If you have young children, is your house clean?

[ASN68]

I really enjoy having things clean and organised but that dosent reflect in my home. I feel like all I do is clean when I can but with work and having a 3 year old and a baby at least 50% of my home is untidy at all times, washing piles up etc. It's frustrating because I never used to be a messy person.

Is this just normal, does everybody with young children have a messy home or am I doing something wrong? Life feels so messy and disorganised right now.

(Disclaimer before there are comments: my partner does help out where he can in the evenings cleaning up while I work from home, he works hard with long hours too at work)

Clean, but massively untidy. 4 year old and stinky dog.

Ha. No definitely not.

It’s clean ish.

Both work FT, have two kids aged 6 and 2, and a dog! No cleaner for the sole reason that we’ve not found one to replace previous one.

We have the luxury of quite a few rooms so a few rules we follow are -

1. No eating in the sitting room/lounge. Eating only occurs in the kitchen-diner

1. The dog appears to have a policy of her own: loiter at childrens feet when they are eating and hoover up all spillages and crumbs within microseconds. This is a huge factor in the cleaning as the floor never has any crumbs on it or any spots of spilt yoghurt etc. We only realise how huge this is if we are on holiday abroad and dog isn’t with us.

1. Toys stay in playroom or in kids respective bedrooms.

1. Toilets and kitchen gets sprayed and cleaned fairly regularly by me and spouse.

1. Kids do not enter my study. That room is out of bounds.

This picture was very different in former house where it was just the one open plan room downstairs, and I confess it was hard. Now that eating, lounging and playing have been designated into distinct rooms downstairs and a dedicated home office exists it’s much different.

The dog always cleaned up though.

Yes… for about half a day after the cleaner comes!

We do manage to keep it clean(ish) because we do have a cleaner come once a week but it’s always a total mess and I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a massive pile of laundry to do. I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself!

Op there is a difference between clean and untidy. A home, with or without young kids should be clean, but untidy is totally different.

I don’t think you’re saying you live in a dirty home, you’re saying you live in a messy one?

No - it’s a disorganised mess… we try, but the kids can undo all the hard work at a stroke!

I try my best! I make sure my home is always clean - definitely not always tidy though, I have a four year old, a two year old and a five month old. I'm a SAHM so I spend a lot of time in the home.

I clean the dining room and give the kitchen a wipe and vacuum after every meal, but the majority of cleaning and tidying is done once the kids are in bed. I always go to sleep with a nice house - five minutes after the children are awake is a different story!
Trying to teach the kids to put an activity/toys away once they're done playing so that they have more space for the next thing they want to get out, but they're still only small at the mo.

Yes it's generally clean and tidy but it's taken a lot of time to get to the point of doing that, a lot of toy storage and organising all cupboards etc to make sure (most) stuff has a place to be easily put away. It's not perfect and it's lived in, but the messy-ness stresses me out so I like to keep things clean and tidy!

My house was ALWAYS clean
Might have been a little untidy at times but I'd sort that out once they were in bed !
I can't relax if I'm surrounded by mess etc so I kept it clean etc

@Rosebuud

Op there is a difference between clean and untidy. A home, with or without young kids should be clean, but untidy is totally different.

I don’t think you’re saying you live in a dirty home, you’re saying you live in a messy one?

I can’t speak for the OP but I definitely mean dirty not messy. This is partly dirt that the children create (sticky hands, dropped food etc) and partly a lack of time to get on top of everything due to the time that children take up and that just tidying up after them takes. Here are a couple of the dirty things I’ve tackled today. Yes they only take a few minutes each to clean but there is a never ending supply of those few minute tasks and they need to be done on top of all the daily tasks and weekly tasks. You think the kitchen is clean and get down on the floor to sweep the last few crumbs from under the table only to see that the underneath of the table has ketchupy finger marks on where the little darlings have wiped their hands there. Then you look over and see that there are loads of crumbs under the fridge…glass panelled door was cleaned yesterday but already has hand prints on, walls have marks on, something got knocked over in the fridge and has spilt, sofa has marks on, bottom of the shoe cupboard has bits of mud and astroturf all over it despite being cleaned out on Friday… it’s just never ending and I find it impossible to have everything clean all the time.

Tidy is easy, once the dishes are done and toys put away it’s tidy every night. I would never feel able to say my house was completely clean though because there is always more that needs doing.

HAHAHAHAHA

No,

I was thinking earlier how houseproud I was, how when I had guests they had lovely fresh bedding, sparkling bathroom, an immaculate kitchen filled with delicious food and drink.

Now its more 'Heres a quilt, I cant find a cover, pretty sure thats a chocolate stain dont worry.'

Clean yes, tidy..... depends on what the baby is doing. I pull toys out for him so the living room can look messy at times but I always make sure it's all tidied away before bed. I can't stand getting up to mess. My bedrooms are tidy at all times as I hate mess.

When I had 3 under 4 my house was clean but not always tidy.

Clean? Yes
Tidy? Hah. No.

We have a cleaner deep clean once a month and then just clean up after ourselves. Always make sure the washing up is done immediately, surfaces wiped, bleach down loos etc.

Youre not doing it wrong. My house is spotless again now because im a SAHM. I worked part time for a year and it was terrible. I actually quit because my ocd husband couldnt take it anymore. He does a lot around the house, but it was just getting too much.
When i compare houses with my other friends you can definitely tell who works and who doesnt.

Definitely not tidy!

Kitchen, loos and bathrooms clean. Everywhere else a bit hit and miss.

Hang in there OP, it gets better. Lots of bucket/box type storage, regular chucking out etc help but sometimes just accept temporary mess and enjoy them being little. Your house will be empty and spic and span again sooner than you think, they grow up very fast.

@Mylittlepixie

Youre not doing it wrong. My house is spotless again now because im a SAHM. I worked part time for a year and it was terrible. I actually quit because my ocd husband couldnt take it anymore. He does a lot around the house, but it was just getting too much. When i compare houses with my other friends you can definitely tell who works and who doesnt.

You’ve just taken it to a whole other level with spotless

Don’t get me wrong my house is surface clean most of the time but I can’t ever imagine being able to say it’s spotless! What do you do every day to keep it that way?