To be fascinated by tidy people

[tangerinemagic]

I’m just not tidy. Nor is my husband. We try. Actually very hard. We have two young children and a dog but there is literally stuff everywhere, all of the time.

I live in London, so we naturally have many parent friends right on our doorstep and there is a ‘drop in’ culture where we might wrap up a playground or common trip and head to each others houses.

Ours is not fit for that kind of spontaneity but others fling open their doors at any time and it’s like no one even lives there.

when conversations come up about chores, cleaning, tidiness, I recoil. They really are extremely tidy people and with young kids. You can’t mistake walking into a tidy persons house, it just feels, different.

The floors and sofa/furniture in our house just don’t look like theirs, even if you have a whip round and tidy you can tell.

So, tidy people, tell me, how do you do it. What are the tips. Was this nurture growing up in a tidy household? Or something you learned? AIBU to be ashamed my pram, car, house is always in need of a clean.

I don’t get rid of things I need. But if I don’t need it or use it then I won’t be rebuying. Do you have an example of an item that you are thinking of? I’m struggling to think of anything

Cleaners do whatever you mutually agree
Mine hangs laundry, fold and put away clothes. Puts away grocery delivery (I order Ocado when she’s in)

This is definitely me.
making tea for me requires the following …open cupboards, take out cup, take out tea bag from tea bag caddy, close cupboards. Tea bag in cup, turn on quooker tap, fill cup, take out milk, pour in milk, put milk back, stir, rinse spoon, dry spoon and put away.

Agree it’s all about the storage

This is exactly what I meant upthread.
It's simply a whole task which is done immediately
Make tea. Put everything away.
It's not onerous or hours of tidying
The idea that you will regret it on your deathbed is so bloody annoying .
No but if I lived in a messy house I would be permanently miserable whilst alive.
I think tidy people have nicer more peaceful lives and are probably calmer parents as a result.
It's like the ho ho ho I have an amazing lovely chaotic life aren't you uptight
Erm nope !

Not really, when you keep the house tidy, it actually doesn't take that long.

The time others are wasting looking for things, or thinking about the mess, or panicking because someone is coming? I am just sitting down having my coffee, or being on MN.

It takes the same time to put things in the wrong place or the right place, that's what people forget. We tend to use more emails than paper nowadays, but it's the same: your emails can be a big mess, and you never find the right one, forget about an important one from school, a change of time from the club.. or you take a few minutes to keep your inbox organised and you save so much time later.

To be efficient, storage needs to be "tidy". No point shoving everything randomly out of the way, it's still a mess

Yanbu OP. I'm a single mum, I work full time. My cleaning gets done early Saturday and Sunday mornings. Saturday is washing, food shopping, changing beds, bathroom. Sunday is hoovering, mopping floors, dusting and tidying.
I clean the kitchen as I cook.

I have one ds(17), no dh. Yet within an hour of ds being awake, the house looks like a bomb's exploded. His room is a disaster. The sitting room is covered in maths & physics books, phone chargers, games consoles, cups, plates. Crumbs all over the kitchen, sticky knives. The loo is no longer clean. Toothpaste smeared on the wash basin.

We aren't cramped, we have four bedrooms, two receptions and an office between us. Plenty of storage.

I hate nagging. If I ask him to put his plate in the dishwasher he will, or use the loo brush or put his dirty clothes in the laundry bag. But I have to ASK. And he goes to bed after me so mornings can be a 'surprise'.

I've learned to do a quick tidy up before I leave for work. Term time is better because he's out making the school untidy instead. 😁

My home is always welcoming but people have to take the house as they find it - because I do too.

Did you not find it a bit soulless? I quite like people’s clutter. Guess I’m nosey.

IMO you’re either born tidy, or you’re not.

My elder sister was always very tidy and organised.
I certainly was not. But we were both brought up exactly the same,

I have had to learn to be tidier and more organised, but I’ll still never be like my elder sister. She’s the sort of person whose kitchen still looks brand new 7 years after it was installed, everything always immaculate.

It's just a lazy way to insult people who have tidy homes.

I don't know anyone who feels as though they missed out because they lived in a tidy house, but I do know people who were embarrassed by their messy homes and who missed out socially because of it.

This is the ideal scenario but when you have toddlera hanging off.your legs you rarely get to finish a task. You might have 5 minutes to have a shower and throw some clothes on, but your hair drying will be interrupted and your towel won't get put away as you rauh to resolve a crisis.
You may just need a cuppa but meanwhile you're also emptying the dishwasher, making a bottle of formula and finding your dh's socks.

It’s so hard keeping things clean and tidy. It’s worth the effort to start with a drawer, a bin bag or two and go from there.

I think, stuff out is fine but if it’s piled onto dirty floors then that’s not good.

I’ve lived in flats with no storage. I wouldn’t have bikes or pram wheels in the flat. Storage boxes outside, in the communal area or hung up on a wall. That’s where my bike lived.

That sofa should have been removed when the old one arrived. Our sofa delivery people did that with ours.

If the photos weren’t done in situ, then they are very difficult to do in a crowded hallway.

I’ve lost count the promises of Vinted pics and FB marketplace sales that I’ve never gone through with. It just gets taken to the charity shop or recycled.

We’ve lived on a main road in the past also, so the dirt was constant. I cleaned a little every day to keep on top of it.

I think when the problem becomes large it’s hard to solve. Just little steps and keep going every day :)

So it’s just a case of you just don’t care 😱
BTW, what was the point of buying new furniture 🤷‍♀️ From what you describe a potential buyer must be hard pushed to buy a second hand sofa from the chaos you describe.

I'm a tidy person because I wouldn't ever be able to relax if I wasn't! It doesn't take long though...I empty/ fill the dishwasher when the kettle is boiling. I leave things on the stairs that the children have been trained to take up if they belong to them😂 if you're always tidy then there's never that much stuff to put back in place. Sports bags etc I would put straight in the washing machine. I find it hard to understand un-tidy people as I would be permanently stressed if I had to live in an un-tidy house!😂

Never a truer word said! The amount of times, I’ve congratulated myself for getting up early on a weekend to tackle a horrifically messy home and then justified sitting down to consult my chores list on my iPad and then it’s no longer 9 but almost 11 😭

’pottering’ (ie cleaning the living shit out of everything relaxes me. DH doesn’t like it, so I look forward to him saying he’s going out so I can get busy. Like Monica in Friends.

having said that, this is learned behaviour. In my line of work, everything is fastidiously clean - or it isn’t clean. I’ve stopped booking Airbnb’s because I have to clean it before I can enjoy it..

I periodically clear out the kids clothes every 6 months with what they’ve grown out of and replace with new sizes. The old stuff either goes on vinted or straight into a charity bag. If it’s not sold on vinted in a couple of weeks it goes in the charity bag too. I hate clutter mainly because my parents are hoarders! I never noticed it growing up, but now when I go there it gives me a headache.

These things stand out from your posts.

1. You don’t like cleaning
2. You throw things down rather than putting them away
3. You don’t have routines so you’re pulled in different directions at once
4. You don’t mind living in a mess (or enough to get it under control).

What I do differently:

• I dislike cleaning too so I have a cleaner.

• I was brought up with “don’t put it down put it away” & brought my children up with the same. It saves SO much time and hassle in the long run.

• I have routines of x then y then z. On repeat daily. So stuff doesn’t build up.

• I do mind living in a mess and not being able to find things. I feel confused if there’s stuff everywhere.

• Boxes, storage systems, filing cabinets, LOVE them.

I only tidy my own mess.
It's quite easy to train DC to put things away, DH is a different matter.......

I agree. It's usually an excuse given by lazy people.

I used to let DD play with toys all over the floor. Once she was in bed they went back in the toy box. It was a 5 minute job.

Well I had 3 and managed it!

Unless it was life and death I just carried on and my DC were fine .

I don’t have a clue it’s so so hard 😩 I wanted to get the whole house done today but it’s just not happening 🙈🙈 We have an almost 4 year old and it is absolutely impossible to tidy around him so it takes both of us really as we can’t both be doing a big task at the same time. I got about half of the living room done this morning and I’ve now come upstairs to try and sort out the landing and the laundry whilst my partner washes up and watches our child play downstairs and then we will swap so they can come upstairs and my partner can go through some of the clothes that need putting away whilst I finish tidying the living room (including the new mess from our child playing 🤷‍♀️😂) and hopefully the kitchen too!! 🤞

I do think show home looking houses look very odd though as they should look lived in if there are people living there, especially children 🤷‍♀️

I agree.

In my experience in child/teen friendship groups, there ends up being someone in the friendship group who has a nice house and becomes a host/social butterfly as a result.

Teens generally want a home that’s flexible enough to have friends drop in whenever - so having a gross or stinky home is embarrassing. That’s sort of social suicide especially when their mates have nice homes/decked out bedrooms to host people. If others have a better atmosphere at their own home, they aren’t going to come back to yours, so it puts you on the periphery when making friends.

I am so happy someone is fascinated by me 😆😆😆

i am a bit of a cleaning freak, its probably someone’s nature, so i wouldnt be too hard on myself. It is what it is.

with two young kids (4 yrs old and 6 months old) and a puppy it is definitely challenging by i have my own system i stick to.

• thursday - kitchen day (front of the cabinets, microwave, moving whats on the counter to wipe everything etc etc)
• friday - bathrooms/toilet day
• saturday - dusting, toys, proper hoover including skertings, sofas, chairs, mopping properly

on daily basis we clean the kitchen obviously but its just quick wipe, dishes etc. I have a cordless hoover downstairs so give a quick hoover every day (usually few times a day, after each meal etc and in the evening, just around the table and the kitchen, 10 seconds job) and have also a spray mop so give it a quick mop every evening without getting a water and floor cleaner ready etc

we put toys away every evening, usually my son does or with our help so nothing is where it should be but it looks tidy’ish and then we do it properly every week anyway.

i never leave things lying around, everything has its own space, or leave something on the stairs and its being picked up by whoever is going upstairs next.

i also dont have much clatter so it makes things easier.

but that feeling when everything is done, and you get to wake up on sunday and have a coffee in nice clean house…amazing!