Messy house v spotless house v showroom condition house

For the last three years I have been meaning to do something about 2 patches of blown plaster in our living/dining room but the thought of tidying up enough to get to them keeps putting me off.

We moved in 4 years ago and were rewired 3 years ago. It was only a month or so ago that we finally replaced the Old Lady Wallpaper with missing patches of bare plaster.

We also only just replaced the carpet in the dining room, which we cut parts off to make repainting the skirting easier four years ago.

Stuff like that doesn’t bother me, or the dried on mud on the kitchen floor, from the dogs’ feet. But, clutter is really irritating and must be expunged.

I seem to be in the minority here but I like a tidy house, find it hard to relax in a room that is full of crap.

With 2 kids this is hard so I have resigned myself to the fact that I wont have a tidy house so we keep 1 or 2 areas clear. 1 is the lounge where we relax and watch telly.

It isnt a matter of spending all day tidying and cleaning, it is just 30 seconds to put something back when you finish using it so it doesn’t build up.

Saying all this, my house isnt a show house by any means. Everything has been done to make it easy to live in and somewhere I dont worry about if kids spill drinks or come running in with muddy shoes. Wood/Tiled floors, paint that can be scrubbed etc.

I feel much better now. It’s not just my wife that leaves a pile of handbags in the kitchen to grow on a monthly basis, or this weeks post in a single growing pile under the coffee table, or me constantly treading on Lego….

Keep it tidy and clean. But the best thing we ever did was get a cleaner… whizz around tidying a few bits Monday night every fortnight and cleaner comes and does the house top to bottom on a Tuesday.

House tidyness discussions in my house tend to go this way…

Me: Why can’t you and the kids tidy up after yourselves…
Her: Why can’t you put your bikes and all associated paraphernalia in a shed in the garden.

We have settled on an uneasy stalemate 🙂

It’s not just my wife that leaves a pile of handbags in the kitchen to grow on a monthly basis, or this weeks post in a single growing pile under the coffee table

I spend a lot of time putting things where they should be…

Ours is quite a busy house ( …as they saying goes, always something happening and it’s usually quite loud)

Little but often works best.
Couldn’t do with sitting in a sterile antiseptic soulless show house – Give me a family ‘home’ any day.

ourmaninthenorth – Member
Confession: in the last few days I’ve been reading blogs on decluttering. Worrying, I know, but I’ve decided if we have less stuff, there’s less to tidy up.

We bought a decluttering book. It ended up in a pile of clutter for months.

Since Christmas we’ve been working on the basis that things should live near to where they’re used. Not a lot of effort but means I’ve now got screwdrivers stashed where I can always find them, which is nice.

Only saddos live in showroom houses.

Or serial killers.

Or my in laws 🙄

At last! I’m not alone! And relax…

*clean, but far too busy to be bothering with all the faff

kryton – I married you and never realised it?

You will be rejecting the Einstein argument that messiness is a symptom of a brilliant mind (my sons’ argument) next?

As I type this I can hear my children messing up the upstairs of my house, I can live with clean but messy, my missus is always complaining but seldom actually sorts anything out, if she gets it into her head to “tidy” its more like a flurry of aimless activity and ranting that ends with the house looking like even more of a tip.

Dishes done, clothes clean an put away, toys in various baskets kitchen table clear, floor vacuumed, that is about as god as ours ever gets, and I end up doing most of that TBH.

We have friends with seriously tidy homes, but I don’t feel compelled to keep up, half of them are on happy pills as they fdon’t seem able to keep a sense of proportion.

dazh – Member
House tidyness discussions in my house tend to go this way…

Me: Why can’t you and the kids tidy up after yourselves…
Her: Why can’t you put your bikes and all associated paraphernalia in a shed in the garden.

Hmm, all my bike stuff is in the mancave..

teamhurtmore – Member
kryton – I married you and never realised it?

You do realise tonight is sexy night?

If I tidy up, I can stop at any point and the house will be tidier than when I started. My wife has to make things messier before they get better.

The great thing about getting a neighbour to do the cleaning is that you tidy up ready for the house to be cleaned before she comes every week

This is very true. If having a cleaner come every week didn’t make us tidy up before she comes then I dread to think what state our place would be in.

It’s not just my wife that leaves a pile of handbags in the kitchen

Handbags dumped on the kitchen table 👿

mrblobby – Member

Handbags dumped on the kitchen table

Its kitchen chairs at our place – I have had a rant from time to time after getting up and having to rush to work/kids school run only to find I can’t sit down for breakfast in the 5 minutes I get to do so.

Anything left downstairs that should be upstairs gets moved to the stairs. When I next go upstairs, they get moved to a pile on the landing. I can cope with a single pile on the landing.

Living room floor must be empty of all items. Cushions should be in the correct places, with zips at the bottom.Remotes live in the little cubby on the side table. Wii stuff lives in the right-hand drawer. Coffee table should be empty. Nothing on fireplace other than the candle holder and the two ‘bookends’.

Dining room table empty, apart from single flower vase. All placemats and coasters in top drawer of sideboard. Top of sideboard allowed a single pile of papers waiting to be ‘filed’.

You get the idea 🙂

Its kitchen chairs at our place – I have had a rant from time to time after getting up and having to rush to work/kids school run only to find I can’t sit down for breakfast in the 5 minutes I get to do so.

No room for handbags on the chairs, they are used for coats!

Edit… and don’t get me started about the bloody keys!

I seem to be in the minority here but I like a tidy house, find it hard to relax in a room that is full of crap.

Me too.

As for de-cluttering I keep find the wife has taken things I’ve put in the bin and stashed them in a wardrobe / cupboard, just in case….

If no one is coming round to visit then our house remains about 30 minutes from tidy.

Me…..

Mrs Binners….

Works out quite well overall. For me anyway 😀

don’t get me started about the bloody keys

My keys: in my back-left trouser pocket, in the door, or on the key hook.
Her keys: in the pocket of the coat she was wearing yesterday, on a flat surface somewhere, in the car, on the floor, under our bed, …

Or my in laws [/quote]

How do you know they aren’t?

My Mrs has almost OCD about cleaning, and wouldn’t trust a cleaner. I have a miketually level of OCD about piles and tidiness. The net sum of this is almost showroom condition

I like it like that, mess creates stress 😀

Messy…ish.

CBA to do that much tidying up. Stuff mostly lives where it should do. It’s easier to not make much mess in the first place.

OH pretends to be tidy, but actually isn’t, and has growing piles of cluttery crap growing everywhere around the house.

It doesn’t help that we’re living in a “just needs a bit of tidying up” DIY project. Still, when we’ve done “a bit of tidying up” it’ll be really tidy. Or maybe not.

Other things that don’t help, offspring and a dog.

Thing that really gets me is missus is always the one who moans about it being messy despite her making a large proportion (I’m not claiming to be perfect) of the mess and me doing all of the tidying.

Eg. “We really need to sort out the mess in the kitchen” = I’ve made a mess of the kitchen tidy it up

‘Er indoors is a complete slattern. A place for everything and nothing in its place. I have a pretty high untidiness threshhold. Ergo, house tends to reach bombsite-in-a-tsunami-zone status before we both snap and go on a massive tidying spree once every few weeks. Or months. Or something.

As we’re sharing: anyone other than me and Mark Cavendish turn all the forks round so that they’re facing the same way?

My friend does it with all his cutlery. Knives, teaspoons, forks, dessert & soup spoons. 😯

That’s nothing to his wardrobe (according to his missus). The guy’s wardrobe from 91/2 weeks? Not the half of it.

EDIT: although with my wardrobe, all shirts must be hung with their top button closed and button side facing left. Once, when on a stag do, sharing a hotel room with a relative stranger (who was planning on living out of a sports kit bag for the weekend), I came back to the room drunk, and unpacked all his clothes and hung them up in the wardrobe, it was winding me up that much.

although with my wardrobe, all shirts must be hung with their top button closed and button side facing left

That’s just good sense. Otherwise some shirts might be the wrong way round!

My friend does it with all his cutlery. Knives, teaspoons, forks, dessert & soup spoons.

Is this really considered unusual?

Is this really considered unusual?

Hmmm…probably not. It’s the reaction to anyone else putting them away in any way unusually that can be a problem I guess.

Our cottage is 400ish years old, so never going to be show home, but it’s fairly simple, functional, subtly decorated & furnished. Not keen on girlfriend’s dog frequenting the house (though tolerate it because ground floor is all tiled), generally tidy, but there’s always something to do, it needs a new bathroom suite, and the kitchen is getting very tired.

However, I’d take the above any day over a show home, bought a second hand sofa off a couple from Blackwood via eBay, I’d never seen anything like it, was spotless, like waking into a catalogue, and they only sold the sofa because they’d seen one they liked in dfs that weekend…… Both fake tanned & dress up to the nines, 2 new cars on the drive……. Life’s too short for that shit!

The husband & his mate insisted on carrying the sofa out, scratched & dented their blue upvc front door to shit, oops

they only sold the sofa because they’d seen one they liked in dfs that weekend.

unbelievable

who actually buys a sofa from DFS?

South Walians! Not to tar them all with the same brush (I have family down there myself), but the culture is pretty vacuous, superficial & materialistic, whether affordable or not….

Can’t relax in a messy house. Have minimalist decor and like everything to be in its place. Just as easy to be tidy as messy. Same goes for my desk at work!

I like a spotless house but I’m a lazy **** so it never is.

As we’re sharing: anyone other than me and Mark Cavendish turn all the forks round so that they’re facing the same way?

A mate of mine does this and has all the beers in the fridge with the labels facing the front. He also bins anything that hasn’t been used in ages, ages is often a few weeks, kids toys, tupperware, pots etc.

My Mrs also dumps piles of crap on the dining room chairs, drives me nuts. I keep telling her if I try and sit down for a meal and there is stuff there it is going straight in the bin. One of these days I am going to need to actually do it. It may stop the dumping…or get me a divorce…

I can’t relax in a messy house. My wife is the messy one, but oddly all of her wardrobe including small and socks is arranged perfectly in colour and shades of grey order.

Another bug bear of mine – we have a kitchen island, which is cleared about once every six weeks but gradually fills up with assorted junk mail, small toys and other crap to the point I can’t butter my toast. Ngggg Aargh!

Shirts pointing to the right btw, top button must be done up.