No time to keep house clean and cook

[Notgoodpt]

Please help! I’m trying to do the organised mum method and I am truly overwhelmed and I don’t think it’s humanly possible to do so much if you work full time and have a toddler.
For some context I leave for child drop off and work at 7:30. I return home with child at 5:15. Two days a week I go to an exercise class so I return home at 6:30. My husband also works the same hours, we swap the child pick up/drop off depending on who is going to the gym.
Bed time for my nearly year old is 8pm. Unfortunately she can only fall sleep with one of us and by the time she is sleep it’s 9pm (or 10 if we delayed bed time because dinner was not ready). Being in bed with her makes me tired (I’m frontline nhs so all day on my feet running and stressed) so I usually go to sleep afterwards or try to watch something to calm down.
We barely manage cooking a meal in that time (sometimes even doing the groceries), eat and give her a quick shower in those 2 hours. At 8 my husband usually does the daily tasks: clean workshop and dining table, take rubbish out, put washing machine, dishwasher, fold the day before’s laundry.
On weekends we try to spend more quality time with our daughter so try to go out and do some activity (sometimes only one of us so the other one does a full house cleaning).
On top of that I am in a professional committee so I have to put a weekly hour or 2 (for free of course) and I have the odd CPD thing to study.
We are both foreigners so no family to take our child for a day. The hourly fee of cleaners are same as ours and we trumped one for a while and I didn’t like it (maybe because the house is such a mess she couldn’t finished in 3 hours and most of our problem is clutter so she needed our input constantly, and we could only afford her once a month so she couldn’t really get into a routine).

I am a nerve wreck lately, how do people do it? Do people take a magic pill to have the energy to do housework at 10pm/5am? I am not getting enough sleep as my daughter wakes up at 6, and I am so tired I can’t do much more than the basics. Also the 30 mins of housework a day never take only 30 mins.
I can’t even work reduced hours to put my life in order as we are short of staff permanently.
PS: I have adhd so my husband does most of the cleaning as it usually takes me a full day to clean half of the house. How does it take me so long I don’t know but I’m usually so overwhelmed that I end up completely mentally drained after a few hours of cleaning.

Autocorrect error: My child is nearly 3 years old not 1!

another error we didn’t trumped* we paid a cleaner for a few months

What jumped out at me is you need to put your energy into decluttering, it does make cleaning easier & quicker. Also would your dd go to bed earlier, have you tried? 8pm for bed and 9 until she's asleep is late for a nearly 3 year old. 6.30/7pm would give her more sleep and you more evening time. If she doesn't nap that often means an earlier bedtime is welcomed. Could she have something pre prepared for dinner and move her shower to the morning to speed up bedtime and give you more time? You all must be so tired, work and little kids is full on.

I also have ADHD and a preschooler (3y & 1y). I know the struggle! I haven't got it sorted, but a few things have helped :

Take TOM room list as your inspiration but not your to do list, and spend 10 minutes a day all cleaning together, perhaps to the soundtrack of some favourite upbeat songs. Do this with the 3 year old, as a fun activity. Three year old dusting and vacuuming is better than no dusting and vacuuming

Then sacrifice half a day of your weekend days out, to make things better and easier for the long term. Your child need not realise it's a sacrifice if you make it fun. Use the time to cook a few bulk meals (maybe enough for 4 meals each of 2 different recipes?) and to declutter.

Your child can help cook by washing vegetables or mixing ingredients, even if neither task is strictly necessary. And they can help declutter by running with items to the bin or the charity box.

Focus on making it fun rather than on being efficient, so that it's still quality family time. Less fun than a day out for you and your husband, but it will make your lives so much easier.

Eat at 6.30 with your child, then one of you puts them to bed and the other has a half hour blast round the house. Or do some housework at six.

Gyms and exercise classes had to go on my back burner for years. Just not possible with small children and everything else going on.

That sounds really hard. You must be exhausted! I second the need to declutter. We too have difficult time constraints, although I don't work the same hours we have other challenges and kids that don't sleep. We have always had a cluttered house due to many house moves and stuff that doesn't really fit in the current space. I reached a point where I just couldn't cope with it all. Over the last year I have been chipping away at finding a home for everything and have embraced minimalism as a path to freedom! I have got rid of so much and now we only have what is essential to our day to day and a few nice or sentimental items. I have organised our house in a way that it doesn't require a lot of cleaning and is very easy to maintain. It has taken me time but the rewards are starting to pay off! I would use some of your weekend time to deal with this as a family and to ultimately make the weekdays easier for you. If you are out of the house during the week you won't be making a lot of mess and could probably get away with doing a quick version of tomm on the weekend to keep on top of things.Remember you can adapt tomm to suit! I have picked up each individual item in my house and said do I need this or want it enough to clean it / maintain it each week. Our clutter costs us our time and our time is precious. Try listening to the minimalist podcast for inspiration, there is a book clutter free with kids which I also enjoyed. It's about adopting a different mindset to your things to try get back your time :)

I’m currently on mat leave but when we were both working full time with DC1 we managed by:

• ruthlessly decluttering. I’d actually done it while on mat leave just doing a little bit each day, but I’d suggest taking some annual leave to get everything under control. It really makes such a massive difference, both in terms of keeping the house clean, and being more organised/efficient as you know where everything is

• might not be possible for you (or DH?), but I compressed my hours into 4 long days rather than the standard 5. It freed up an extra day in the week to get stuff done so I had more time at the weekend, and it also saved a day’s childcare fees and gave me more time with DC

• on work days we do not do any proper housework, just the basics. In the morning beds are made, a load of washing goes in, and I give the sink and toilet a very quick wipe if they need it. DH did drop offs and pick ups and cooked dinner, prepping work lunches at the same time (or we’d have leftovers). Once I got in at 7pm I’d eat, spend some time with DC and do bedtime (mine also went to bed about 8pm and I’d have to sit with her, so I started getting her ready for bed around 7:30 to push it back a little). I’d then hang the washing up to dry and load the dishwasher, usually sitting down around 9pm. Before bed we’d both do a two minute tidy of downstairs.

• the cleaning was done at set times. For me that was about an hour on my week day off (in little 10-15 minutes bursts when DC was playing) and then an hour on Saturday morning while DH entertained DC (usually out of the house). I work to a timer to keep me working fast. I prefer flylady to TOMM though I adapted it to suit our life. There’s a basic weekly clean - dusting, vacuuming (not a full, right into the edges and under the furniture vacuum) etc and then you do a deeper clean in one area per week. You don’t have to clean absolutely everything in every room every time. Do the bits you missed last time first the next time. It won’t be perfect in the first month but it quickly becomes much cleaner and quicker to do each time.

• Sunday night I spent an hour or so ironing uniform, packing work/nursery bags etc, and we’d meal plan. One of us would do the shopping on Sunday morning.

• like you we took it in turns to exercise although we found it worked better to get up early to do it. It’s hard to get up for a run or yoga at 5:30am at first but I never regretted and it becomes second nature.

• I dropped my standards. It is not feasible to have a spotless, sterile show home working full time and with little DC. We aim for tidy, hygienic, pleasant to spend time in and organised enough to function efficiently.

I found that an hour on each of my days off was enough to keep things ticking over and still leave plenty of time to spend as a family and also have a little time to myself. I plan on the same routine when I go back this time. I recommend reading ‘How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind’ by Dana K White. It’s aimed at those of us who struggle with housework (I can absolutely relate to the cleaning taking all day, that used to be me!)

We found that the tidying was getting in the way of the cleaning as well. The Organised Mum Method is good for setting a cleaning routine and on the weekend one of us will take DS out for a few hours. The other one will tidy a set room, and only that room. Now we have done that for several weeks in a row we don’t need to tidy every weekend, other than a general tidy. The big tidy focussed on decluttering, sorting, and we bought some more storage as well. For example one week was for me to pull all clothes out of the wardrobe and go through the ones that didn’t fit/I didn’t wear and one was for DH to do the same.

Something has to give for a few years. For me that was any hope of going out in the evenings after work. My youngest is now 4 and I'm able to get out once a week without it causing chaos with bed time / household chaos.

Bed time seems quite late to me though, at that age for mine they were in bed by 6.30/7 having been fed whilst in childcare. We would prioritise eating together as a family at weekends.

Everything is very temporary at this stage though. Bed time routines will change. Sleeping patterns will change.

Try not to put too much pressure on yourself. Whatever decisions you make to survive life with a small child and working full time aren't forever.

My son is 7 and his bedtime is 8-8.30. A 3 year old should be in bed asleep alot earlier than that. Can the childcare provider not give her dinner at 4.30ish? 6.30 is late for a 3 year old to be eating dinner.
Sounds exhausting. How about a career change? Youre running yourself into the ground, is it worth it?

Oh, and forgot to add, I’m also frontline NHS and relate to the tiredness of lying with a child at bedtime. After story time I used to get her to roll over so I could stroke her back and then sit on my phone without her seeing. I’d check my emails, banking, do any admin things or online shopping that needed doing, and also guilt free mumsnetting.

Hi, thank you all for your kind works and useful advice!
Regarding my daughters sleep time, she never slept much. But now that you mention this, she has a 1.5 hours nap at nursery and lately it can take her until 9:30 to fall sleep. I will ask tomorrow to cut the nap off all together she will be starting going to bed at 7:30. We eat together and she eats the same as us, so we should really do some weekly meal plan so we don’t arrive home to an empty fridge!

I agree that clutter is our main issue. Plus We moved to this house 2 years ago and we don’t have a nominated drawer/ cupboard for things, therefore everything goes everywhere. My husband has more clutter than me and it has caused some arguments already. I will dedicate tomorrow (annual leave day) to declutter as much as I can ☺️
I have a terrible mum guilt regarding working so much but since my husband job is not very reliable (jumping from contract to contract), I have to keep working full hours. It’s too late for changing careers (I have a few other threads here about leaving the NHS and retraining) but I don’t really like anything else nor can afford to have no income for a year.

I could have written a lot of your post OP, I have 2 DC under 5, no local family and we work full time.

Yes you need to try and get DC bedtime earlier, it does sound like its time for the nap to reduce/go. Does your child get a hot meal at their childcare? If so then toast/cereal for dinner is fine and much quicker.

We are too wrecked to do much housework on weeknights, so we let DC potter around and play/watch TV on Saturday morning and both of us blitz the house. I don't feel guilty as they don't get much time with their toys in the week due to being in nursery full time. Then we have Saturday afternoon and Sunday to enjoy quality time as a family.

We really struggle to fit in exercise - I try and do mine n my lunch break so it doesn't impact on family/household.

I agree that when they're this small, everything is temporary. Routines will change.

It sounds like you are doing an amazing job, don't be hard on yourself. Something has to give.

Concentrate on decluttering and then the chores will be so much quicker. DH and I are very minimalistic, it takes me 2 hours to clean the whole house every week. (I break it into chunks! Don't do it all in one go!). Kitchen gets cleaned after every use. Things get put away and aren't left where they don't belong.

My son and my DH have ADHD and I do believe that having no clutter and a place for everything (and everything in its place) helps them.

Also front line nhs but out the house from 6-8 most days.
TOMM works but worth doing the boot camp on a week off first. Also be strict with your time, if it’s not finished it’s fine because you can do the rest next week. Sometimes I break the 30 minutes into ten minute chunks, 10 mins before work, 10 after, 10 before bed. I usually do the daily tasks (apart from hoover before work).

At 3yo a nap at nursery isn't necessary and sleep training to help her settle herself might be appropriate - although hard work for a few nights.

Dont feel obliged to fit too much into your weekend for your child's sake. Nursery is as busy for them as work is for us and down time is a good thing for them too.

Try a different cleaner!

I'm not great at doing stuff at the end of the day but always found it easier to get up early, maybe 4.30 or so and get everything done then.
Would that suit you?

I did this as a single parent and front line NHS. i just had to lower my standards for a few years until he was older.

It's ok not to have a house that looks like it belongs in a magazine or Instagram. It's where you live and so long as it's a health hazard, give yourself a chance to just enjoy the moment with the 3yo. They grow up too quickly.
But do start taking 15min baby steps everyday to clear the clutter, throw away things that you don't love or don't need or are not useful in some way.
It'll make the house feel so much better and easier to clean

I disagree, this is essential self care and is a priority imo.

Exercise helps you cope with daily stresses, makes movement easier, exercise has a huge impact in avoidin illnesses later in life and the costs of not maintaining ones body are catastrophic.

yes it may seem like a luxury but if you look at the bigger picture it really is not.