The amount of mess in my house makes me want to cry, cleaning it up constantly makes me want to cry

[ldnmm]

My kids, 2 and 4 are just constantly making a mess- constantly. It never stops.

I've been cleaning up constantly and whenever I turn around, there's a new mess somewhere. I just can't fucking hack it anymore.

I want to throw away all their toys and be done with it. I just can't take it anymore.

Make them tidy up after themselves you say? Yes I do that but it's just so consistent and there are so many things that I don't always have the energy to get them to tidy things away. There's just so many bits of bullshit toys all over the place that it becomes a huge ordeal to even tidy up properly and not just dump everything all messed up in buckets.

My husband is a bit shit at tidying up after himself as well and I literally cry because I can't take it anymore.

I cry when I am trying to stay on top of everything because I'm so exhausted and so frustrated. So yesterday my husband said, let's just leave it a bit- it doesn't make a difference as they make a mess so quickly anyway. So we left it a bit, but I'm just fuming today. I feel sick and frustrated.

It's just so fucking relentless and I don't know how to manage it better but I clearly can't just ' let it go ' as it drives me absolutely mad and I start being extremely frustrated. Chuck all the toys away ? They're never going to be able to tidy up every little thing after themselves like I need them to. Yes they'll tidy up at the end of the day etc but because they have so many toys and so many activities ( stickers, drawing, puzzles ) they like to take them out, play, then come back to it etc etc. so I can't see it working, without me having to be constantly on top of them and being exhausted by that too.

It's driving me mad though ! So I don't know what to do.

Ideally you should do that at the beginning of December because the charity shops always get an influx of toys in January too late for the people that needed to buy secondhand toys to wrap up for father Christmas. The charity shops then Do Not store them for 11 months they stick them in the bin.

Then I go back downstairs and there's toys everywhere there was all and they're trying to push chairs to the sink so they can do water play. I let them do water play but then everything gets soaked.. then I look at the floor all wet, they're all wet, toys everywhere downstairs and clothes everywhere upstairs and it just makes me feel extremely frustrated - stressed out/ on edge. I just feel like it's all a mess

This bit stood out to me. You're letting them do too many things at once. It' s really hard especially if your dh is lazy. For your sake you need to get tougher, even a 2 Yr old understands they need to tidy some things away before getting out more.
Water play is absolutely an outdoor activity.

OP we are the same the only way around it is to keep routinely declutter the toys and be strict about it otherwise too much stuff is difficult to manage. We did a declutter before Xmas and wilL
need to do it again soon due to the influx of presents for Xmas.

And if you don't you will still be doing it 10 years later. Reduce the time between each tidy up and it's not so bad.

This is going to sound really cheeky, but I don't have time to but and read the book, could you distill what she's saying down into a couple of sentences? Why does she think we hoard stuff and what are the issues with keeping it? (Other than not having a big enough house)

I love all the suggestions of using lofts, garages and making one sitting room your own 😏 Many people live in flats or small places where there is just no room for flexibility.

You say this Jannier but many, many parents who made their children tidy up have messy teens and many don’t. I was a messy child but a tidy adult.

In 10 years they will only want screen time and they won’t play with toys anymore, it’s hellish now but you will miss it then.

If the toy designers had to tidy up the tiny bits they designed - I'm looking at you whoever designed LOL dolls and their tiny clothes and accessories 😤 then they wouldn't have !!

I'm still finding tiny shoes and baby bottles years on!

Empathise OP. It's like shovelling snow when it's still snowing.

Oh I so don't. 😂

@Annabella92

She basically says declutter by category and keep like with like once you have decluttered. Also, pick up everything, touch and hold and ask if it gives you joy. If it does, keep it, if not (and it's not useful in your life), thank it and let it go.

So categories include:

Clothes ( but you can have sub categories such as underwear, jumpers etc to make it more manageable).
Books
Papers
Everything else
Sentimental items last.

The everything else can be done by category eg utensils, bathroom products, makeup, dvds, etc

OP I absolutely get it! All the people who say to "just declutter" tend to be those who are always out of the house, force kids to stay in their rooms or give them mind-numbing amounts of screen time. Before they can read, kid can only use toys to play with and that inevitable creates physical mess.

I had exactly the same feeling of literally wanting to cry while tidying up and knowing it will be exactly the same a few hours later. Having "living room kids" makes it worse because the clutter migrates into a space for everyone. Ages 2-5 are absolute hell for mess and at some level you may just have to accept it and learn to ignore it. The only halfway solution I found was to stick with toys which are easy to tidy, eg Duplos and Legos. Those can all be chucked into a big box and don't have tiny bits which can go missing. We have one big box of Legos and one big box for miscellaneous toys.

Also, it really does get better around age 6. Once they can read and write it's a huge milestone. They can have books, activity books or simple video games to keep them entertained. The amount of physical mess goes down dramatically. Within 6 months, my evening tidying time went from 1hr+ to just 10mins.

I don't mean to spam, but I didn't read your post properly @Annabella92

Hoarding basically stagnates not your home leaving it it without energy, but it stagnates your life, leaving you without energy to live the life you want. She's very big on visualising what you want your home and life to look like, before you start the decluttering journey. You declutter for the life you want now, not hanging to the past and not wishing away your life for the future.

In my own personal experience, I found her book magical in that it did change my home, my outlook and, yes, my life too. I was never a hoarder, just had way too much stuff to be able to breathe easily. It was impacting my mental wellbeing - just that feeling of being out of control and feeling overwhelmed.

Decluttering at the Speed of Life is great - or if you don't have time for a book try the podcast (A Slob Comes Clean) - I found this life changing as someone who has always struggled with staying clean/tidy/organised.

@SnowflakeSmasher86 impossible to distil a study of hoarding down into a couple of sentences but you can see a lot of the common themes in this thread.

• Scarcity mindset (I might need that later)
• Worry about "waste" - sunk cost fallacy, guilt over environmental concerns.
• Sentimental value, worry about regretting decisions.
• Executive dysfunction (aka disorganisation) - moving things around rather than getting them out of the house.
• Decision paralysis resulting in putting off a decision until "later".
• Wanting to get rid of things in the "most perfect way" but then this being more effort so not doing it.

Thank you for that summary, maybe I need to read the book afterall, does she have much to offer people with a scarcity mindset, who hate waste, see value in everything and struggle to let go of the past because the future definitely won't be as good? 🤔 I'll get the book, maybe a version she revised after kids

I really recognise these 😬

While I see what you're saying but we have LOADS of shit in the house because of gifts and bits picked up by family/grandparents in between Xmas and birthdays. It just becomes an endless churn, no matter how much I thin out. I think this is quite common for parents now - fewer kids being born and more doting relatives with extra cash wanting to do a bit of spoiling. It comes from a good place but I wish our cultural ideas of love would shift away from 'stuff'.

Reduce the number of of toys available, and institute a strict “tidy away what you’ve just played with before you can get another toy out” rule.
Make the storage work so that it is as easy or easier to put an item away as it is to get it out.

Definitely!! I found a lot of her reframes helpful for this - like allowing the shop to store something instead of me storing it. The value in empty space vs the value of all this stuff which isn't being used.

And lots of practical tips - going by category rather than area means once a category is done, it stays done, it doesn't slowly mix into the chaos of everyday life, because whether a sock is in the bathroom, hallway, kitchen or bedroom it's still a sock. Whereas you can endlessly declutter the bedroom, but if the errant sock happens to be in the washing machine or down the back of the sofa it will get missed, and cups/books/doom boxes will find their way back into the bedroom.

Saying thank you to items is also strangely helpful. And I do like her order with putting sentimental things last. I think that's really important, since I get stuck there.

OP I absolutely get it! All the people who say to "just declutter" tend to be those who are always out of the house, force kids to stay in their rooms or give them mind-numbing amounts of screen time. Before they can read, kid can only use toys to play with and that inevitable creates physical mess.
Not at all: I declutter often because the stuff accumulates often, it’s not one and done. I do it while they’re playing so I can semi-supervise the play/mess/destructive behaviour but it also helps to see what they’re playing with versus what they’re trampling over. Big box on a high shelf and I would make an excellent, albeit short, basketball player with how good I’ve got at flinging party bag tat and craft creations up into it while they’re playing.

House is still messy but it’s messy with play rather than that horrifying smorgasbord of underfoot crumbs, paper bits, random tiny things, all the missing muddled bits from sets, old pen lids, etc.

I try to tidy less as we go as I would be exhausted by the end of the day, and they’d only go back to the scene of the crime and re-mess it: so right now DS is playing with trains but there’s a big scatter of pens and colouring books on the floor. But that’s fine, he’s two and it’s easier for him when bored with trains to potter over and get going with colouring again if it’s already all out. Before, I was frantically tidying each thing then unpacking it all again, so by evening I was DONE. But we do have the luck and privilege of a big Edwardian house with space to spread out (though that also means every room is horrifying at times).

DD5 plays more and more in her room but by choice, I’ve no idea how I’d force her to stay in there or keep her stuff in there anymore than I’d know how to force DS not to experimentally put yoghurt in his ears to see what it’s like.

It's probably because they're overwhelmed and overstimulated by having so much. And you're overwhelmed by seeing it everywhere and never getting respite from it.

Three steps:

1 Stop the influx

Stop buying toys and tell relatives no to toys. It doesn't = love. Money, book tokens, clothes, art materials instead.

(If you do buy toys, avoid the ones with loads of BITS that can go missing, get mixed up, get trodden on.)

2 Reduce what you have

Look at what they have. Tell them if they're six, 'oh that's a bit ... five ...' and see if they decide themselves that it can go to younger kids.

Let them know in an age appropriate way that some children don't have anything, if they're refugees, or in care etc.

Let them help you box them up and take to charity 'for the babies.'

3 Store well

Storage in their own room, not in the family room - you need adult sane space to keep you calm and relaxed.

Start a routine. All toys to go back to bed at night, just like they do. A basket each they can use for putting the toys to bed each evening.

A bedroom unit with easy pull out drawers they can empty and then tidy back themselves.

Replaced by slobs who don't do anything to help dump washing with their dirty plates on the floor and think mummy is their servant.

My husband is a bit shit at tidying up after himself as well and I literally cry ... so exhausted and so frustrated. ...So yesterday my husband said, let's just leave it a bit- it doesn't make a difference as they make a mess so quickly anyway. So we left it a bit, but I'm just fuming today. I feel sick and frustrated.

This is the actual problem.

Your husband simply does not see or mind the mess.

He doesn't care about what it's doing to your home or your peace of mind.

He doesn't have any empathy with how you're feeling.

He doesn't pitch in and do his half of the duty.

Careful not to ask him to 'help me' tidy up. Or to say 'please could you do it for me'. That suggests it's your job.

This is where a big part of the change needs to happen.

Do you tell them that you throw stuff away? Perhaps if you didn't keep thinning it out they would realise you have too much and stop buying it? Maybe they think your children don't have many toys if your house seems quite empty.

Nah, some people just love buying stuff and don’t gaf. We’ve asked MIL till we’re blue in the face to stooopppppp but she still sends 6-7 gifts per Christmas and birthday. DS turned two on Christmas Eve, he needs bugger all and has no clue, he still got a total of 15 things from her across birthday/christmas.

Well, she SENT 15 things. We donated 13 and presented one on birthday, one under the tree.

But even if relatives are sensible all it takes is having a lot of them, and then them not enjoying the idea of giving book tokens, days out, vouchers; you can be quickly inundated and they don’t all care if you’re donating it. We get a lot of “at least they had fun unwrapping it!” and “the charity shop will welcome it!” as if it’s not a burden to declutter constantly or as if manufacturing this stuff in the first place isn’t a problem.