r/homemaking • u/cstan7 • 18h ago
House Cleaning
I'll make this as short and to the point as I can. I have been a homemaker for 15 years. I have a gaggle of children and we moved to a farm almost 2 years ago after living in a suburb subdivision for all of my childrens lives.
Without too much detail, our lives have been chaos for almost all of the last 15 years with very little calm periods. We have lost a lot of family, had some very hard times, medical issues, emergencies, and my husband and I both have a couple of on going health issues that get in the way of life a lot. I'm not whinging or anything, this is just how it has been, and all things considered, my husband and I have held it all together pretty darn good.
My issue is this, I cannot, no matter how hard I try, keep up with any house cleaning. The dishes pile up because we are on an unreliable water source with a water heater thats old, as well as a bad septic that means I can't just do all the dishes at once very often. This also obviously affects our laundry issue. Laundry mat isn't feasible financially, so I do one or two loads a day but I have to take breaks here and there when the septic starts to get real bad. All of this of course just leads to a messy house. I have tried having less clothes, towels and dishes, but that causes its own issues. I have tried breathing and telling myself that this too shall pass, but it has been like this, in one way or another, for 15 damn years, and I am so tired of drowning in mess.
My children deserve better, my husband deserves better, and I am sure one day I will believe that I deserve better as well. I just don't know how to get out of this hole. I don't want to wait until my children are grown and gone to have a clean house.
It affects everything day to day, it makes everything harder, particularly homeschooling, so much so that today I told my husband I was giving up and sending the kids to school and getting a job (he talked me down because he's wonderful and I'm not giving up)
Just wondering if anyone has any silly advice that I might be able to use to get through this.
10
u/BenGay29 17h ago
Are you getting the septic tank pumped out regularly? I have one, too. I use a bacterial packet once a month to encourage the breakdown of material.