Do you ever feel...

[Goofy Newfy]

like your house is always a mess. Between the dogs, the kids, the cats and the construction working husband, it is neverending. My walls always look like they need a good scrubbing, my floors are always dirty right after I clean them.....

 

[YorkvilleNewfie]

Yes, yes and yes again! I'm a bit of a neat freak and I have never hated spring as much as I do this year, my first with a Newfie and a child! Good grief. I said to my husband the other day, "I'm Bill Murray and every day of my life has become Groundhog Day!"

 

[TerriW]

like your house is always a mess. Between the dogs, the kids, the cats and the construction working husband, it is neverending. My walls always look like they need a good scrubbing, my floors are always dirty right after I clean them.....

YES! It drives me crazy. Add a 5-lb Chihuahua who sometimes misses the puppy pad and hits the carpet, sheets and blankets all over the couches and chairs, dog hair everywhere, cat litter boxes that seem to always need to be changed.....I don't even want to invite people over to our house.

 

[RiverTheNewf]

My house is horrific right now. I only let select friends and family in the front door. My backyard also seems to have been transformed into a bog. There is mud spattered on the TV I am watching right now. Malcolm submerged his head in a mud puddle that he and River worked very hard on creating, and if mud were red, then my bathtub would look like Psycho right now.

 

[Wash]

Its a never ending cycle starting with never being quite caught up, and ending with complete disaster. Rinse, repeat.

 

[soccerbabiesmama]

Its a never ending cycle starting with never being quite caught up, and ending with complete disaster. Rinse, repeat.

Couldn't have said it better myself! I'll never forget when my husband emptied the vacuum one day and said, "I think I just threw Raven's twin in the trash." No matter how much I wipe the walls, they are covered in dried floogers embedded with newf hair - and I haven't even gotten to the humans!!! Aye

 

[blaue_augen]

Yes! and we don't even have the dog yet! Just the three kids and the husband. Sometimes I am really good at prioritizing what's important (that my family is fed and played with and loved) and other days it's tougher to accept my house isn't as clean as it used to be. I just keep reminding myself, that the kids won't grow up remembering whether the house is clean. And I won't be old and remember that either. But hopefully we'll all remember how much fun we had and that we lived in a house full of love.

 

[mrs big dogs]

yup welcome to my life

 

[sara722003]

Believe me, I feel your pain. I'm on the Trustee Board of a couple of orgs on top of being someone who loves to have people to our home. With a Berner and Newf over the last decade, I've had to drastically scale this back. Now we're down to only one newf and a rescue mutt, but I still am inundated with hair and conditions unacceptable for 'entertaining'.

When it's all said and done, (at a great personal expense to my prof life), I have decided I'd rather keep these folks arms-length and entertain on extremely rare occasions. That comes at a price, as I love to have people come here, and enjoy lots of folks around. But when the rubber meets the road, I've decided that in the end, these dogs mean too much to my own health to dismiss them. I NEED them here, as the favors they do for me daily are too numerous to count.

So I lean their direction. But, I promise you, it's always a dance. So my heart goes out to you. If you live close, maybe we could work on an exchange. One person keeping dogs for a day or two, the other cleaning and wiping walls to entertain....

Did you happen to post where you were writing from?

 

[Clifford the big dog]

Just yesterday my husband was cleaning up for company coming. He claimed Clifford was following him around and slinging more drool faster than he could clean it off the walls, furniture etc. Oh yeah, and then the kitchen sink backed up and we didn't get it fixed until today so had to do some dishes in the bathroom to have enough for dinner. After 3 rounds of Drano, much plungering and finally a plumbing snake pulled out a nice big wad of Newf Hair clogging the drain.
Thank goodness Newfs soo loveable and worth all the mess they make.

 

[lacey9875]

And this is why I love you all!


Add to all of the above, 13 year old girls congregating in your house. I did teach them Casey's foot-shuffle hair removal process however, so at least they're useful.

 

[Jorge's mum]

hahaha!!! I think this is the normal way of things when you have a newf!!

 

[Erika]

when I first got my dogs , I tried to keep the house the way it was pre big dogs. One day in a cleaning frenzie I realized..............all this time I spend cleaning I could be spending with my dogs.......I aint a clean freak no more, its clean ???? most times, but ya know what, I sure enjoy the time on the dirty floor and dusty house with my loves. Folks at work even joke now, if theres dog hair on my suits .....Um Erika is it bring you dog to work day..lol:shrug::shrug:

 

[Leonard and his bud Snuffles]

like your house is always a mess.

Since I moved back in, that is what Mom has been saying for years. Since Snuffles moved in, as she says, she "has mellowed".

But I will say since we started a major remodel job, the house is a MAJOR disaster!!!!, so the typical messes just blend in right now.

 

[Ocean's Edge]

...there's a high tide water line at about 33 inches, all through the downstairs hallways and up the stairs. ....

.....you'd think with the kids being in their 20's - it'd be less work with 4 of us to do it...

Not a chance.
Although they do help, just not much

....my husband is a technical geek - there are piles of papers, projects, and disassembled electronics everywhere. And then he gets annoyed when the dogs run through his 'organized chaos'

.... and there's been the 'we're in the middle of renovating everything' since last September. I'm *praying* we actually get finished in the next 6-8 weeks. At least if the house is on the market, I'll have good reason to be barking at everyone to "clean up that mess!"

.... silly me, I keep promising myself the next place will be different (I know I know, lemme hold onto my delusions just a little while.....) at least the renovations there will be to make the house more livable and manageable - a separate doggie room/porch, and a workshop for the husbeast will hopefully make things better

 

[OurnewfDarwin]

Absolutely.

We have a cleaning lady come in every Wednesday. She washes the walls and corners of fur. She mops, and washed everything, including the linens. We vacuum the floors twice a day most days. The carpet was already destroyed by the kids, so no amount of vacuuming up fur from a newf and two cats makes any real progress. The cat box gets scooped every day--but I swear it smells like cat pee in my bedroom if I go past 24 hours on that task, because the scent transfers into my room. Luckily that odor will clear in 15 minutes with the windows open.... and I take comfort in knowing that since I can still SMELL a cat box odor, then my house doesn't smell like cats. The master bathroom smells like dog (drool, I'm guessing) because he sleeps in there. The kitchen floor is an assortment of blotches from Darwin laying down next to the water bowl, after eating... well, anything he eats.

I'd hate to think about how it would look and smell if I didn't have it cleaned thoroughly every week!

 

[dumainedogs]

My house doesn't "feel" like it is always a mess, it is.. at least by non-newf & cat owning standards! I long ago gave up having a perfectly clean home for the joy of pet ownership. It is taking my husband a little longer to come to that realization. I try to keep it at least sanitary and attack the floogers and fur fine-cleaning when we're expecting visitors!

 

[NewfMom]

Our house is always a mess too. We have the dogs, a messy cockatoo and the kid moves out and back in just often enough to keep piles of his stuff in random rooms throughout the house.

Add in that I decided the 20 year old wall-paper had to go and we decided to DIY. Then I got roped in to leading a giant yard sale and have been collecting boxes of stuff in the living room.

The yard sale WILL happen in June and I am so hoping that this summer we can get the de-wallpapered rooms finished. Then maybe I can keep it so a reasonable amount of cleaning would let people come over.

Does anybody else do FlyLady? That's the only thing that keeps me remotely on track.

 

[lacey9875]

Sharon, I fully intended to do a yard sale this weekend, so I brought TONS of crap, I mean gently used items, and put them in my living room.

They're still there. Yard sale never happened. Can I crash yours???

I'm also going on a two year kitchen renovation, that while was huge, should have been finished by now. So I have a box of tile, some trim work I wanted to put on my island, and holes in my ceiling from having lights put in and moved. Last night the cat knocked down my curtain rod in the family room again, and I still haven't finished my curtains in the kitchen.

I've tried flylady, but I think I just need some gas and a match.

 

[NessaM]

Sandy and I cleaned our garage yesterday. There were piles of fur in there larger than Nanook!

We have someone come in on Thursdays who cleans - but frankly that's just scratching the surface. I try to keep a lot of the doors closed to minimize cat shedding on clean linens and dog drool winding up on every wall...but it's a losing battle. I'd rather have the bears than have a clean house, anyway. I might be covered in fur but at least I'm not lonely!