Pre-baby our house in London was pretty tidy, and I would consider to myself to be house proud. Don’t get me wrong I still am, but in different ways. When we bought our home, we spent thousands of pounds re-doing the kitchen, bathroom, garden, painting and decorating. We would put our hearts and minds into sorting out the house, making it the home that we wanted. Since becoming parents, our priorities and focus has changed, obviously that was inevitable, and it has shifted away from cleaning and keeping on top of general household maintenance, to focusing on our daughter and her needs. Here’s some of the changes I have observed over the past 14 months: Painting and decorating is virtually impossible There are certain areas that need a lick of paint or need sprucing up which have remained this way for some time. I don’t know why but our weekends are so full, and the last thing my husband and I want to do when we get home from work is repaint a wall in the kitchen. The garden is becoming neglected With all the hot weather over the Summer and little rain our garden is looking a little over-grown and wilted at the same time. It is longing for a full day of hard graft to put it back to its rightfull state and give it the love it deserves. I am also really annoyed with myself that I’ve not collected the damsons from the trees to make damson gin and vodka this year. The laundry is 10 piles high Every single week I find myself with a huge pile of clean laundry to put away. I really need to get better at this, by putting away each wash as it comes of the drier. Maybe I need to become more organised and have separate clean laundry piles for me, my husband and my daughter. My kitchen is a kitchen / play-room The kitchen is the only room in our house where we can create a play-room, or baby jail, for our little one to remain trapped. This is vital for the day that I work from home. However it also means that we have a huge play pen permanently sitting in the middle of the kitchen. I have placed this strategically so there is enough room to access all cupboards, open the dishwasher and oven, and open our back doors to the garden. The living room is full of the larger toys The larger walker toys that we own all reside in the living room as there is space for our daughter to play and climb. This does mean that there is no living space in our home where I can escape the coloured plastic. My freezer is full of toddler sized portions, fish fingers and chicken goujons The description says it all, my freezer is full of toddler sized portions. Before I had our daughter I made a huge effort to cook meals in advance. Now I am doing exactly the same for our daughter, so that when we get home from nursery I can quickly re-heat a meal in the microwave for her dinner. Automatically watching CBeebies when turning on the TV This is what inspired me to write this post. The other day when my daughter was napping I went to turn on the TV. Instead of going to channels or a program that I would watch, I instantly went to channel 121. You know exactly where all the creaks in the floorboards and stairs are I am like a stealth bomber in my house. I know exactly where every creak is, and how to tread without causing our floorboards or wooden stairs to creak. I discovered this new tactic during the 4-month sleep regression, where one false move would cause the baby bomb to go off. The floor beneath the high chair is cleaner than the rest of my kitchen floor This is an odd one as you would expect it to be dirtier. However last week I realised it was probably the cleanest floor in the entire house as it is cleaned with dettol at least 4 times a day. Our house plants have homemade cardboard protectors over them When our little one started crawling she was obsessed with getting to the house plant, taking out the soil and eating it. To prevent this, I’ve created a round cardboard disc that fits across the plant pot, with a hole for the plant, and a liftable flap for watering. This is quite a random list of ways in which your home and home life changes once you have a child. I hope if you’re reading this you can relate, or can share other ways in which your home life has changed. I wouldn’t change it for the world, and in this day and age we can throw money at these problems to get decorators and cleaners to come into our homes to make it exactly the way that we want it to be. I am incredibly lucky to have a lovely home, where I live with my husband and daughter, and there will always be changes that we want to make to it. I would love to hear from you on how your home life has changed since having children. Claire x This post first appeared on Meet Other Mums