New house, new start. Please tell a complete idiot your house rules androutines!

[Cagliostro]

I have always struggled. Grew up in a rundown house with hoarder parents (one now ‘reformed’ in a nice flat, the other... not so much) and various vermin. Needless to say I didn’t learn good housekeeping skills there.

I am autistic and have various physical and mental health conditions that have added to the struggle over the years. Add in two autistic kids and it got seriously overwhelming.

But we are moving to a bigger house (me/DH/11yo/8yo/baby). I feel really positive that this is the chance to turn things around, as we will have more space (and other various things like a garden and better location that will have huge effects on my health and happiness). But I also know it’s not a magic pill and I want to work really hard to make it happen! And I am DETERMINED.

First step, decluttering - I have never managed to actually do the Kondo method all in one go but her principles have changed me and I can now let go of stuff - and I know that if we moved into this bigger house without getting rid of stuff, we would be no better off at all. So we have been chucking and giving away loads. We are having to furnish the place almost from scratch so we are thinking really hard about storage and what we actually need. I have literally never lived in a home where “everything has a place”.

Routines are something I really struggle with too. Autism is commonly associated with need for rigid routines but I find it difficult to get into one and form good habits. I would really like some rules/basic routines (I do follow the Flylady thread but a range of ideas would be great) as I just have no clue how to do this basic adult stuff!

What rules do you have? For example on another thread on here, I read about the rule of only eating food at the table. It had literally never occurred to me before. See I need help! And inspiration please.

Congrats on the move!!!!
One thing I do is always tidy up after a meal. So fill the dishwasher, wipe the surfaces, brush the floor. Kids bring over their bowls and cups to the dishwasher. It only takes 5 mins but it's done. Same in the morning, I don't go downstairs until the beds are made, windows and curtains are open and rooms tidy. My dds are expected to keep their room tidy. I do a load of laundry a day, and that helps us keep on top of it. So basically, I just keep on top of it and never let it build up. Once a week, I have a proper clean and clean bathrooms, dust etc. We also have a robotic hoover which has been a brilliant buy.

Also the decluttering you are doing now will be a big help. The less stuff you have, the easier it is to keep on top of it. I'm minimalistic by nature... Even as a child I hated being surrounded by lots of stuff so that helps loads. Dusting a clear surface takes a minute. Dusting a cluttered surface, where you're having to move bits and equally dust those is a gruelling task. Same with floor space. I think keeping belongings to a minimal helps. Obviously with kids, there is clutter that comes with their toys etc but I think it pays to be.mindful which toys they play with and which are just left there.

Thank you very much liadan :)

Those all sound like good rules. Food is a definite mess issue here. The kids are very clumsy and messy too. Also the baby is loving her food, dropping less now but still a problem! We have a splash mat but will get a bigger one, and have ordered a better high chair.

Sadly we don’t have a dishwasher! Was really hoping we would have space for one but it’s all cupboards. After a year (HA property) we can ask for permission to take a cupboard out and then we can fit one, which will be genuinely life changing (I get dizzy standing too long so it’s difficult - DH does 99% of it, but works full time late shifts so it usually all gets left till the morning as doing it at midnight would wake the kids).

I need to get the kids into good habits too, for their sake as much as mine! Part of my rules need to involve getting them to do their bit. They currently put their own clothes away and put washing in the dryer etc and love things like hoovering so I would like to make a consistent routine for all of us including regular chores for them. I definitely agree about one load of laundry a day. It builds up so fast! I must make that a priority.

Your kids are doing great;) putting away the laundry is a great help;) I'm not sure what age your children are but would they be able to wash and dry the dishes? If you had a sink filled with hot water and let them at it;) after every meal it would only be a few bits whereas it's a bigger job done in the evening. I hear you on babies making a mess eating... My two are just beyond that stage but I remember it well;) my youngest was prone to throwing food at the wall the IKEA highchair is a good one as you can push it into the table if you want...

Rules:

Shoes off at front door. That way no dirt gets smeared on the carpet.
No food upstairs when they were little. Now they're teens that one has relaxed.
When DC are asked to take their stuff upstairs, I always say: Final Destination, which means don't just dump it on your bed or desk, put it where it actually should be.

I love routines. Like you I was raised in a pretty chaotic, grubby house with no rules or routines, so Flylady is my start point.

Best tip ever: 5 minute room rescue. Set a timer for 5 minutes and whizz round a room making it as tidy as you can in five minutes. Hall: Hang up coats, bags, pair shoes and stash them, toss junk mail and papers. Polish mirrors, bannisters, door handles.

Kitchen: put dirty cups and plates in dishwasher. Food in cupboards. Wipe surfaces. Sweep/mop floor.

bedrooms: dirty clothes in hamper, clean ones in wardrobe. Toys in baskets. Shake out the duvet and open the window.

Bathroom: polish taps and mirrors, change towels, bleach loo, quick scrub of the bath and shower stall. If you do it daily, it rarely needs more. Keep windolene, bleach and a polishing cloth under the bathroom sink. Clean bath itself with tail ends of shower gel.

It's amazing what you can do in 5 mins.

I also have a morning routine: feed cat, put on a laundry load, empty dishwasher while kettle boils and restack it if stuff has accumulated after dinner the night before. Wipe surfaces, make breakfast and packed lunches, clear away breakfast stuff. If you are a SAHM, you can reboot the laundry when you're back from the school run. If not, do it when you get home from school.

Afternoon routine - empty school bags and retrieve melted kitkats, bashed bananas and worksheets/letters from school and homework or reading books. Give DC a snack. Fold and put away dry laundry.

I keep two crates under the sink. One with all my cleaning stuff in it and the other for recyclable plastics, tins and bottles, so

No food upstairs Ever...
They can have water nothing else.
Mouldy cups and plates are nasty.

laundry and paper
if you have control of those, you have control

Put away what you're playing with before you get the next (big) toy out - we have a small house and this rule makes a big difference to how cluttered it feels
Tidy up time for everyone (adults and children!) before lunch, before tea, before PJs - we sometimes use music to get this done speedily and with better humour my children will never be able to hear I like to move it move it again without leaping up and putting something away
Laundry basket(s) live beside the washing machine, dirty clothes go straight in there so no lurking piles in bedrooms or bathroom
Give the rest of the bathroom a clean while kids are in the bath - it's easier and less boring than feigning interest in bath toys
And shoes off as soon as you come in, that helps too (straight into shoe tubs in owner's bedroom)

Enjoy your new home!

Check out the organised mum method (TOMM) on FB & Instagram, you do 15 mins of daily duties, 1 wash a day and a different room to do a focussed half hour cleaning with a timer. Life changing!

The organised mum method is working for me. My youngest is autistic and everyone suspects I am but I can't face the diagnostic process.
Anyway, I need routines and could never find a routine I could follow without my ocd completely taking over. Well TOMM IS working for me so definitely look up the blog, find her page on fb and join the fb group.

Check out equipment to help disabled people with everyday living, via your council’s social care department. They should be able to give you advice and point you towards where to purchase it, much of the basic equipment is surprisingly cheap. Some stuff that might help isn’t even ‘equipment’ as such - for example, what about a tall-ish stool, possibly with a back, so you can wash up without standing?

Wow thanks so much everyone.

I will definitely check out TOMM. I suspect (given my weird issues with routine etc) that in the end it needs to be my routine rather than someone else’s IYSWIM, but getting elements from others will help. So I will write all this stuff down - I have already started a page in The Moving Notebook :o of new house rules so I have lots to add now

Re equipment I have to get an occupational therapist to visit once we move in, as the idea was that they would do adaptations (although now appears I may have a fight on my hands about that ). I did have a perching stool but being slightly lower by leaning on it meant I was lifting my arms higher, which led to more pain and dizziness anyway :( I am tempted to even ask if getting a cupboard removed (funded by us - it is literally just the permission aspect) so we could then buy a dishwasher would be something I could apply for under medical need?! Worth a cheeky ask anyway.

Really interesting idea about laundry and paper being the main issues - how does one keep control of paper? Major issue here

Older two are 11 and nearly 9. Eldest has washed up occasionally so I could make that a regular thing, DS is scarily clumsy.

They are both home educated due to their SN so we don’t have a school run as such, but they have got clubs every day. I’ve just ordered new buckets for a couple of tall Trofast units that we are going to put downstairs (there’s a weird long cupboard thing but I think they should fit well) as I want it to be a sort of “leaving the house” cupboard - a big bucket each at the bottom for shoes, then all their other stuff like leotards/doboks/hair bun nets/uniforms will be folded into the smaller drawers. The idea being that every night they completely empty their backpacks (we do get the occasional squished orange etc ) and pack them for the next day. We don’t tend to forget anything but their stuff is currently stored in different places all over the house and it can be a last minute rush sometimes - so I hope having it all in one place will make it easier and it can become their responsibility entirely. I just need to make the unpacking/packing a part of their routine.

I have a feeling lists will need to be put up on the wall for a while! We have attempted to get into routines before but it always falls apart eventually. I just hope that by moving into a house that is less chaotic to begin with will mean it is easier to gradually build up good habits.

Definitely worth asking. You could say that it’s a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act 2010, if the HA does seem happy to grant permission.

• doesn’t

We were recently in a similar situation, moved from one rental property to another. The old one was mouldy and damp and the landlord wouldn't try to fix it, so it became very hard to clean as it was demotivating. When we moved we decided we were going to make a big effort to keep the new house tidy and clean.

I sat and wrote a list, room by room, of all the chores we need to do. No matter how big or small, put it on the list. We then decided if these needed doing daily, weekly, monthly or rarely, which helped to make sure we were both in agreement about how much stuff needed to be done. I put a tick box next to each and coloured the boxes depending on how often the task needs to be done (red, orange, yellow, green), then printed the sheet and laminated. I also left some space at the bottom for random jobs that crop up, like booking appointments or buying gifts etc.

Having the list means that at the end of each night, I can have a quick glance over the daily tasks and make sure we've done all that stuff, so I know I'm keeping on top of stuff. I tend to do the weekly stuff on a Saturday, and monthly stuff is done on Sunday afternoons (I try and do one monthly task and week rather than four or five in one go).

IKEA Trofast units and the boxes are a great way to keep things tidy.
Agree with pp all food and drink consumed at the table, nowhere else. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a biscuit, crisps or fruit: up to the table. We always have a towel on the back of someone’s chair too for immediate wiping of hands.

paper.
keep as little as possible. practically everything is online. banks/utilities/council tax/insurance. if anything isnt I scan it and keep it in a folder on my phone.
school letters done and put back into school office following day (school has a post box for this). with secondary schools dds i just used to post them back!
school letters that contain info i take a photo on my phone then delete after the event. every thing that cannot be done straight away goes on the fridge!

Thanks again it's really great to hear about fresh starts working out too!

Thanks for paper advice. We once bought a filing cabinet that housed lots of paperwork for a few years before we got rid of it. Never used a single thing in it and shredded it all when we ditched the cabinet. That kind of waste of time and money is typical of us!

I'm starting look at all the extras we need like laundry baskets etc and there are so many types of storage in the shops now, stuff I never knew I needed clearly I need to reeeeally think hard about what will actually be useful and what would just end up being clutter in itself.

Definitely need to continue with the decluttering. Recently got rid of a storage unit that housed loads of pens pencils glue etc... Why?! We don't need so much. I despair at my past self!

seriously we moved last year. the stuff i chucked away i still shake my head at.
now, if any one knows how to keep up with feckin socks id be grateful!

Don't put it down. Put it away!

And as for We have attempted to get into routines before but it always falls apart eventually. Everything needs refreshing, keeping new, never take the successes for granted. Always look hard at what's working and why, what's working and why then tweak, adapt, change accordingly. Every single day make some little thing be better or stay better.

What's not working and why too.

You don't need more storage. You need less stuff.

My best tip would be that every time you leave a room, take something that doesn't belong there with you and put it away en route. It prevents clutter building up completely.

I have a basic routine of cleaning the bathroom in the morning after the school run, before I do anything else. Kitchen is cleaned after the dc are in bed, before I sit down. Other jobs are spread through the week, but Hoover daily downstairs (wood floors that attract dust), hoover upstairs min twice a week. Floors downstairs are washed a min of once a week. Dusting is done a min of twice a week. Laundry is put away as soon as it's ironed, or the morning after if I do it at night, the dc help with this and put their own clothes in their rooms, dc6 into drawers, dc4 puts his on his bed in a pile. DC also make their own beds, I don't worry if they are perfectly done as I want to foster their independence and not make them feel like there's no point as mummy will redo it anyway! It sounds like a lot, but if it's kept on top of, there is less to do and it doesn't take as long.

Definitely agree we don’t need lots of storage “stuff” (I was baffled at the range of solutions in Wilko... tiny sets of drawers and such). I have learned over the last few years that buying more storage does just mean it gets filled with more clutter rather than making things neater.

Unfortunately we do need to buy SOME storage though. We have virtually none to take with us - for example we have zero clothes storage, as the kids had all their stuff in their cabin beds, which fell apart (they are on mattresses on the floor, which they love, but are getting new beds delivered to the new house on Monday), and so currently all our stuff is in one built in wardrobe so we can’t take that with us! DS is going to have an old Trofast though with new buckets, and DH and I are getting one wardrobe with drawers at the bottom as I reckon that will be enough (neither of us are big on clothes). We were going to get the girls a wardrobe and chest of drawers, but then we realised the Kallax we are getting as a room divider would probably do the job - rather than getting a wardrobe etc AS WELL and then the Kallax getting filled with random clutter.

Other things we inherited over the years are falling apart too. So we are trying to really really think of what we do need rather than going crazy buying lots. We are just going for Kallax in the living room as I think that’s versatile enough for board games (they are a family obsession so we have and play lots), books (already decluttered by about 90%) and home ed/tutoring supplies. We’ve got the first furniture arriving next week so we can build it and then I think we will get a better idea of what we really need. We may wait until after we’ve moved in to get the last bits though, it’ll mean keeping our clothes in boxes for a while, but it may be better to give us an idea of what we really do need rather than guessing. It’s exciting furnishing a house almost from scratch but also high pressured as I don’t want to get it wrong .

We really have decluttered so much though. We are now down to all the random bits and pieces that don’t really have a category!

I really like the idea of having set times to do particular tasks. A lot of my issues are not knowing when to start, but if we wrote in the diary that the oven needed cleaning on x day, it would help.

We also have a garden to think of for the first time! Not going to plant anything yet though as it’s too late. Need to sort the lawn out, get the decking pressure washed and treated. We have a lovely shed too which will help as my DH runs a sports club so all the supplies fit easily in that, rather than being in the house!