To think it’s impossible to keep a house clean and tidy with small children

[Kindersurprising]

Unless you have a big, wipe clean, new house with a utility room, garage, big bedroom for each child etc

I live in a 2.5 bed Victorian terrace (third bedroom 1.7m wide!) with no garage, no proper garden (courtyard) and no utility space. All we have is the small cupboard under the stairs and a small attic. The house is old, and hard to make look nice/fresh - gloomy narrow corridors, sunlight doesn’t really come in properly. On top of this it feels impossible to keep on top of the kids mess. I cleaned the place from top to bottom 3 days ago and it already looks like a shithole. The worst offenders are:

1. DD’s bloody ‘crafting’ materials. Cut out bits of paper and newspaper fucking everywhere
2. Crumbs and food smears. Doesn’t matter if I put a bib on DS and wipe him down, some food will find its way into the rest of the house.
3. Mud from the buggy which obviously lives in the hall, and the kids welly boots. When it rains I want to cry
4. Fucking LAUNDRY. We have a tumble dryer but can’t run it all day, we don’t have a utility or space for a proper outdoor rotary line so we have bags of the fucking stuff everywhere constantly in a state of waiting/drying/needing rewashing

Every time I hear somebody say ‘oh it’s not hard, quick clean here, quick clean there, put a bib on them’ it’s somebody with a big wipe clean new build with tons of storage.

ITS IMPOSSIBLE IN MY HOUSE! AIBU

No. Impossible would mean it couldn't be achieved.

It can.

Whether it's common to not achieve it and whether it should be an expectation (who said it is? is a very different thing.

You do you.

Yanbu, I always have one room that's visitor ready, and the rest are anywhere between a bomb site and sort of OK at any given time.

Very literal aren’t you

It’s really hard. Our buggy lives in the car for this reason! Luckily I don’t have particularly crafty children but they do make such a mess with toys and the laundry … lord. DS has now got into baking thanks to some CBeebies programme he was taken with!

I am a teacher and the nursery my children attend three days a week doesn’t offer term time only so while I do only have them do two days rather than three in school holidays, it does mean I can really get the house in order on those days. So I think the only way it’s possible is if you’re a SAHM who also has a bit of childcare! God knows what I’ll do next year when DS is in school and at home with me!

Oh god, the pram! I've just had flashbacks to the endless bits of leaves, mud, dust and general debris when DS was tiny. We had to keep it in a corner of the living room as the hall was too small.

DS is five and I can maintain presentable as a rule. But it is just me and him and I do lose the battle some days still! In the bin and pram days it used to get me down though.

That’s reassuring actually @lilysunder . I have noticed since turning three it’s been possible to do housework around DS a bit more, and it’s been downright easy since he turned four but I do have to use TV, which isn’t ideal.

I think the easiest thing to do is get a degree of acceptance about it. Sometimes our house is messy, there are toys on the floor, crafts all over kitchen table, piles of books in random places. We have some pen marks on the doors and walls, stains on ceiling from DD1’s sticky slugs she kept throwing up there. One day all that stuff will be gone, it’ll be me and DH rattling around in our spotless house and this will all be a memory.

Family life ebbs and flows and our home is where we live and spend a lot of time, and the degree of tidiness will ebb and flow too. At the risk of sounding like a crunchy twat, caring less helps me with lots of things in life, including this.

Invest in some big storage basket things and at the end of the day chuck everything in them and shove them to the side. Then just do a declutter of them every so often. Being able to just get rid of stuff very quickly is the key I think, just out of sight, out of mind.

It's really hard for me too, we have 4 kids (19, 11,6 and 5 weeks) in a 4 bed bungalow which was build in 1937. I love our house but we also have a non stop mountain if laundry, 6 year old lego everywhere, the kitchen always looks really cluttered even when it's cleaned. Yesterday I spent over an hour just organising my larder because it was full to the brim with stuff

You can but it means forgoing playing with the kids and having a life really!! Just as a parent of teens, start getting your children helping now, before it’s a big deal.

I've given up attempting too much. Youngest is a toddler. I just settle for nothing that would grow into a science experiment level of unclean. My oldest is 10. Its a lot easy as they get older (for some) my middle is far more chaotic with mess. But hey ho.

For me it would he impossible to keep my house show home clean without being exhausted and stressed. Probably wouldn't be much fun for my children. So I settle for good enough. If any family members want to judge they are welcome to hire me a cleaner or get cracking themselves.

YANBU. My downstairs was cleaned this morning and my daughter is currently pulling out all her crafting and has been fucking about with water balloons INDOORS. It's not possible to keep it clean and tidy 😅

The absolute worst was when she was about 4 years old and I read someone saying, go down to her level and look at your walls. Jesus Joanie it was horrendous.

I can't keep a one bed flat with just a cat and 43 yo partner clean and tidy.

I’ve tidied and cleaned every day this week for about 4-6 hours straight through (deep spring cleaning and trying to stay on top of the kids mess ready for Easter and half term)

DH had the cheek to actually say to me yesterday’s “See, DW.. the cleaning and tidying you’ve done over the last week is really what you’re meant to be doing every day anyway; that’s just life”

I’ll be damned if I’m spending 6 hours a day scrubbing the house 🤣 he thinks he gets off Scott free because he does the laundry and ‘noone else he knows does laundry in their house’ 😬

Not really.

I just know after dozens of threads like this and the oft-repeated myth which will be seen on this thread of 'social services would be suspicious of a clean and tidy house with young DC' .

That it's a spectrum of lives with having a clean and tidy house with young DC neither being impossible or suspicious nor the opposite being assumed as normal for everyone.

It depends on a number of factors including personality and skills of the parents and the DC, time, opinions on what is important or not in a particular family or house.

And people shouldn't be comparing themselves positively or negatively to anyone else and definitely not saying something is impossible for everyone when that isn't the case.

You’re not being unreasonable at all. It really is harder to keep a house clean with young kids, especially in a small, older home with little storage. Victorian terraces aren’t made for modern family life, and without things like a utility room, garage, or big bedrooms, everything feels more chaotic. The mess isn’t your fault craft bits, crumbs, mud, and piles of laundry are just part of life with kids. People with big, modern homes and loads of storage don’t face the same challenges. You’re doing your best, and it’s totally okay to feel overwhelmed. It’s not you it’s the setup.

@Iamwearingmyglasses how does your dh think other people get laundry done then? Or
he means none of his similarly lazy arse male mates do it?

For an hour a day here and there till the next thing gets tipped out 😅
I can keep it hygienic and tidyish with constant chasing after them with a cloth and tidying as I go.
But small houses clutter easily and little ones have a lot of stuff. There are stains. Once they are out of toddler years I intend to replace the impossible to stain remove Items. But I refuse to splash out on brand new sofas and bits until they are older.

Don’t do any unnecessary washing OP, so don’t wash pyjamas after one nights use etc. the only thing that needs to be clean on for each wear is underwear and socks

Kids, multiple, you're fighting a losing battle. Especially if they are not all girls or all boys. Even if you have a girl who isn't particularly into glitter and a boy who hates Hot Wheels they still get bought completely different things for Birthdays and Christmases and you need 2 sets of clothes.

I don't find it so bad in a terrace as I'm a good multitasker with a day off a week, but we only have one and he's 6 now. I think 4 was peak mess.

Three bedrooms, a hallway large enough to keep a buggy in it, courtyard, attic, cupboard under the stairs?

Sounds huge to me.

I hear you OP. We have a new build so it’s easier to look cleaner on first glance. And to clean floors and skirting etc.

BUT no garage, no loft, no utility. One room downstairs so we have telly, table, kitchen in one room. Buggy just randomly in the kitchen as no where else to put it (hallway only wide enough to walk down). So always pushing a muddy buggy inside.

it’s HARD! And compared to you we are so lucky to have an outside washing line and tumble drier so only just keep on top of laundry which is helpful. Every else though is hard - food smears, scrabbled egg on floor, sequins around, Lego.

What are you comparing it to?

Every place I've lived in, houses and flats.

Ime it’s been impossible to keep a house clean living on my own, living with a bf, living with dh, living with young children, living with teenagers. I try to let it stop worrying me.

Our house was always clean and was always tidy at the end of the day except the odd train set / building half built / Lego etc . Our children were bought up to tidy away things they weren’t using and despite being overloaded with toys they always respected their stuff and looked after it . WRT crumbs we have a cordless vacuum and a handheld cordless on both floors and it’s so quick to just grab one and pick up any bits .