struggling to cope

[SomeKindofWonderful]

I am at work 5 mornings a week, 8am-1pm. I get up at 6:30am ish.

I have DD 4yrs, DS 9mths. DH is a house husband, he looks after the children while I at work.

We are struggling to cope with the housework. I am finding I am going to work, house is in a reasonable state, but not able to get on top of the additional stuff like putting washing away. I come home and the house is a mess, DH says he is working hard to stand still, and I spend the afternoon cleaning the house, am knackered by the evening, go to bed not too long after DS as he wakes in the night (i deal with that). I get up in the morning, house is reasonable, but have not had time to do the additional stuff like putting washing away, go to work, come home, tidy, its like bloody groundhog day.

Rather than DH doing any cleaning, he is looking after the kids and this seems to involve creating a huge mess. He is trying. He is not a naturally tidy person, clean, but not tidy, but he is hopeless at organising.

I am trying really hard to not nag, and to let things go, and accept that the house is not perfect and that DH does things differently to me, and accept he is working hard to look after the children, in his way.

But its just chaos. I don't know how to deal with it without grinding myself into the ground. I am already exhausted. I have reduced my hours, and with DH not at paid employment why the heck can't we manage?

We have already agreed to a cleaner once a week, which I am working on, but this is not really going to do much more than give us a little leeway. It will not solve the situation as we will only have one for 2 hours once a week.

Please give me some pointers on how to organise the house, and DH, in a way that does not look like I am dictating how it should be. Before I chuck everything^ in the house in the bin (which would sort it all out, nothing in the house, no mess!). It is really really getting me down and I am starting to dread coming home.

Hello. I have a similar age gap, although my DC are now 2 and a half and almost 6.

First, I would say that you are in the worst phase age wise and it will get better, not that the children will not create mess as they get older, but they become slightly more self sufficient so you will get more time.

Some tips from us, not that I would profess to be especially tidy or in control:

• have one room you keep on top of. I've just moved to a smaller house and it feels messy a lot, but I try to tidy the living room up when the children have gone to bed, so at least I can sit in a tidy and serene space.

• I have bought a set of 3 wicker baskets quite cheaply from sainsburys. One lives at the top of the stairs, one at the bottom and one under the coffee table. The one under the coffee table I use to throw in any small toys lurking around when the DC go to bed, it only takes about a minute and then the room feels more tidy, without the effort of putting them all away properly. The other two are to round up things that need to go downstairs or upstairs (although I did get a shock when I found a huge spider had taken up residence in one!)

• If you have a problem with clutter, I read a tip on here which came from fly lady about going around your house and chucking out a number of things (10 perhaps, I'm not sure) from each room. I do that sometimes and it does help.

• If I want to blitz the house and don't have much time or just can't face it/motivate myself to get started, I allow myself one hour, and divide it by the rooms I want to tackle. So I give myself 10 minutes per room, set my kitchen timer and put some loud and cheery music on. 10 minutes per room somehow seems manageable and even if its not perfectly tidy, it does really make a difference.

• I used to have a cleaner and I found it did really help, even if it means you know you are getting kitchen and bathroom thoroughly cleaned once a week. Being forced to tidy so she could clean also helped.

• My DH is often at home with the children and is rubbish at looking after them and cleaning up after them. The only way I can deal with him is to give him set tasks to do, If your DH isn't working, I think you need to push him to do a fair share. I have also given up on trying to get him to sort the washing as he just won't can't do it .

All in all, storage is pretty key I think, so you have somewhere you can hide put away things quickly so you at least feel better in your home. Things will get better.

I know how you feel, except I am as disorganised as our DH.

No idea how my friends do it!

ohh I feel for you.
in our household I am the messy one. it really helps having a cleaner, so you have an incentive to having the whole place tidy once a week. the cleaner is for cleaning after all.
we tidy up as part of bedtime routine, of course baby does not really tidy up yet but it is just part of it. that way we have a tidy flat to relax in in the evenings.
I agree with giving dh a task for the day, maybe it also helps him be better organised. it can be quite overwhelming alone with too small children and a lot of mess...

Thank you, yes storage is an issue, but it really involves getting shelves put up, sorting internal cupboard shelves etc. Which means I bug DH to do it, constantly, the nagging woman comes in, and out comes the 'don't you ever stop having something to nag about?' or else i do it. I can't do it all/don't want to.

DH is good, he does ALL the cooking apart from the odd token cooking by me, but he refuses to cook meals for the freezer either at the time, or specifically. He says h can manage fid but sometimes he cooks for us/kid seperately, sometimes doesn't want what we have! at it creates continious chaos in the kitchen. He does clean the kitchen, in fact we seem to spend so much tim in there cleaning, but thats cos he cooks so much. I will try tackle this particular issue with him.

He also does washing, but there is no routine with it. We need some routine. He so so random that, washing gets put on, some is still left on floor of bathroom, not put away, then it doesn't get hung up as he is busy doing something else, when it is hung up it is left for days to dry and then no more washing put up. I suggested we do something like every single morning as soon as he gets up, he puts one load of washing on, and when I get home from work, while he makes me a cuppa, I hang it up/take down the drying clothes. yeah yeah, he says but doesn't, so we never get on top of the washing.

So he does a lot, but as there is no organisation to it, it is like doing it twice/three times. And becomes tiring so he gets fed up. And yes, it is hard for him with two children to look after too, I do know that.

He hates routine, he says it himself. not so much in the house, but because he hates routine, he has absolutely no clue how to have routine. I am not great at it, but I can when i try to, but not when I am up against a man whose every fibre kicks against it.

I feel we are doomed. My main bugbear, a bit issue, in fact two, but related are clean, clear floors, and for him to take his shoes off. I need his shoes off as he treads bits of food from around DSs highchair throughout the house/the new carpet and it grinds in/spreads and he does not know as he cannot feel it, then the muck from spreading/grinding gets trod onto the wooden floor. And he never notices so I have to scrub the odd spot of mash here and there from the carpet.

I like the wicker basket idea,

Oh my goodness, I really feel for you. I have no words of wisdom because both my DH and I are quite disciplined with cleaning/tidying even though we both work fulltime.

But...

• It really helps having baskets in each and every room that you can toss toys into (I wouldn't bother with actually putting them away as such).
• Your older child should be able to help out now - dusting, for example, or at least tidying away her things before bedtime
• Perhaps accept your DH will never change and accept you have to do it all - might stop you "nagging" and be more accepting of the situation
• Your older child will be in fulltime school soon so it will be easier

Oh, and the food in carpet / on floors issue: Could you keep a plastic mat under the high chair so thrown/dropped food falls on it and not the floor? Perhaps you may have to accept that until your baby is older and dropped food is not so much an issue, then your floors and carpets will suffer for another year or so...

I think it it might help you if you designate some jobs as your responsibility and some as your dh's. It sounds as if at the moment whatever he doesn't get to, you come home and sort out.
If say cooking,washing, ironing(if you do it)washing up/dishwasher and bathrooms were his responsibility.That would leave you with floors(which you obviously care about) tidying bedrooms and living areas dusting etc.
Obviously you need to sit down together and talk about this and come to an agreement.
HTH

We struggle to in this house and I wholly agree with having one room clean and serene. Choose what ever room you need it to be. For us it was the kitchen. It's been a week with it being reasonably tidy and so the next room is the living room...
I'm working on clearing things out to help myself keep the house clean(ish). What I've been doing is looking at one room and making a list of things that I want done in the room. Then slowly I've been working my way through the lists. When I come across something I don't know where it goes/belongs (or have no place for it) I toss it in a big box I've put in the 'spare' room. Most of these things are things I'm finding are actually going to be freecycled. And once a week I've been trying to freecycle items that I know I don't want. I put them all in boxes and bags right away and put them in a row in the hall then list them and get them out.
And I keep reminding myself that little steps forward are still steps forward. And I will get to point where I will not have an embarrassingly messy house...