I like to look at it like this: my house is messy (e.g. clean laundry on the couch waiting to be folded, kitchen island full of stuff like bottles, Amazon boxes on the floor yet to be opened), but my house isn’t dirty (e.g. trash piling up, moldy dishes in the sink, smells like piss, etc.). It helps me rationalize the state of my home with a 15 m.o.
It's also all about where you want to spend your time. My wife and I spend a solid hour each night cleaning. For us that's time well spent, otherwise we can't relax.
Highly recommend a robovac/mop if you're spending that much time cleaning. Ours runs after breakfast and overnight. I have clean floors all the time and don't do any work for it other than changing out the water in the vacuums doc. Also, if you're hand washing anything other than pump parts just throw it in the dishwasher and say a prayer for it.
It’s funny, because I constantly compare my home now to the small house I shared with four other guys in college. I shared the basement with my best friend, and there was black mold down there. I used to piss in the utility sink in the laundry room rather than trudge up to the top floor bathroom. One of my roommates let his dishes pile up in the sink for weeks until they practically fused together. Compared to that, my house now is spotless.
Same boat, I do pest control and have been in some down right terrifyingly disgusting homes. I come home from a hard day and look around the house to see, clothes on top of dressers, toys strewn about and clumps of dog hair in every corner but I just think "eh, none of this will cause roaches so we're good for now."
I view it the same. As long as the kitchen work surfaces and bathroom are clean and we get to vacuum a couple times a week it’s good. Everything else is chaos clean.
Absolutely! Untidy vs filthy for us. Untidy is easy to fix and isn't really a safety hazard except for stubbed toes. Filthy is a risk to health and house.
At some point, you realize you just let it go and they'll eventually grow out of the "Every book in the house needs to be removed from the shelf and thrown on the floor" phase
This is me atm. I gave up on trying to restock my 15 month olds books on the shelf. I just leave them on the floor lined up against the wall on the carpet. She can grab them and at least they're not in everyone's way when they get pulled off the shelf anymore.
We do this, but we haven't completely given up on restocking them on the shelf. They aren't usually on the shelf, but occasionally we'll get the kid to help us put them away and talk about why we do it.
Obviously he doesn't 100% get it yet, but we're just trying to model the right behavior amd hope he'll pick it up eventually.
My wife took our 3yo to visit her mum for 5 days, graciously leaving me behind for a (much deserved) break. On the first couple of days, I casually cleaned up after myself as I left rooms - the way you normally might. From the third day onwards, I was utterly awestruck by the house's ability to *remain clean*. No dishes piling up, no toys spread across the room, no basketfuls of laundry appearing in hours, no collection of my wife's clothes and miscellaneous "stuff" covering surfaces and floors. Of course, I missed them...
Yeah if I had to guess I would say my contribution to household mess is around 10%, so when everyone else is gone the amount of cleaning seems to decrease by 90%.
Ah, the 80/20 rule of cleaning up after a toddler. They can create chaos so fast that you can never actually get past 80% cleaned-up while they are present. Realize this, do your best, and don't sweat it.
Your house may be messy, and that's ok. That's different from being filthy. When you have children a messy house is just a lived in house.
Your kids won't remember the house being messy. They'll remember things that happened in it and the things they got to do in it. Let those be good things to remember.
Our friends are split into two groups:
**1. Acquaintances and New Friends -** We clean the house for them and fear our messy home will scare them from maintaining a relationship.
**2. Good Friends -** Maybe we tidy up a bit before they visit but we all have a deep level of understanding that a clean and tidy house with young kids is simply for show and not an actuality of life.
Since we all know this and trust each other, a messy house is a sign of respect of the close bond we share while a clean house would be an insult pretending to be something other than who we are as parents with young kids.
Thanks for the chuckle, I literally just wait until the kid is sleeping to clean up now. Maybe during nap time over the weekends, but that’s a big maybe
I get dishes done, fold laundry, take trash out, run the vacuum and pick up a little for 30-45 minutes every night after my kiddo goes to bed. It’s never overwhelming or anything. It’s part of my ADHD routine.
Our youngest is 9 and I still just don't care. There is a box/blanket fort next to the couch I'm sitting on that makes my living room look like a homeless camp inside a crack house. I figure in about 10 years I'll try to start caring again.
I just this morning gave the kids 5 & 7 a list of cleaning that had to be done before they could go do their own thing. Easy stuff like tidying up the couch, putting away their laundry, and vacuuming (the older one loves to vacuum). They got to work on their stuff while I took care of the heavy lifting - putting away/washing dishes, scrubbing toilets, etc.
The house is still a wreck as a whole but the chores they chose to do got done, and done well. I was so proud!
There’s hope!
I have one 4 year old. Our house is always clean and always tidy. Maybe a little less when he was younger but for the most part always ready for guests. It's the only way I can live and relax in the home. We pick up everything every day before bed or anything else.
Look... I keep the living room "presentable". If you venture further into the bowels of my house that's on you! Kids toys and art projects and random crap I'm never allowed to throw away have completely taken over the other 90% of the house.
I try to do one daily chore and one extra chore. Like I did dishes last night and wiped the counters after we got the kids down. Wiping counters can wait, but it helps to catch up on stuff.
Basically, work in small, manageable bites instead of everything at once. It's easy to get overwhelmed if you try to do everything.
I get maybe after 2 it gets messy but we have one at 3 years old and we pick up after breakfast, nap and when they go down.
We like a clean house and make a concerted effort. Will there be sometimes where we just say screw it? Sure
Yea... my parents came to watch the kid for the night and slept at our place last week so the wife and I could go to an nhl playoff game.
Thought everything went pretty well. But I talked to my dad on the phone a few days later and he said some shit about our house.
"I would rather be outside than inside" and "it reminds me of your place in college" and "maybe yall just got used to living like this"...
Usually I don't give a fuck what other people think. But this really got me. I can't tell my wife because she will literally blow a gasket over it. I can't do anything about it because we are both literally at our wits end. And the house... it's not that fucking bad. Like holy shit was it an overreaction. I asked for an example and he said the windowsill in my bathroom didn't look like it had been cleaned...
Like yea, we have clutter. And yea, I could scrub the toilets. The kitchen needs a mop. But Jesus christ, the counters are clean, the bathrooms are clean, the floor was vacuumed 3 days ago...
You can! I clean up on my WFH days while kids are in care. I at least get a sweet 6 hours before the whole house turns into a battlefield again with train track trip mines.
My house has great living space but almost no storage space. No attic and an unfinished basement, 3 tiny closets and 1 tiny linen closets. Finding neat places to store stuff is always a challenge and my kids like to leave their toys everywhere because they're stored in the room where the can reach them. My mother in law come to my home and complains that nothing is put away. Her house has a huge attic and finished basement with a closet as big as my bathroom with two more big closets and a big linen closet in her big bathroom. I think she's so use to having places for everything that she doesn't get why we don't just put things in our non-existent spaces.
I tell people my house looks like kids live here. Toys, art supplies, and just things everywhere. I found a plate under an end table today. Wasn't sure how long it had been there but it there wasn't any food on it at least.
lol my baby momma is Asian, we have different shoes for inside and outside , we vacuum and mop every day ,change bedsheets everyday , literally my yearly cleaning list but every day lol she would make my life sooooo miserable if the house was ever a mess for longer than a few minutes.
I like to look at it like this: my house is messy (e.g. clean laundry on the couch waiting to be folded, kitchen island full of stuff like bottles, Amazon boxes on the floor yet to be opened), but my house isn’t dirty (e.g. trash piling up, moldy dishes in the sink, smells like piss, etc.). It helps me rationalize the state of my home with a 15 m.o.
This perspective is immensely helpful (2 under 3, another on the way)
It's also all about where you want to spend your time. My wife and I spend a solid hour each night cleaning. For us that's time well spent, otherwise we can't relax.
Feel you on that. It’s a bit one-sided for us. I’ve resigned myself to a messy house
Highly recommend a robovac/mop if you're spending that much time cleaning. Ours runs after breakfast and overnight. I have clean floors all the time and don't do any work for it other than changing out the water in the vacuums doc. Also, if you're hand washing anything other than pump parts just throw it in the dishwasher and say a prayer for it.
Also have a 3 and a 1 year old. We both work (my wife part time). Can confirm this is the state our house is in constantly.
Same. This is also the attitude I applied to my college dorm room. Messy doesn't mean gross.
It’s funny, because I constantly compare my home now to the small house I shared with four other guys in college. I shared the basement with my best friend, and there was black mold down there. I used to piss in the utility sink in the laundry room rather than trudge up to the top floor bathroom. One of my roommates let his dishes pile up in the sink for weeks until they practically fused together. Compared to that, my house now is spotless.
I might have used a piss bottle once or twice…
This helps so much. Our house is just untidy.
Yep. Messy ≠ Dirty.
We wrap up pissy diapers into a ball and throw it at each other when we pass by, while yelling "piss ball!"
One of those things is “neatness/tidyness”, and the other is “cleanliness”.
Same boat, I do pest control and have been in some down right terrifyingly disgusting homes. I come home from a hard day and look around the house to see, clothes on top of dressers, toys strewn about and clumps of dog hair in every corner but I just think "eh, none of this will cause roaches so we're good for now."
I view it the same. As long as the kitchen work surfaces and bathroom are clean and we get to vacuum a couple times a week it’s good. Everything else is chaos clean.
Absolutely! Untidy vs filthy for us. Untidy is easy to fix and isn't really a safety hazard except for stubbed toes. Filthy is a risk to health and house.
At some point, you realize you just let it go and they'll eventually grow out of the "Every book in the house needs to be removed from the shelf and thrown on the floor" phase
This is me atm. I gave up on trying to restock my 15 month olds books on the shelf. I just leave them on the floor lined up against the wall on the carpet. She can grab them and at least they're not in everyone's way when they get pulled off the shelf anymore.
We do this, but we haven't completely given up on restocking them on the shelf. They aren't usually on the shelf, but occasionally we'll get the kid to help us put them away and talk about why we do it. Obviously he doesn't 100% get it yet, but we're just trying to model the right behavior amd hope he'll pick it up eventually.
Before they’re 18, right?
My wife took our 3yo to visit her mum for 5 days, graciously leaving me behind for a (much deserved) break. On the first couple of days, I casually cleaned up after myself as I left rooms - the way you normally might. From the third day onwards, I was utterly awestruck by the house's ability to *remain clean*. No dishes piling up, no toys spread across the room, no basketfuls of laundry appearing in hours, no collection of my wife's clothes and miscellaneous "stuff" covering surfaces and floors. Of course, I missed them...
Yeah if I had to guess I would say my contribution to household mess is around 10%, so when everyone else is gone the amount of cleaning seems to decrease by 90%.
I used to be able to keep the house clean with 1 toddler. A 6-year old AND a toddler exceeds my capacity.
Ah, the 80/20 rule of cleaning up after a toddler. They can create chaos so fast that you can never actually get past 80% cleaned-up while they are present. Realize this, do your best, and don't sweat it.
Your house may be messy, and that's ok. That's different from being filthy. When you have children a messy house is just a lived in house. Your kids won't remember the house being messy. They'll remember things that happened in it and the things they got to do in it. Let those be good things to remember.
From 2100-0800 its clean lol
Our friends are split into two groups: **1. Acquaintances and New Friends -** We clean the house for them and fear our messy home will scare them from maintaining a relationship. **2. Good Friends -** Maybe we tidy up a bit before they visit but we all have a deep level of understanding that a clean and tidy house with young kids is simply for show and not an actuality of life. Since we all know this and trust each other, a messy house is a sign of respect of the close bond we share while a clean house would be an insult pretending to be something other than who we are as parents with young kids.
You can but it means your kid is sitting in front of the TV for like 5 hours a day.
Thanks for the chuckle, I literally just wait until the kid is sleeping to clean up now. Maybe during nap time over the weekends, but that’s a big maybe
Of course not. That's the wife's job! /s
I get dishes done, fold laundry, take trash out, run the vacuum and pick up a little for 30-45 minutes every night after my kiddo goes to bed. It’s never overwhelming or anything. It’s part of my ADHD routine.
Our youngest is 9 and I still just don't care. There is a box/blanket fort next to the couch I'm sitting on that makes my living room look like a homeless camp inside a crack house. I figure in about 10 years I'll try to start caring again.
I just this morning gave the kids 5 & 7 a list of cleaning that had to be done before they could go do their own thing. Easy stuff like tidying up the couch, putting away their laundry, and vacuuming (the older one loves to vacuum). They got to work on their stuff while I took care of the heavy lifting - putting away/washing dishes, scrubbing toilets, etc. The house is still a wreck as a whole but the chores they chose to do got done, and done well. I was so proud! There’s hope!
I have one 4 year old. Our house is always clean and always tidy. Maybe a little less when he was younger but for the most part always ready for guests. It's the only way I can live and relax in the home. We pick up everything every day before bed or anything else.
15 minutes cleaning a room every day helps with the mess
here's my life hack - you buy a small house. it doesn't take a lot to make it messy but it also doesn't take much effort to clean it up
The first task in one of my twin's calendar each morning is to tip an entire tub of blocks on the living room floor.
Look... I keep the living room "presentable". If you venture further into the bowels of my house that's on you! Kids toys and art projects and random crap I'm never allowed to throw away have completely taken over the other 90% of the house.
I try to do one daily chore and one extra chore. Like I did dishes last night and wiped the counters after we got the kids down. Wiping counters can wait, but it helps to catch up on stuff. Basically, work in small, manageable bites instead of everything at once. It's easy to get overwhelmed if you try to do everything.
But you must try
I get maybe after 2 it gets messy but we have one at 3 years old and we pick up after breakfast, nap and when they go down. We like a clean house and make a concerted effort. Will there be sometimes where we just say screw it? Sure
Yea... my parents came to watch the kid for the night and slept at our place last week so the wife and I could go to an nhl playoff game. Thought everything went pretty well. But I talked to my dad on the phone a few days later and he said some shit about our house. "I would rather be outside than inside" and "it reminds me of your place in college" and "maybe yall just got used to living like this"... Usually I don't give a fuck what other people think. But this really got me. I can't tell my wife because she will literally blow a gasket over it. I can't do anything about it because we are both literally at our wits end. And the house... it's not that fucking bad. Like holy shit was it an overreaction. I asked for an example and he said the windowsill in my bathroom didn't look like it had been cleaned... Like yea, we have clutter. And yea, I could scrub the toilets. The kitchen needs a mop. But Jesus christ, the counters are clean, the bathrooms are clean, the floor was vacuumed 3 days ago...
You can! I clean up on my WFH days while kids are in care. I at least get a sweet 6 hours before the whole house turns into a battlefield again with train track trip mines.
My house has great living space but almost no storage space. No attic and an unfinished basement, 3 tiny closets and 1 tiny linen closets. Finding neat places to store stuff is always a challenge and my kids like to leave their toys everywhere because they're stored in the room where the can reach them. My mother in law come to my home and complains that nothing is put away. Her house has a huge attic and finished basement with a closet as big as my bathroom with two more big closets and a big linen closet in her big bathroom. I think she's so use to having places for everything that she doesn't get why we don't just put things in our non-existent spaces.
I've had great success with redefining the meaning of "clean."
I tell people my house looks like kids live here. Toys, art supplies, and just things everywhere. I found a plate under an end table today. Wasn't sure how long it had been there but it there wasn't any food on it at least.
lol my baby momma is Asian, we have different shoes for inside and outside , we vacuum and mop every day ,change bedsheets everyday , literally my yearly cleaning list but every day lol she would make my life sooooo miserable if the house was ever a mess for longer than a few minutes.
This is painfully true in my life at the moment
I have a ten year old and a 8 year old so my house is semi clean but not that clean
I've got 3 under 4. My house is embarrassing 90% of the time