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!

I’ve heard of this amazing decluttering technique. You get a big garbage bag, then you put your husband in it.

I work for someone who wants me only to tidy up. I quite enjoy doing it. If it is getting you down and you can afford to, maybe get some help in. The problem is of course that five minutes after children arrive it’s a bomb site again.
I tried to teach my children to get one game or toy out at a time, and put it back when finished with, worked sometimes.

Sit down with DH and make a plan together. Who tidies/cleans which room when (day & time) on daily/weekly basis. DH can't get away without doing chores. This isn't how adult life works and he needs to understand that.
Do a declutter day together after Xmas. Can you sell things on eBay/vinted so you feel like you're earning a bit of money. Can you afford a cleaner? Then you only need to keep on top of tidying.

Start with decluttering your husband’s stuff. Once he sees that he might help.

i Feel your pain. And my husband is incredible with helping around the house. I’m quite houseproud I guess but I know when to switch off and leave things for the next day. Just when I think the house looks lovely, the kids untidy it like a breeeze. When I get on top of the laundry if fills up just as quick. I take clean, dry laundry upstairs with every intention to put it away and it turns into a tall pile which after about a week, I can’t ignore ha! Some days I do wonder why I bother and I think if I ended up in hospital, the house would be growing stuff !

The only trouble with decluttering is you’re not allowed to declutter other people’s stuff. OK, I do with the kids as I’m their boss. But even there, DP and I split tasks so eg I’m in charge of the toddler’s clothes, and I limit the amounts so there’s not giant heaps of washing, and he’s in charger of our primary-age kid, who has a full-up triple wardrobe. There’s just no need! He’s the same with his clothes: I counted once and he has 75 T-shirts and 62 pairs of socks. How?! Why?! There’s a constant giant pile of clean washing on our bed/floor, and if I sort through it, it breaks down as: 10% household (teatowels, kids’ flannels, bibs), 10% my clothes, 15% each DC, 50% him. Just mountains and mountains of stuff. He’s a “wear once then into the washing person” but also wears two T-shirts, a shirt and a cardigan all at once like Joey wearing all of Chandler’s clothes.

The kitchen is the same: I’m drinking coffee and ignoring the DC while mumsnetting and can see (because they’re not in cupboards because too much stuff/not enough cupboards) the following never used items: Instant Pot (turns out we both find a big hob/oven batch cooking session much easier and just don’t use this), Aeropress (“I’ll take it to work to save money on coffee!”…has never happened), chef’s apron (“For making pasta from scratch so I don’t get flour on the nine T-shirts I’m wearing”), espresso cups (“We might get a coffee machine one day”), random vintage bottle (“But I gave you that for your birthday, it’s sentimental!” not to me, pal), leaky travel cup x3, pile of CO monitors yet to be installed, spice grinder (“I really miss making curries”), giant bulk box of dishwasher rinse aid (“It’s cheaper to buy a year’s worth from Amazon” WE DO NOT LIVE IN A YEAR’S WORTH OF RINSE AID HOUSE).

I often tell him that if he just took the kids away for one (1) week I could not only get a handle on the house but it would stay that way. One day to pile everything extraneous in one room. One day to get rid of it all. One day to DIY. One day to sew/repair/organise. One day to deep clean. Two days relaxing in my clean, minimal, done house before they returned to one toy and book each, a peg for their spare sackcloth, and a kitchen with nothing in it. The dream.

Marie Kondo folding only works on deep drawers like ikea malm especially if the wearer is older than 6-9m, I wasted a load of time folding then realized all my non-malm drawers were too small and I couldn't afford to replace them all. having lovely drawers is a privilege

Just wanted to say I enjoyed your post. @reclaimmyboobs 😂 and also your username.

Husband

If, genuinely, you’re doing ALL of it, you have THREE children and you’re a single parent.

You’ve got 3 children, not 2.

google flylady

You say you are both at home a lot maybe get jobs with longer hours and hire a cleaner?

It will get better. The kids will grow up and help with it, you will leave your husband and marry someone who is not a child.

My husband is a lazy messy so and so. His response to being asked to tidy up after himself/cleaning is “get a cleaner”.

i do not want a stranger in my home. I don’t want an immaculate show house, just somewhere pleasant to be in.
My best advice -
I read somewhere recently “Don’t put it down, put it away”. I find this really does work.
A ruthless declutter - just one drawer/cupboard at a time is life changing as you can see everything and don’t ned to pull everything out creating further chaos.

Finally, get a robot vacuum or two - I read a review on here recently and although initially sceptical am now proud owner of two (kitchen and lounge) and a complete convert, At £99 they work miracles in sprucing things up.

@reclaimmyboobs I think I love you.

No, no, no. My house very much IS a shithole. We have two small kids and all their attendant garbage, we both work full time, and we're both acquisitive people by nature.

We just acknowledge that we love our stuff, and that our stuff means we're never going to have a pristine house. Then we do crisis management on the worst of the dust. We also have two rooms (kitchen and bathroom) that absolutely HAVE to be reasonably clean, so that people at least can say 'The living room's a hovel, but there's no mould in around the bath!'.

So I'd say that you need a general lowering of standards, with a smattering of moral high ground that's based in one or two manageable zones. Then you're grand!

@tallsmallmum Nah, it works on any drawer you just have to get creative with the folding 😁

I recently got rid of all the toys in the living room (I have DD3 and DD2). They've not really noticed, and now it's so much easier to keep clear.

If I had my re again I'd ditch the lazy arse hoarder husband. Does yours have any redeeming qualities that you want to keep him around? What about a cleaner who is willing to take you on as you are? Re too much stuff, start building up your decluttering muscle. Maybe start with stuff best suited to the bin -empty boxes, random bits of paper with long expired to do lists for example
Some charities you can post stuff, BHF via collect +, CRUK will pick up bags, not sure exactly how it works. Oxfam take do actions via yodel. Maybe this will make donations of good quality items you don't want to bin, having to schlep stuff to a shop can be a big barrier to getting rid of stuff. Other stuff, put on freecycle/markerplace for a week to see if anyone will take off you for free . Until you get on top of things, don't bulk buy if economically possible, if you have lots of stockpiled stuff then 'shop' from your stockpile, don't open a new toothpaste tube for example if you already have several open tubes . As far as possible, have places for things so you don't end up spending time trying to remember where the stamps are or where your passport or diary is, or where the library books are,newsletters you need to refer back to.
You have to keep revisiting things you need to get rid of, do separate areas regularly so it doesn't become.overwhelming
You are not going to get pristine without a husband who pulls his weight and children and pets. If eventually you can keep things acceptable, any time you are.expecting a member of the royal family to tea. If she isn't bothered about his parents seeing the results of his inaction, lots of people have suggested things to say to them.
Lots of people do not have pristine houses all the time even if when you visit it is. They have probably spent some time making it so, and if you dropped in unannounced you might get a better idea. I remember when staying with people as part of a town twinn ing thing, the place was spotless. It was a big house, and one day the door to the rest of the house was left open, and behind that the rooms were lived in, certainly not spotless. Our forebears has a parlour that only special visitors were allowed in, or the family for special occasions, so visiting inlaws would be ushered I to there.

Whenever my DH sees me doing a task, for eg. Emptying the bins, he says,’ I could do that.’ My response is, ‘Yes, so why didn’t you’?
He replies, ‘’You need to tell me!”.
So, tell your DH. Give him a list. They are children, they need to be told what to do.

Yuk. I have three kids. Being expected to treat my sexual and life partner as another is one of the reasons I got rid. Attraction died because Im not attracted to kids.

Well I could cry today as the builder has let me down yet again so my house will remain a shithole over Christmas and new year, unless he turns up for a couple of days this week. Do Christmas miracles ever happen?

Do you think that men don't have eyes to see that things need to be done?

They can (and do when their wives leave them) see these things for themselves, they just choose not to. Men are not like children unless they choose to be, they don't need to be told, so stop indulging them and stop spreading this misandrist narrative that the poor dears can't help themselves.

Absolutely

Bollocks. I signed up to have two children and a partner, not three children, one of whom is overgrown. How unattractive to have to baby your adult partner. Do men also need sticker reward charts and a mid-morning snack after they’ve “helped”?