Are you houseproud?

I love this thread! I thought it was only me that feels life is too short to worry about dust under the sofa :D

Oh gosh, I am guilty of cleaning everything. Years of being an army wife has stuck. Funnily enough my best friend has a very full house and nothing gets moved.. which I love... it's so relaxing! Nuts I know.

misadventure.
Mine too.Every thing that to her 'needed to be ironed ' was and if she thought it could be scrubbed ,polished etc it was. When wanting to go on holiday she would 'pet' babysit for me so I would take my little darling to her house.On one occasion mum and aunt came to mine. Days later after mum had returned to her own home I found my brand new non stick unused milk saucepan with very little remaining of its non stick coating. My reaction was one of 'I don't believe it '.Yes mum had used a wire scouring pad with her view the 'plastic' ?ones did not do a proper job.

I used to be quite houseproud many years ago. We were in the forces and lived in their married quarters so everything was always kept shipshape as part of the way we lived then. Now I have a more relaxed attitude ....every three months I do what I call a seasonal blitz. A good clean and tidy of everything. Getting rid of unnecessary stuff helps me keep things tidy and easier to manage without too much hard work involved. The one thing I get irritated with is dirty windows especially in the summer when every speck shows up, so my windows have to be done more often. As for ironing, hardly any done during autumn and winter months, use the tumble drier, and if you take things out as soon as they are dry and put on hangers straight away that saves lots of time. Keep on top of the bathroom and kitchen regularly but that's about it. Our home is clean and comfortable without too much effort.

I wonder if there is any correlation between the idea that poorer kept everywhere so spic and span so that they wouldn't be seen as 'common'?

To quote the late, great Joan Rivers:

"What's the point in housework? You clean, tidy, make beds and dust. Then 6 months later you have to do it all again"

I'm with you Rosina, my house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy. This includes 'folding' rather than ironing, I only ever iron things that will be seen!

I'm not houseproud. It's clean (I think) and I like it tidy and we have repairs etc done when needed but we are not constantly improving and I am not constantly cleaning.

On my narrow boat there is nowhere to move sofa out too and I wouldn't if I could. My burner covers everything with dust...sighs. If visitors are expected....damp cloth over everything. Life is just too short. Strangely I have one daughter obsessed with cleaning and one who rarely does. Son is somewhere in between as he is in age as well. If you spend your time cleaning you don't have time for anything else....

JanaNana, Karcher steam window cleaner is magic. Worth every penny.

Normally it’s mostly the parts that show that are tidy. DH is much more thorough though and will silently shame me by moving beds, sofas and so on and hoovering thereunder. But we’ve just put our house up for sale and as I write I’m sitting (tidily) in a quite unnaturally sparkling front room. It feels as if we’re living in someone else’s house

I am to an extent, probably because my Mum always hated housework and if I had a friend round and wanted the house tidy I had to do it myself. When my youngest brother was born I got out of going to Sunday school by offering to do housework instead. As a young Mum I did a lot of cleaning before the morning school run and my last job was to rake the long pile carpet as we were on our way out. These days I haven't so much energy and feel life is too short so my day off is a 'me' day. Saying that I do the minimum to keep it to the standard that I like.

By the standards of my grandmothers' days, no I am not houseproud, compared to my mother and her generation, yes I am, now that I have time to be.

Being slightly allergic to house dust, I dust and hoover frequently, change bed linen every week and clean the bathroom and kitchen once a week too. Floors are washed when they need it.

I no longer iron every time I do laundry, but I have been considering going back to ironing the tea towels, they look nicer hanging up in the kitchen if they are ironed.

I LIKE HOUSEWORK and I can't surely be the only one who does!

I have a problem here.... I'm a minimalist for the specific reason of not having to wash or dust it!! My husband can't seem to bear an empty space .... be it on walls.. floors..work surfaces.. cupboards..table-tops...everything gets covered and spaced out... so three magazines won't get put in the box under coffee table but left ON coffee table, not in a pile but spread across the table , then he puts the newspaper (open ) next to them. He actually can't stand space.!!! We are an odd pair!! But if absolute cleanliness is impossible with him , then it's ok by me . I just scoop it all up and throw it either out or 'away'. He cannot see an empty space without needing to clutter it. And as for actual cleaning anything....he says his mother didn't do housework so he neednt. !! Mothers should always be aware of what examples they're setting ...for good or bad!! Life is tooooo short and there's tooooo many books to read.

As for folk wh do ironing ??? What's that all about??? Only things that get ironed are shirts for weddings /funerals... I would also put a crease in trousers for same. Any other ironing is stupid. Learnt that from my daughter ... she just asked me the salient question ..... WHY???

I don't think I'm particularly house proud, just hoover and dust if and when it is required with maybe a deep clean (moving sofas) once or twice a year. But a few years ago when I had very light carpets I did ask a relative to remove her shoes when she came in and she's never forgiven me! Having said that I always remove my dirty shoes as a matter of respect when stepping onto someones carpets, so does that make me house proud?

I Have mislaid my 6" tablet. I believe it has gone under the sofa. Bought a new one. Will move sofa out when I feel better. Then I will have two tablets. House proud not

Not very houseproud at all, kitchen is clean, bathroom clean, as for moving sofa, not often. Last time I moved my sofa I found a dead shrew underneath it, a hazard of having a cat

I have a super-clean friend who now has a cleaner as well as doing her own housework. She even picks leaves from her trees before they fall to keep the garden tidy. Last week she told me that she is horrified with people who don't take new toothbrushes and toothpaste on holiday, just the ones from the bathroom. Speechless (except I told her I don't).

Blimey. If I was asked if I pulled furniture out to vacuum underneath my response would be, "You must be effing joking!" Do I roll about under my furniture for the fun of it and get covered in dust? No, I do not.
I can think of much better ways of spending my time, and cleaning ain't one of them.
My house is clean enough to be healthy but dirty enough to be happy. 'Nuff said.

Clean bathroom and kitchen hob and no bits on the carpet. That’ll do me most of the time. Yesterday I noticed a dirty mark on a picture rail, stood on a chair to wipe it and then saw about three years of accumulated dust on top so ended up cleaning the lot. Felt so virtuous that I told my DD when I saw her in the evening. Her reaction was that I need to get a life!

I had an aunt who was so house-proud, she would move the cushions as you sat down, in case they got creased!! How sad is that?

I don't ever remember my mother playing with me. It was always warnings bout not dirtying the kitchen or my clothes. And the only hug I remember after about the age of 4 was when my guinea pig died. I was about 12.

My DH and I are both OCD about tidiness and, additionally, I use my house cleaning duties as my fitness regime. Everything is done in the morning so I can go out, walk, read and indulge in other pleasures in the afternoon.

I do manage to Hoover under the sofa as it has legs rather than a valance and I move a couple of items as I go round.

However, I would say that a proper job is only done once a year when the Christmas tree comes down and the needles have crept into corners and crevices one hardly suspected existed! Once done, it's all forgotten for another twelve months.

I have to say, though, that when friends visit they often comment on how clean and tidy the place is as if that were a very bad thing.

My sofa is on very low block legs so no dust could possibly get under it as it's 1/2" off the carpet.
I have a cordless vacuum so it takes no more than 15 mins to do the whole house excluding stairs which get done weekly. I pull out the 4 opaque boxes from under my bed which house my handbags, spare linen, some summer clothes etc and vac there weekly and wipe boxes with a cloth. My 'thing' is having clean windows, which I do inside weekly and the outside done monthly by my window cleaner. Because all of my children and CG and GGC live more than 100 miles away it's usually me who visits them and not the reverse, hence few toys are left here. I suppose I'm tidy by nature and hate dust gatherers like ornaments. Some occasional tables such as the hall console, side tables and coffee table are glass and get wiped with a microfibre cloth every day but in all I spend no more than 45 minutes a day on cleaning. If I'm going out I don't do more than the dishes and my bedroom. One pet hate is when people plump up the sofa cushions the minute you stand up to leave. My SiL was annoying my brother so much about her inability to be done with faffing around dusting lampshades etc that he made her seek help from her GP.
Making your visitors welcome and comfortable is much more important than dust or magazines and toys lying about.

Last year my DH cousin came to visit from S.Africa. They slept in our spare room (which has two plugs near the built in dressing table.) She took great delight in telling me that she had found the plug behind the bed for her hair dryer. I was mortified, as I only vacuum under the bed every now and then. Needless to say there was a mighty pile of fluff where she had been searching.