Beautiful homes with kids and pets

[Anonymous]

As others have said: professional help and/or clear uses of space. I have a small space where there are no rooms we don’t use regularly and functions are allowed to sprawl over (my kids play everywhere and I’m fine with that) but that does mean that everywhere is clearly lived-in by kids and cats and me. But I also prefer the lived in look. I remember the first time I visited a college friend who was rich (my definition; DCUM would probably call her family middle class) and I thought her house looked like something out of a magazine. I said that part and complimented them on how nice it was but privately thought it seemed like a very uncomfortable and anxious place to live. I much preferred the worn, lived in house if my hometown friends.

[Anonymous]

My next door neighbor has three kids. Her first floor looks like no one lives there. They have furniture, decor, etc., but no detritus. I couldn't get my house to look like that. They don't even have visible phone charges. She's a SAHM so maybe that helps.

[Anonymous]

They clean right before they take the picture. Stop comparing your typical with other people’s best.

[Anonymous]

Bunny Williams social media is great inspiration for this!

She doesn’t have kids (or they’re grown, idk) but she has dogs and dog beds and dogs on sofas and such. When she has a couch upholstered, she has quilted blankets made in the same fabric that she puts on for the dogs and can whisk away for guests.

The other thing is making everything washable and having good tools for cleaning. If you have a dog, you have to be better at cleaning than non dog people. Get to know fabric types, a Bissell, oxiclean and nature’s miracle.

I think big fancy houses with dogs also often have a “dog room,” sometimes a mud room, where the dog hangs out a lot of the time. Any house that big is going to have formal and informal, “back of house” spaces. That goes a long way towards keeping the formal spaces clean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:3 kids and 2 dogs. It takes a lot of daily clean up. We have a housecleaner every week and hired a professional organizer to get the pantry, laundry room, mudroom and closets set up with a good system I could continue. I get stressed if the house is messy so it’s a lot of effort on my part - you just have to decide if it’s worth it to you or not.

OP here - thats the thing though, its totally worth it to me! In general my house is clean. We have bi-weekly cleaners, the pantry, garage, fridge, closets are all organized and we have a good system. Its just the small random things that sit around that drives me nuts. The mail that needs to be sorted, the Amazon return that needs to go to UPS store, the kids art work that came home from school, a random rubber band from one of the kids that got left on the counter, etc. It just all adds up and to me it makes the house messy. My husband is thankfully also a neat freak but we just don't have enough time in the day to keep everything as clean and organized as we would prefer.

[Anonymous]

You kind of answered your own question in your OP. The pristine houses often have more space (400 sq ft plus vs 2600). If they are that big, they are generally newer and have ton of built in storage. I live in a house a little smaller than yours in a neighborhood where all houses are older. I don’t have a garage. There just isn’t great storage for certain stuff so it requires a lot of work to de clutter/stash stuff away, which I don’t really have time for working full time out of the home with little kids. Hopefully people don’t judge me!

[Anonymous]

It’s the house size. I live in an 1800 sq ft house and even if we didn’t have kids and dogs, “pristine” is impossible when all of your daily traffic is compressed into a smaller space. We don’t wear shoes indoors, but our floors wear faster and our 2 bathrooms get dirty faster because everyone needs to do the same stuff as my friends and neighbors in houses twice the size but it’s constrained to less rooms and narrower paths. This became really obvious during the pandemic. Having two extra people at home accelerated wear-and-tear and maintenance.

Most people also have the same amount of basic stuff- rain jackets, dirty cleats, backpacks, work bags, lunchboxes- so if you less storage or fewer places to hide it away, it has to turn into visible clutter.

Like PP above, we don’t have a garage. Or an attic. Or a basement. I would love to have just one so I could hide some stuff!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had one of those type of people visit my house once and she asked for a tour. I have a larger home and we had just moved in about a year earlier. She was very sweet and said something like your house is so lived in -- it was meant as a compliment and I took it that way. She just never could get comfortable to allow her house to not be perfect and she envied that I could be more relaxed.

This is me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My next door neighbor has three kids. Her first floor looks like no one lives there. They have furniture, decor, etc., but no detritus. I couldn't get my house to look like that. They don't even have visible phone charges. She's a SAHM so maybe that helps.

I’m a SAHM and it does not hide my phone chargers for me. Hidden phone chargers take space + the money to redo a kitchen or entryway just to accommodate a phone charging garage or drawer.

The people I know with pristine houses are all very, very rich. It takes space and money to hide the evidence of everyday life, and you have to be able to redo it frequently as that evidence changes. The people I know who keep up with this have contractors in multiple times a year to redo closets, redo playrooms, reconfigure bathrooms, even move walls. If I run out of closet space, I get rid of stuff or accept that some stuff will be visible. My friend will literally move walls and make more closet space!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3 kids and 2 dogs. It takes a lot of daily clean up. We have a housecleaner every week and hired a professional organizer to get the pantry, laundry room, mudroom and closets set up with a good system I could continue. I get stressed if the house is messy so it’s a lot of effort on my part - you just have to decide if it’s worth it to you or not.

OP here - thats the thing though, its totally worth it to me! In general my house is clean. We have bi-weekly cleaners, the pantry, garage, fridge, closets are all organized and we have a good system. Its just the small random things that sit around that drives me nuts. The mail that needs to be sorted, the Amazon return that needs to go to UPS store, the kids art work that came home from school, a random rubber band from one of the kids that got left on the counter, etc. It just all adds up and to me it makes the house messy. My husband is thankfully also a neat freak but we just don't have enough time in the day to keep everything as clean and organized as we would prefer.

I can offer a solution for your returns. I have a dedicated shelf in a main level closet for returns, boxes I haven’t opened yet, donations, etc. I realized I needed one empty shelf to house things that were on their way IN or OUT of our house, but needed a place in the meantime.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a few kid books downstairs but otherwise all kid toys are upstairs in their rooms and the playroom. Their backpacks and lunch bags are hung in the mud room. The bulk of the dog’s toys are in our room. If she brings one down we bring it up at the end of the day.

So are they only allowed to play in their rooms and playroom? My kids play all over the house. Yes of course we clean it up but inevitably something gets left out.

They play more imaginative games downstairs that don't require things. Oh, or sometimes a board game will get brought downstairs and we'll play at the dining room table. But overall, they are playing in the playroom. Their bedrooms mostly have books, very few toys.

[Anonymous]

You don't live in an Architectural Digest home, OP. It has signs of human existence. That's the thing with the shows on HGTV or photos on social media. They aren't real life. They represent a fantasy.

Now if you'll excuse, I must move my pile of random papers to another table.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3 kids and 2 dogs. It takes a lot of daily clean up. We have a housecleaner every week and hired a professional organizer to get the pantry, laundry room, mudroom and closets set up with a good system I could continue. I get stressed if the house is messy so it’s a lot of effort on my part - you just have to decide if it’s worth it to you or not.

OP here - thats the thing though, its totally worth it to me! In general my house is clean. We have bi-weekly cleaners, the pantry, garage, fridge, closets are all organized and we have a good system. Its just the small random things that sit around that drives me nuts. The mail that needs to be sorted, the Amazon return that needs to go to UPS store, the kids art work that came home from school, a random rubber band from one of the kids that got left on the counter, etc. It just all adds up and to me it makes the house messy. My husband is thankfully also a neat freak but we just don't have enough time in the day to keep everything as clean and organized as we would prefer.

PP here. There’s really no way around it - if you want a pristine home, you have to stay on top of all that. Reduce as much clutter as you can. I try as best I can to trash or donate an item when something new is purchased. But it’s hard. Especially with pets - there’s just no avoiding the need to clean up dirty paw prints or vomit or destroyed chew toys.

I’m not entirely sure it’s worth it to me but it definitely reduces my anxiety to keep a clean and organized house - the pain of constant cleaning up (and having dogs) is less than that, in my mind. But that’s not true for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You kind of answered your own question in your OP. The pristine houses often have more space (400 sq ft plus vs 2600). If they are that big, they are generally newer and have ton of built in storage. I live in a house a little smaller than yours in a neighborhood where all houses are older. I don’t have a garage. There just isn’t great storage for certain stuff so it requires a lot of work to de clutter/stash stuff away, which I don’t really have time for working full time out of the home with little kids. Hopefully people don’t judge me!

My sister lives in a palatial house in Texas with a Christmas tree closet. My entire house could probably fit into two of her rooms LOL. There’s not a pin out of place in her home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bunny Williams social media is great inspiration for this!

She doesn’t have kids (or they’re grown, idk) but she has dogs and dog beds and dogs on sofas and such. When she has a couch upholstered, she has quilted blankets made in the same fabric that she puts on for the dogs and can whisk away for guests.

The other thing is making everything washable and having good tools for cleaning. If you have a dog, you have to be better at cleaning than non dog people. Get to know fabric types, a Bissell, oxiclean and nature’s miracle.

I think big fancy houses with dogs also often have a “dog room,” sometimes a mud room, where the dog hangs out a lot of the time. Any house that big is going to have formal and informal, “back of house” spaces. That goes a long way towards keeping the formal spaces clean.

Lol. Only bunny Williams could afford to use Schumacher at $400 a square foot for her dogs to lounge on !