Is there a market for it? (good housekeeping guide for hopeless people)

[littleEDfamily]

I am definitely sleep deprived, as Nappy Lady, your poem made me cry.

So much helpful stuff in your responses. I am taking a forum break for the week to try and focus in implementing some of these tips (picking up after myself, cleaning my sink AS WELL as rocking my baby). I'll let you know how I get on...!

[The Nappy Lady]

LOL littleEDfamily...it used to make me cry when the children were younger, but I think my hormones must finally be settling as it only makes me smile now (or grin wryly)!

It does make me laugh to think back to my image of motherhood pre children and compare it to the reality, so naive, but I'm sure most of us were the same.

Back when I used to do weekly nappy demos it did make me clean and tidy up once a week ahead of everyone coming, I kind of miss that pressure as I can be a complete slob now :-$ (making mental note to invite more friends around in order to instigate frantic cleaning sessions)!

[sophiechristophy]

Molly - I love that your mum told you that poem. I think it has a wonderful and liberating message :)

[ClareC]

Btw Pickle and Pebbles, both of your houses have looked great when we have visited!! Have now nagged my partner into a big tidy tomorrow instead of the planned beach trip...... Hmmm having read that poem maybe the beach should win after all!

I do need to bake my daughters first Birthday Cake tomorrow too..... Almost sounding domestic ;-)

[LoopyMum]

Excellent poem ! Folks find it strange that I am quite happy to stay up until 2am in the morning decorating

a 3 tier cake for a client but I am not so nifty with the savoury cooking - it just bores me, thank god

my husband is a good/keen cook.

As for cleanliness it's spotless but on top of those gleaming surfaces expect to see sippy cups, miniature cuddly toys,

note pads, odd bits of plastic with no home but too scared to dispose of ''just in case !'' LOL

[Claire.Hobbs]

I'm so glad i'm not alone :)

Didn't our mums usually have their parents and other family around to help with childcare though? We haven't got anybody to take our little one for a few hours while we get on top of things but I'm sure it would make a huge difference if we did. We're toying with the idea to move closer to family just to get some help!

[Gussy]

Yes Clare I think this plays a big part. Most or many of us don't have mum (or gran even) nearby to ask for advice or to pass down all the tips and tricks and coping strategies through the generations.

All I can say is when my two finally start school I won't know what has hit me. Think of all that time on my hands....hmmm baking, sewing, home improvements?? Erm, no, probably back to work full time!

[nunheadmum]

I won't even start on how hopeless my house is. But then, my mum was a useless housekeeper so I keep telling myself that as long as I don't let it get as bad as hers was, I'm doing okay. (Until my MIL is due to visit - then I panic!)

The one thing I remember about being little though was the amount of time we spent out the house. Maybe not so much when I was pre-school and the older ones were at school but once they were home and weekends etc, we all played together outside, in each others' gardens or in the street etc with the bigger ones looking after the little ones etc. It must have made life so much easier for our parents - except for trying to get us back in at bedtime. I'm quite aware that my LO's will probably never have that freedom and as a result, I'll probably never have that peace!

I'm pretty good at finding reasons not to feel bad about the things I don't get around to doing - probably too good!

[helena handbasket]

I love the idea, but would need my management consultant to go one step further and manage me! I feel like my head is always everywhere these days, I can't focus on a thing because there is so much "noise" around me (clutter, dishes, shoes in the hallway, toys everywhere, half finished crafts, stuff everywhere, phone calls/emails to return it goes on and on) as well as a small boy with a thirst for adventure.

At the very least they would have ME pulled together......... clean ironed clothes ready to go, messages organized, dishes done and really good storage in every room. I'd also like menus on the ready and the necessary ingredients all set to go.

I was thinking it was a valet I need but actually what I think I need is a wife!::o

Yeah that will bring out the humourless............

[Fuschia]

my two tips:

clean the bathroom quickly every morning around your shower (quick going over of loo/sink)

re mail, have two box files

one: things to be actioned

two: filing jan/jun or jul/dec - just chuck everything in most recent to the front. if you then need, say, car insurance... you ill know it gets renewed every jan, so easy to find. if for some reason you need 2 years of gas bills, it's far far quicker just to track back through your boxes getting them out.. waste of time filing under gas, elec,phone,car, blah blsh...

[ryedalema]

I totally agree - I'd love a wife. Or maybe, if I could just clone myself???>:D<

I reckon I'm ok at the tidying/cleaning/baking/sticky backed plastic type stuff (cept ironing - life is wayyyyy too short).

I just need more time...and my clone could swap for me in shifts.

I'll be in a yummy Clarins bath reading a trashy, sorry, improving novel. "Ryedalema #2 - bring me a lycheetini!!!'

[KatsuQueen]

Hi I guess there are advantages to being a slob, because Mr Katsu and I are actually tidier now than before we had MiniKatsu :)) Now we have to tidy up or else things get lost/ broken and we do the washing up every night instead of leaving it until one of us cracks and does it! (Known as a "washing up off" in our household) I actually have to vacuum on a semi-regular basis now instead of 3 times a year :-$

We always had to spend days (literally) tidying up before parents came to visit though. To excuse my laziness, I always think that my real friends wouldn;t care about the state of the place if they came to visit, and the ones that judged me, well they weren't my real friends anyway.

Nowadays, I go even further - there are two types of people in my life. People I have to tidy up for before they visit, and people who help me tidy up when they visit or look after MiniKatsu so I can do a bit of vacuuming! I love them...

[Saleha]

Lol katsuqueen thats exactly how me and my husband were before the kids came along!

Its funny how we generally struggle to stay on top of the household chores here yet you go abroad and most house wifes have a housemaid even the poorest of households. Its just the norm there! So much so that even the housemaids have time to visit the beauty parlour at least once a month.

I'd be lucky to go once a year!

I dont know if its to do with culture or economy or both but we have a lot of pressure to be a perfect housewife! I think its a myth - no one is perfect!

[Ruth_Baldock]

I was looking at photos of our living room BB (before babby) recently and remember thinking how clean and neat everything was- our carpet was stain and wear and tear free. Amazing.

I am a TERRIBLE 'home maker'. I can sew, and bake, and all the rest but never have the time/energy for it. My son has always been 'spirited' and even now won't let me leave the room without and epic meltdown and if he's in the same room, will occupy himself for about 10 seconds before he starts pulling at my legs and asking to be carried. I'd do all the housey stuff when he's asleep but he won't nap without me there, and I need the 2.5 hours sleep that we have together everyday a LOT.

It drives my husband mad, I think he thinks I am lazy. I suppose I am to a certain extent but even the simplest tasks are mammoth amounts of effort with Bubs around (I had to call N-power the other day and it took almost all day to get 'round to doing it, and Seb was screeching and writhing and lunging for the phone the entire time. Hmph)

[womanofdulwich]

Saleha

Hello? where are you talking about maids? Maybe in somewhere like Dubai- but not in western europe/australia.

This is East Dulwich after all -

[Saleha]

Lol a lot of african and asian countries do have that system and it is very common there thats all I was saying!

[citizenED]

I like to invite people round because it is the guaranteed way of ensuring that we get to tidy up. Have to say that the tidiness of the house seems to reflect more on the woman than it does on a man. Always think that is so unfair on Mrs CitED and all women. Seems to be born out by this recent Mumsnet survey. Here

[dully]

wod, I think it depends on who you are not where you are. Why Dubai? I've never seen anyone refer to australia and western europe in the same sentence, either way the act is not beneath them but subject to motivation and money. I know plenty of people with maids and various help. If money were no object, I think most people have indicated they would love the extra help.

[womanofdulwich]

Dully ,those countries are the limit of my knowledge. I know in Dubai the work visa set up means there are a lot of non natives who work for relatively low wages that they send home. I have never met anyone in this country with a maid, other than Arabs/ Africans and they have been in Central London, the maid travelling with them betwen their various homes. This is just me experience. Usually their maids are from places like the Phillipines and they have left their children and parents behind and send money home. This is just a reflection of my knowledge/ friends. Maybe it is the word maid? with all its connotations. It is a word generaly associated in this country with the upper classes and their country homes, or from asia/africa /middle east.

I'm all for help on the house, butI would have to pay the market rate to someone that has the right to work here.

[dully]

I think you have limited knowledge and should be aware of it. If you are going to call people up on their comments without actually knowing yourself. Supposition and assumption are not reasonable things with which to have shot down previous comments and more so your comments come across as ignorant and then a little worse than that. You don't know everyone and everything about these countries to turn your opinion to fact. There is the Queen for one who only (questionably) employs english maids and much lower down the line my in laws are english with an english maid in dear old dulwich. There are plenty of people employed at a respectable rate, fully legal and not being exploited.

[womanofdulwich]

CHrist- talk about jumping to conclusions. I did say it was my experience only. I have come across maids in central London who are not UK passport holders and they sleep on the floor in the kitchen. I have also come across Phillipino Maids who are not exploited- they are paid a good wage, but send a lot of their money home for their families.

I have lived in Dulwich for 20 years and have never come across a maid.

[dullified]

LittleEDFamily you could maybe ask your mum how she managed to be so organised? Presuming she?s still around to share her secrets.

Personally I think my mum would bang her head against a brick wall if she knew I hankered after improving my domestic skills and better systems for organising my house (luckily I do not) as she was from a generation (not so long ago) where a woman?s role in society was very much confined to the home and the realm of the domestic and career options were very restricted.

[jollybaby]

Surely saleha was just commenting that there are countries in which it is fairly common for 'middle earners' to have domestic help, rather than it just being the preserve of the rich. One of my good friends has moved to Hong Kong and has a helper (they don't call them maids). She found it strange to begin with - she didn't like the intrusion into her family life but now she'd find it very difficult to manage without her - she does all the cleaning, food prep and provides ad hoc childcare. she's still a bit sheepish about the subject though as if she's embarrassed to have external help and not be a 'supermum'.

I'm still getting over the return of my lovely mother in law to Australia - she did all our washing, cooked our meals and entertained the baby for 5 solid weeks . . . . . . but did i manage to do any of those boring jobs that I've been meaning to do for ages . . . course not.

[littleEDfamily]

dullified Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> LittleEDFamily you could maybe ask your mum how

> she managed to be so organised? Presuming she?s

> still around to share her secrets.

No sadly, not mum and grandma passed on when I was still a young lady. I still have my mum's sister, who lives by the mantra of 'do a little bit often' around the house. But, thinking about how mum coped, she did have some help (paid for and family). My grandmother never had any help, however, and her entire family was in another continent. I do so wish she was still around so I could ask her how she actually coped (and hoping she would admit to how rubbish she was in those early years!)

I am thinking about writing a journal for my girls; a warts and all account of motherhood in the hope that that might be of some comfort to them when they find themselves in the same position in years to come and I will have forgotten what is was really like. But I never find the time....

But... back on topic! FlyLady is bloomin marvellous (thank you peckhamgatecrasher)!! She is exactly the kind of organising I needed (sister is onto her as well), and 3 days in my house has not been in better shape in recent memory. Yes, it's weird and cheesy, but quite motivating - and FREE! My favourite quote from her so far is 'perfectionism got you into this mess in the first place'.....deep.... :-)

[pebbles]

littleEDfamily - i've just been checking FlyLady out - tell me, have you started at day1 ie clean the sink or have you skipped to when you actually start doing stuff. I'm really interested cos a bit like a diet i need to be told when and what to do!!!! any info greatly appreciated