My house looks awful

[PrincessFiona]

We're only a few days into summer vacation and this place looks like a college dorm room. It's just gross. I was struggling to keep up as it was, but this summer has just tipped me over the edge and it's barely June. With 4 cats, I battle constant cat hair on everything (including cleaning rags) even though I vacuum daily with a good vacuum. There is kid clutter everywhere. There is grown up clutter everywhere. It's just too much, and I don't know what to do. My mil is coming in August and I'm already worried about how I'll get it in some order by then. I hate living this way. It feels uncomfortable.

I tried to make a to-do chart for myself to rotate chores but I quickly realized that every day I have to do the kitchen, living room, office, entry way and downstairs bath in order for it to look semi-presentable ... which it currently does not. There is no way I can add things like make beds, vacuum upstairs, vacuum downstairs, clean floors, clean out fridge etc etc. I'd be freaking cleaning all day long. I'm not willing to do that. I have grown to despise cleaning. Also, there is the laundry for 7 people. Holy crap. If I had known this, it might have affected my family planning. Just kidding. Sort of. I have no idea why I'm throwing in multiple loads daily. It's out of control.

What do you guys do? Where can I start to just get control? I'm at that place where I feel like hiring a dumpster and just throwing away everything that isn't nailed down. Then I want to hire people from care.com for things like organizing my closets, etc....

[Vanquisher]

You know this, but I hire it out. Girl, you are working, going to school, and are a mom of 5.

Cut yourself some freaking slack and hire yourself some help. What's the most daunting? Hire that out. Seriously. You are a superwoman, but you don't have to be, and you don't have to prove anything. Life is too short and too precious to have this much anxiety about a messy house. Furthermore, it's too short to spend so much time doing an activity you despise.

Give it up. Stop now. Hire someone.

[diggitydot]

What chores are the kids doing?

[Vanquisher]

What chores are the kids doing?

While they should be doing lots, I imagine it's just as much work (if not more) getting them to do it.

Alex is old enough to be doing laundry and kitchen.

Aidan can do bathrooms and vacuuming.

Zoe can pick up clutter and put things away. She can wipe surfaces and dust.

I still maintain that hiring it out is worth it.

[rainbabies]

My house is gross. We don't have AC. Everything is sticky from the humidity. My floors have dog hair and grass on them. My kids rooms...I don't even want to look at them. My bathrooms need a good scrubbing. I have loads of laundry to do. I don't work or go to school. My house should be clean.
Cut yourself some slack. You're busy!!!

[scrub-jay]

I have a friend who did hire a professional organizer. She calls that woman a "Goddess" bc she sat with my friend, helped her declutter and organize. My friend also hires out cleaning. I can't afford to as we're in residency, but I've had some luck with the Tody app bc it allows me to let things slide and tells me what to prioritize based on how long something's been waiting. My 4 yr old makes her bed every morning and is learning basic tidying. I've learned to forgive myself.

[PrincessFiona]

My kids should be doing more. Right now they are parasites with few responsibilities.
Zoe helps me fold towels and cleans the downstairs bathroom when asked. I have to help her and redo.
Aidan does nothing but would. I could take advantage of that.
Alex will vacuum and clean the stairs if money is involved.
Amanda babysits a lot and she cleans the main level when asked.
Andrew is a pig who is oblivious to the messes he makes.
More kid involvement....talk me through that. How do I set it up?

[spotty_dog]

*hugs* We're in shedding hell too! SO MUCH FUR.

DH and I are considering, as our anniversary gift to each other, hiring someone to do a deep clean of our house.

I'm sort of on top of everything else. I only truly catch up when DH is home though. I do superficial cleaning most of the time, and deeper cleaning (fridges, floors) very infrequently.

Have I shared this link before? The rest of the series (Reasonably Clean, Fairly Neat, and Comfortably Tidy House) is in the right column. The author is a mom of six grown kids who started the blog in order to share with her daughters, as they start their adult lives and young families, the things that helped to make their life happy and cozy as they grew up in a busy house. I find it so inspirational.

http://www.likemotherlikedaughter.or...irly-neat-and/

Here's the next post, which is about getting started decluttering: http://www.likemotherlikedaughter.or...et-to-get-you/

[Vanquisher]

I have a friend who did hire a professional organizer. She calls that woman a "Goddess" bc she sat with my friend, helped her declutter and organize. My friend also hires out cleaning. I can't afford to as we're in residency, but I've had some luck with the Tody app bc it allows me to let things slide and tells me what to prioritize based on how long something's been waiting. My 4 yr old makes her bed every morning and is learning basic tidying. I've learned to forgive myself.

Tody app?

[diggitydot]

I don't know what would work for your fam, but our kids have the same exact chores each day. Nothing fun happens until homework and chores are finished. When school is out for the summer, nothing fun happens until chores are done.

DD1 (18YO) unloads/loads the dishwasher, wipes down counters, and hand washes the items that can't go in the dishwasher. DD2 (14YO) sweeps all the tile/wood floors and mops as needed. DS (12YO) takes out the garbage/recycling as needed and picks up his bedroom everyday.

The kids all pick up dog poop outside as needed and clean/dump cat boxes. The girls *should* be picking up the bathroom they share daily and scrubbing it once a week, but that doesn't happen unless I raise holy hell and forbid them from doing anything fun until it's finished. DS picks up and scrubs his bathroom as needed, which is usually a couple times a week. The girls share lawn mowing duties (one prefers doing the front, the other likes doing the back).

Both girls are also pretty good about throwing their laundry into the washer and they usually do a load every night or so. I no longer fold the kids' clothes. I got tired of them "cleaning" their bedrooms by dumping clean clothes into the dirty laundry so I was repeatedly washing/drying/folding clean clothes that hadn't been worn. Homie don't play that.

I do everything else.

Our house is rarely what I would consider "clean", but it's usually OK enough for unexpected drop-ins.

[alotofyarn]

The only reason our house isn't a complete disaster is because I hire ladies to clean my house every other week. The clutter gets ridiculous though. I try to pick things up at least before cleaning day, but I still fail. I'd love to have someone come in once and organize things for me, but I'm pretty sure that's not in the budget. We have stuff everywhere and are pretty bad about putting things away, though I do think we're slowly getting better.

[scrub-jay]

Tody app?

It's an app that separates tasks by area. You enter the tasks in along with their frequency and the current status (when I started most were "overdue") and the app uses that to prioritize tasks. What's cool is this: If I let a task slide that's due weekly and another that's due annually...the app knows that a few days for an annual task is nbd compared to something that I said was supposed to be done weekly. It might make my annual task yellow, but my overdue weekly task orange. When I started...all red. Now I've got some green, some orange, and some yellow sprinkling in amongst my red. It's slow going, but the all-or-nothing was too demoralizing.

[spotty_dog]

It's an app that separates tasks by area. You enter the tasks in along with their frequency and the current status (when I started most were "overdue") and the app uses that to prioritize tasks. What's cool is this: If I let a task slide that's due weekly and another that's due annually...the app knows that a few days for an annual task is nbd compared to something that I said was supposed to be done weekly. It might make my annual task yellow, but my overdue weekly task orange. When I started...all red. Now I've got some green, some orange, and some yellow sprinkling in amongst my red. It's slow going, but the all-or-nothing was too demoralizing.

The latest iteration of my system is similar. Each chore is in my iCal with its frequency. (I decided what chores and how often mostly by reading Sidetracked Home Executives.) If I get behind, I take a deep breath and redistribute tasks by priority. The bathrooms are getting awful? Bathrooms go today, other rooms tomorrow and the next day; biweekly closet cleaning and bimonthly floor scrubbing can get pushed off to next week for all I care. I don't think I even have any annual tasks any more.

Every evening I prep my next day's daily task list in my Bullet Journal. There's something about paper and pencil that keeps me honest (and keeps me from getting lost in websurfing when I go on "just to check my chore list!") In particular, where I could keep bumping a chore for days or weeks (or leave it behind altogether) when I used just the iCal, now I don't leave a checkbox unchecked without carrying it forward to a new day. Re-writing the same damned task twice is enough to make me do it, come hell or high water, the third day!

It's a beautiful feeling to realize that I've done my weekly chore, ON the day I assigned it, more than once in a row! It doesn't often last, but it's nice!

[Pollyanna]

You know this, but I hire it out. Girl, you are working, going to school, and are a mom of 5.

Cut yourself some freaking slack and hire yourself some help. What's the most daunting? Hire that out. Seriously. You are a superwoman, but you don't have to be, and you don't have to prove anything. Life is too short and too precious to have this much anxiety about a messy house. Furthermore, it's too short to spend so much time doing an activity you despise.

Give it up. Stop now. Hire someone.

This!!!

[SoonerTexan]

There's no way you can do it all alone. I'm got hiring it out, but we all know full well it can go to crap in a day without the kids being on board somewhst