Constant Clutter Chaos!

My house is constantly cluttered and messy. :drown: It's not dirty-it's vacuumed, sweeped, disinfected, etc..--it's just messy! I've never been a neat freak but I ran a much more orderly home prior to children. I look at the clutter (most of it is mine by the way) and I just don't want to get off my @ss and make the time to find a proper place to put things away. DH and I can make the house look spectacular in little time when company comes over--our litte secret? Our bedroom becomes the dumping ground for all things random (which is why our bedroom, in particular, is crazy messy and not the serene haven my husband (and I!) would like it to be. :gah:

At the end of the day, I'm DONE. I want to sit on my butt, on the couch and not move if I don't have too. :wine: And I think I deserve it after a long and wonderful and challenging and LONG day with two two-year olds. And while I do to some degree, I know deep down I have to motivate myself to find the time to tackle it. I guess I want to find out if others are living this way too. I'm not alone, am I? And if you used to live this way, how did you get yourself out of your own mess?

 

Haha you should see my house. Although in my case it's mostly kids, husband and dog. I'm the only one who picks up in this house and I'm just sick of it, so now I only do it once a week when I feel like it... because even when I do, it's a mess again 2 hours later anyway. Our bedroom has a huge pile of clean clothes that we just never find the time to put away (dh doesn't like me folding his clothes but he never does it), and dh keeps leaving his dirty clothes there too, which drives me nuts, and we still have a box of random stuff from when we moved...

 

Oh, I totally feel the same way! It is never ending and exhausting! I'm so done by the time the kids go to bed too. So, you're not alone! I'll be watching to see if anyone else has some great ideas!

 

I think with each kid your house takes a hit. we just moved and I think I have finally figured it all out..... STUFF. It is too much STUFF that makes your house cluttery. Our shipment hasn't yet arrived which means more clothes, books, toys, etc. and when that comes I'm cutting down. I got one of those "Trofast" systems from Ikea and it really helps to have a spot for the toys. In our livingroom right now only a single basket of toys. You could pack up their toys into rubber made containers and then rotate every 3 weeks. Less toys means less mess. Locks on everything prevents them from taking everything out of your cupboards.

Hope that helps.

Heather

 

The one and only way I have found to solve that problem is..... get rid of some stuff! We're going to be putting our house on the market, so going through every single closet, nook and cranny and either packing up, selling, or giving away everything that we don't use on a daily/weekly basis or that we won't need for the next few months. And it is AMAZING how much more calm I feel, and how much simpler it is to keep the house tidy. A cluttered house is a cluttered mind and soul; digging in to make the effort to simplify really, really does help you keep your life more peaceful.

Another wonderful thing I've discovered for toy clutter: at Ikea, they have a closet organization system that's basically a metal frame with either wire baskets or plastic bins that slide into the frame. I use two stacked on top of each other to keep all the girls' toys. The bottom ones are bins that they can take out on their own, and I keep the toys that aren't incedibly messy or tons of pieces in those. Then in the ones they can't reach, I keep the toys that need supervision. All the toys (except for the ride-ons and 2-3 bigger toys) in one neat, tidy, place and super easy to scoop things up and put back in the bins.

It's a pain in the rear decluttering, but oh so worth it! You can do it!

 

I thought that my clutter problems would be solved with a bigger house LOL! we moved to a bigger house and now I have even more clutter! I have a sister that has a spotless house! it is so perfect. While I go through my clutter I always think "what would Jessica keep?" if it does not pass that test it is out of here. It also makes me feel good to donate things so that helps. Getting the energy up to actually go through it is tough but I make myself do it and once I get into it it flows and when I am done with an area it feels really great! If I had a trash shoot and a shoot to the Goodwill I would be clutter free all the time - my dh is the one who stops me from getting rid of some things saying that some one we know can use that - then we never end up giving it. I wish I could just put it on the shoot and send it off!!

I have also put things in our room to make things look better - problem is my dh does not care who sees what mess and the times I have done that our room is the place he takes our company to show them our closet or something

 

At the end of the day, I am also done. So, my solution to the clutter problem: lower my standards. :crazy:

 

Our bedroom is where everything goes that we don't know what to do with. We have boxes of stuff in there now. It's awful. Baskets of clean laundry that we'll never put away. The rest of the house is cluttered with toys. It drives me crazy, but what can you do? There aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with it. I think being at home with them all day, makes it worse. If I attempt to clean anything, they just undo it.

 

AAAAHHHH!!!! I am exactly on the same page as all of you and it is incredibly FRUSTRATING and sometimes depressing I've never been great at keeping house...it's always been something I wanted to be better at. I can make things look great for company (at the expense of my bedroom) but I've never been on top of everything ALL the time (and usually I'm not even close). I feel like I'm drowning!!! I just can't seem to keep my head above water (the house clean) for more than a few days at a time! DH really doesn't mind the mess and having company over with the house a mess doesn't bother him at all.... so he's not a lot of help unless I basically tell him exactly what to do all the time (which I hate) and he works his normal job plus teaches jiu jitsu in a city that's an hour away three nights a week, trains once a month four hours away... let's just say he's BUSY so not much help at all. We've talked about hiring a house keeper for once every other week to help take the work load off of me but we've had a hard time fitting it into the budget. We hired someone once and it was awesome! I am the queen of creative finances... so maybe I can make it work! Even then, I still need help. Anyone know of any life changing books, websites, etc to help us all out?

For about a year I had a housekeeping schedule I kept. It was basically a chore list for each day of the week. It certainly helped but I'm busier now than I was then. I should probably revisit that

 

We commit ourselves to cleaning up the messes (usually the boys' messes) after they go to bed. Otherwise, I couldn't sit still looking at it (living with these messes has taken a lot of getting used to for us. Pre-kids, our house was pretty meticulous).
But, I'll tell ya, I look VERY forward to the day when they'll be cleaning up their own messes before bed or the days when our house doesn't look like it's been burglarized by the end of the day ;-)!!

 

That's why I don't bother anymore. It's not worth spending 15 minutes cleaning every night just to have a huge mess the next day again lol

 

We clean up every night and have started getting the boys involved, too. Its nice to sit in a clean room after they go to bed plus kids play better with toys when they are not in a jumble.

 

same here.I don't let my two go upstairs(or downstairs) until stuff is put away in the room they played.
craigslist is my best "friend" as I sell stuff almost daily I don't need.
SO PROUD of myself for clean house