Tidy home, tidy mind?

Right! But why does the tidying part have to be such a pain in the neck?!
Our kitchen is fairly big and has been a mess pretty much since we moved in last year. My husband hates mess, he's a real tidy freak bless him. I can live with a bit of mess, but not loads. My mum doesn't help by bringing random things round for little projects she has the kids doing on a Saturday.
So today I decided enough was enough and I'd get my head down and do it. We have this big cupboard/draw thing in there, full of letters and random things but handy for storage so I thought I'd start there. I've been at it now for about two hours, sorting through crap, things we need or things we don't. Then there are bits that we may need so I don't want to throw them away in case I'm throwing out something important, like a plug that obviously goes to something but I don't know what! It's beginning to drive me mad and I have awful backache now. You wouldn't believe how many 'important' letters we have! I'm still on those! Once they're out the way, next it'll be the food cupboards because I'm sure they're packed with stuff we're never going to use or is out of date.
But I guess this is what I have to do to have a clutter free home. It definitely pays NOT to bury your head in the sand that's for sure!
I think when we moved we just chucked everything wherever because we had literally a week to move house, then it's just been put to one side because we've had two babies in the space of that time. I gave birth to my second boy last April then my daughter this March so time has just flown and disappeared. Hubby is keeping the older two and our year old occupied and seeing to our newbies needs while I attempt to do this. I just have to keep reminding myself it'll be therapeutic once it's done. Like Dory in Finding Nemo - "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming..." Lol!

HAHAHA I have defeated the letters!! I literally now have a bin liner full of letters we didn't need to keep. And a file half full of important ones we do need to keep.
I have discovered books and photo albums that need a home. Recipe books will stay in the kitchen, other books will have to either go in the roof or in our room. Somewhere. We have zero storage in our room.
Food cupboards have reminded me I have not even eaten a thing all day as of yet, so they will have to wait till tomorrow because its now 4:16pm here and the baby's bottles need washing up and sterilising. She already has two done, so I may wait till after dinner so I don't have a second lot of washing up to do later. Yes, that makes perrrrfect sense.
Oh well, I may not have finished it off completely, but I've done rather a lot. Been going for aaaages!
For some unknown and quite bizarre reason, there are a number of waffles in one cupboard. And a random loaf of bread. These escaped my knowledge. Scary stuff.

Neptune, You're inspiring me! Scary waffles, LOL!

P.s. hi beau!

The waffles are TERRIFYING. Lol!

It does not have to be that way. Tidy home can mean hung-up/anxious mind that can't stand things out of place :-) I don't think one can tell much of anything about another's life just by how they keep their living space. Otherwise, all our teenagers need help, bad!

My apartment is tidy, but my mind is anything but! On the other hand, my car is a pig sty...

I'm not sure what kind of responses you're looking for but to me when things are neat and orderly my mind seems to be a little more neat and orderly. My problem is that I put it off until I can't stand it anymore and then get busy. Feels so much better afterward... for a while. I am a little messy (okay I'm messy) but the person I live with is beyond messy. I do what I can with her part and the shared part but I can't just throw her useless tons of stuff out can I
But I can't say much because my space needs a good cleaning and organizing session. It's hard. And right now I'm focused on replacing wood and siding and rearranging flower beds so I have an excuse for the inside mess lol.
Hope you get it all worked out.

and the cleaning never ends lol

Yes...when my house is all spiffy and tidy, I do definitely feel better, but I hate cleaning! I have three hairy pets who leave fur everywhere. This past weekend, instead of cleaning, I spent the time working on my art and watching online films!

Seeker - we too have three furry pets lol have to vacuum the top of the sofa daily because one of them lounges on it leaving fur everywhere!
Wasn't really after responses as such, was half wondering if anyone else felt the same and half moaning at myself for leaving it this long

I love it when things are clean and neat, but I've got to say that PERFECTLY clean and neat is kind of a different thing.

And the only people I've ever known who had those "perfectly" clean homes were either very, very unhappy (read: privately miserable) or rather fascist in their world views (always telling everyone else what they should be doing, and when, etc.).

OR, they can employ an army of youngsters to do all the chores, several times a week. I'll admit, sometimes, I do fantasize about having that option. Or employing a regular maid service, and/ or a cook! (wahoo!, whatta treat that would be.)

My home is tidy, and hygenic. That is to say, I am certain no one will contract dysentery or develop horrible skin rashes, should they use the upstairs bathroom. But it is also COMFORTABLE, and that means I am not running a vacuum to the dismay of my cats and my husband, endlessly dusting, re-arranging furniture every second week, doing 4 loads of laundry a day, everyday, etc.

Some people I know behave that way; and for the life of me, I don't know what they actually get out of it. (Feeling superior, perhaps...I'm not sure.) And I don't want to sound insensitive to considerations regarding anyone with OCD. I am a handwasher, and pretty fastidious about certain things in my kitchen and bedroom, so I get it better than you might think.

All of this aside, it DOES feel great to conquer a chore that has been hanging over you for a long while, doesn't it??

I love a clean house, but I hate to be the one to clean it. I make no bones about it: I want to have enough money to pay someone else to clean it for me. I will pay them a fair price, because I think it's hard work and deserves good pay. Call me lazy, call me whatever you want...I don't like to do it, and I'll avoid it if I can. However, since I can't afford to hire someone, once we get it cleaned up, then I'll have to do some frequent maintenance. Unless one of you wants to volunteer?

Seeker, I would much rather do something creative than clean house, so if you accomplished some art and enjoyed some films, by all means, don't regret it! Artists don't have time to clean! Art is too important!

Sod rearranging the furniture, I can't be bothered with that! I vacuum the sofa because the cat sits there and makes it super hairy, one of our kids is asthmatic and our new baby has been in and out of hospital with bronchitis so I fear anything like fur or the budgie making a mess with his seed might aggravate that, plus our one year old puts everything in his mouth and crawling about if I didn't make sure the carpet was clean goodness knows what he'd end up choking on. So I like to make sure that's done. I'm not usually that bothered about a bit of mess, but lately it really gets to me and makes me quite anxious. I think because my husband hates it so much. He'd rather have a minimalistic house, which is all very well, but we have kids and they make a mess as kids do, so it's never spotless. We also have a very judgemental health visitor who seems to love to pick holes in everything I do, so if I give her the opportunity to see a messy home she'll make a meal out of it I'm sure.
It would be lovely to employ someone to do this instead, and a chef that would be nice too! Then again, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with a stranger touching our things.
But yeah, it does feel good to conquer something that's needed sorting out a while!

Maven, I would volunteer but I have too much crap to sort out here lol

Yes! I want a chef, too! Where do I sign?

As for pet fur, I understand it can be a problem for allergies, but speaking for myself, I don't mind pet fur too much (although I'd vacuum to keep it from getting too bad). I love my pets, fur and all (well, I would if I had a furry pet)!

My office is in a state and I really need to dig in. Just keep putting it off for another day.

For me there is a definite relationship between the two. On one hand, the condition of the housework can serve as a pretty accurate barometer for how I'm doing mentally. On the other, if it gets too far out of control, I am easily overwhelmed and will have a harder time bringing it back into order than I would keeping it up a little bit every day. So I try to make sure the basics are always done.

I discovered about myself that I'm not the slob I (and everybody else) once thought I was. As the oldest of four children, I shared a room with my younger sister while my two brothers shared another bedroom. My sister and I are the bookends. My brothers come in the middle and are closer in age to each other than my sister and I are. Therefore they had a lot more in common growing up, and my sister and I didn't relate to each other as well. But I shared a room with her out of necessity.

I being the oldest and she being the youngest, messiness was automatically blamed on me. I remember trying to defend myself saying I wasn't the one making the mess, but while my parents would acknowledge that my sister was messy, it was still my fault. "Look at the example she's got," my father said. I can't count how many times I've heard in my childhood, "I'll hate to see your house when you grow up. I bet it's gonna be a pigpen!" Well, now I'm the one with a house that's always in fairly decent condition, and she's the one wading through garbage like something you might see on Hoarders. Even she, just a few years ago, remembered how they used to get on me about our bedroom, and they didn't believe me when I said it was her, and as she admitted, "It was me."

But for a while there, in my first marriage, it looked like all those predictions were going to be right. I didn't know it until that marriage blew up, but again HE was the slob, and I simply found it impossible to keep picked up after him. So I'd give up and not do anything, overwhelmed like I said, and because I didn't do anything, people judged me but not him by what the house looked like. "Just do a little every day, and don't let the messes get too big" doesn't work when you live with an extreme mess-maker who won't even so much as flush the toilet when he's finished, because he expects his wife to do that for him. I know now that I wasn't the problem, because I am living with a husband who does his share, and the house never gets too awful, even on a bad day. And my ex, like my sister, lives in a garbage can.

Personally, I think all those people who called ME messy owe me an apology. (PS: "But you're never going to get one," says my husband, reading this.)

Dunno about tidy home tidy mind? My sister is a neat freak and her home always looks like it belongs on the inside of one of those glossy magazines. She is into control........ mega control. I recon she is part OCD.

I tidy up every so often then things fall in a heap. Tidy Up and then fall in another heap. Maybe it is true..... lols. Moving house always helps to clean things out.

But I love the "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming". Turtles may be slow but they get there in the end. So will you.

A woman's work is never done

our house (especially my room!) is hardly ever tidy... firstly because of lack of motivation, and also because their's just simply no reason to do it- if we had visitors or something, sure.

but apart from that..

We're missing a post! Where'd it go?

I'm just LOVING all the validating responses! This is a GREAT thread!
Growing up, we lived in a small 4 room house on Coal River in Boone County, WV. I was the older of the two of us, me and my sister, two years younger. I was always the one who had to clean the house, see that supper was ready for my parents when they came home from work. One time when I tried to get my younger sis to help me, she knocked me down and bloodied my nose! I could never understand why sis was allowed to go out and play while I had to stay inside and do housework. I think that is a large reason why I resent doing housework! Also, when I was married, my husband would go around checking for dust on furniture! When his mother and sister came to visit, I felt their disapproval. Now...being single and free, I just do what I want ...when I want!

Okay, I would vacuum more often, especially if I had children with allergies and /or asthma. (Very frank question: Are you sure you're supposed to have pets? Bird dander can be terribly iritating for many people, as can cat or dog dander.) Just gotta ask.

The other thing is, I love things clean, too. And got a lot of unfair blame for "messes" when I was growing up (also shared a bedroom with my sister). I wasn't stealthy or clever enough to always clean when Mom was watching (lil sis was!). I did it then the same way I do it now---cleaning as I go, working on different areas on different days. A little at a time, then things don't get too terribly out of hand.

And I will say, it NEVER did get out of hand when I was single, living alone. Everything was organized and had a place. Having a man to tidy up after has left me feeling that old resentment again at times. (He was SO neat and tidy when I met him.....whaaahhhappened????) He is so spoiled.

So, I do ask for help now (am not afraid anymore), when I really need it. Just on projects I know he can handle---otherwise, it'll have to be done twice.

The one who has asthma doesn't actually live with us, he is my husbands son and stays every other weekend. His mum has cats and always has done. I had my two cats before we even met, the bird we got a while back. I'm unsure of if they affect him hugely, difficult to know because he was like that before we got the bird and has always been around cats. As far as I know, his doctor hasn't advised he shouldn't be around pets. I think part of the problem was until I told her otherwise, his mum wasn't using his medication properly so he wasn't benefitting from it as he should have been. He has the blue and brown pumps, the blue one should always be used first to open up his airways then the brown one, to gain the most effect from it. I've read up about it and apparently the brown one should by now have eliminated most of his symptoms if used properly. But because she wasn't using the blue one first he wasn't getting the full benefit from the brown one. This has since changed, after I told her that she should use blue first, last time he came down he hardly coughed at all whereas before he would cough so much he'd end up being sick. We don't allow the bird to fly around when he's here for those couple of days and we vacuum up any seeds or feathers that may have escaped his cage every day. We also keep the cats away from him at all times and remind the other children that they need to do the same with him.
With our LOs bronchitis, I'm not sure what could aggravate it, I know smoke can but we smoke outside, change clothes and wash hands after to minimise anything on us. Not sure about fur and stuff though. We haven't been told by the hospital, I think if it was a major risk factor they'd have said something, but still it's good to be sure it's all vacuumed away anyway

Maybe somebody tidied up the thread?