Ok I need to get things back under control

[fernie3]

Normally housework is ok, I have never been the worlds most organized person but I have kept on top of it. Since before christmas i have had terrible morning sickness and the house has just gone totally out of control. I start doing something and it makes me sick within 10 minutes!. I had to stop trying so hard as I was dehydrated and housework or in fact any movement at all(!) was making me feel worse and faint!. This is my fourth child, the others are all under 6, my husband is out of the house 12 hours a day and has recently been suffering depression - so you can imagine the state things have got into in the last month or two.

Anyway I am 13 weeks now and still sick but not as bad as before, I have come out of the daze and looked around at the devastation (its the only way to describe it) and I dont know where to start!

I started trying to just do 15 minutes (flylady used to work really well for me!) but I seem to be totally overwhelmed and 15 minutes just doesnt seem to be helping.

what can I do?!!?

Could you rope in some help from family/friends? I have to say that housework went out of the window during the first three months of my pregnancy and DH half heartedly attempted to help out but it was rubbish. I just had to live with it until the sickness passed and I could get scrubbing again. Congrats with your attempts to run a tidy ship with so much on your plate!

Oh love, sounds like you've had an awful time!

Would it help to figure out if there's any particular aspect that really gets you down? For me, it's laundry. I feel hassled and stressed if the laundry pile is taller than the bed (because then I can still see it when I'm trying to sleep!), so I would tackle laundry first. At least sort it into loads for washing and get one going. Put away clean, dry stuff that's been on the airer for the last three days.

You need to feel like you are getting somewhere when you're sorting the house out, so I would do one room at a time rather than bits everywhere - maybe your bedroom to give you a bit of a refuge?
Make the bed, open the curtains, decide whether all the clothes lying around are clean or dirty and either put them away or add them to the washing pile.
Bedside table surfaces are always full of crap like dirty tissues, 5 books, handcreams, receipts, bits of post... half of which should be binned, the rest hidden in drawers/back on shelves.

Unfortunately it is impossible to clean until the place is basically tidy, so I would prioritise clearing surfaces/floors, putting stuff away and chucking out rubbish.

Are the DC old enough to help much? They can at least tidy up their toys, make their beds etc.

Good luck, and if it's getting you down too much then maybe go out for a walk or something to get out of the environment and distract you for a bit.

well the dirty clothes pile is now HUGE we have a big basket and even that has significant overflow. One thing I would like to do is sort through the clothes because even though most of our clothes have not been washed and i have only done bare minimum we havent gone without which makes me think that we must all have about 4 times as many clothes as we need!

I think starting in the bedroom is a good idea, waking up to a mess is not nice. I think it would take maybe an hour to get the bedroom to some level of normality between everything (It also has a giant computer desk and a couple of computers in - which seem to be slowly taking over the room). I normally have a lovely chair in there which I relax in which is buried under clutter so I think I will make a start with the bedroom tomorrow!.

My children are 5,3 and 11 months. They would help a little but tbh it would probably be more effort than doing it alone lol. I dont have any family apart from husband who is not really up to it.

thanks for the suggestions!

So how are you getting on today? Hope you've been less sick!

could you get a cleaner in to help you get it fully cleaned and then you can keep on top of it.With you husband, I know depression is a horrible thing to deal with, but usually even doing little things can make you feel like you've achieved alot, rope him in gently just todo little things for you.Hope things get better for you x