Tribe for mamas who want a clean house

[jrabbit]

I grew up with Super Mom. She was perfect and kept an immaculate house and was a leader in scouting and active in school, etc. I was always in activities, and our family took great camping vacations, etc. We had 'enough' money, but she worked a little bit and took college classes and eventually was able to start medical school at the age of 40 (I was 20).

so, here I am at 42, with 3 kids, un-schooling, just a few activities, no job anymore. we have 'barely' enough money, but we have a nice house with all the amenities, a housekeeper, and currently a babysitter to work through the transition from bedrest to full-time mom again.

MY house is a mess. ALWAYS a mess. I don't like it. It makes me crazy and unhappy. I want it to change, but every time I try to make a change, something gets in the way. Right now, i have a 6 week old baby, and that's enough of a hand-ful, but it's not fair to blame the chaos on her. Really, it's a much deeper problem.

I know "how" to clean, and I'm capable of being very organized. We're working on our packrat problems, trying to get rid of the excess clutter. We're having a garage sale in 3 weeks, and I hope that will help, but as always, things get worse before they get better.

It's 2:50 now, and I've barely eaten lunch, my older kids are with the sitter, my baby is in a sling, I haven't started any laundry, and I'll be asking Dh to bring home dinner again tonite. I'm very aggravated because the kitchen is a mess because the children & the sitter don't know how to clean up after themselves (and they definitely don't do it to my standards). I'm ready to just cry.

But **really** does **anyone** have a house that is clean and well-kept anymore? How did my mom do it? Sure, we were in school, but that's not the only reason. I can't ask her because she thinks I'm useless - I've always had a messy house, and she just criticizes me whenever I say I'm trying to get better.

help!
--janis

ETA: 10 mins later ... I had put the baby down because she was sound asleep, and I'm not yet strong enough to carry her for hours, and she was crying before I could fix myself anything to eat ... I ate the hard boiled egg I peeled an hour ago. so, i'm back in bed nursing. i'm thirsty, too.

i had intended to mention about my mom: she also had many many activities going on herself, sewing, crafting, reading, baking, gardening, and more. one thing, though, is that she was unhappy with her life, and was finally happy once she started her medical practice. i can't say that i'm happy with my life, either, so it's not a trade. clean does not equal happiness, but neither does clutter. i can't use the excuse that i'm *doing* great things with my family because i'm not. i'm always trying to clean or finish projects.

[Lysa]

One thing at a time...

I grew up in the opposite house as you - my mom once said "I'm no June Cleaver," and I had to bite my tongue from laughing! (She shot me a glare anyway.)

My grandmother has ALWAYS had the same kind of house as your mom. Wish I knew how she did it. I've asked her some things now and then, but I always feel like I am disrespecting my mom when I do ask something.

It helps that my dh works in dirt all day, and he wants to come home to a clean house.

I have learned that I can not go from a messy house to a clean house in one day and expect it to stay that way. That does not teach me or anyone else to change their behavior.

So, start with one thing you want to accomplish every day. Do it for a week successfully, and pat yourself on the back. :

Then add something else into the routine. Do those two items for a week successfully, and then pat yourself on the back, again. :

When I say pick one thing, I mean pick ONE thing - like run the dishwasher every night before bed, not clean the kitchen from top to bottom every night before bed. (OK, so I probably would say all dishes clean before I go to bed, but you get the point - make your goals easily attainable. If you set your goals to high, you will get frustrated and stop.)

Also, if you have a housekeeper, use her to your advantage now while you physically need to. Make her do the heavy stuff while you try to work on the daily stuff - one thing at a time. And make your kids do it too - encourage them to take pride in their home so they can feel comfortable inviting friends over.

And, yes, it is totally different when everyone is in the house every day. My best friend cleans her house from top to bottom every day - as soon as the kids are off for school. Me, I make the kids work for 30 minutes every day, and we start learning time after that - and I use the kids to help keep me on track. We have a rhythm - early morning chores (dressing, straightening beds and rooms, laundry to baskets), morning chores (laundry, vacuuming, trash, sweeping, dusting), breakfast (and cleanup), then table time (our structured time), break, exploration time, lunch, outside time, nap/quiet time (1:1 time with my oldest), 3pm snack (my 4yr old is learning to tell time this way), 4pm tv time until dinner, ... quick cleanup before bed again.

I HAD to assign times for snack and tv to prevent snacking all afternoon and eliminating dinner, and for an easy way to institute my tv limit. Nothing else has a time - it's just what follows next.

Of course, these are our 'at home' days... I try to keep the same routine every day until after breakfast, that way chores are done first, and not forgotten. Also, it gets them out of the way.

The reason I do morning chores before breakfast is to give myself time to make breakfast without complaints from them.

HTH!

[jrabbit]

thanks Lysa - that is how i approach it. i happen to be a fan of flylady, and habits can be learned. but my problem actually seems more pronounced now that i have extra bodies in the house: the sitter is like another child who i have to clean up after! the housekeeper just keeps up with maintenance mopping & cleaning the bathroom.

what i fail at is teaching my kids to pick up and share the responsibility. i periodically pack up EVERYTHING and seal it in a box which gets put away til the imaginary day when things improve. they never get better, so instead, we have 6 boxes of stuff that was banished. (long story, but i cant get rid of the boxes because there are missing pieces to games in them!) my dh doesnt even agree with me, it feels like. if he would just hold the baby when he gets home from work, maybe i could make progress, but there arent enough hours. (and i don't give the baby to my sitter while she's here, but that might be a good idea - but I happen to LIKE holding her, so i don't WANT to give her to someone else)

i'm the kind of person who just DOES it myself when nobody else DOES it right, and then i hold in all the emotion until i explode and yell at everyone.

i guess i started this thread hoping that maybe there are other mamas in my boat who might want to CHANGE - and we could support each other ...

--janis

p.s. my kitchen sink is shiny every night and the dishwasher gets run every night - it's the daytime mess that I don't like in the kitchen - leaving crumbs on the floor or counter, ppl not washing their hands before touching my dishes & food, using 25 bowls during the day when 1 would have been enough ... and, yes, my kids are old enough to understand that they aren't supposed to do those things, but they refuse to listen.

[Lysa]

I sat down to watch tv with the kids this afternoon - and How Clean is Your House was on. This show always makes me feel wonderful about my house - no matter what state it is in!

I don't really fully do the FlyLady thing... I guess because I don't like to follow somebody else's rules.. hence why I appreciate many bits of the unschooling approach!

My DH was wonderful when he realized that I was doing all of the work in the house, and decided that *HE* and the kids were at fault. He realized that no way could I be solely responsible for the whole house cleaning and educating the kids too.

Of course, now he's on a new schedule and is having dificulty just putting his clean laundry away - but since his kids can do it, so can he! (Yes, we've had this discussion.)

[Kappa]

My mom kept our home very clean and neat when we were little, then GAVE UP by the time we were in school. Our house was always a junky, disgusting mess. She would scream at us to clean up 1x a month, our social lives severely suffered because we could never have friends over regularly because the house was just, yuck! After we moved out, she began keeping it pretty much scary clean again. I am working on teaching myself to be neat and clean. My crawler needs a clean house to explore with out swallowing too many unidentify-ables, and I want to be able to have friends over regularly (my friends), like every weekend at least. We just moved, so that made it harder for me to get things nice.

I have been doing this for several weeks, and it is easier for me because i live in a community with a trash compactor, but I gather a bag of garbage and take it out EVERY DAY. It is a lot of trash, but it is all trash, mostly paper, empty boxes, packaging, clothing items with holes or stains, etc. My house finally got clean last weekend, and is a mess again as of today due to clothing and towels on the floor. That is obviously the problem I am going to have to tackle first, to have locations for dirty laundry, and clean laundry that hasn't been put away yet.

[HarperRose]

Wow, do I need this tribe!!!!

I just can not get on top of the housekeeping. I don't know WHAT is up with that.

When I was little, my mom had me cleaning bathrooms at 9 and doing dishes at 6 or 7 and I was doing this stuff nightly (dishes) and weekly (bathroom). I don't want to do that to my kids, but I DO want to teach them to pitch in and help.

It's extremely distressing. I also feel like we have too much crap, but when I look around, there is truly not anything we can part with. A dinner table, a loveseat, a chair, a rocker, the media center, a desk, dh's shelf (work stuff on it, next to desk), beds, dressers. But it's 5 ppl in a 900 sq ft apartment. Space contributes to it, for us.

But it's not the only issue. I just can't seem to get on top of the dishes & laundry, mostly. It's embarrassing.

[MittensKittens]

Hi Janis! (I was in your DDC)

I can do with this tribe as well. I know how to get the house clean and neat, but I don't know how to keep it that way :. There is stuff everywhere -fabrics (I sew), toys, , clothes, general clutter... I feel really bad about it.

My mom is the same too, so it is hardly a mystery where I got it from!

[BellaClaudia]

In whole honesty I am trying to keep it real :-)..
sometimes my house is like tornad went through it and other times
it is just model home.

I totally got over comparing myself to other mamas and my own mother as I decided that we all have different situations that just can't be comapred.
The dynamics of each family is different..

I used to cry thinkint that I can't keep up with some friends that I know who seemed so organized.. then I looked closer..

The reality is just that every person has different situation and different priorities. Nobody can do everything equally right...

I have only one child, yet she is very demanding and high need ever from day one, I on the other hand practice attachment parenting and nursing on deamnd and child led weaning..

having said that I do not envy anymore clean houses or super organized homes that some mamas I know or knew had and yet knowing
that their kids were just not getting the same level personal service : or
undivided attention and love :

My sister in law is one of the most organized person I knew.. had super clean house and everything was just soooooo perfect and she worked full time..
and I just know now that I would never want that life for my family as it would mean so much less time for my child.

You can put yourself only in one place so clearly you can't do at the same everything so I just let go what can wait and focus on well being of my child.

I do clean and keep the house neat and oganize as the situation allowes but I neve hesitate to postpone a loundry for a day to have great art project messy house and go to the fun activity.. at the end it just does not matter if the house was that much cleaner last year but we always remember the fun and joy of life we had together.

I love clean house so we cean when and how we can. I love the home cooked meals but I was really easy on myself when I just had a baby.. it is most important to be well and get back on feet and not to worry too much aobut other things.

I do like clean house because it keeps my sanity so if I can't keep it all clean I just try to keep it neat to acceptable levels at places where I need to funcition most and get to other places when possible.

Just take it easy.. relax and baby steps. I am happy if I am able to clean a room in 3 days bit by bit.. it used to take me 20 minutes in pre-family times :-) and I do not care anymore.. just as long as we are all happy and everbody is healthy and the house is after all not really a disaster area..

there are always homes that are bigger messes than ours and people are still happy there?

so let's keep it healthy

hugs.

[Aeress]

I kept a fairly neat house the first few years dh and I were together and then I had dd, and sometimes it was clean but mostly it was messy. I am finishing some house projects like getting rid of stuff. Having too much stuff makes keeping stuff clean impossible.

I'll join this club

[because why not?]

I sooo feel you!
I'm jealous of those women who seem to run on boundless energy. Women whose houses are spic and span and whose kids are in every kind of elective program, from scouts to athletics. It's isn't that I want that life -I don't- but I'd like to feel capable of running a tight ship. I feel guilty about my messy house because it's a constant, in-my-face reminder of how worn out and disorganized I feel. It's like my worst qualities in physical form.

Just out of curiousity, why the tribe? I noticed there is already a whole forum on this subject, here.

[annettemarie]

Moving to Mindful Home Management. You can be a tribe there too, and this topic is already hosted in that forum. Happy cleaning!

[mommaof3boz]

My mother also kept a very neat and tidy house. How? Because I was her only child, she was a single mother and worked three jobs all the time. We were never in our house. I was with grandparents a lot. Don't get me wrong my grandparents were wonderful to me. But I do not compare myself to her at all. It is apples and oranges. I have a dh, three sons, homeschool, live on a two hundred acre farm, have tons of animals and work part time as a nurse. My house would be a 6 on the neat-o-meter. The floors are clean, bathrooms get scrubbed weekly, counters clear, dishes/laundry caught up. However, I dont scrub my floor on my hands n knees, wash windows, iron, cook a big meal every pm, use serving dishes, or anything fancy. I have some laundry in a basket to be put up. My bed is made but I only get my sheets washed every 10 days or so. I would like to be a more June Cleavery wife. I would like to be made up daily-not just when I go to the hospital to work. I live in yoga pants and tee shirts. Aprons look cute but its just one more thing to wash or wear.
What has helped me is getting rid of everything we dont need or deeply enjoy. It is so much easier to dust when there isn't much knick knacks. I have also gotten rid of every unnecessary horizontal surface in my house. No place to pile stuff. I have two towels for every person and one set of sheets per bed.

[OceansEve]

Ugh! I am so in this tribe! I may get a burst every other week and do a decent cleaning job on the entire house, then by two days later it looks like I didn't do anything! *(#$%&*$#(#$^)!!!!! It makes it so much harder to give up my few minutes I get online to do any cleaning!! I did a load of dishes today, and two loads of laundry (even though its still on the kitchen table) The sink is already overflowing again and rather than cleaning my house I need to be getting the brooder preped for the chics we are getting next week.... but wait.... I can't even walk around the furniture box we found to brood in this year cause the garage is already totally full again!! As things pile up (paperwork, nik naks from holidays and birthdays, other stuff MIL hands off to us) they all go into diaper boxes and shoved into the garage, where else am I supposed to put that junk?? There is already stuff piling up in the kitchen again, time to grab another diaper box.......

I try, I really do, but the little tornadoes and sloppy joe come through and completely undo what I just did.... it is so frustrating.... I work pt and use up all my babysitting hours while I go work. MIL has agreed to watch DD1 tomorrow, but my mom won't be available to watch DD2, and she is so clingy there's no chance of me accomplishing anything...... argh......

[velochic]

I feel kind of in between here. Dd is 7 now and so much more active. She isn't content to just get out some toys and play. She wants to be involved in everything and part of that means that it takes me a longer time to get things done and we end up with bigger messes (I'm thinking specifically of cooking and baking in this case). She wants to create instead of just using something already made (if that makes sense... for example, she wants to get out crafts to build a bed for her babies instead of just using the bed that came with them).

I'm not OCD, but I have been a neat freak my whole life. I've had to let that go because I simply can't have the perfect home that I had up until a couple of years ago. Even as a newborn, dd was content to be worn as I went about what I was doing. Later, she just wanted to be in the same room with me, so I was able to get things done and interact with her as well.

Now she is in school and has two activities (our limit), but the single most important thing for us is that we sit down to a healthy, from scratch meal every evening. We occasionally eat out but we eat at real restaurants that have good food. Dd has never even eaten a McDonald's nugget in her life... we just don't do fast food. I will typically spend 2 hours a day preparing supper (and I'm a fast prepper with great knife skills). That takes up a large portion of the day... and I work 15 hours a week, too.

For me, personally, I have always been an advocate of traditional homemaking. I grow a garden, I sew, I can my food (both water bath and pressure, which can be very time consuming), I make our soap, I hang our clothes, etc. All of this is a drain on time, too. So, my June Cleaver days are over, but I would love to get back to a spotless house along with everything else. My house is clean by anyone's standards but my own. I think everyone needs to find their comfort level. A stack of newspapers bugs me, but I've let things like that go. I've had to. One day it will get better. My floors are mopped, the bathrooms and kitchen are clean, my bed is made every day... but I might have a load of clothes sitting in the basket for a couple of days.

Well, that was a small novel, wasn't it? I think I kind of belong here, but it's because of my own standard, not really the standard of the masses.

[Krisis]

Oh do I need this tribe. I used to be a major neat freak and our house was always spotless. Then I got pregnant and everything - EVERYTHING - made me throw up. I couldn't do laundry, I couldn't go into the kitchen, the only thing I could do was clean the toilets periodically (because I was already throwing up in them ha ha ha.)

Now DS is a year old and I feel like we're living in a cesspool or something. Our apartment is super tiny for us, and I've decluttered as much as DH will tolerate. Part of my problem is I have no energy, no motivation, nothing... to keep my space clean. Two days this week I went crazy and vacuumed the living room (!!!!) But then on the third day I was so exhausted from doing so well that it's all gone back to pot. I'm seeing a dr about this lack of energy next week but sheesh.

I dream of having a clean house where everything has a place and there are no granola crumbs on my floor... but I think that won't come at least till DS is in school!

[OceansEve]

Originally Posted by Krisis

Oh do I need this tribe. I used to be a major neat freak and our house was always spotless. Then I got pregnant and everything - EVERYTHING - made me throw up. I couldn't do laundry, I couldn't go into the kitchen, the only thing I could do was clean the toilets periodically (because I was already throwing up in them ha ha ha.)

yep - that is exactly it. I was a decent house keeper, at least organized, then couldn't do squat while pregnant, and I have now spent the last 3+ years either pregnant, breastfeeding, or both.

[jrabbit]

ok, so i've had a few days to think about my own pity party. now, it's time to change. who is with me? i'm not looking to replace flylady or compete with it. i just want real live ppl who want the same thing as i do: SOME order to the mayhem!!!!

does anyone else see this cycle> it's like musical chairs here. my Goal is to have a clear Dining Space when my parents visit in 3 weeks. we just inherited a table set, but the room is where we've been stashing freecycle & garage sale stuff, so it has to be cleared out first, but there is no place for the stuff in the garage yet, so step #1 for dining room Goal is to make space in the garage! that makes me tired just thinking about it.

so, today i'm going to work in the garage trying to separate keep, sell & toss ... DH is going to cut windows in the new/old chicken coop, and DD's will play in driveway and ask a million questions about all the stuff i'll find in garage. sigh

any ideas about how we can be a real support group for each other?

one thing i vow is to NOT set foot in another thrift shop unless i have a TRUE REAL need.

--janis

[hillymum]

I find it hard to teach my children to help keep a relatively tidy house when my husband doesn't mind living in a huge mess. His mother used to just take him and his brother out rather than try to clean whereas I helped my mom do the cleaning.
I have started to give all three of my children little jobs to do and we all do them at the same time. They love emptying the dishwasher so thats a job they do together. I have a really light weight vacuum cleaner which all of them can use. It's a canister so I can pull anything out which shouldn't be thown away.
We are getting there. It's an uphill battle teaching everyone the joy of living in a tidy house but they are enjoying having usable spaces.
One thing that is really helping is they are identifying which of their toys/games they really use and what they don't. What isn't used is gradually leaving the house by being given away, sold, or if it's in a really bad state then it goes out with the trash. I am also not buying anything until I have thought about it for 48 hours.
I just need a lot of motivation to get everyone else here motivated!!

[elsie]

It is only recently that I have been truly been able to get my girls to help clean up their stuff and they are nearly 5 and 7. But the thing that strikes me the most in your posts is that you want to control it all. My suggestion would be to give up some of that control. I found my girls are much more happy to straighten up their room if I don't cringe at their funky way of making up their beds. It's their room, why should it bother me if the blanket is not perfectly laid out the way I'd do? Some things we are making a habit - toys get picked before bed every day, dirty clothes get thrown in the shoot, coats are hung up and shoes are by door, dishes are placed by the sink after every use, trash is thrown out (this was a big one, finding clementine peels all over the house - at least it smelled nice). These are all things they are capable of doing and it really helps.

Now I do recall back when DD2 was new, I could not get a single thing done. She was my hold-me-constantly-or-I'll-scream baby. Cooking was a challenge, cleaning was nearly impossible. Oddly enough, I started watching chows like Clean House and How clean is Your House to get DD1 into picking up. She was horrified to see how bad it could get, and now we joke when I mention cleaning that 'we should do this now, so we don't have to go on Clean House.' Not really a threat, more like a realization that we all need to be a part of the solution, not just part of the problem. We are a team and we need to decide not to live in a stinky or messy house.

As far as the June Cleaver thing goes - didn't they all take speed back then???

[Da WIC Lady]

Originally Posted by elsie

As far as the June Cleaver thing goes - didn't they all take speed back then???

Nope, Valium. They were so not stressed over anything that it all got done because there was never the "I might need this someday"
hoarding junking the place up. Also, they never showed the housekeeper that came in off camera while June was at the market or the butcher.