Do you like to have an immaculate house?

[Poodlelove]

Since our children have left home , I have been clearing and sorting things so if anything happens to us, then the house is not the terrible mess / cluttered that my parents and other family has left for us to deal with.
We have emptied our loft and garage .
I feel that I am getting a little obsessed and wanting to clear more things in the house.
I just feel more relaxed if I leave for work and the house is tidy , husband thinks it's a bit over the top.
Does anyone else put their house ' to bed ' at night ?

I like it moderately tidy. Spotless houses with nothing out of place and bare surfaces every where make me uneasy.

I absolutely love when my house is really tidy, but it rarely ever is with 3 young children 🤣 I also work 4 long days and do all the housework, cooking, childcare, bringing to activities, homework etc.
That being said I don't think it's the worst and also I would be fairly ruthless with chucking stuff we don't need. We don't have anything in our attic (because we don't have one 🤣 - we have a dormer bungalow) and every so often I'll clear out toys, kitchen cupboards, drawers etc. so we don't have a lot of stuff that needs sorting through.

I agree with decluttering and keep on top of that.

Otherwise, no I don't like an immaculate house, I couldn't care less about that. I like my place to look like a lived in home. There are also lots of things I would rather be doing than constantly cleaning and tidying.

I love to have a clean and tidy home but unfortunately at the moment the best I get is passable.

My mum died not long ago and although we haven’t taken a huge amount from her house, we have taken a few things that we’ve added into an already full house. We also have a huge box of death admin paperwork.

I’m a bugger for bulk buying and have huge sacks of rice, multipacks of tinned tomatoes and beans, supplements, teabags, coffee beans, tissues, loo roll, shower gel refills, soap, washing powder, washing up liquid, snacks etc stored in various locations which adds to the cluttered feeling.

Our children are spread out in ages so have games/toys/tech/sports equipment for various ages. Third child is very ‘busy’ and changes activity about 14 times a day. On Sunday she played football, played shops, did painting, did drawing, made bracelets, played with dolls, practiced gymnastics, set up a library, did a puzzle, played two board games, made a den, played the floor is lava, made a birthday card, made a ‘sculpture’, played Minecraft, changed outfit three times to facilitate the different activities and generally left a trail behind her. I do get her to tidy up but am not always aware of the activity changes and she’s very good at shoving things under furniture or into corners and her creations end up covering every surface!

DH and all children have a lot of hobbies and are very sporty so lots of different equipment/clothing to store.

Generally we all like having stuff. I have a huge drinking glass selection and love the occasion of making a drink in the ‘right’ glass (or mug tbh, have loads of those too). Apart from that and jumpers I’m not too bad though. I try to keep it all tidy and organised and to declutter regularly but I could definitely do better!

Keeping a really tidy house tidy isn’t that hard. It’s a million times easier and less overwhelming than trying to tidy a messy house.

I’ve previously lived in houses with loads of storage and my houses have always been immaculate. It’s easy if you have storage. My current house is not as spacious so it’s trickier to keep tidy.

If you have more stuff than storage it’s always going to be an uphill battle.

I definitely agree that good storage is key - for everyone, not just those of us who prefer to have some 'stuff' in our homes!

Our current cottage is about the worst - and the smallest by a considerable way - house for storage that we've ever owned, being roughly one third of the size of the largest. So, we're in the process of improving that. When you've lived somewhere with huge floor-to-ceiling linen press type cupboards, airing cupboards galore and massive walk-in eaves storage spaces, one little understairs glory hole was never going to cut it!

We do have a garage here - but it's an integral one that was originally a reception room in the Georgian cottage, so the plan is to turn it back to habitable space as currently it's ruining the look and proportions of the building. At our last-but-one house we had three(!) attic spaces, but never needed to use any as the garage there was so huge (plus we had three outdoor 'caves' and a shed 😉).

We're going to add a large housekeepers type cupboard for all the cleaning stuff/vacuum/office bits and bobs, which we did successfully at our last house using Ikea Besta units. Here we'll be using reclaimed cupboard doors from a salvage yard so the cupboards look original. I literally can't wait to have a better system of storage for everything as extreme decluttering/Swedish Death Cleaning - however popular - is never going to be our thing!

I still have 3 teenagers at home so we have a full house and it's a constant fight to stay on top of it because so much stuff is constantly coming into the house (e.g. we have far too many mugs because my DDs are obsessed). I do daydream about streamlining our lives again so we have more time to ourselves rather than constantly dealing with stuff.

There's a world of difference between having a completely minimal home and having a home where the amount of stuff you have hinders you doing what you want to do. So for example, last autumn we went through the games cupboard with the kids and got rid of about half of our puzzles and board games. Because what we kept is a) the games we actually like and b) more organised it's easier to pull out what we want to play and so we play board games more. Nobody would look in our playroom boardgame cupboard and think we were minimalist but it's a lot more functional.

“I’m a bit OCD”… What because you like things being in their place? While having a house full of clutter…🧐 OCD is an awful thing to deal with on a daily basis, it’s not about “having things lined up & things being kept in their place”. It’s not some quirky personality trait, most of you that claim to be “a bit OCD” haven’t got a clue about this awful condition and how draining it is to deal with. Stop claiming OCD as part of your personality, it’s borderline offensive.

Err, no, actually, although perhaps I used the incorrect term, so apologies @LexiiRH if offence was caused by my comments 💐

Since childhood (I'm mid-fifties now), I've had issues with needing to do certain things in a particular order, or a set number of times. Otherwise I'm convinced something bad will happen. I'm guessing that isn't OCD at all, but some other problem I have 😓

For example, from the age of about eight years old I would have to go into the bathroom exactly three times before bed or I believed I'd be ill (vomit) in the night. Sometimes I literally stood outside the bathroom door and put both feet into the room and out again as I saw this as one of my three times. Not sure why I began 'needing' to do this. I never told anyone about this till I met OH at university at which point I was still doing similar.

These days, I don't do that, but have equally repetitive patterns of behaviour including placing items in exactly the same spot in our home or else I think something bad will happen.

If I use the loo at night (which at my age I do frequently!), on one occasion - but only one - I have to use just one sheet of loo roll. Every other time it's fine to use two or more, as necessary.

I've never sought an explanation for any of this (there's far more, I won't go into here as I don't want to derail the thread), because I refuse to see a doctor (haven't seen my GP for 25+ years).

Again, apologies for upsetting you. I shall stop posting on mumsnet now as I don't want to misappropriate your condition.

immaculate is a dream for me. I've been brought up in an immaculate home. Well organised and happy. Its something i would love to be myself. But I struggle alot with simple tidiness as DH is untidy n fights if I have to pack things away. Gets to me, makes me cry, makes me frustrated. But I cant help it. Any tips on how to get around a stubborn, self centred DH to keep home tidy is most welcome

I like my house to be tidy yes but can tolerate a bit of mess/clutter. As a guest in other people's houses I'm not a fan of immaculate because it's less relaxed. I think there's a balance, not tidy enough and it's chaotic and frustrating to live in, too tidy and it's too rigid and unrelaxing.

God yes. I’d live in an all white house with minimal furniture if DH wold let me! I can never understand when people talk about having loads of clutter to sort out ( except for kids stuff ), or when people say “sell unwanted stuff on EBay”. I’m thinking “what stuff”?! Totally agree with tidying up at night so I can start the day fresh.

I WOULD like to. I just never do!

I'd like to have an immaculate home but I'm not great at throwing things away so there's half pieces of paper with the kids drawing on them, colour pencils, bits of toys, Uno cards etc on the sideboard in the living room.
I gave thr kids boxes each so they could keep their own things in them. Clearly that didn't work as we now have another three boxes.
Because I have ADHD I have a pile of clean clothes and a pile for worn once and can get away with wearing it again possibly. Underneath the clean clothes are clothes that I can hang up but they've been there since beginning of September.

I have combined ADHD and my two children have too but I do try and keep on top of the cleaning. A bit of mess is ok but the place has to be clean.

My family and I stayed with a friend.
He's a publican with a big living space upstairs so the four of us imploded in his immaculate living room. I hated it, he was absolutely fine with it all but it grated on me.

I want to live like that but for the next god knows how many years it won't be

We tidy up the day's mess most evenings, so the dishwasher will be running and obvious things out of place put away, apart from maybe a basket of laundry. That's a long way from immaculate though.
It's for DH rather than me as he's sensitive to mess whereas it doesn't stop me doing other things.

I do think I could get obsessive though

Yes I hate the stuff. But the children love the stuff and I love the children so it is a struggle.

This isn't what OCD is :).

OP does your partner ever help? I find that they switch off because they don't have the mental load of having to actually DO it, so don't experience the peace from it bring done.

I would love to have an immaculate house. Alas with 2 children, it regularly looks like I have been battling a poltergeist for 6 days!

My home is clean and tidy. But immaculate? No, I don’t think so. It’s lived in, it’s certainly not a show home, but by no means cluttered (not to my eyes anyway).

Minimalism never has, and never will, appeal to me. I do have periodic sort outs though. At some point, it will have to be cleared when we are no longer here, but I imagine that job will be given to house clearers to do.

The loft is empty. The garage is tidy, and houses the car which means there’s not room for much else 😂, (but the freezer and washing machine are in there).

I’m trying really hard. DD has a severe dust mite allergy (recently diagnosed), so I’m decluttering everything and spend 2 hours a day cleaning and tidying. At the weekends, I spend 8-10 hours a day cleaning. I’m hoping that my house will become minimal in this process so that it all takes less time.

Yes! Which has a tendency of turning into obsessive hunt for stray toys at a bedtime. I can't breath when the surfaces that are meant to be empty get cluttered.

We're a mix. Our kitchen diner is always reset at the end of the day - surfaces clear and cleaned, sink clean, dishwasher on. Looks pretty insta overnight....our living room is also clutter free and reset before bed - throws and cushions straight, everything put away.

The reason these rooms can be like this though is because we have a utility room which is constantly cycling laundry through, with football boots during out and sports kits ready to be packed for practice etc. We also have a playroom that looks like the lego factory exploded. I rarely if ever reset these rooms.

We are not minimalist- love books and have loads and we have different aged children so store a lot of hand me downs etc. But we do have regular big clear outs and we are fairly brutal with keepsakes or memory stuff. We take a photo and then get rid.

I hope to increase the decluttering as the kids leave each stage behind - I don't want to keep toddler toys and books when I have teens for example.

My grandparents left my parents literally everything to sort. They lived as if they'd never die and that's helped me parents to be more careful and I want to do the same.

Yeah. I was very messy at home but as soon as I got my own place I adopted DM’s various mantras

1. a place got everything and everything it it’s place
2. Don’t put it down put it away
3. if you have anyone else in your space have a few designated spots (drawer, cupboard) that the sh*t they leave around can be tidied away. It encourages them to get with the programme.

sometimes, in exceptional circumstances I start to not put things away. It quickly escalates and I can’t find anything. It’s always a good feeling when I start to clear up again

another maxim , any cooking starts by rising the kitchen, clear up as you go along and finishes by clearing again. This makes the clearing up required at each point nugatory. It’s great for my mental health