I feel like my house is constantly a fucking mess. My wife and I work 80 hours between us and we have a 2 year old and I feel like it’s constantly a mess.
We do what we can and often spend a couple hours on a weekend tidying but it’s a losing battle.
How do you cope/keep on top of things?
My robot vacuum really helped with this. It runs every day while at work, which forces me to pick stuff up and make sure it won’t get stuck somewhere.
Got me into the habit and by now it’s second nature. Before I leave the house I do a quick check/clean, which takes a minute or two at most.
And then you have the obvious benefits in getting the apartment vacuumed.
Damn I thought I was the only one haha. My robot vacuum also forces me to keep my place relatively tidy so it doesn’t get stuck.
You just need to master one rule: designate a place for each item and put them IMMEDIATELY back in their designated place after use.
OP can master that rule today, won’t make a damn bit of difference with a 2 year old around.
haha, yes, all hope is lost there…
Oh yes, this is the path to giving up.
I recently found out I had ADHD, which explained a lot imo.
BUT, you have a kid. Who has a kid and a tidy house? Rich MFers who get there home cleaned weekly ig
It makes me wonder if anyone really has a clean house or I only really go to my parents/in-laws house and they have only themselves to clean up after
I’ve found the only people I know who have clean houses are: people without kids, people with house cleaners, people who’s mental health issues make them want to clean. Everyone else just apologizes for their mess and moves on.
Preach.
Moved from 1000sqft to 2400 and all hope was lost.
With 2 kids under 5 and a couple of pets, I literally can’t clean fast enough to make a dent.
Bathrooms and kitchen are clean… the rest belongs to the animals.
So me and my wife talk about this… Is keeping a small house tidy easier than a large house? We have a 2400 sq ft house as well. I would assume if you had a small house, it’s the same amount of mess, but it’d be more overwhelming because it’s compressed into a smaller space. And clean space would fill up faster. So you’d be cleaning more to at least have some space that’s clean.
Dispersion is the problem. In the last place, there were 2 places the kids could wreck, the living room and their shared bedroomso we could tidy them and it would be presentable… this place? Half dozen easy, plus there’s 2 additional bathrooms, the kitchen is twice the size and the basement is like a soccer pitch sized FFS.
We needed the space, last place wasn’t working so these are good problems to have but it’s definitely more than I anticipated.
I say it depends on the type of people making the mess. I myself can live with a little mess. If it not catastrophic, I might add to it by not putting some stuff away immediately. But at some point, it’s too much, and I’ll be putting things in order as I go, instead of adding more.
But with a bigger place, I can spread it more, so overall more mess can be made before I stop adding more
I feel this comment! Makes me feel better about the state of things. Entropy, entropy everywhere.
We have a sign in our home. “Cleaning a house while kids are growing is like shoveling while it’s still snowing.”
We have a cleaning day once a week. Other than that, we let it be other than daily kitchen duty.
Same here.
At home, me and the wife try to split chores as evenly as possible. When she was struggling with burnout, one of her problems is that the house explodes into a mess, thanks to two children. One of the advices she was given by her therapist, is to block a few minutes a day for the entire family just to do minor cleanup chores. The mess remains, but it feels a bit more manageable now.
Yes. I have a husband and a 16 year old autistic son (unfortunately he is very low functioning and does not really help with any chores because of that, despite his age).
My husband works 5 to 6 days a week, usually 12 hour shifts, sometimes if there’s a 6th day it’s 8 hours. I work 8-5, 5 days a week, but also have about a 45 minute commute one way.
Husband also has a large family and we have a pool, so right now at least one weekend day is usually spent hosting them for swimming.
My best strategy right now is that if I walk by something that needs doing and will take a few minutes or less to complete (think throwing away some trash, tidying the coffee table, grabbing all the dishes in the room and moving them to the sink), then I do it right then. It’s not perfect and it doesn’t take care of everything, but I’m hoping if I do it more, I’ll be able to sort of stack things and do two things at once that need doing and then cleaning will become part of my routine.
But honestly I’m mostly here to get tips because my ADHD brain needs help.
Thing is, you and your wife must make sure you share the same set of rules. For instance, here I saw someone suggesting that you should put things back to their designated place immediately after you used them. It’s a good advice, but both of you must commit to the same rule, orherwise you’ll end up like me, that is, tidying up after my parter almost all the time. 😆
dont tidy up after your partner. tidy up after yourself, and let them figure it out eventually.
Let me assure you, this kind of passive behavior does NOT work and only results in being resentful as you wait for the other person to figure it out and they never do.
Don’t assume people will figure something out on their own if you care about the result. Communicate openly. I cannot stress that enough.
I totally agree with you.
I just try really hard to do the small things all the time. Whenever I leave a room, I try to bring something with me that shouldn’t be in that room. Whenever I go into the kitchen, I try to clean one thing in the kitchen whether it’s putting something in the dishwasher or throwing out an empty package.
Just do small things whenever you have a moment.
Our place still looks chaotic though so don’t expect miracles.
Wife and i both work full time with a 3 year old and my wife is currently also going to school as well. Basically clean as we cook in the kitchen, one of us pick up the toys while the other puts her to bed. Pretty much everything else gets sidelined until it absolutely needs to be clean. We have a roomba that vacuums, but other than that the floors dont get cleaned until one of absolutely cant stand them. Bathrooms get deep cleaned only when people are coming over. Windows get washed once or twice a year. Basically, weve adapted to mess in a way that’s tolerable to the both of us in order to enjoy the little free time we have. I think the best thing we’ve done is not holding messes against each other. I’ll tell her tlthat im not doing dishes tonight but ill get yhem tomorrow. If she decides to do them, thats her decision. If she says she’s not doing laundry, cool, ill do it if i need something. Im absolutely fine living in qrinkly clothes that came straight out of the hamper. Communication is absolutely key to not losing your mind.
That’s living with a 2 year old. We had similar situation, but we were able to put little guy to sleep at about 6-7 pm every day. Still we were so tired, that we went to bed around 9-10. But we woke up at 5 am, and we were able to clean before work. Sometimes it was more effective than cup of coffee.
No. If my house is not tidy, it disturbs me. I have to clean up.
This is me. Except it’s still not enough to motivate me to do the cleaning. Adhd sucks sometimes.
probably try to change yourself? it’s so common case especially when you have a boy
For daily upkeep it’s best to clean as you go. Little tasks embedded in your other tasks. Like if I need to change my shirt, grab the laundry on the way and put it away before putting on that shirt. It saves 1 trip of walking along the way. Same principle as cooking, you clean as you go. Like you slice meats and start the browning…so turn around and clean the cutting board while you wait for it to brown.
For monthly upkeep we hire cleaners to go through the whole place for 200+25% tip. It definitely costs money, but saves on our time and sanity to not have to remember to do all these little cleaning tasks all over the house that just keep piling up until you “find” time to do it.
I’m AuDHD. Other half is undiagnosed but probably ADHD. 8 year old is AuDHD. No idea about the three year old. But yeah… our house is either stripped bare if I’ve been on a hyperfocus clean or absolute chaos if neither of us have been
Deebot our robot vacuum has helped a lot. And we are trying to implement some routine but none of us are very good at routine so… 😂
We’ve got a robot hoover, herv but he’s been struggling recently because we’re remodeling our kitchen and the floor is a bit uneven. I’m hoping that he pulls his weight a bit more when the floor is tiled
I have two kids who are 3 years old (they are twins). I accepted that my house can’t be as clean as it used to be without my kids…
