Managing the house with three under 5

[Jaberwockky]

Hoping for some advice and ideas 😊

Long and boring story short in the last 12 months we’ve gone from 1 child, to having a child with brain damage, a new baby, and DN who has been temporarily placed with us while his parents (hopefully) get their shit together. We are not coping with the day to day running of the house at all, the clincher this morning has been me realising I’ve ordered DH’s Father’s Day gift for July rather than this month. We’re just all over the place.

There’s piles of washing to be sorted all over the place, constant toy clearing, endless to do lists and I just feel really overwhelmed as does DH. It’s down to us. None of the kids can take any responsibility for doing jobs like tidying up toys etc. at the moment due to age and disabilities. I get that some chaos with kids is normal, but this is just excessive.

Any advice on keeping up with basic cleaning would also be great, we used to do TOMM and it was brilliant, but the house day to day is just beyond that now.

We have got one week child free in July and really want to use it to turn things around before I go back to work in September. I’ve started decluttering which I think will help.

I think we’re specifically struggling with washing, meals (batch cooking ideas would be brilliant), cleaning, and just remembering things if that makes sense? Admittedly we are both getting very little sleep, DN and DS2 wake often during the night and we’re up from 3:30 again today so it’s not a shock I don’t know what months Father’s Day is.

Sorry if this is a bit of a garbled mess - I really want to get this sorted for us and the kids.

Wow, not surprised you are a bit all over the place. You are being an amazing support for your DN. I found the only way was lists and low expectations and standards. As long as we were fed(simple meals) , clean clothes, bathroom clean enough , kitchen clean enough everything else could slide. I planned very little re outings and anything extra etc but I know some people hate being stuck in so partly depends on what is important to you. I think it's one day at a time. Can you get any practical support at all with the children given the circumstances.

For me with very small children at home, the key tended to be constant tidying and small "resets" throughout the day. If we lost control of the toys, it became seemingly impossible to get back on top of it.

I also found that the more we were at home, the worse it was. If we spent a lot of time outside / out of the house, then it simply couldn't get as messy! Do you have decent storage? Having a set place to put things is important.

As for the to do lists and the piles of laundry, I wish I could help, but I've struggled with these my whole life!