Tips on "Letting It Go" When My Home Is a Mess

its all normal i have a cleaning lady have to clean before she comes too.
with litttle ones it has to be messy take one day when husband home and clean what you can and save the rest for next time. i would always do bathroom sink and toilet with a lysol wipe still do it everyday( i have teens now). Relax and enjoy the babbies they grow fast home will always be there
and once they start school you can get it all done how you want it.

Do you have a lot of dual purpose furniture, like an ottoman that has storage inside or end tables with drawers? A hidden away space to toss all the toys? Make sure you have few enough toys or large enough storage that everything can be stashed away, no overflow. That can help to make "straightening up" quick and easy. I do my best to keep the kitchen and living room (rooms that can be seen from the door) in a presentable condition, not super clean, but not embarrassingly disastrous. The rest can be shut behind closed doors for unexpected company.
But most importantly try reading "Song for a Fifth Child" whenever you have an urge to clean. Accept that this is the hardest time (in terms of your kids' ages) to keep the house cleaned, and any mother will know this and sympathize. You just have to give yourself permission to enjoy your babies (or rest so you can enjoy them later), you will never get this time back, but your house will be clean eventually. In fact I just framed this poem for my friend's baby shower because it beautifully sums up my most important mothering advice.

Song for a Fifth Child

by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing and butter the bread,
Sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
For children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

I come from a long line of freakishly clean women, so I get what you're saying.

Trying to live up to an impossible standard (that's in your head) can make you:
•Fail (it will never be "perfect enough" for your head
•Miserable (you will miss rest, fun and SO many special moments if you are always thinking about the carpet, the dishes, etc.)
•Lonely (I know women who stay behind to clean while the husband takes the kids to the pumpkin patch, the museum, etc.)
•Frustrated (Because the list never ends, and there's ALWAYS something else that needs to be done.)

I think part of dealing with this is accepting the fact that these are (what my grandmother referred to as) "the cluttered years".
Think about what is really important.
Think about how once your kids are grown, what will be missing.

Clean to the point of health department approval!
Clean to the point of keeping germs at bay.
Clean a "zone" each evening and let the rest wait.

If you're like me, before kiddo, I cleaned my house top to bottom every week and it stayed pretty clean. It's not going to be like that again for QUITE a few years...so go for the cyclical cleaning...a bit per day.
Have you ever checked out www.flylady.net? Good time-saving tips AND some reminders on what "zone" is today's "zone"! You can just jump in where you land...nothing to join, etc.

Good luck & enjoy your kids!

I've never been able to let go.

So I work around that.

Try keeping a big toy bucket in each room. And then just throw EVERYTHING in that at the end of the night. Make sure your toddler helps. Part of her evening routine, when it's time to start playing. 10 minutes can fix 90% of the clutter. Then you can put things AWAY on a day where you have time to do so.

I'm going to help you out here. Hire the cleaning lady back. As a fellow working mom with 2 kids, I will tell you that I realized very early on that my husband was not going to help, and expecting him to just made me resentful. In my opinion, it is 100% worth it, especially when your kids are too young to help you with the cleaning, to hire a cleaning lady. I know you want to save for a house, but then what? You have a big mortgage, and a bigger space than you live in now, and you will still have no help cleaning! Better to train your husband now that a cleaning lady is NOT optional, ESPECIALLY if he won't help with the cleaning in any meaningful way.

That being said, also consider de-cluttering. Anything you haven't recently used, get rid of it. I know it's hard in a City apartment - there's just so little space in general that even if you don't have a ton of stuff, there's still not enough room for it all.

Good luck, and go get your cleaning lady back! Hang in there.

Riley's answer is practical and effective. And you can do the quick cleanup at any point during the day that the clutter begins to overwhelm or undermine the play. As your kids get older, it may simply become routine for them to do that for themselves. My grandson began voluntarily straightening up his play areas himself when he turned 5.

I am a clean freak too, so I am not going to be much help here. What I always did was have my kids play with one thing at a time, and clean up after each activity. It really cuts down on mess and it also keeps all of the toys and pieces together. My husband like yours never thinks anything is a mess, he didn't live in a spotless house so I wouldn't expect him to see things as I do. But now he knows, clean house, happy wife, lol!! So he does help me A LOT now. I like you straighten the house for the cleaning lady and my family makes fun of me!! But I want her to clean and she isn't going to know where everything goes so I straighten before she comes. I think she loves coming to my house. I say get the cleaning lady back, at least you know everything is clean at one time and you just have to keep up. You work and it isn't going to save you that much money but it will save your sanity!! Go for it!!

I save the cleaning more for the winter when theres not a whole lot to do. I try to clean every other weekend but just bathrooms, kitchen and living room. Everything else can wait. Nice weather always trumps cleaning. Sometimes I will do spot cleaning during commercials when my shows are on. Your husband is right. people are there to visit you and not the house.

You can control how you feel about your house. When it's time to go to bed but you're feeling anxious about doing some cleaning, remind yourself that your sleep is more important than whatever that chore is and force yourself to go to bed.

Use positive affirmations. As you're getting ready for bed tell yourself that you deserve a good nights sleep and say I am going to sleep now. Chores will wait. Over time you'll have changed your thinking.

I know this from experience. I, too, stayed up nights doing the dishes, picking up the clutter, etc. and was often cranky the next day. I thought if I'm going to be cranky when I do stay up and clean then I might as well get some sleep and be cranky because the house is a mess. At least I'd be rested and better able to cope with my feelings.

Sigh! I discovered that a good nights sleep enabled me to handle the messy house without being cranky. Sleep is important especially when dealing with babies. Focus on enjoying them instead of the condition of your house and how you feel will change to meet your new expectations.