatever. Be consistent and then build on that, after snacks bring your plates to the sink etc etc

I'm so glad I'm past this phase. When your kids are that age, it's endless. The decluttering helps, but it's also a stress in itself.

You need to spend some time alone get DH to take children and dog out.Put on some music get black sacks and get rid of anythng you don’t need.Charity shop,dump give away.How many toys do children really need.Buy each child a toy box open top and teach 3 year old to put toys away then little one will follow.DH stuff all his left about stuffin a sack and put in the shed or garage .He can sort that if he pleases.Good luck.

Bold of you to assume it isn’t!

I work but actually thats not relevant as ive also been a stay at home mum so this is my advice as it applys to both scenarios.

Dedicate an hour at night when the kids are in bed, you may not even need an hour but dedicate it anyways, so from 7-8pm you run around the house doing a general clean/tidy.

Morning time put dishwasher and washing machine on so its ready to be emptied at night.

During the day dont stress as you will never get it tidy with kids but at lest when they are in bed and you sit down at 8pm its all done.

What works for us:

• Declutter regularly including any toys and clothes they have grown out of.
• have good storage so everything has somewhere to go which is accessible for kids to take out and put away on own.
• 5 min tidy up with toddler before bath time
• clean up toys and junk after kids sleeping every evening
• Robot vacuum runs nearly every day

Honestly it’s not you. Unless your children are out of the house/napping for a decent chunk of time it’s just impossible to clean/tidy fully. It will get better when they’re older but I know that’s not a lot of help now! And yes of course your husband should be pitching in for an end of day 20 minute tidy up

You need to teach the kids tidy up game. It’s not perfect but it does help so much. My boys one and a half and tidys up quite a bit. He picks things up and puts them in a basket. He also helps me if he sees me tidying up. Now helps wipe his table.

Toys - organise into boxes. One set of big toys at a time! (Train set, farm set, shop set etc). A small shelf on rotate. Hide the rest. They also play better this way I find.

With clothes do a cull. Take an afternoon and Marie kondo the drawers. Including the folding. My house really isn’t perfect. Think coffee cups all over the place. But the Marie kondo drawer thing is something I do for my son and it keeps me motivated to keep it that way. I fold only when I am doing bedtime and sit in his room and do it while he plays before bed.

kitchen - buy an air fryer and paper disposable liners. Have one plate for each child so it always gets washed. I’m not saying ration food but don’t give the one year old multiple breadsticks when one will do. If he wants another he finishes the first.

Husband. Tell him to help. If he doesn’t then get two boxes, one dirty one clean. Everything of his mess goes in these boxes. Plates mugs, random crap in the dirty. All clean clutter like wallets random crap goes in the clean box.

Take it one room at a time. And keep that room going.

You need to organise systems for each room and make sure the house has a flow. So if you always have drama with coffee cups and clutter in living room then get a huge tray for the coffee table. Then all clutter ends on the tray. In the evening you can dress it with a candle and the channel changers when it’s clean and returned to its home. It sounds like a silly thing but that’s what I mean about systems. You need a plan to assist flow.

Both DP and I keep on top of it. Every evening a quick tidy round, normally one washes up and does the kitchen while the other does a general quick tidy or sorts out laundry. Means we only need an hour on the weekend for hoovering and bathroom clean.

Still end up with the dryed laundry pile of doom mind 😂

What’s an NB house?

Mouthouch has some good tips!

Could you batch cook meals so that you are not cooking from scratch every day?

Its impossible to keep a house immaculate with a three year old, a one year old, a dog and a lazy husband...well you could manage it if you never slept, never stopped cleaning and drove yourself totally crazy. It's like trying to hold back the tide.

I'm the same.

One of our issues is too much stuff.

Trying hard to declutter but it is a never ending battle.

Just wanna say… same!
It’s not that me and DH are lazy, we just both work FT, have a kid, his job is high pressure, mine is shift work and random times. Mentally and physically exhausted so housework just takes secondary place. It would on paper be very easy to carve out an hour each day to do some cleaning so it doesn’t build up like above but I am overstimulated and exhausted and I opt in to ‘lazying around’ - I think there will always be stigma around that, but some things just have to give. Kids are happy, everyone’s clothed and fed and that’s all that matters.

It’s not you! Young kids create mess, I don’t even work and find it impossible to keep on top of, as soon as I have tidied it is a mess again. Constant cleaning toilets that have skids in them minutes after. Never ending washing loads. Dining table disgusting after every meal and the floor 😩 The house seems to create so much dust as well. If I make time to do extra jobs like cleaning the fridge out then the rest of the house goes to shit.

Declutter, declutter, declutter - is my mantra. The less crap you have the quicker it is to get everything organised. 3 y/o is old enough to put toys away with supervision and husband is definitely old enough to do so without.

I'm the same! Kids were off sick last few days and that made it much worse. My husband is pretty good but he works away a lot so find it very hard to keep on top of it. I know what I need to do (declutter and improve routines) but I never seem to do it. I am a master procrastinator. For example I follow all the declutter and cleaning people and have read several books and probably watched hours of YouTube on how to get house in order. I spend way too much time on phone especially mumsnet. I can only conclude I am super nosy that I am so addicted to reading mumsnet threads.

I have to try and think it could actually be a lot worse because I have actually done a lot of decluttering and like you I do basically tidy and do laundry and it's not a complete disaster. I terrible for just moving stuff around rather than decluttering. I'm also working on my 7 and 8 year old kids habits because they contribute a lot to the mess whereas they should actually be helping me. But I have 2 younger kids too and they make mess!

People usually recommend Dana from A Slob Comes Clean (she is brilliant I think her podcast is great especially) and How to keep house while drowning which I have only read couple chapter but seems really good. I also like the minimal mom on YouTube.
I think if it like a process, there's a phrase which I think comes from flylady (another house system which I keep trying but don't usually stick to), progress not perfection! If husband not helping that making things worse and hopefully he could understand that you are anxious and work on his own habits.

Lazy husband is biggest issue.

Also have as little stuff as possible, be ruthless with chucking stuff away.