Sick of constant clutter & cleaning - tips please for more simple life

[Littlemiss74]

Posted this in chat & then realised this might be a better place..

I’m sick of spending my weekends tidying & cleaning and basically moving ‘stuff’ around from room to room.
My DS is 13.5 & I want to to make the most of my weekends with him before he completely doesn’t want to do ‘family stuff’. DD 8 wants me to spend time with her and I’m always saying, I just need to do this...
I am constantly decluttering but the house never feels tidy or organised. There are piles of clothes everywhere and yet I feel as though I never have anything nice to wear.
I’ve tried making ‘homes’ for things but no-one else ever puts them back there so it just doesn’t work.
I feel overwhelmed by the constant mess - it’s not hoarder level, it’s just constant & I’m thinking there has to be a better way to organise everything.

I work mon-thurs so I leave all my jobs to Friday but that is never enough and it eats into the weekend.

Does anyone have any suggestions please for more simple living?

My tips on top of a general de clutter are:

Iron as you need things (so the night before work and school). When washed and dried just put them away and iron when needed. Don’t spend ages once or twice a week ironing a pile. And put them away daily so there isn’t a like staring at you.

Spray, wipe and rinse bath/shower and sink in a morning once the last person has used it. Literally takes 1 minute and feels fresh again. Do an intense scrub once a week.

Wipe sides down in bedrooms and hoover upstairs once a week. Ideally end of your working week so it’s clean for your days off.

Clean inside of windows once a week. I usually do them quickly while tea is in the oven one evening. Maybe do downstairs one week and upstairs the next. I find this is enough.

Clean hard floors every day. A quick wipe over with a damp cloth and some cleaning spray on it either in a morning or straight after tea. Hoover round downstairs every other day. I find when the floors are clean the whole house feels cleaner

Clean kitchen worktops and sink after evening meal. A quick spray and wipe. Clean fronts of cupboards as and when needed/see marks on them.

This for me makes the house look and feel clean most of the time and I spend maybe approx 30 a day on this including the ironing.

It’s always a work in progress but don’t let it get you down

Get the children helping 10-15 mins every day and reward them each time.

Yes decluttering will save you so much time but don’t despair whenever you feel overwhelmed just keep chipping. away Then down tools and devote time to your beautiful kids.

I’m in the same situation and have become so aware of how much stress the clutter and constant tidying causes me. I feel like it affects my ability to succeed at anything (parenting, work, my own self care etc) because I just can’t relax. It’s hard to get organised and it wastes so much of my time. I’ve finally started reading Marie Kondo’s book and it’s really helping me to change my mindset. I’m not able to do a big declutter in a short amount of time but I’m seeing myself as being in a decluttering phase and follow her recommended steps so e.g. if I have 20 mins spare I’m sorting clothes and will focus on that area over days/ weeks. Then il move onto books etc. It’s really helped me to focus and I’m seeing so much I don’t need any more.

@lokomojo

YY I agree. Don't keep things in your home just to stop them going to the bin. That's actually just you living in the bin. Don't live in the bin!

I've read this before and like it. Helps to motivate me when I feel guilty about getting rid of stuff when I don't need it or really want something any more.

I am sentimental about things, so I can sympathise with you feeling guilty getting rid of things. It is so liberating having minimal stuff though! I like the onion method, just start with the things you definitely dontbwant/need, then keep going. I read once about setting a timer for 15 mins in your spare time to get something extra done, I do that and I get a real sense of satisfaction afterwards.
Also try to be brutal about bringing new stuff into the house, I stopped going to shopping centres with the dc 'just for a look' as we always came home with bags of crap from the pound shops.

I've been decluttering over the last few months, like you I felt I was constantly tidying but never getting anywhere. Lots of good advice here already, a few other things I've found / realised:
Fly lady is a bit weird in places but some of her concepts are great - and it's a good place to start if your house is messy. I found the idea of 'hot spots' helpful ie the areas that accumulate clutter. Once you've got one clear, then put in a couple of minutes a day to keep it clear. It's all about building the daily habits to keep things tidy.
Cleaning a tidy room is so much quicker and more enjoyable than cleaning a messy one.
With a tidier & emptier house, it's also so much easier getting the kids to put things away.
It takes time to get there though, just focus on building the right habits. Another vote for Joshua Becker too.

The mindset change is to go from 'I might be able to manage without x' to 'my life will genuinely be better and simpler without x'.
Just one example, a few months ago we had a small non stick pan that was broken and went to the dump. DH was all set to buy a new one, I persuaded him to wait a few months and see if we ever had a time when we couldn't manage with the existing pans. Obviously we've been fine and are not going to replace it. So we have more space in the cupboard and getting things in and out every day is just a tiny bit easier.

It sounds basic, but I only put a wash on when I have a full load. I was finding that I’d be doing small loads pretty much constantly. I bought a triple laundry sorter (one basket for whites, one for lighting colours and one for darks - reds and delicates go somewhere else) and I only wash a basket when it is full to the top (this is a full load for my machine).

Sheets are done every other week (so one week I do our bed, the alternate week I do the DC beds) and towels are done on Thursdays and Sundays.

I only put clean washing away when the clean laundry basket is full.

Do you have your supermarket shop delivered? If you go in person, that would eat up a lot of your Friday.

If you’re cooking in the evenings, you could make double and either freeze half or keep the other half for the following night. It is fine to eat the same thing two days in a row.

Can your eldest take a turn in cooking one evening a week? Even if you have something simple like pasta and sauce and garlic bread, it would take one thing off your plate.

Dishwasher goes on at bedtime, and I empty it whilst the kettle boils first thing the next morning.

Having emptier cupboards and drawers (through starting minimalism) has helped as everything had a place to be tidied which isnt out on view.

I'm quite minimal, and live on my own. My one rule is don't put it down, put it away. Hang your coat up when you come home, put make up back in the drawer when you've finished with it, that kind of thing. If you don't have too much stuff, it's easy to put things away.

I agree with PPs that in general most of us have too much stuff.

The other tip is to work towards as little as possible on surfaces, particularly in the kitchen and bathroom.
As you declutter unused stuff, more storage space will emerge for stuff you use.
It's easy to pull a toaster on a tray out of a cupboard onto a clear workspace, then put it away again. It's hard work keeping a toaster clean of general kitchen grease and splatters, and wipe around and under it all the time.
At first it may feel bare, but it'll soon feel much much better than cluttered surfaces.
Try to minimise the amount of products in the bathroom. Find one and use it all till its gone. Any back ups go into storage. Try to keep the bare minimum out on bath edges.
Keep going with it. It may take a long time to get where you want to be, but it's infinitely better to be gradually decluttering, rather than maintaining current habits, and the overwhelm gradually getting worse and worse.