My house bothers me!!

[EMS83]

Is it my age?  The age of my kids?  Feeling out of control somewhere else in my life?  My childhood home looking like a magazine 24/7?

 

I didn't used to care, at all; part of it probably was rebellion against the Good Housekeeping home I grew up in.  But as for my house...everything has a home, everything is usually in it, more or less.  we pick up daily, we have a basic cleaning routine.  It's not sterile, but it's not a pig pen either.  People live here.  And dogs.  And a menagerie of small critters.  But recently I just...want it to be spotless?  Unrealistically so.  I'd have to ship the kids off to school to attain the vision (I think).  I just turned 34 last month, kids are 6-11.  Is this a stage that one just goes through?  Or what?

[HomeAgain]

I go through periods like that.  It's usually when I have a lot on my plate and just need something to have calm in my life.  It's usually also combined with an aversion to touch, pressure, sound..all symptoms of the same stress for me.  Dh knows my little quirks and gave me an empty living room in our new place. :)  It has a couch, a cabinet, and a stove.  That's all, and that's how it'll stay. He set up the smaller office room as the tv/den area.

[Wheres Toto]

I get like that all the time but my house sucks.   It's not a constant bothering but comes and goes depending on what I want to do that I can't, and probably what time of the month it is.

 

We have a very small house with no storage at all.  So it's always cluttered because there is no place to put things and 4 people living here, plus homeschooling so we're here all day.  It's never neat, the rugs are stained from dogs and kids (I'm trying to convince dh that pergo is the way to go when we can replace them), it's impossible to keep clean.

 

There are some things we can do, but we're looking into addition possibilities and it doesn't make sense to do anything (like fix the roof) until we know whether we'll be tearing down walls, redoing the roof, etc.   I understand the logic and practicality of that, but living with it in the meantime can be very frustrating.

 

I guess I'm kind of in one of those moments when it's really bothering me.

[Garga]

I just spend every spare second I had for the past 2.5 weeks reorganizing and deep cleaning my house. I got through everything except the homeschooling stuff. That'll probably take a week of its own.

 

I had found that the things we needed to use daily or weekly were in hard to access places. And things we use monthly or only yearly were hogging all the good spots. So, I bought a bunch of bins and put the monthly/yearly stuff in the bins in the basement (well marked) and I moved the stuff we use daily to the prime locations.

 

I washed all the windows, scrubbed all the baseboards moved all the furniture and cleaned behind it.

 

My diningroom, kitchen, and bathroom are now a little echo-y because they're so cleaned out with all the clutter put away.

 

 

Wait....I just realized you said your house is already clean and tidied. Mine was a cluttery mess and I had hated it, but now I love it. But if yours is already clean and you still hate it, then there's something else going on.

 

Does your furniture match? Or even go? It took me until about 8 years ago (when I was 36) to feel that my furniture went together. Until then, things didn't go together well. It took time to make my little nest the way I like it.

 

Maybe you need some new paint on the wall? Maybe to hang better pictures? Dinky pictures on the wall make me feel a little nuts. I like big pictures to fill a wall.

 

 

Can you take a good look around and figure out what it is in particular you don't like? Maybe there's an easy fix, or maybe you hate all your furniture and it would take too much money to fix it. Or maybe someone will have clever ideas on how to fix whatever it is you don't like without having to spend money.

 

To sort of answer your question, I was sooo sick of my house 3 weeks ago, but now it's pretty awesome, but it just needed a solid cleaning and reorganizing.

Edited June 22, 2017 by Garga

[Storygirl]

Garga, can you come to my house next? :rolleyes:

 

I spent last week in the opposite way, going through all of the homeschooling stuff. We aren't homeschooling any more, so DH and I sorted through all of the books, papers, and supplies, decided what we should keep, and got rid of the rest. Actually, a lot of it is still here -- we still have to make trips to Goodwill and the used bookstore, and there was too much trash to put out all in one week. But soon it should all be done.

 

Fellow homeschoolers, don't be like me! Don't throw all of the papers and workbooks into bins and piles for ten years, thinking you will sort it later, sometime. Make time to do it year by year. Or even more often. Or you will regret it!

 

Now I just have to do the rest of the house :eek: .

[Guest]

I go through periods like that. It's usually when I have a lot on my plate and just need something to have calm in my life. It's usually also combined with an aversion to touch, pressure, sound..all symptoms of the same stress for me. Dh knows my little quirks and gave me an empty living room in our new place. :) It has a couch, a cabinet, and a stove. That's all, and that's how it'll stay. He set up the smaller office room as the tv/den area.

Are you in my head? I get exactly like that too!

[EMS83]

I just spend every spare second I had for the past 2.5 weeks reorganizing and deep cleaning my house. I got through everything except the homeschooling stuff. That'll probably take a week of its own.

 

I had found that the things we needed to use daily or weekly were in hard to access places. And things we use monthly or only yearly were hogging all the good spots. So, I bought a bunch of bins and put the monthly/yearly stuff in the bins in the basement (well marked) and I moved the stuff we use daily to the prime locations.

 

I washed all the windows, scrubbed all the baseboards moved all the furniture and cleaned behind it.

 

My diningroom, kitchen, and bathroom are now a little echo-y because they're so cleaned out with all the clutter put away.

 

 

Wait....I just realized you said your house is already clean and tidied. Mine was a cluttery mess and I had hated it, but now I love it. But if yours is already clean and you still hate it, then there's something else going on.

 

Does your furniture match? Or even go? It took me until about 8 years ago (when I was 36) to feel that my furniture went together. Until then, things didn't go together well. It took time to make my little nest the way I like it.

 

Maybe you need some new paint on the wall? Maybe to hang better pictures? Dinky pictures on the wall make me feel a little nuts. I like big pictures to fill a wall.

 

 

Can you take a good look around and figure out what it is in particular you don't like? Maybe there's an easy fix, or maybe you hate all your furniture and it would take too much money to fix it. Or maybe someone will have clever ideas on how to fix whatever it is you don't like without having to spend money.

 

To sort of answer your question, I was sooo sick of my house 3 weeks ago, but now it's pretty awesome, but it just needed a solid cleaning and reorganizing.

That's awesome of you!!  That does feel good.  

 

Mine could use a deep cleaning.  It's basically clean and tidy, but not deeply cleaned...so maybe that's part of it?  

Kids clean with me, so quality goes down in favor of training.

My furniture does not go.  I didn't used to care about this though?  The living room and master are the most mishmashed.

We really need a bigger house; I know the trend right now is to shed square footage, but we are at 235 per person with no extra spaces (garage, basement, attic, shed).  Can't fix that...maybe ever.

When I look around, though, it's little things...the boxes on the toys shelves aren't straight most days (there's a day for that though), or the kitchen counter is still cluttered at the end of the day (with perfectly reasonable things--recycling drying, vegetables hanging out), the sofa blankets are in their tub but not folded (but they get washed and folded weekly).  and yes tub...like the kind you put beer in at a picnic, lol.  Things like that.

Maybe the nitpicky feeling is a sort of displacement because I can't change the big things I want?  But would that really help?  I feel like I should be at peace both with the furniture and the crooked boxes, and I'm not.   :p

 

Just to be clear, though...I don't feel like this about other people's houses!!  Whether they're magazine McMansion homes or a super cluttered trailer (been in both and many in between), I'm perfectly conformable, because I'm not responsible for managing that space.  :D

[Carrie12345]

Oh, I would love for my house to be TRULY clean and tidy!  Just... not enough to make it so.

 

My theory is that it's a natural longing after living so many years with babies and toddlers, forcing surrender to the chaos.  (Oldest is going on 19, youngest is 6.  That's about 16 years with at least one child under the age of 4.)  I feel like there should no longer be a reason for messes.  Every single one of the children (all the way up the line) disagrees, apparently.  Dh, too!

 

I want a pretty She Shed that nobody else is allowed in!

[Elizabeth86]

I dont know. I always desire a spotless house, but it never has been and I doubt it ever will be.

[scholastica]

I just spend every spare second I had for the past 2.5 weeks reorganizing and deep cleaning my house. I got through everything except the homeschooling stuff. That'll probably take a week of its own.

 

I had found that the things we needed to use daily or weekly were in hard to access places. And things we use monthly or only yearly were hogging all the good spots. So, I bought a bunch of bins and put the monthly/yearly stuff in the bins in the basement (well marked) and I moved the stuff we use daily to the prime locations.

 

I washed all the windows, scrubbed all the baseboards moved all the furniture and cleaned behind it.

 

My diningroom, kitchen, and bathroom are now a little echo-y because they're so cleaned out with all the clutter put away.

 

 

Wait....I just realized you said your house is already clean and tidied. Mine was a cluttery mess and I had hated it, but now I love it. But if yours is already clean and you still hate it, then there's something else going on.

 

Does your furniture match? Or even go? It took me until about 8 years ago (when I was 36) to feel that my furniture went together. Until then, things didn't go together well. It took time to make my little nest the way I like it.

 

Maybe you need some new paint on the wall? Maybe to hang better pictures? Dinky pictures on the wall make me feel a little nuts. I like big pictures to fill a wall.

 

 

Can you take a good look around and figure out what it is in particular you don't like? Maybe there's an easy fix, or maybe you hate all your furniture and it would take too much money to fix it. Or maybe someone will have clever ideas on how to fix whatever it is you don't like without having to spend money.

 

To sort of answer your question, I was sooo sick of my house 3 weeks ago, but now it's pretty awesome, but it just needed a solid cleaning and reorganizing.

Did your kids help? If not, what were they doing? I have been working on small projects here and there to work toward this, but if I did this the way I want to, my kids would not be able to leave the house for weeks. Getting them to help would be more hassle than it's worth right now. So, I feel stuck not really able to do it to the extent I want.

[HomeAgain]

Are you in my head? I get exactly like that too!

 

It's always nice finding out I'm not weird! :lol:

[Garga]

Did your kids help? If not, what were they doing? I have been working on small projects here and there to work toward this, but if I did this the way I want to, my kids would not be able to leave the house for weeks. Getting them to help would be more hassle than it's worth right now. So, I feel stuck not really able to do it to the extent I want.

 

My kids are 12 and 14 and mostly did not help. I had them carry a few loads of things up and down some stairs because my legs were getting super tired from all the carrying of things up and down stairs.

 

They help with the maintaining of the house, but for the most part there wasn't much them could do to reorganize. I suppose they could have helped with the deep cleaning, but it would have been more of a hassle than was helpful.

 

I didn't clean straight through each day, though. I probably cleaned 5 hours a day, in broken segments. The rest of the day was teaching them how to sew, getting them started on handwriting, doing math with ds12, teaching them how to cook dinner, going grocery shopping, blah blah. I also made a point to get a full 8.5 hours of sleep each night.

 

I did some of the cleaning during the day when the boys were reading books or playing on their computer and relaxing, and the rest of the cleaning in the evening when DH was home and able to pay attention to them if they needed it.

 

If I'd been able to work straight through, I could have shaved a week or more off of my cleaning.

 

If they were younger and I'd have had more interruptions, it probably would have taken twice as long. The interruptions I had were mildly frustrating, but bearable; not like when they were tiny and I couldn't work more than 5 or 10 minutes without a long interruption.

[Garga]

That's awesome of you!!  That does feel good.  

 

Mine could use a deep cleaning.  It's basically clean and tidy, but not deeply cleaned...so maybe that's part of it?  

Kids clean with me, so quality goes down in favor of training.

My furniture does not go.  I didn't used to care about this though?  The living room and master are the most mishmashed.

We really need a bigger house; I know the trend right now is to shed square footage, but we are at 235 per person with no extra spaces (garage, basement, attic, shed).  Can't fix that...maybe ever.

When I look around, though, it's little things...the boxes on the toys shelves aren't straight most days (there's a day for that though), or the kitchen counter is still cluttered at the end of the day (with perfectly reasonable things--recycling drying, vegetables hanging out), the sofa blankets are in their tub but not folded (but they get washed and folded weekly).  and yes tub...like the kind you put beer in at a picnic, lol.  Things like that.

Maybe the nitpicky feeling is a sort of displacement because I can't change the big things I want?  But would that really help?  I feel like I should be at peace both with the furniture and the crooked boxes, and I'm not.   :p

 

Just to be clear, though...I don't feel like this about other people's houses!!  Whether they're magazine McMansion homes or a super cluttered trailer (been in both and many in between), I'm perfectly conformable, because I'm not responsible for managing that space.  :D

 

Yeah, it's totally the clutter bothering you. That's what was bothering me and when I could move it to the basement, it made all the difference. You can't create an attic or basement, but could you buy a shed for the yard? That might be the only option.

 

Have you decluttered recently? Sometimes there's only so much you can declutter and you're just stuck. Do you have only two sets of sheets per bed (for example)? One set is on the bed, the other set is between the mattress and box spring. One blanket and one comforter/quilt per bed, and it gets washed and dried the same day?

 

Can you cull the number of coats and shoes people have? Cull the number of clothes and buy things in the future that all match with each other, so you need fewer pieces? Do you have those skinny bins for under beds?

 

You have probably done all that. Without storage, there's just going to be clutter unless you live as simply as monks. Most families have to have a certain amount of things and in a small house without storage, those things are just going to be out.

 

Maybe save your pennies and get better containers for the things you have: like a nice basket for the blankets instead of the beer cooler. :). But then again...if you do that, then you'll have to find a place to store the cooler for when you need to take drinks somewhere. But maybe you could replace some sort of furniture with furniture that has storage in it? That would take money, though.

 

I feel for you. I think it's pretty normal to take a good hard look around from time to time and realize the house isn't the way you want it, and to wish for change. I wish you had some storage so you could make your changes.

[Garga]

What helped me when I was feeling overwhelmed with stuff and couldn't fix it was to think of the colonial era cabins we toured at various places. The cabins were set up to be like a home would be in the colonial era. Everything was out: sewing projects, tongs for the fire, bowls and utensils on the table, herbs hanging from the ceiling. There was no storage. The ones we toured were "working models" with real fires in the fireplaces and a reenactor cooking over the fire.

 

Some days I look at my house and think to myself, "This is a working model." I'm not in the model home that no one live in. I'm in the working model, where we really cook in the kitchen. I'm in the one where we use the bathroom all the time. When I thought of it that way: my house was the working model: I wouldn't mind the fact the the things we used had to be out and being used.

 

Sometimes it's a mind game.

Edited June 22, 2017 by Garga

[mom@shiloh]

Maybe it is your age, or more likely the ages of your children.  You've survived the constant demands of the verysmallchildren stage and now you might feel like you have energy for something beyond survival.  When your children took all your time, you couldn't even think about your house.  Maybe they're more independent now and you finally have time to notice your house.  

[Wilma]

What helped me when I was feeling overwhelmed with stuff and couldn't fix it was to think of the colonial era cabins we toured at various places. The cabins were set up to be like a home would be in the colonial era. Everything was out: sewing projects, tongs for the fire, bowls and utensils on the table, herbs hanging from the ceiling. There was no storage. The ones we toured were "working models" with real fires in the fireplaces and a reenactor cooking over the fire.

 

Some days I look at my house and think to myself, "This is a working model." I'm not in the model home that no one live in. I'm in the working model, where we really cook in the kitchen. I'm in the one where we use the bathroom all the time. When I thought of it that way: my house was the working model: I wouldn't mind the fact the the things we used had to be out and being used.

 

Sometimes it's a mind game.

This is brilliant!

[catz]

My house is driving me absolutely nuts right now and no one else in my family cares.  I'm ready to order a dumpster to declutter.  I don't mind living in a working house.  We just have WAY too much stuff right now and way too much storage space.  My husband is terrible and has boxes he hasn't looked at in years. 

[Mimm]

We just cleaned out a storage bin we had under a desk in my living room. That stupid thing had been there for years. As we dug through it, I was amazed at what we kept. Printed material for organizations that don't exist, information from a school my kids haven't attended in over seven years, a keyboard with a plug a couple generations before USB. We also loaded up FOUR computers, two monitors (one large broken flat screen and one absolutely ancient CRT) and a laptop that's thicker than two laptops that you buy these days, probably thicker than 4+ Macbook Airs stacked on each other. That laptop came from a job my husband hasn't worked in 15 years. All that stuff is being taken to be recycled.

 

WE HAVE A PROBLEM. We keep crap that has no use, that will never have a use. Because we don't bother thinking through what to do with it. "I don't know how to dispose of this computer so we're going to stuff it in this closet and till I know what to do with it." A lot of my family's problems would be solved if we just got rid of things when we were done with them. My ideal is to own nothing I don't like owning or need to own. Ideally, everything would be both. :)

 

Last fall my house stayed cleaner than it ever had in the past for a couple months because I did the floors every day. I picked up, swept, swiffered, vacuumed, in the kitchen, dining room, both living areas. It was work, but it was worth it. And I never once looked at the swiffer pad thing and said, "Well that was a waste of time."

[mommyoffive]

Mine bothers me so much.  

 

Looking for ideas.

 

Mostly I need to really really really declutter and work on organization.  But our house just doesn't fit our life now.  It was fine when it was 3 of us, but now 7 us nope. 

[BusyMom5]

Another that is on the decluttering phase. OP, I think you should try to at least declutter a room or two and see if it makes you feel better.

[happypamama]

I hear you on the decluttering. Especially after this winter, we've been managing the basics but not much else. I'm using summer break to catch up on some deeper organizing and cleaning. It's so nice! This week, I took all of the books (and assorted other stuff that had been shoved into them) off of three of our bookcases, wiped the shelves, repaired a few books, and reorganized them by type. It looks so beautiful and happy now!

 

Do you have a room or two that you like when they are very tidy and clean? I live in an old house that we are very slowly remodeling and updating. I finally got my schoolroom painted and set up the way I wanted it, and now it is happy.

 

If your things don't have spaces, I would spend some energy to create proper storage spaces for everything. It helps if you know where things should be.