Tell Cif how has your home changed since having children? £250 voucher prize draw NOW CLOSED

[MichelleMumsnet]

Cif have asked to find out if Mumsnetters have changed their homes since having children.

Here's what Cif have to say, "We all know that children see the home as a playground, and playgrounds get dirty. But we also understand how difficult it can be to clean up after your child, so we want to help make that process as easy as possible."

So, have you changed your home since having children? Have you rearranged it to keep more valuable breakables out of reach? Have you rearranged your living spaces to make room for their toys? Or perhaps you have you stopped buying more expensive furniture in fear of your child spilling their drink on it? Maybe it has been a more gradual and unintentional change?

Whatever it is, we would love to hear about how your home has changed since having children.

Everyone who adds their thoughts to this thread will be entered into a prize draw to win a £250 Love2Shop voucher.

Thanks and good luck,

MNHQ

When my community MW came round to complete my booking-in appointment, he looked round our clean, tidy, cream house and gently laughed at us. He said that it wouldn't last long when the baby arrived. Unfortunately, he was right.

We have lost our dining room (now full of toys), our spare room has become DDs bedroom (we don't have overnight visitors very often any more). Before DCs we only used our en-suite bathroom, now the family bathroom is full of toys and needs regular cleaning.

We can't afford new carpets and the ones we have are 15 years old. They have been doodled on, poohed on and sicked on. They are now cream with a hint of grey.

There are discarded socks everywhere.

We no longer have a book case with alternate shelves given over to object d'art. We have a rotating table cloth, it goes something like this: on the table, dinner time, off the table and in the wash, out of the wash and on the table (and repeat)

We've never been very tidy people but since kids arrived, to keep my sanity and stop from drowning under a tide of plastic crap, I am now much tidier than before and make sure everything is put away every night before bed. Also employed a cleaner to help me keep on top of the onslaught of grime, crumbs and sticky handprints everywhere. So or resell doing a lot more cleaning and tidying for very little to show for it....

Fabric sofas replaced by leather, carpets only in the bedrooms, no ornaments or precious things on show!
I have banned the dogs from the family rooms as crawling babies and muddy feet and hair just don't mix and it was far too much work to keep cleaning the floors.
Now I wash them maybe once a fortnight and they are barely dirty as we don't wear shoes indoors and I have a fab hand held dyson which I use (hourly) for crumb busting!
I am more conscious of handwashing and germs since having dc so probably clean more but accept more clutter/mess. We built big storage cupboards for toys and craft stuff so at night most things are usually hidden away which is good. I can't really relax in a room full of toys!

I use much less cleaning products, opting for the ones that leave little or no residue. More and more worried by the links between asthma and air borne pollutants etc

the house is totally reorganised now we have kids.. breakables and things that matter are moved waaaay up high.. lots of big toy boxes in different rooms - love my habitat basket one the best, was a bargain, what is amazing is the amount of stuff 2 kids need - 2 pairs wellies, 2 umbrellas, 2 pair gloves, 2 scarves, 2 bobble hats. It all needs to go somewhere, let alone 2 school shoes, 2 trainers.. 2 clogs for swimming.
We have a sofa in front of a glass cabinet, not worth ever moving it as the dratted thing would be smashed to smithereens in minutes if I dared.

the rule of thumb is if it's breakable, smashable, spillable, destroyable, then it will happen. So if you love the thing, bubble wrap it and hide in the attic

I am not so meticulous about making beds which is annoying as I hate getting into an unmade bed. However, when getting myself and DS ready in the morning, making the bed isn't top of my priorities. I don't own an iron and haven't ironed anything in years. Just gets tumble dried and hung up. No time for that. I use cleaning wipes to save time round the house which I never did before as I thought they were too expensive. Now I use them as they are convenient and save time.

Our house has changed quite a bit since the kids arrived. I was always tidy beforehand so having children has tested this but we have somehow managed! Breakable things are out of the way in our dresser or on shelves.

We've bought storage units/boxes/baskets/tubs for the kids stuff, some of which is in our living room/dining room (mostly games, books, stationery and craft stuff) but it hasn't taken over as lots of their stuff is in their bedrooms. It's easier to accommodate their stuff now they're older as it's smaller than their baby toys.

The biggest change is the amount of stuff everywhere; clothes, shoes, bits of paper, marbles, just stuff!

We deliberately bought leather sofas for the wipe-clean-ability.

And have waited before decorating the hall because of the hand prints. Which is as well because being parents robs us of the money and time to do the house up in any way.

It's years and years since we used baby wipes for nappy changes, but they became a way of life that has stuck. This year I have used wipes on camping trips, including to clean tent floor and pots and pans, to get splashes of tar off my car, to clean the leather sofas and to wipe down the car dash board and hard surfaces.

The floor and table surfaces are always kept clean. Everywhere else is a disaster zone of clutter and unexpected smear.

Lots of plastic! Especially in kitchen! Baby bowls, plates, snack storage, utensils!!

It is no longer a house it is now a home! and one with far more cleaning required

I have removed anything precious that I really don't want broken and I've accepted that most other things will get destroyed - I now own candles with teeth marks in them!
My vacuum cleaner is liable to burn out from over use and most of the day I seem to have a cloth or sponge in my hand.
The entire house seems to have been taken over with toys or stray shoes.

There are more shoes in the hallway than ever.
Potty and toilet trainer seat in downstairs loo.
The living room looks like a toy shop: the lovely colour scheme is now littered with coloured plastic toys; the fridge is covered in rotas, poems, paintings and sticker charts; little tiny fingerprints on the tv.
Stairgates at top and bottom of stairs, gate separates open plan rooms.
Sideboard locked and the top is where we store endless supplies of nappies, cream, wipes, nappy sacks etc etc.
Double the amount of stuff in the medicine cupboard.
Twice as much washing!
Throws on the sofa.

Wouldn't swap them though!

I never got the need for nappies, potties etc to be everywhere, but I suspect that has a lot to do with having a 4 year gap, since by the time DC2 came along DC1 could be out of direct line of sight for long enough to change a nappy.

We did childproof for DC1 but poor DC2 spent her early years in a building site and knew better than to play with tools from a very early age.

Changes? Mostly those associated with doubling the population of the house. Stuff. Everywhere. Sports kit, riding kit, coats, wellies, innumerable shoes (some long outgrown ), and the laundry. It's my blind spot. I loathe and detest putting clean laundry away, and we don't really have enough or good enough space to put it all away, so the default answer to "where is my....." is "in a pile". The skill is in predicting which pile.

All i can say is there is no time to brush my hair let alonr do anything!! The constant nappy changes, to feeds, manouvering around the house like a robot picking up toys, to washing and ironing its endless. All in all though its a blessing having my two gems, atleast i get some form of entertainment.

It didn't used to matter if I didn't vacuum the house for a couple of weeks - the carpets still looked clean. Now, if I vacuum the house, as soon as I return to the room I started in it could do with being vacuumed again.
Our kitchen chairs have fabric covered seats which are now ingrained with cornflakes, porridge, macaroni cheese etc.
There are toys, books and baby equipment everywhere. (I've given up putting them away in the daytime.) there are even toys in the shower.
We don't have any valuables to keep out of reach, but I've hidden all the cleaning products out of reach.

I used to be house proud, with my LO no more. Toys are everywhere, we do lots of messy play/crafts. All our ornaments were put in a box under the stairs. We have quite a few marks on walls. Life has changed and I am happy with that.

Storage for toys is impossible! As soon as you have it sorted, the toys change and nothing fits anywhere.

Cleaning certainly becomes more relaxed; when my son was first crawling, every mark was wiped immediately. Now he's three, it all gets done at the end of the day. Does mean I have to use more intensive products (Cif cream to remove welded on crumbs!) but much less stressful!

He's not been too bad with ornaments, but then I don't have many. However, we have put off buying new things until he's older; the living room carpet is looking a little tired, and I'd be thinking about replacing it, but have made the conscious decision to leave it until he's older.

My house is actually cleaner now than before I had children. I try to keep the carpets vacuumed and the kitchen and bathroom wiped down.

There are fewer things out now, as my children have extendable arms and can reach anything.

We just have a corner in the living room for toys so no real encroachment.

Our sofas are almost falling apart and quite sticky and our TV is ancient. No point in replacing these things until they grow up.

We actually hoover more, because the baby eats everything she finds and walked in stones/crumbs/general dirt aren't great for her diet. Our living room looks like a toy store and my books are close to getting kicked off the bookshelf to make way for more DVDs and general crap that doesn't have a home.

Anything we buy we make sure it's machine washable/wipeable. When we brought new floors we had two under two and decided to go for hard floors thoughout with (of course machine washable!) rugs. Best decision ever! Cannot imagine how grimey carpets would've been!
We have wipeable sofas too - fabric just wouldn't have survived a day!

Things have gradually moved out of reach - sometimes I think we need a lit more storage at head height, but then I would never reach it and the children would probably find a way to climb up! Toys have appeared in most rooms, but can be tidied out of sight at the end of the day in the living room. We now have a baby cage taking up space in our kitchen.

Since having children I have realised that a clean practical house id far better than the fancy impractical homes I found see in magazines and on TV. Life for us as a family is about being able to access toys, nappies, wipes etc. who cares if they are on show? As long as the surfaces, bathroom, kitchen etc are clean does it matter than every room comes with a selection of toys? a juice cup or a half eaten slice of toast?

It's noisier and muddier but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Have wooden floors downstairs and leather sofas which help as football boots and carpets do not mix well!