How do Mums cope with cleaning the house with two young children?! I feel so deflated and exhausted.

[Biosblbay]

So I am currently on maternity leave but I go back to work full time mid March and I am freaking out! I don’t even have time to get house work done being off work, let alone being at work!
I have a 3 year old and a 7 month old. My typical day is wake up which is usually 6:30am, get my 3 year old ready for school and do breakfast, feed baby, do lunch for my 3 year old, feed the dogs, then my husband takes him school at 8:30 before he starts work. By this time the kitchen is a mess, living room is a mess, beds to be made, bottles to wash, dishwasher to unload, laundry to be done, by the time I have done these basics my baby would have woken up from her first morning nap and she would then need a nappy change, entertaining and feeding and then keeping her upright for half hour to let her food go down, then she would be ready for another nap at around 1pm. During her second nap I get about an hour to do something which is usually doing my lunch which then results in a messy kitchen again, I then get about half hour after lunch to do something else before she wakes up, but there’s honestly 101 things to be done, this even includes deciding if I can have a shower and wash my hair!. Then I have to collect my son between 3 and 3:30, which then I have 2 children to feed, bath every other day, kitchen is a mess again after doing dinner, bedtime routine. My son goes to bed at 6:30/7pm most nights but my baby would have a late afternoon nap and then be up from about 6 until 9pm, so I don’t even get evenings to do much (my husband works long hours so doesn’t usually get home until 8pm on average and travels a lot for work too) so a lot of evenings I tend to do most of it myself including dinner for me and my husband. But come 9pm when both kids are asleep I am too exhausted to do anything!

HOW on earth do I find the time to clean the bathroom, polish, Hoover, mop floors (I have dogs so it gets dirty quick!), look after myself when I go back to work?! I just don’t understand how people do it. I hate the idea of using every weekend to clean the house and get on top of everything. That to me is family time and we do go out a lot on weekends with the kids or we see family, we always have plans.

I know I could get a cleaner but I couldn’t afford one every day, maybe only once every 2 weeks. I seem to just have the time to do the living room and kitchen and I don’t get time to do any of the other rooms. I am struggling for sure. I sometimes get so overwhelmed with the amount I need to do that I end up staring into space for about 15 minutes stressing about what to do first and where to start!

I would love to know how mums cope with cleaning, especially full time working mums, it baffles me and I feel stressed thinking about it. The closer I am getting to starting work the more stressed I am feeling

There is probably a really simple answer here and It probably doesn’t help that my house is currently a mess due to moving all the bedroom around and a lot of stuff still only half done, but I just feel that a little tidy house is a tidy mind and having a tidy and clean home really does make a huge difference but I just can’t seem to get on top of it ever!!!

would love some tips, ideas, to know other people might be going through the same, how to cope etc…. Hoping for mostly positivity and no nasty responses from people 🩷 thank you x

Batch cooking. Every dish you cook make double the amount. For years we lived on stews made in the slo cooker, cottage pie, fish pie, lasagne. One to eat, one in the freezer. Sandwiches made in the evening in bulk and put in the fridge. No puddings, just yogurt or fruit. There was no online shopping in the 90s so I used to do a big shop after dropping ds1 at nursery, baby in sling. Thank goodness I could drive to the supermarket. No ironing. We bought a dishwasher and a freezer when ds 2 was born. Cleaning standards slipped a lot, but the kitchen and bathroom got done somehow.

Impressed and horrified

I don’t follow her but I saw a reel where she said she’d been busy filming content now look at the state of her bathroom. I appreciated her honesty!

When I had a baby I had to change my mentality to just cleaning one thing, rather than a room. Quite often that would be grabbing an extra baby wipe after a nappy change and using it to wipe a surface. I still do that to some extent eg I keep an antibac spray in every bathroom and give the loo and sink a quick spray and wipe when I go for a wee rather than going “oh the sink is dirty I need to clean the bathroom”.

It’s really hard though and although I’m on top of a basic level of cleaning now my children are older I still have a long list of things I’m not on top of and that makes me feel like my house is really grubby although if you just walked in it wouldn’t look bad

I have a three year old, what helps me is
I have a cleaner two hours a week and she does the bed changes and sorts the floor and gives the kitchen and bathrooms a wipe, best £30 a week.

it also sounds like you’re cooking a lot from scratch every meal which is work and created clean up each time . Batch cooking and freezing at the weekend (either you or DH doing this) sounds sensible.

you could put baby in the high chair to watch you washing up or chopping veg while chewing on a slice of cucumber or similar. They’d enjoy this at this age and talk to them about what you’re doing.

seriously drop standards I definitely don’t make beds every day.
wash myself last thing at night before I get into bed to wind down - I often put my damp hair into two plaits so I have nice wavy hair and don’t have to bother with a blow dry.

i think even though your husband gets home at 8 he could be in charge of adult dinner twice a week at least either he preps something like a curry at the weekend that you can defrost on a couple of evenings in the microwave or he brings a nice healthy ready meal from m and s at the train station for you.

I get the point about how things have changed, but I don't buy this it's changed for the better. Social media is just full of misinformed information from people with no real qualifications harping on about attachment theory and how children now must be entertained 24/7 in order for them to have good attachment.

There's absolutely nothing wrong or harmful about a child or baby being left in a safe place for 20 minutes or so while a parent cleans a bathroom or the kitchen etc. As long as you can hear them so you can respond if they are in distress. It's what women of generations did before and I can't see any good research to indicate that a baby being left in its play pen for 15 minutes as left generations of traumatised adults. Certainly it's been well documented that women burning themselves out to reach impossible standards as shown in social media and children being entertained 24/7 is in no one's best interests.

Certainly it's true in the early years standards are dropped and its harder to get things done. But yes best advice I have is that they can be left (in a space safe obviously) for a short time while you get things done. That way you're not trying to play catch up during nap times and evenings.

I am just curious as how making beds takes so much time? I literally just straighten the duvet and throw it on the bed and put pillows on top. Takes about 30 seconds I'm certainly not fluffing up cushions or blankets or anything!

I only have one child, so it is different I know, but I have invested in a load of chests/baskets/other places to hide the shit. At the end of the day, before she goes to bed, we throw everything “away” in one of those hiding places. It’s really helped with the feeling of tidiness and it’s easy for my 3 year old to do. We have a robot Hoover and I mop once a week. It’s not as clean as I like, but it’s not a shit hole and means it’s bearable!