No motivation to keep house tidy

[Peaplant20]

Hi all, looking for reassurance that it’s not just me! I just cannot seem to motivate myself to keep the house tidy/ clean in the week. Everyone else seems to have a spotless home. I spend basically all weekend tidying and cleaning and by Monday evening it’s like a student house again. It makes me feel rubbish. I work quite long hours and so does DH, have two dogs and a baby on the way. How do people do it? My mum, bless her, almost 60, gets home from work on a Friday, goes to the gym, walks the dogs and then is cleaning the kitchen floor. Meanwhile me (30) can’t get off the sofa once I’ve sat down (and I really do need to sit down when I get home after a 50-60 hour week). It feels like a never ending cycle and I can’t seem to get into good habits. Help!

Can you possibly afford a cleaner? Absolutely worth it if you can.

If not there are a couple of routines online - fly lady I think is one - give it a Google -

I wish I knew, I'm swimming in a sea of clutter and mess, what usually motivates me is having people coming to stay and since that hasn't happened for a year, well there is nothing that is getting organised. I have let everything go including my own care routines. I work from the mostly and live alone. My life is grim and grime at the moment

*work from home

TOMM has worked wonders for me. You spend 15 mins per day on daily tasks plus 30 minutes on a rotation of rooms. No cleaning needed at the weekend.
You could split that between you and partner or just do daily tasks which would make a big difference. Good luck. www.theorganisedmum.blog/

I hear you. I seem to devote my weekends to cleaning as I'm so exhausted and pushed for time in the week. My colleague cleans on a Friday night but I just can't summon the energy for that.

My husband has a chronic illness which means he is bed most days unfortunately. So I feel I carry the burden.

For me it's putting stuff away. There's stuff everywhere. I feel so much better when everything is tidy but it takes very little time to get it back to normal.

I'm off work for two weeks now and intend to clear out a lot of stuff. Eg all the homeschooling stuff that is still lying around even though the kids went back on Monday.

Try to declutter so everything has an easily accessible place to be put away rather than being put down. If it's barely more effort to put stuff away properly it will happen more often than if putting something away involves moving several other things...

Cleaning is much less effort than tidying up to permit cleaning, and takes far less time if you can just run a cloth/mop/hoover over an area too.

We're about to move to a house that is twice the size of our current one, and I am going to make very sure everything has a home and ban putting stuff down as clutter breeds clutter then tidying is a massive job!

Totally get the people visiting thing being our biggest motivator to tidy and not being allowed people over means the place doesn't need to be visitor ready!