To accept I live in chaos?

[Partlyavent]

I have a 3 year old and a five month old baby and I never thought I had massively high standards but the disgusting state of my house is really getting me down and I am partly venting but also wondering how others have managed it. The baby cries whenever put down which is really frustrating (trying to clean one handed with her now) cleaners take the piss (and in any case need to tidy before they can clean) and on the odd occasion I manage to make some headway it looks just as it did within a few hours. Any advice?

Disorganised to the max and I have a two year old.

My friend is storage. Out of sight, out of mind. I have a sideboard in the living room that holds nappies, wipes, nappy cream, hair brushes, clips, bobbles etc etc. Easy to bung the wipes in a drawer away from little hands that want to empty packets and easy to find when needed again. Same with after bath time. Everything needed is close to hand and is tidied away again in 5 seconds.

I bought a large fabric storage box that matches my living room colours, it sits behind the sofa and holds toys. Takes minutes to run around the living room and put all toys away rather than trips back and forth to her bedroom to put the million toys a day she takes out away.

I'm sure organised people are good at selling items that are no longer used. I'm not organised and I never will be so I toss them without any guilt. Clutter gets binned too. Bin, bin, bin.

Cleared the Christmas decorations away today and it's reduced my stress levels so much already.

Cleaning is easy when the house is tidy. Tidy is easy when there isn't "stuff" everywhere. There are points through the day when there is "stuff" everywhere but I know it all has a place to go and that makes it easier.

Nap time and bed time are when everything gets put away and something like harmony returns.

I get 6 hours a week when she is at nursery to deep clean properly and sort through toy storage to marry up pieces again. It makes the world of difference and only started in September but before that I felt I was drowning a bit and that was with a helpful DP.

It does get easier as they get older. The 10yo is pretty good at keeping things tidy now and I know we'll get there eventually with the 2yo.

@SutWytTi i know perfection is unrealistic with a baby and very young child but it just feels so horribly messy and nearly always does. So just now DS was playing with a toy tool box and a pirate ship and dragged both into the lounge, I spend a couple of hours when both asleep sorting and tidying as best I can, I manage just downstairs then the next day it all starts again. Meaning bedrooms and bathrooms never even get looked at!

I felt like you as I have 3dc and the run up to Christmas things got away from me and the house was a riot but a couple of weeks ago I started a new weekly cleaning routine and now I am on top of things.

tackle one or two small jobs a day and in a week or two you will be on top of things

Maybe you just need to de-clutter.
I raised two children 17 months apart as a single sahm and my home was spotless.
My sister raised 3 and she was the same.
But we were minimalists and still minimalists which helped.

Pregnant and have a 4 year old. Knackered, house is also complete chaos. Mess, toys and 2 big baskets of washing.

Ugh yes to laundry - am also fed up of potty training! And the potty is another piece of clutter in the way!

I'm like you op.
I just can't function in an untidy/ dirty space. Just can't. I can't even chuck things in a box because that Box will drive me crazy. I have an excellent cleaner though, and she comes 10hours a week and I just tidy up in between. She deep cleans too so tidying up doesn't take much. I have a very clingy 1yo. The biggest thing that helped is I don't keep clutter. Everything has a place. Dh is tidy too so that helps .

Perfection is definitely unrealistic.

I accepted toy carnage during the day, but tidied everything away each evening. But our full tidy took about twenty minutes - what are you having to tidy away?

A good technique is to rotate boxes of toys so there are fewer in active use at any given time, meaning less tidying to do each day.

My main advice is 3 parts

1. Declutter
2. Organise, organise, organise
3. just do it-clean as you go. I don’t walk past anything and say “oh I’ll do that later” because by the time you’ve thought that you could have most probably gone the job, it’s a hard mentality to get into at first but once you start it’s hard to get out of it then. For instance, i make the bed the minute I get up, I bring dirty clothes straight to the washing machine, if it’s full I turn it on. I wash the shower/bath down as I’m getting out. I hoover daily, I wash dishes pretty much instantly unless i don’t have that much hot water.

I can tell you where anything is in my house at all times, because it’s always in the same place. I have been home with my two dc (8 and 10) today and my house is spotless. I didn’t do a major clean but I did one load of laundry and hoovered. My laundry basket is empty but my washing machine has 5 items in it.

Where's your other half in all this?

My top tips:

Have less stuff. Charity shop or chuck stuff ruthlessly. Clutter is soul sapping.

More storage. Shove stuff in boxes and cupboards each evening. It doesn’t all have to come out every day, either.

Prioritise. Choose one or two rooms to prioritise. Let the rest go for now.

I feel your pain. I work full time and spend my Saturdays with my mum. I’ve always taken her food shopping but since my darling dad passed away I spend the whole day with her. This leaves me Sundays to catch up with the house stuff. DH does wash up and push the hoover round when he gets home from work (he works 6-2) but I think he thinks we live in a bungalow 🤷‍♀️ as he never does anything upstairs.
The state of the house gets me down but it is what it is at the moment. I’m also going through the menopause and I’m
permanently knackered!!

Laundry goals 😍. I have 3 baskets (no make that 4) full at the moment! The washers been on 4 times today! It’s never ending. DS2(16) will wear an outfit for half an hour then shove it in the wash! Before anyone else says it…. I know I should have trained him better! 🤣

I do this but also have a cleaner 5 hours a week and my house is in no way spotless 🥴🥴🥴

BUT is also not completely embarrassing and if people drop in I don’t die of shame.

decluttering reallyyyyy helps

Don’t beat yourself up OP. Life can be chaotic.
I massively decluttered and that helped me loads. When kids are in bed me and DP clean then, we do the kitchen, hang up washing, hoover and mop, put away the toys.

We’ve started rotating toddlers toys every few weeks so some are in a big box in the cupboard and some are left out which equals less toys to tidy up in the evening.

Saturday mornings one of us watches the toddler and one of us does the bathrooms and hoovers things like the stairs, bedsheets and all that jazz, works well as every other week I get the week off 😂

If we have guests we do a bigger clean but tbh we do what we have to do to be clean and to keep the house presentable and sometimes that’s good enough!

Do you have a partner (or relative) that could take the kids for a full day? Use the day to declutter and tidy everywhere. Then just put everything back as you go. I have 3 kids, my house has always been tidy because I can't function at all in mess. I wish I could be someone who could ignore it. I have a big clear out of their rooms twice a year. This means generally all of their clothes fit them and the right season (summer or winter) are in their drawers. I give away toys and books they've grown out of.
Most toys are in their rooms and they bring down what they're playing with that day, or now they're older (8,7,5) they will play in their rooms sometimes.
Some days I am cleaning til 10pm when they go to bed. Other days just a quick hoover once they've had their tea. It depends on the state of the house. Set days to clean the bathrooms.
When they were babies I never sat down.
BTW this isn't a brag post at all, as I have already been accused of today. It is just saying how I keep my house tidy. As I said, I wish I could relax in mess, I tried when the kids were younger but I couldn't.

Toy rotation is a good idea except when I’ve tried it in the past I’ve forgotten about the ones I’ve rotated!

I will add that I am separated so no dh and I have dc half the week but to be honest even pre separation I was always organised and my laundry was always kept on top of. (With the exception of the last house we lived In which was too small and so it was a lot harder to keep on top of laundry as I got depressed.) but that just really reiterates the declutter and tidy as you go theory in my opinion.

I'm not really 100% on this but....

Invest time/energy in properly sorting your 'big' storage areas... loft, shed, big cupboards, garage etc.

Then take 12 months to make a point of decluttering all of your smaller storage areas... wardrobes, kitchen cupboards, drawers etc. use secondary storage as much as you can but make sure it's functional first and foremost... don't waste time and money decanting things for the sake of it.

Then as PP said, ruthlessly clean and tidy as you go. Wipes in the bathroom. Easily accessible cordless vacuum to hand. Glass cleaner under the sink. Spray mop.

Train your whole family into not putting things down, but putting them away.

Reset living areas every night before bed.

Keep bins emptied, be fastidious in emptying the dishwasher and prioritise laundry so that it's little and often.

Not read the full thread, I have teenagers and there isn’t a day goes by that I don’t regret investing some effort into getting them into the habit of putting toys away when they have finished playing with them, when they were little. If I had a time machine, I would go back and rather than spending hours after dc is in bed sorting and tidying away their toys, I would pack away the majority of their toys and put them away out of sight, and just leave them a small selection of toys, then rotate them, so the toys all have a turn at being packed away. I would also very gently train them to clear up their toys at the end of their play session (the key to this is planning - making sure you allow time for the tidying up in the schedule. My teens are rubbish at keeping themselves / rooms tidy, and I suspect it is largely my fault for enabling this over the last 15 years!

having less stuff - ie an absolute embargo on new things coming into the house, is also a good idea. Fewer clothes, and reducing the amount of laundry by doing spot cleaning on dirty bits. Organising things into baskets etc can help. I think trying to aim for one area that is highly visible and sorting that out, helps you feel a lot better. I tend to load up the spare room with clutter to get it out of the way, so while I haven’t actually dealt with the chaos (ie got rid of it), at least I don’t have to see it all every minute of every day!

This a brilliant idea!

House jneeds to be basically clean and tidy. Reduce clutter. Pay for a deep clean maybe twice a year. Put baby down and let them cry fgs! They don't break ! It's not fair on your older child either. Put baby down in a safe place and spend a few minutes tidying or cleaning and gradually increase the time. Clean using disinfectant andvthey willget used to being put down for short periods of time disposable wipes for ease and so no dirty cloths to wash. I clean the shower whilst I'm in it! Seriously don't give in to the baby all the time, it makes life really stressful. Also put your phone down and get off MN!

One of the problems is we have such limited storage space. It’s an old cottage, no access to a loft area and the garage is DHs domain! So toy rotation is a good idea but not sure where I’d rotate them TO!

Big box.

I feel like this. I can't stand it.

My youngest at 15 months just doesn't let me do anything without crying and clawing at my legs. It's so frustrating. I try and have a blitz at the end of the day but usually am too tired.

One thing that's helped lately is we got better storage and now the rule is only one box of toys at a time. Then all the toys go back in the box before another box comes out.