To ask ‘how do people do it? Working, family, and keeping a clean home’ - I’m exhausted!

[TheGhostsOfMeAndYou]

I honestly don’t know how people manage to juggle everything.
I work 4 days a week, school hours and term time only, and my husband works from home 5 days a week. His job’s in tech support for the hospitality industry, so even though he’s home, he’s often working long hours and has to jump on things at all hours if a problem crops up.

We’ve got one child, our 13-year-old daughter who’s ND, and I just feel like I’m constantly doing.
If I’m not at work, I’m doing housework. If I take one day off, the place looks like a bomb’s gone off. It’s only a 2-bed, 1-bath, but it somehow needs endless attention.

I find myself constantly thinking, “Right, I’ll do the kitchen tonight, then the hall and lounge tomorrow, then hoover and mop downstairs after that…”
There’s never a point where I feel “done”.

What’s really getting to me now is the mental exhaustion of it all, the constant background anxiety about the house looking messy or “behind”. I can’t seem to relax because I’m always thinking about what needs cleaning next. I want to be able to enjoy time with my family, actually switch off and do something nice together, but my brain just won’t stop listing chores.

How do people do it? How do you stay on top of the housework, work, and still find time (and energy!) to enjoy life?
Are there any routines or hacks that actually work, or do I just need to accept that something’s always got to give? 😅

I don't keep up with it all. I work 4 days a week, two teens, one is ND.

I'm prioritising quality time and support during exam years. The physical care of small children has been replaced by life coaching chats where I like to think I'm helping them to stay sane. I keep on top of bathrooms, kitchen and laundry but theres a couple of cobwebs that might as well stay up for Halloween.

Tbh today I didn’t manage it .

just dropped youngest off at karate and pulled into Starbucks for a little cry in the car park.

today has been a lot .

Hire a cleaner or lower your standards.

Realistically your house can't get that messy.

Kitchen surfaces get a wipe down in an evening, but everything else gets done at once on a weekend - with the teens pitching in.

So, the whole place is clean. Then it all spirals down over the week. Laundry is the exception, and gets done every other day to keep on top of it. Put stuff away after it's been used.

I can't imagine cleaning a room a day - that would feel never ending!

I have to ask what are you doing and how high are your standards ? Because I had to work a lot more and still had a basically clean home

have a junk box / don’t tidy other people’s stuff just stuff it in a junk box under the stairs / that solves the mess

save the big clean jobs like fridges and cupboards for the school holidays and spend no more than one day a quarter on that lot if you must

I mean daily - clean the dishes, wipe the counters shouldn’t be more than 15 mins. Another 15 for laundry

What exactly are you doing everyday? It takes less than an hour for me to wipe down all kitchen surfaces, load the dishwasher, do a load of laundry, run the hoover round and give the bathroom a quick wipe. I work a full day too.

Sometimes I will do it, sometimes do, sometimes we share it. Bigger tasks get done at the weekend if needed, but again it doesn't take long.

Habit and frequency. I hoover downstairs and stairs while DC eats breakfast twice a week. Kitchen is always clean before I do school run. Furniture dusted and hoovered as needed when I make a quick nip upstairs.

Bathrooms I spray and wipe twice a week as a five minute job. The trick is to never let them look like they need to be done, otherwise the 5 minute job becomes an hours job. Toilets with brush as needed using a quick squirt of hand soap. Showers and baths weekly/fortnightly as needed and deeper/proper cleaning work as a weekend morning job. Same with windows and mirrors. Podcasts are your friends on a weekend morning.

Laundry on in the morning, in the dryer at lunch and put away when kids doing teeth.

Cleaning is all a mind trick - the moment it looks like it needs to be done, you've gone from a 5 minute job to a 3 hour job.

Cooking is best done with radio on and kids doing homework at the table.

What exactly is it you feel you are not keeping up with? Three adults in a two bed house shouldn't be hard to keep on top of, especially as you are only working term time.
Both myself and my husband work out of the home for 40 hours a week, we have two teens, two dogs and a cat (trust me the cat counts, he's a messy little bugger 🤣).
We get up super early, have breakfast together then he deals with the laundry and cleaning the bathroom, I do the kitchen and hoover the whole house (not the kids rooms) and in 45 mins ish everything is done for the day. It just needs a quick once over in the kitchen after our evening meal. This has been the routine since my children were babies as I absolutely cannot stand clutter or dirt.
I chose to lose sleep rather that lower my standards but it will always be hard, it's just sometimes a case of choosing your hard and getting on with it.

I can’t stand when people say lower your standards. If I’m sat knowing the house needs cleaning or it’s messy my anxiety increases.

OP these are the things we have done:

• full family cleaning sessions, put on some music and set a timer for 15mins everyone has to clean up (not just their bedrooms it could be living room / kitchen).
• one touch, never touch something twice put it away or where it should go straight away. A glass, don’t pick it up and put it on the side put it straight in the dishwasher
• get a cleaner every 2 weeks to help keep costs down but really help keep on top of things.
• whoever didn’t cook cleans up after dinner, full kitchen reset before bedtime (not just their sitting down after dinner straight into cleaning the kitchen), coming down to a clean kitchen in the morning always helps me

If anxiety is causing you to need to do hours of housework every day - get help for the anxiety not the house

Lowering standards doesn’t necessarily mean living in a mess though. It depends what exactly the OPs standards are. For me it meant not stressing if I saw a cobweb on the ceiling or if there was a bit of dust on the skirting board.

I think your mistake is thinking that it should be “done” at some point. Housework doesn’t work like that. It’s absolutely fine that the kitchen is cleaned one day, the bathrooms the next and so on. It’s normal to have a pile of dirty laundry, then a pile of drying washing, and then a pile to fold and put away.

It’s unending drudgery but you’re not doing it wrong just because it’s not instagram perfection.

If you’re not doing this already a 3 minute tidy where everyone pitches in is worth getting off the ground. Yes they’ll all loan like they’re walking barefoot on Lego the first few times, but if you stick with it, it’s worth it. Mostly because it educates your family members to put stuff away and not make a mess because they have to deal with it eventually.

I hear you! TBH I think some people are just mort organised. My house is lived in and that's fine byy me.Dog DC and PTwork when DC were young was exhausting.I am older and DD still at home with us.she is ND and is messy.i just have lower standard's. Clean kitchen every night .wipe downs .sweep floor bin out. Bathroom same .DH hoovers and I dust .weekends washing done .that's fine. Not worth endlessly fretting over

Far from lowering your standards - have higher standards for what your DH should be doing. Just because he ‘works longer hours’ doesn’t mean he gets away Scott free.

Love all the 1950s posters expecting you to get your dd to shift her arse but not the grown up male in the house. 🙄

You both live there and make mess. It’s supposed to be teamwork - it shouldn’t be all on you.

Both work FT somewhere between 40-60 hours a week depending on workload, 2 dogs and 2 adult children.

What jobs in the house do your DH and DD do?

I do have a cleaner - I would rather go without clothes, haircuts etc than loose her, but you do seem to have reduced work hours and your DD must be at school on your day off?

Inbetween cleans every morning for 30 mins I hoover downstairs, tidy the lounge, mop floors etc, toilets/ bathrooms are cleaned every 2 days, laundry done every day, kitchen is tidied and sorted every night before bed (DHs job!), sheets stripped every week each person has a day - kids strip/ wash their own bedding, they walk the dogs, do the dishwasher etc. If one is cleaning their car they do all the cars.

I do a home shop, DH puts it away. Once a year I do everything in one room - all cupboards / wardrobes, drawers etc to completely declutter.

I have a biggish house, 3 dogs, a cat, an teenager and work FT from home. I never let it get messy because it’s too much work to clean it all at once so I do it frequently and in short bursts. It also helps to have a place for everything and don’t put it down, put it away solves lots of mess accumulating.

i make lists of what I need to do that day and just tick things off so I can see what I’ve done. I don’t do any housework really after 7pm as I can’t be arsed 🙂

Hard disagree
I can't stand that constant feeling of never being " done"
It never looks clean and tidy and it's inefficient

I do all my shopping, cleaning and laundry on Fridays.
Everything is spick and span and then I can relax.
Im a fan of decluttering, one touch and simple systems to keep everything clean and tidy

I posted on @Kitchenbattle original thread.

Ruthless declutter
Storage for everything else
One touch-dont put it down, put it away
Bins emptied daily
Laundry once a,week, daily laundry is busy work and it looks awful hanging all the time
Dishwasher runs after dinner every day and DH empties before bed.

No idea why people say lower your standards
So you live in a messier house than you do now? 🤔

She has an ND teenager - it’s a whole different ballgame

I’ve basically given up.

Laundry once a week??!

🤣🤣🤣🤣

I’ve got 4 children including a toddler who rarely sees his father or at least when it suits him , working too , constant football rugby training , school runs ,sports games all weekend here there everywhere .no family to help . I just stop worrying about the house as much as I did and drink wine most evening 😂😂😂

Admittedly I probably do have low standards… but tidy over clean. My 13 and 11 year old tidy up after themselves with some reminders and will help set table / clean up after dinner. Three year old is work in progress but older two will chuck his toys away if it gets crazy!

I don’t have a man in the house and after passed experience this is a help rather than a hinderance!!

Sole parent, triplet pre-teens, full Time job, near by elderly father to keep eye on. F@@k knows how I do it, but somehow I do! Hardly ever see my friends, try and walk to as many places as poss for excercise. I have a cleaner 2 hours a week, and a guy who mows the lawn once a fortnight. It’s a treadmill for sure and Im very afraid of falling off.

Forget about the cleaning- I agree with a post above that the thought patterns here are unhealthy. Maybe anxiety, or ocd (and I don’t mean ocd cleaning, I mean compulsive thoughts about it) ie:

“What’s really getting to me now is the mental exhaustion of it all, the constant background anxiety about the house looking messy or “behind”. I can’t seem to relax because I’m always thinking about what needs cleaning next. I want to be able to enjoy time with my family, actually switch off and do something nice together, but my brain just won’t stop listing chores.”

this rumination is really unhealthy. I reckon a short course of cbt counselling would be more effective than paying a cleaner

Yes once week
Daily laundry is ridiculous
You end up with everyone putting clothes to wash rather than hanging up and wearing again
It's just making work
People have so many clothes there is just no need