I feel like I spend my life tidying up but still live in a midden - is that just a fact of life with small people?

[padboz]

How does everyone else keep on top of it?Apart from the fact that Im on the sofa typing rather than cleaning, why does every waking minute seem to be spent either dealing with a mess or thinking 'I really should go and deal with that mess' - anyone out there that doesnt have cobwebs - do you have a cleaner or do you have a plan? Help this old slattern get it together!?

I have found the fly lady thread to be handy. I find that Mumsnet is to blame for a lot of unnessesary sitting down time.

dismal fact of life in this household

I occasionally have a rant ,sometimes tearful,sometimes not.The effect never lsats though.
Tidying up feels as pointless as stringing beads on a string with no knot.

Ha ha - new to mumsnet - are you telling me I am in danger of getting even less done?!?

def try www.flylady.net there is a reg thread on mumsnet, but I just follow it by myself.

It helped me alot.

ggirl like the bead analogy. This is basically what DH says - that theres no point in putting all the toys away properly cos they'll all be out again in the morning. which means I cant get him to help... . Thing is its not just stuff - there are hand prints on sofas and grime on walls. I think if they all went to Disney world for a week and left me to it I might just get it clean by the time they got home. Learn to ignore it or learn to love wiping things?

thanks to all the people who have mentioned the fly lady - I'm looking at it now - is it me or is it a confusing website... ?

I find it depressing to live in a mess after a while

I like a clean floor area.

don't join flylady website

you'll be bombarded with endless emails

Message withdrawn

Often pointless. Today mad tidying upstairs, go downstairs to put kettle on and the place was a tip - you could have stirred it with a stick. Cue tears. Hopeless. Have temporarily given up till I find some motivation.

my god, I am soooo glad its not just me

I just try and do the basics...hoover a couple of times a week, our bathroom gets the world's quickest spray and wipe...wipe down surfaces...

I try and ignore the rest! As long as we are meeting kinda basic standards of hygiene!

I find getting out the house helps a lot, it's when I'm in for a while that the sticky handprints etc start to get to me...

website for FLy is cronic, which is why I joined the daily thread. Mission etc is on there

i live in fear of unexpected visitors, i need 48 hrs written notice minimum of someone coming by unless it is a very good friend!

but if i ever pop in on friends, they are rarely up to their eyeballs in mess and dog and cat hair like me!

So true. I should be cleaning up right now -dh has taken dc to see Bee Movie to help me get on but here I am on MN - & I feel like I'm drowning in all this stuff! Toys & clothing grown out of, some of it hardly worn or played with. I wish I had the money instead. I feel like chucking everything out which would be a hideous waste so I'll give it to charity but it still needs to be sorted & cleaned. Argh!

I find I can generally ignore it but then someone unexpected turns up like the gas engineer yesterday who went into my bathroom. When you look at it with someone else's eyes it is As he was supposed to be finding out why the heating wasn't working he had no business going into my ensuite (which has a white carpet) without asking but I know I didn't leave the toilet lid up

BUT I can spend an entire day cleaning and tidying, then DS2 and DS3 come in from school and iut looks like it did before I started. What is the point?

Couldn't agree more!

i used to 'fly' but found the emails annoying. i did sort out my hotspot in the kitchen today. i also keep just looking at the doors and thinking i must wipe them down. just looking, nevr do them. hooo hum.

Last night I went to bed and the house was spotless. Today, DH is at work, its 1:40pm and the house is a mess again. I stopped mning for a while to get on top of it, but to be honest makes no difference I just spent ages tidying and it got messy again.

I think its a fact of life with babies....18 months here

Oi pavlov! I've got an 18 month old coming to visit with his mum next week (PTA mtg) & I've forgotten what they like to play with & eat & what I should do in the way of babyproofing the house. Can you remind me?

The most important thing on the fly website is the weekly home blessing which is ...
10 min (or less!) of each of these tasks - dusting, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning mirrors and doors, tidying magazines / magazine rack, emptying bins, changing bedsheets.

If you do this once a week, it makes a big difference, even if you do little else!

Then there is the daily mission - a task in whichever room you are supposed to concentrate on that week - things like wipe down the doors of the kitchen cupboards.

Lots of people hate the emails, but as long as you delete the ones you don't want to read each day then they are a good way of getting into cleaning mode!

Well I think at least we realise we are not on our own reading everyones posts.

I had a rant and rave this morning - unfortunately no one in this house really listened to me.

I spend my days off cleaning, tidying, ironing, I cook a nice meal everyday, but on a Saturday morning when I get up the house just seems to have had nothing done to it all week and this morning it looked like a pigsty.

Not sure if I am a too tidier person and if someone else looked inside they might think there is nothing wrong.

DH quite often says to me FGS sit down and have a rest.

Does not help though that a few months ago I found this interesting website called Mumsnet.

Message withdrawn

Life does get easier eventually. I think the tidying issue is most tricky when the children are at the toddler stage, when they need to have all their toys near at hand. Now my DC's are older (now 8, 5 and 4)I have restricted them to a small toy hamper and a play wooden kitchen in the sitting room, and everything else gets slung back up into their rooms every night by (in theory) them. I used to think parents who did this were very mean, am now a convert!

There is no solution to the cleaning - I LOATHE it and now have a non-justifiable cleaner.