Feel so embarrassed about our house

[Whatinthe]

Last week my kids had some friends over to play and one of the girls kept commenting on how messy our house was. She's lovely and it was just observations rather than her being rude and I laughed it off with her. Thing is, it really upset me and I felt so ashamed that our house was noticeably messy to an 8 year old. I had spent the whole day tidying their rooms and doing the housework but the sides were all cluttered and, whilst much better than it had been, she was right, our house is messy. We've been through a lot healthwise and are both struggling with stress and anxiety...and I'd say it shows in the state of our house. It's not dangerous or dirty but clearly messier than other people's homes.

My kids have another play date tomorrow and I'm dreading it- i have today to get the house sorted but just feel embarrassed for my kids that I can't keep up with the house and their friends can notice that.

Urgh just wanted to vent somewhere and hope I'll find I'm not alone. I feel I know the theory to sorting this out but we just keep falling back into things being a mess.

The best thing I ever did OP is hire a skip for a week and clear the house and garden. My god ut felt so good! I physically and mentally enjoyed throwing the stuff away and my house is so much less cluttered that 5 minutes wizzing round makes it tidy and inviting rather than tidying for hours and getting no benefit.
it will honestly help your mental health too.

I completely agrees. I have a very tidy house. It's also warm, welcoming and fun. I just take five min after every game and tidy! My kids have learnt to do the same.

I don't spend hours every day sorting and cleaning.

Mess is only a problem if it bothers you (the residents!) or hinders you functioning.

In my house we have managed to create a place for everything. It's a small 3 house so that's not easy and we have regular clear outs of anything that doesn't have a place. Means that when it comes to bedtime or visitors, the surfaces can be cleared quickly and easily and it looks presentable even tho it probably hasn't been dusted since 2017.

FWIW I had a 2 friends at primary school whose houses I never liked visiting. Their houses were absolutely pristine, cream carpets and furniture, nothing out of place. It felt weird and unwelcoming to me, not homely, even though the families were lovely. I much preferred my NDN house which had piles of clean washing at the bottom of the stairs, some toys on the floor/table and you could watch telly with your feet on the sofa.

In my house (which is a small terrace) we have managed to create a place for everything. We have regular clear outs of anything that doesn't have a place. Means that when it comes to bedtime or visitors, the surfaces can be cleared quickly and easily and it looks presentable even tho it probably hasn't been dusted since 2017.

I wouldn’t get too down about an 8 year old. My DS is AUtistic and said the same walking into someone’s house but with OTT amaze and wonder. “ wow look how messy this house is, who would live like this etc etc” mortified isn’t the word. The weird thing was it was actually tidier than ours at the time 🤣 things do slip when you are coping with health or anxiety because we are human.

for inspiration and down to earth advice have a look at Clean my space on YouTube. She uses a 3 system approach to tidy and clean efficiently and it really does work. I tried fly lady and all the others but we have a stressful life too and found the others require too much faffing checking what day is what etc…also get a cheap timer off Amazon and just spend 15 mins on each sweep if time and overwhelm is a problem. I do this when things start to slip which they do as you know…..life

I felt like replying that his parents worked every hour god sends to afford their big flashy new build and I'd rather be there for my children but I didn't.

god I’m glad you restrained yourself because that makes you sound jealous and unpleasant.

maybe it's overly messy
maybe the kid is weird
I suspect the truth is probably a bit of both.

We once had a visiting kid announce "isn't your house SMALL?!" within seconds of coming through the door. It is small - an unextended Victorian semi - but we're a family of four and everyone has their own bedroom, so not exactly overcrowded.

When I went to this kid's house I expected a mansion, but was met with - you guessed it - a three bed semi, just one that's been extended downstairs .

My house was always messy when I grew up and I was always embarrassed and avoided invited my friends over. As I got into young teens, I was less embarrassed and all our friends were always hanging out there as even though it was a mess, it had a really warm, inviting, friendly atmosphere.
There were a couple of comments from friends that I still remember to this day but I don't care so much.

It has completely changed how I keep my own home though. It's always tidy and clean and I get so embarrassed if there's even the slightest bit of clutter and I find it really stressful being in my parents house as there's stuff everywhere.

I'm really not jealous of them having a 360k mortgage for a house with a postage stamp garden, mostly to impress other people. We live to please ourselves not others. You couldn't pay me to live in a new build built on a former industrial waste site.

Agreed. My children and their friends are welcome to make as much mess as they want… play with all the toys, crafts, paint etc. We just tidy it all away afterwards.

Haven’t read the whole thread but just to say it isn’t your sole responsibility. Please do involve everyone in the house in getting it to a state you’re happier with.

And morally superior.

It wouldn't even have crossed my mind to judge their situation if their child clearly hadn't been hearing things from his parents. He cried when I dropped him off at his Grandads as he said his parents were never at home and he preferred our house.

I'm sure they have to justify their life choices to themselves somehow. We live in an area with very affordable housing. I can understand if we were in the SE.

Anyway this is really getting off topic so I'm off to get my kids to school.

Just get a kallax, even if it’s just temporary- they have a good resell value too. One of my friends from years ago lived with her parents in a flat and it was hoarder level cluttered with notes stuck everywhere (about jobs that needed doing) but I loved it there, her Mum was so welcoming and it was relaxed.

BTW all those possible ADHD symptoms you mentioned are very typical of me too!

I have experienced the reverse of this with one of, DS1 friends, who came over one day and kept saying how tidy & clean our house was, I wouldn’t say I was particularly tidy person, but yes clean. I wondered if it was just the house we were living in then was larger that an average house, so more room to spread things about, so it didn’t look messy.

Right this is what we do when we've got people coming over and our house is a little bit cluttered. Get a couple of big bag for life or storage boxes or anything like that that you've got lying around and just put everything in there and then choose a room to put it all in and say that that room is out of bounds.

Then when you have time bit by bit go through each bag and find an actual place to put the stuff.

Honestly we've had to do this quite a lot and it does seem to work for us and a lot of the stuff we have on the side is rubbish most of the time.

@NoSquirrels I love Dana from a slob comes clean! There's no judgment, just simple things to try and gradually your house gets better.

I switch between Dana and Dawn from Minimal Mom.

Our house used to be cluttered and I would dread people coming over but now I've got rid of about a quarter of our belongings it's so much easier to keep tidy.

Using Dana's where would I look for this first? means I can actually find things!

I now even have labelled baskets so everyone else knows where things go so when we had to tidy for selling the house it was actually pretty easy.

The house still looks a complete mess on a Saturday morning but it's surprisingly easy to tidy up now so it's definitely worth doing.

@Whatinthe a slob comes clean could really help.

Her daily things are extremely basic but that might be what you need with ADHD.

Dana's personal daily things are do the dishes, sweep the kitchen floor, shut all kitchen cupboards and do a quick tidy of the bathroom surfaces.

She then has weekly tasks like Monday laundry, Tuesday bathrooms etc but it's all very basic. And if you miss something you just do it next week, no stressing about what you haven't done.

Once you've figured out your sticking points (you may not have an issue with shutting cupboard doors!) then you'll have freed up some time to other things.

She also shows you how to decluttering without making a mess. I can't be trusted to empty a cupboard, declutter and put it back neatly. I can however do one shelf at a time just by binning things, chucking things in a bag to donate and moving things to where I would look for them first.

I've done the whole house in 15 minute chunks really with the occasional hour of madness if I've binged the podcasts.

It's amazing now. We even just went through 20 years of paperwork but that has taken about 4 years to manage but it's still pretty amazing.

My DCs do have a few jobs around the house like emptying the DW and putting their laundry away. At a push they will vacuum their rooms and the stairs.

I'm not saying my house is perfect now at all, but at least I know where the nail clippers are!

@Whatinthe - from a fellow person with too much stuff and who would really like to be tidier but hasn't had the time, and also been ill...

Two things I've found helpful in the past are

The Pomodori Technique
Where you basically split your time into manageable chunks with breaks - if you Google it there's a lot more on it - it works for anything not just tidying, and if 25 mins is too long, you can reduce the time slots.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Ten minutes Five items
Where you commit to finding 10 minutes every day to find 5 items to throw away / give away / recycle.
It may not sound a lot, but in a month that's 150 fewer things cluttering the place up / needing to be put away.
Some days it might simply be recycling 5 old magazines or junk mail
Other days it may be five pairs of shoes - or five recipe books (which I find much harder, despite having loads!)

I think some people are just Natural Born Tidiers - and others just aren't - and those that aren't need to take it slow and steady!

The other one I know I should do but don't is

One in One out
Or even better don't let another one in until you e identified the one you are replacing and got rid of it first. I really should do this with clothes, but I don't. If I did, I really wouldn't buy anything for the next decade!

I totally relate to your comment @VintageGibbon

I grew up in an old farmhouse where my dad sometimes cooked in his wellies so he could pop out to the vegetable patch and get veg!
But in an early life he'd been in the army and still had that neatness instilled. My mum could never bear to throw any newspaper or BMJ away, just in case she might want to read it later...

It was ordered in parts, chaos in parts.
My childhood bedroom was show room perfect.

Now I'm busier, older, more tired and I've accumulated a lifetime of stuff. I'm much more like my parents house. And I kind of like it.

But definitely agree that when I walk into the kitchen and the table is empty apart from a vase of flowers and the work surface is clear, it lifts my soul compared to the current state (archaeological dig + simnel cake ingredients for the cake that never happened - we had Covid instead )

I'm still going to make that blooming cake...

@TellySavalashairbrush -

wow, your friend letting a guest sit eating next to a dirty dog bowl on the table is just another level.
That is really rude quite apart from being really unhygienic. My mind is boggling on how anyone couldn't see that is bad

@RIPWalter
I'm not sure that's true.
Floors to me are lowest priority and we live in the countryside where the tile floors downstairs can end up dirty enough it would make socks dirty after one muddy walk / play in the grassy garden and a misjudged caper from DS9 before he takes his shoes off..

but I'm very aware of hygiene in the kitchen and so things may not be always perfectly tidy but all kitchen utensils are clean, never mix up chopping boards for raw meat with others, etc.

And I do need a clean bathroom at all times!

@Whatinthe - hats off to you having people over for dinner on a work night! That would never happen here.

I suspect you are pushing yourself quite hard to meet standards you probably don't need to...

Poor you! I know how you feel. I'm not very well and our house is looking pretty scruffy at the moment.

A short term solution when you have visitors and the house is untidy is to go through each room clearing. Go through the house and chuck all the paperwork in one box and stick it in a cupboard/wardrobe, same with clothes, toys, etc. Then go through and straighten cushions, make beds, etc. Then go through and wipe visible surfaces, windowsills, etc. Then quick hoover of all the main thoroughfares.

This is a really quick way to get sorted for visitors. Decluttering a longer term process. Just start small with a drawer or a shelf. Next day do another drawer or shelf.

decluttering is key here. schedule just 1 minute or two mins a day to do one small area. e.g. pants drawer, kitchen drawer, bathroom caddy. Do one room at a time through this method of a few mins a day. With kids stuff you need to be careful and chuck when they are out of the house (avoiding super sentimental items). So much easier to keep tidy when you own less.

Yes! How strange.