Housework/ cleanliness

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As a kid I didn't care about being messy. Now I really like clean, but to achieve moderatly clean I have to work my butt off. I think it's a slight executive functioning defecit, I just keep forgetting what I'm doing and never seem to finish. Of course, with two kids they mess it up faster than I clean at times.

The only thing that seems to work is rituals. I HAVE to make my bed before leaving the house, I HAVE to vacuum every two days (preferably every day), the dishes have to be gone before by bedtime and the toilet and sink have to always be clean. I clean the whole bathroom every two weeks and mop the kitchen and bathroom floor every weekend. (Carpets in the other rooms).

The big problem is toys. They get scattered all over the place. I try and collect them once a day, but only organize them once a week. I typically do laundry on Saturday night (party girl) or if I get a couple of hours in the middle of the week.

If I don't do it by rituals it seems so overwhelming, but when I do it the way I always do it I get into the flow of it and I enjoy things getting clean. My only problem is I never get it clean enough, I simply don't have the time or skills required.

My apartment has usually been a disaster site lately. I have no clean dishes and food on the floor and counters I'm afraid to put food on.

But I'm sleep deprived... so if I get a good rest I'm gonna get up and clean this place up.

I'm not messy at all. I feel stressed out if there if there's too much crap laying around the surfaces of my room. I'm not big on dusting though. Although my room is tidy, it's covered in dust and my counters have gunk on them.

The house I reside in is quite a mess.
I liked the Donald character in Mozart in the Whale because his apartment was also very messy and I could relate to that.

I am the same way, except I kept my work area clean because of either safety or it was in the public.

I live by the credo "Dirt builds immunity."

It's called the hygiene hypothesis and there's definitely something to it. My son grew up in a pigpen and he's never been physically sick in five years.

D

I WAS very messy, until I had a room mate who was way messier than me. I got tired of it, so after that, I just worked cleaning into my life.
The trick is to just do a little here and there every day. Wash some dishes while you wait for the microwave, etc.
And I always loved to organize things into pockets or containers, so I just started thinking of my apartment as a big box of different size/color beads or something, which helped me keep it organized as well as clean. XD;;;;

But yeah, dirt builds immunity, I believe that too. :3 There's a balance.

Yep - chaos reigns supreme on many an occasion round here too - usually when i have some interesting work on or arent feeling too spritely on the physical front...

i dont like the mess - but i'm not always capable of cleaning it...

At other times - if i can get a routine going - everything sparkles

And theres the random OMG i've completely overlooked that corner of the house for months moments too

the routine bit is what gets it on track i think...

I had a cleaning lady come once a week for a while there - that was awesome - she'd turn up and i'd get cleaning at the same time - kinda enforced routine when ya pay someone else to make sure ya stick to it

At the moment my garden is cleaner and tidier than my house

And my computer filing is obsessively neat - seein as i have to look after 1000's of files for 100s of different clients

If the kids are big enough to scatter the toys all over the place, they are big enough to gather them in one place. If you can teach a dog to do that, you should be able to teach human children to do that as well
Have a big toy-box where the kids are to collect the toys when they are done playing.
If the kids have trouble doing that (as neurological thingies are hereditary... besides, kids usually do have problems with such things ) you can make it a game - a treasure hunt, or such.
I used to "sell" the clothes to my niece (who has ADHD) when she was 3, to get her dressed in the morning

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BTW, I have always had problems with personal hygiene, cleaning and such things... it's just waste of time, that can be used to more important stuff, like listing, sorting and collecting information
I have always thought of Einstein... if a messy desk is a sign of messy mind, what is an empty desk a sign of...? >:->

My house is an entire mess & it's really hard to clean it. Especially because my mom is a big part of the reason it's such a mess & I have to clean up after her as well as myself. My room is the worst. The main problem is that I'm a bit of a hoarder. Probably more than a "bit" actually. It's really hard for me to throw things away because I feel like I'll need them someday. However, since around Christmas, I've thrown away at least five 39 gallon bags of stuff, plus some bigger stuff that didn't need bags. I have a tendency to keep broken items & ripped clothes because I think that someday I'll be able to use them to makes something lol. But lately, I've just been throwing all my stuff away. I feel bad about it, but the other stuff I threw away that I felt I needed, I don't even miss at all & can barely remember what most of it even was. Just yesterday, I threw away all of these beautiful glass jars I've been saving for over a year with the intentions of buying some of that colored sand, filling them, & putting them on display. However, I highly doubt that will ever happened & I finally threw them away. I feel bad about it, but it's better this way. We're hopefully moving in April, & I want to be rid of at least most of the junk before we move. When we moved here two years ago, I brought a great deal of that junk from our old place to this one. I didn't view it as junk at the time, but as things that I needed. I'm hoping I'll be able to keep our new place cleaner than this one. Of course, it would be easier if I had some help from my mom in that department.

I can get my 5-year old to tidy up if I negotiate, but since he has to do that at preschool I don't want to pressure him too much. His evaluation showed his rather sensitive to a build-up of demands. (He's autistic). His brother's the worst, but he's not 2 years old yet. You can get him to put stuff in a box, but as soon as he's done he just pours it all on the floor again. He'll scatter my stuff and his older brother's stuff too. It's just the age.