How Do Moms Do ?

Put a load of laundry in before you go to bed. Move it to the dryer when you get up. Fold it at nap time. Do this every day.

With a 3 month old in the house you are basically in survival mode. Up all day with the older kids and up all night with the baby. And when you are tired and worn down EVERYTHING seem to make you feel like you aren't doing enough. Trust me, at the end of the day if your children are fed, clothed, and somewhat clean you've done an outstanding job,

I found that when everyone was home the house was a disaster because they were there all day to make messes.I ended up packing away 76% of the toys because more toys equals more mess. I bought a dozen laundry baskets and would sort by load into the baskets and then stack them in the laundry room so all I had to do was open the machine and throw in a basket of clothes. Lather, rinse, repeat because with 4 kids I had a mountain of it. I think I caught up once everyone moved out.

What I've found is organization ebbs and flows. Sometimes you are right on top of everything and think there should be an award for moms like you who are so organized and great. And the next day when everyone has the flu and you are up to your armpits in puke sheets and tylenol you wonder how the hospital even let you leave with your kids because you are such a failure.

Don't compare yourself to anyone. If someone looks like they have their $hit together know that they don't. Do your best every day. Be kind to yourself. Remember that kicking the ball around the back yard is more important than scrubbing the kitchen floor.

Good morning!

I'm not organized and my house is not where I'd like it to be so I'm not an expert in this arena for sure.

Please don't set yourself up for failure. You have a lot on your plate. If you are able to go to bed at night and the kids are fed and well you have had a successful day.

Fly lady is supposed to be great in organizing your home. Your 4 and 6 can help you with a lot. With going back to work, I would cut yourself some slack and remember it takes time to find your new normal.

Congrats on your newest. Remember you are only human so there may be some things that will be less priority.

Blessings!
L.

I just wrote a lengthy answer, and it 'poofed' on me!

The condensed version is that frankly, when all of the kiddos were home, many things remain a blur! I do know that my floors could have been cleaner; that their sheets could have been washed more; that clutter could have been greatly reduced. What is NOT a blur are the memories we share of the funny things that happened, the laughter we shared and some of the challenges we faced and got through.

I always tried to stick to a routine (whether when working outside the home or in).

I cooked double meals and froze extra for a quick meal on busy nights.

Anytime I passed the washer/dryer, a load went in, came out, was being fluffed then folded or put away.

My youngest two just graduated from HS. The floors could still be cleaner...the clutter less. But I have happy, accomplished wonderful young adults that come home for holidays and share happy memories.

Relax. Enjoy. Make memories.

It is a cliche for a reason...tempus fugit!!

A plan/routine will emerge. Promise!

Best

Congratulations on your newest addition :)

That's a lot. And going back to work ... you have a lot on your plate.

I lowered my expectations every time I had a baby. When I had toddlers my house looked like a jungle gym.

I don't mop on Tuesdays or wash the bedding on Mondays. My fridge gets cleaned when someone spills the milk. Same with my floors. When I notice they're gross - we pull out the vacuum. Here, it's pretty often someone's spilled something or there's dirt tracked through - so it gets cleaned, but kind of in bits. Here and there. But all the time.

My friends have cleaners that come to their houses twice a month to do the bigger chores. Sounds heavenly.

Meals are what I struggle with so I have like 5 easy quick meals for the week and my husband barbecues or throws a roast in on the weekends.

Some days though we throw it all out the window and it's toast and eggs for supper. Or the kids don't get bathed. I have extra clothes (just enough) so if laundry doesn't get done, they have pants to wear.

I viewed little ones as a full time job. Anything above and beyond was like bonus. And I have one room where I shove everything if people come over.

Good luck :) You're not doing anything wrong!!

Your need systems. I have a laundry system, a cleaning each room system, a dinner plan system. I then have a room or place where I "dump" things. Our utility room is usually a disaster. The rest of my house? Fairly clean and neat. Give me 30 minutes and I'm company ready.

Get a roomba. I vacuumed bedrooms while at the park this morning :-) kids had to pick up.

In fact, my son started the roomba. I use my kids. Mine are 7,5 and 2. When I had my third, I realized I need to start enlisting my kids help. They do clean up their stuff: playroom, bedrooms, office. They put away their clothes. They sweep the kitchen crumbs.

Laundry is easy: first and last thing every day start and move a load. With 5 in your Household, you have a load a day, If not two. Pick a day for cleaning the bed sheets, and teach the kids to stripe their beds and put them back together. Your 6 year old is more than old enough to be helping out here.

Everyone I know with lots of kids use their kids. My kids help each other too. In a short while you will see how easy it is with more kids: more kids is more hands. If everyone helps, it gets done quickly.

Also, get rid of 30% of what you own. Simple living is easy, it's simple, you just have to simplify :-)

Some people are super organized and some are not. What works for others (re: Fly Lady) may not work for you.

In my case, I have 1 child at home and a job and tend to do things piecemeal. I do a load of laundry when I go through that room. I do a load of dishes sometime when I take a break. My goal is to always have the coffee pot washed. ;) We hire someone 2x a month to do a deeper clean. DH also pitches in, as a functional adult who is able to take care of children, cook, run errands, etc.

You can also enlist the older kids. They can put away dishes if they go in low cabinets. They can feed the dog. They can sort a basket of laundry and match socks. They can put their own toys back in bins, even if you give up on the toys being sorted and neat. My 6 yr old will use the dust buster or vacuum.

I do agree to cut yourself slack. Three kids 6 and under is a lot and frankly if your house looked like a magazine I'd wonder if you spent any time in it as a family.

I did a daily schedule routine for keeping up my home. I had a 3 year old and a newborn at the time.

It took a bit to get the routine down but it did work. When we moved back to the states some of the routine was lost as I went back to work but I did keep as much as possible. You go with the flow. Some days you will get it all done and other days it as if why did I get out of bed? As others have said as long as they have been feed, cleaned up and are happy you did great.

Soon you will have that house beautiful cover shot when they are grown and gone. Unless you have hobbies that take over the house and then it might look like you are auditioning for the hoarder show.

Good luck and don't beat yourself up. You have you hands full with your first two so do pat yourself on the back when you accomplish a goal for the day.

the other S.

PS Baby is the easiest of your kids right now.

My biggest advice is to downsize...EVERYTHING! Even extra furniture. I have been in the process of doing this and it makes it so much easier to keep things clean, put stuff where it 'should' be and generally stay on top of things. Americans buy WAY more than they need so get rid of everything that is a duplicate, extra or you don't love or need it. Especially the kids toys.

I'm also the Queen of easy recipes. I have a few go-to pantry recipes that I can throw together in 15 minutes or less. If I'm having 'one of those days', that's the meal we have. I also have a couple freezer meals that are easy. I make about 3 meatloaf's at once and freeze 2 of them. Then thaw and cook. I also just made tater tot casserole that you make with RAW hamburger so I made 3 of those and froze the other 2. It took me 15 minutes to have 3 dinners made.

I've been having some health issues since Sept and some things just don't get done and I don't care and neither does my husband or friends when they come over. I don't remember the last time I dusted, probably 6 months or more. lol I will when I can get around easier. No big deal. There's also a book called Speed Cleaning by Jeff Campbell. Super great for keeping the house clean in like 15 minutes a day.

Also, my husband does ALL of our laundry. He even puts it away for me. My kids are older and have daily chores which helps a lot too. They do their own laundry. So between the 4 of us we stay on top of things pretty well. So my biggest advice to you is downsize, it makes life easier in general. Good luck.

you are not doing anything wrong.
i try to toss a load of laundry into the wash every day.
i load and run the dishwasher right after lunch every day.
i clean one room a day (declutter, dust and vacuum. or wipe down the whole bathroom or kitchen and mop)

i take it one day at a time and if i miss a day i give up on it and make sure i get it the next week.

You are in the hardest part right now, IMO. For me, it actually got easier when I went back to work. Why would I say that? My kids had center-based childcare. When no one is home during the day, the house stays picked up because the kids aren't home to scatter toys everywhere. Not as many dishes because the kids eat at daycare (well, lots of bottles to wash, but none for the other kids).

For laundry - every night before bed, a load comes up for folding, the load in the washer goes into the dryer, and a new load goes into the washer. So, I do one load each night after the kids are in bed. Yes, the clothes get wrinked because they sit in the dryer all day. But as long as we're wearing CLEAN clothes, I call that a win.

First of all you need help. Your husband can be helping you and your 6 and 4 year old can both do some chores. I found when my kids started helping they also took more pride in the way the house looked and clean clothes on a regular basis. So try giving them a little more than picking up their own toys - if you don't already.

Other than that, relax. This time will pass and you'll miss it, so enjoy them all being young. The house doesn't have to be perfect.

I have a 9 year old and 7 month old, my husband and I both work full time. It has got alot easier since the baby has gotten bigger. The kitchen and dinning room are cleaned every night and dishwasher ran. The bathrooms get wiped down 2x a week. The house gets a general pick up weekly. Dusting and such gets done when it can. Staying on top of junk mail and school paperwork has helped along with putting the toys away everynight. We are in the throws of baseball, travel baseball and my husband traveling also so it is hard to keep up with everything. We just do the best we can.

Geez...they forgot to find you the Super Hero Kit after the first, second AND third baby??? Hospitals just can't get good help nowadays! 😛

Couple thoughts:
1. It will NEVER "all be done"! (At O. time.)
2. Check out Flylady. Good tips & daily habits that become second nature.
3. Enjoy your kids. It goes FAST. And you won't remember if your laundry was done when you look back.

Here's what I did. (I know it's hard, by the way.)

I put a load in every morning before leaving for work. I'd turn on the washer and walk out the door. Without fail. When I walked in the door from work, as soon as I got the kids in the house (or if they were asleep in the car inside the garage), I'd run into the house and put the clothes from the washer into the dryer and turn it on. I'd grab the other pile of clothes (already sorted the night before) and throw THEM into the washer and turn it on.

When the dryer went off, I'd somehow get in there and pull them out and throw them in the basket and bring them out with me wherever I was. I've folded clothes in every room in my house. Beside the kitchen sink. I had hangers in the laundry room and grabbed those to hang up shirts so that they wouldn't wrinkle.

Then the most important thing, Kate. I wouldn't wash another load of clothes other than those two UNLESS I had actually put the other clothes away. It's one thing to wash a fold. It's another thing to get them put where they need to be so that they don't end up all over the house.

I usually only washed two loads a day on the weekdays because of work. I didn't want clothes left laying in the dryer all day (unless it was towels or sheets - that's okay and could be the 3rd load of laundry.) I mainly focused on those two loads that I could start early morning and just coming home from work. I could manage it. I DID manage it. I MADE myself manage it. And I got those clothes put away. It certainly gave me a feeling of accomplishment and control. And the weekend could be catching up with the rest of the clothes washing.

Most important for the weekend? Putting each and every load away AS IT CAME OUT OF THE DRYER. If you wait until you've washed all the clothes, it takes forever to finish and Monday morning comes with clothes all over the place. Again. No, no, no.

I promise that this will help you if you do it. Start now.

You aren't doing anything wrong! I have a toddler and another due soon, and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to work it out with two..can't imagine 3 at this point haha. I've never been a schedule cleaner/fly lady type. Because if I miss a day or four I feel like I've failed. I have a few tips, but I generally do better when I wake up and clean what I feel like cleaning that day. Then it's a win if I get it done. ;).

Every night before bed, I shove a dry load of laundry in the washer. In the morning I start it, then dry it and fold it later that day. I enlist my son every day to help pick up the "debris" all over the house. Toys, trash, books, dishes, whatever is out that needs to be put away. Even if it comes out again later. Weekends are catch up time a bit. My husband helps and we do a couple hours of cleaning on Sunday afternoon.

For baby 2, we are hiring a housekeeper a couple times a month until we get our bearings again. But really, I'd rather sit and play with megablocks or read books or take a snuggle nap with the kids at this age. Gotta soak it up while I can. And if someone comes over and says my place needs a good cleaning, they're welcome to help!

If you can afford it, hire a housecleaning service every other week. We do that and it's a godsend! They take care of the basics. We still have to get some cleaning done in between, but the bigger things like scrubbing toilets and washing floors are taken care of during those visits.

Learn to lower your standards, too. With a job and three kids, including one with special needs, there's only so much you can do. Some nights, toys will be left on the floor and laundry may stay piled up. Unless HGTV is on the way to film your place, I wouldn't worry about it. Try throwing laundry in the washer before work and moving it to the dryer after. I do the bulk of our laundry on the weekend. It's too hard to get much of it done during the work week, so I only do it on weekdays when it's essential.

Also consider using a grocery delivery service. I did that when our kids were young and it was a great time saver. I could log on and order when they were asleep and get things delivered after work or on the weekend. No spending my free time hauling cranky kids around the store.

Finally, enlist your husband's support. Make a list of all that needs to get done in a week and find out where he can help. It's a partnership, so don't try to do it all yourself. It should be a fair split.

An empty house is one which stays cleaner. Things might actually prove easier once you are settled into being back at work.

Our lives are less complicated than yours. We have one DS aged 4. We both work. We have a 950 sq foot apartment. We have one bathroom for the three of us. We don't have our own laundry, but make use of a communal one with commercial sized machines in the building.

To keep things in check-
we use the roomba and the scooba at least 2-3x a week. Keeps our floors clean.
we run the dishwasher nightly.
we take the trash out nightly.
hubs does laundry 1x a week, but can do 5 loads in the space of 2 hours because we can access lots of machines.
we batch cook, we eat left overs.
we use the occassional maid service for a deep clean.
DS puts his toys away.
we shop online - amazon prime/ peapod
we do one "extra" cleaning job a day, whether that is cleaning out the medicine cabinet and wiping down the shelves, emptying the sock and underwear drawer and getting rid of anything that is too tired looking, wiping down the home office secretary unit. It doesn't take long and it begins to add up.

Best,
F. B.

I don't think people really keep up with everything all the time. Some days my house looks great, but my workload for my business is piled up. Some days it's the opposite. The only thing that helps me is to really focus on self care and trying to keep my energy up enough so I can keep up with daily routines (flylady style). If my energy drops and I end up dragging for a couple of days, the house and work take a hit. The kids always comes first, I guess because they are too loud to fall through the cracks. ha.

With a three month old, you are in the trenches and you will need to focus on loving those kids and asking your support system for help. I had a neighbor teenager come over to play with my oldest when my youngest was that age. It was one day a week and gave me time to clean and organize for a couple of hours while the youngest slept. It was so nice to know my daughter was having fun and I was getting things done so I could feel more at peace. That was cheaper than hiring a housekeeper and it really helped me to do something other than taking care of the kids for a little bit.

As far as organization goes, a few friends of mine are super organized and I know their secret. They don't set anything on a surface if they can help it. They directly put things away and they plan their days to give themselves enough time to do that. So, while making dinner, the spoon is used and then put directly in the dishwasher, the counter is immediately wiped with there is a spill, the bowl is washed right after use. They do things quickly, and efficiently, so it really does look effortless. They don't leave a room without making sure everything is put away and in it's proper place and they insist that their family does the same. I don't think I'm wired that way, but I do try to keep routines in place to mimic that as best as I can and it really does help.

My husband does the laundry. He also does a lot of the cooking. Especially during grilling season. I don't do nearly as much as I could or should. I plan to catch up when the last kid goes to college in 2027. But some days it drives me totally crazy. I told my husband we need to buy a new house. I'm too overwhelmed with how it is now. If I can start fresh with a new house I promise I'll do better. (Said mostly in a joking way.) As long as my kids have clean clothes, good food, a safe home, and time with me I'm happy. But, that also means my house will never be on the Home and Garden network. But maybe on the show Hoarders. But seriously, without my husband it would be a lot worse. I try to keep the main living areas at least picked up so you can walk across the room and see the table top and counters. It took a big shift in defining what a clean house is.

You have your hands full! Each of your 3 children poses a unique challenge. You're sleep deprived. You're tied down with a baby. You're somewhere between excitement and dread with returning to work.

How do we cope? We don't always. But we do best when we scale back and reduce our expectations. The beds don't get made, things don't get dusted. Sometimes we eat off paper plates or have cereal for dinner.

I think it helps to not look at the entire mess of a house and say, "Where do I start?" If you leave the kids' rooms alone, and focus on the public spaces, that helps. If the kids have too many toys and they're all over the place, put some in storage and rotate them out. You can have a "sick day" box and a "rainy day" box that only come out under certain circumstances. You can rotate those out too - bring them out and put others away. But if you reduce the number of choices, the kids play with what they have and don't up-end everything.

Make your tasks 10 minutes long - wipe down one bathroom and take the trash with you when you leave.

Try to cook in batches - make multiple meals at once that use similar ingredients, divide & freeze. Label label label so they don't sit there for a year. Rachael Ray has articles in her magazine and stuff on her website that help you do this.

Put storage baskets or bins or a small bookshelf in the family room or wherever the mess accumulates. Kids at 4 and 6, even with issues, can spend 3 minutes pitching things into a basket to get them off the floor. A bookrack helps them stand books up without the whole mess falling over. Stacking trays help corral puzzles.

Have a Lost & Found basket for things they leave around. If they don't put stuff away and are searching for it, they can look in one place. They can put dirty clothes in a hamper even if that means you put a laundry basket on the closet floor in their room rather than send them down the hall to a main hamper. You can make a game (basketball) out of it. You can make a game out of matching clean socks and folding/stacking underwear. Give each child 1 chore - just one - he/she doesn't have now: taking the magazines/newspapers out to recycle, putting the dog's water or food out, putting the baby's diapers in a stack by the changing table, putting silverware and napkins on the table.

Put a shoe tray by the back door to hold wet shoes so they dry, and keep a little basket of socks there so someone isn't searching for socks when it's time to leave. Hang hooks for lunch boxes and the diaper bag right by the door.

And ease up on yourself. The photographer from House Beautiful isn't coming this week. Everyone understands. If people come to your house who will criticize you, they aren't your friends.

Cut yourself some slack. A LOT of slack.
I only had one kid and had a full time job and was a single parent. If at the end of the day, she had had three meals and a bath, I called it a win.
Housekeeping and laundry got done catch as catch can.
Do what you have to in order to keep the Board of Health from condemning your house and screw the rest if your kids want you to play. They will only want you to play with them for a short period in their lives. Enjoy it while it lasts.

ETA: I have had people come to my house and criticize, for which I had a few stock responses.
"If you came here expecting the Martha Stewart ride at Disney World, I'm afraid you're in for a disappointment of epic proportions."
"I don't need floors that are clean enough to eat off of. I have dishes that are clean enough to eat off of."
"If you don't want cat hair on your clothes, stay off the upholstery. It's called FURniture for a reason."

I stopped stressing about it. There will be plenty of time to keep a perfectly clean home after my kids grow up, until then the crafty glitter and a few dirty cloths or dishes will just be a part of the background. My home is a place were people live and children explore and learn, not a show room. Of course we all take time as a family each Sunday to do the real cleaning that can not be ignored, but I gave up this idea that I needed to have a perfect home to be a perfect mom or wife a long time ago. With laundry I just try to get a load in when I have time, fold it when I get to it. It really is no big deal, in the end the kids will remember all the fun times we had, not that fact that their house was or was not perfectly clean all the time.

Two words - lower standards. I have lowered my standards and focused on my must haves. My must haves are clean clothes, a reasonably clean kitchen with mostly clean dishes, and reasonably clean children at bedtime. I want my family fed and I want time as a family. The rest of the chores and the rest of the obligations I ignore. I don’t have a schedule because it stresses me out. I can’t commit to cleaning a floor every Wednesday because if it doesn’t happen, it’s awful for me mentally. Instead I take a bare bones approach, focusing on must haves (see the list above).

We have two kids full time and three kids part time when my stepdaughter is home. They are aged 2, 4 and 11. We try to be smart about how we use our house. We spend a lot of time outside playing because Texas has good weather mostly year round. We have a two story house; the children's bedrooms are upstairs as is the playroom. Mostly the only use for upstairs is sleeping. My stepdaughter is old enough she is in charge of her bedroom and bathroom. I don't go in there. If it looks like a war zone, then that's her problem. Prior to her being in charge of her own bathroom we all used the master bathroom for all showers. We use the downstairs hall bathroom and that's my husband's job to clean. We have found we get less of the house dirty this way and it's so much easier to clean less. You'll never eat off any of my floors but really who eats off floors? We vacuum the whole downstairs once a week, upstairs once a month. Our mentality is simple - if you don't use a space, you magically don't get it as dirty. We also have rules like "you get out a toy, play with it, put it away to get another." Also every night all of us pick up the toys or whatever mess made its way out of its home (all things have a designated home to keep clutter from happening). For us cleaning is a family affair built on mutual respect and kindness and driven by the fact many hands make light work. With clear direction even very small kids can pick up and put toys in bins. We don’t overbuy on toys either so all of the toys can fit in three bins. As they grow out of toys I promptly go through them and donate as needed. The only revolving chore is Sunday is laundry day – four loads: three of clothes and one of towels. Every now and then I add bedding to the roster; I hope for once a month but no one keeps score on that matter. I start the laundry usually on Sunday. I load the washer and dryer. The family helps me with folding and putting away. I don’t overbuy on clothes either which forces me to keep the wash going without the dirty pile becoming overwhelming.

For me it’s a matter of forethought and lower standards. Good luck and don’t waste the time stressing about how clean your house is or isn’t. One day all too soon all the kids will be gone and your house can be pristine.

I hear you. I wish I could send you a picture of my kitchen and laundry rooms right now - you would feel SO much better about yourself! I look around at my house and just want to sit down and bawl.

I have a terrible time with organization. I took 2 days and cleaned my house from top to bottom (exhausting), and then promised myself that I would a tiny bit of time every day to keep things tidy. It worked for about 5 months, which I consider a personal victory! I'm trying to make today a super cleaning day, but I'm going to farm out my kids because I have a hard time getting things done with them around.

Check on Pinterest for organizing ideas. It worked so well for me because I could find things that directly applied to our household and way of life.

Best of luck! I would say "cut yourself some slack", but if you are like me, you WANT to be organized so that you have more time for enjoying your kids. Give yourself grace, yes, but find out what will help you specifically. Being a little organized takes away a lot of stress! :)

Do you have help? I mean is your husband REALLY pitching in after work? Do you have any time when the children are looked after by a friend or family member? Even if it's just a Grandparent hanging out with them at your home a few hours per week, it can be a tremendous help.

Maybe find a Mother's helper. A high school kid to play with the two older ones while you take care of baby and have some time to gather yourself. What you describe is just too much 24/7. There are creative ways to slice out a little time to take care of the stuff that's bothering you, then let the rest go for a while.

From my experience you are in the thick of it right now. It can be overwhelming and so stressful when they are little. Unless a person has experienced being the long term, primary caretaker of little kids and a home they just don't get it.

I only have two and they are 3 1/2 years apart, still there were days I wanted to pull my hair out! Hang in there, this too shall pass. Then you will look back on it all with nostalgia and fondness, such is life!

Why not drop either all or some portion of laundry duties at a local wash, fold and dry place. The cost isn't more than you pay to do it yourself and the time you get back is priceless. When I was raising 6 kids under 9. I did two loads of laundry daily. I would get up at least 1 hour before the children so I could have my needed quiet time. Before showering I would throw a load into the washer. After the shower move that load from the washer to the dryer and start another load of wash. All dirty laundry is taken to the washer at night and clean laundry is also brought up at night too.

Relax. Sometimes you will be on top of things and other times things will be on top of you. Raising children it should be all about the great memories and the things you teach them. While your 6 year old may be challenging with the adhd, that shouldn't necessarily exclude him or her from helping put clothes in the washer or dryer. Our role as parents is to teach them everything they need to be successful independent adults.

Don't take everything so seriously. Do the best you can do and laugh a lot.

I agree 100% with Squirelly Tots. Lower Standards. The 3rd one did me in (he's over a year now), and my two older ones are really easy reasonably responsible girls (5 and 8 now).
My husband and I both work full time... that is until Friday and I'm on summer break for a glorious 8 weeks... say it with me HALLELUIA.
With the addition of the 3rd I finally broke down and sprung for a cleaning lady. It's only once a month, but it's like hitting the reset button when we need it most. It also forces me to do a total "pick-up" once a month because she is coming.
Other than that, I do a lot of kitchen work in the morning. We are too wiped out and after dinner and there are baths and homework in the evening. I allow 20 extra minutes before others wake up and do all the kitchen clean-up then. I am a morning person though.
Saturday and Sunday it's chore lists for the two girls. It's only a few things each, but they are into and do it quickly. It's tasks I could do in 1/2 the time, but it forces me to back off and make them responsible for their own messes.
Weeknight dinners I scaled down to extremely easy dishes. And a lot of strategic take-out nights. And sometimes... bust out the stash of paper plates- less dishes. Also make everyone choose 1 cup for drinks and re-use it for days. My husband is working on this he drives me crazy with his multiple glasses and cups.
Laundry- hubs took charge of adult laundry and adult bedding. With a house of 5 you can spend your life doing laundry. It's not fair for one to shoulder it alone. I do kid laundry and it seriously takes me all weekend. I usually start early morning, and make the kids beds at the same time- then I toss all the clean laundry on their beds so it forces me to put it away by their bedtime. Just to keep me on my toes.
But mainly.... lower standards.

When my youngest was born, the older two were 2 & 5. I wasn't able to get much done during their waking ours. I could unload the dishwasher or do a load of laundry, but cleaning the bathrooms and mopping the floor were out of the question. So, most of that happened once they went to bed. My husband has always contributed--it definitely takes two.