I would definitely check IKEA if you have one near you.

I gotta say Target. They go on sale for under $200 pretty frequently. I got one three years ago and it’s great. Drawers open easily and hold everything a six year old can fit in there. Some are white and some are dark or light wood.

Is there an American Freight where you live? We got our eldest son’s dresser there, which was particularly annoying as they only had lavender! I had to repaint the lavender parts red and replace the drawer pulls, but it was still inexpensive and it is holding up very well after five years. And since you are looking for girls’ anyway . . . We also got one from Target for our second son. It is high quality, but I don’t like that you can’t open a drawer unless all of the other drawers are fully closed. I know this is supposed to be a plus, but I find myself constantly checking to see which drawer has a sliver of fabric sticking out.

you could try an unfinished furniture store. Then paint/stain it to match. typically have better wood pieces with dove tail joints etc and a small fraction of the cost of pricier places like potterybarn etc.

BTW, Ikea is great for inexpensive but most of their stuff is particle board.  I’m not putting it down…I own quite a bit of their stuff.  But it’s not solid wood or it is cheap wood, like pine.  For the best price and quality, I would shop craigslist or thrift stores, but finding matching dressers would be quite the challenge.  Now you could take two similar dressers and between fresh paint and stenciling and accessorizing with knobs and matching scarves on the top surface, you could make two non identical dressers go very nicely together.

I’d have to agree with Michelle’s caution about Ikea’s durability vs. “real” wood. Most of the Ikea stuff we own (8 yrs of marriage) is beginning to fail.
You can find some gorgeous stuff on Craigslist.  If you’re squeamish about using it, you can even use the search criteria to select *only* dealers (not individuals) or only from your town, or even big consignment or auction salesrooms.
And yet, I happened to find our fabulous dining room table, inexpensively, thru an individual’s posting on Craigslist…and it turns out it’s from Ikea!  So maybe that cancels out everything I just wrote!

StephC, I think IKEA has excellent dining room tables and chairs. But I agree that the chests of drawers are not made well. Most of our Ikea furniture from our life BC (before children) has long given up the ghost (or the allan key).

EWTN - they have Mass in the am and some religious cartoons/kids shows as well.  Other religious videos - even Veggie Tales.  Easy craft ideas - talk about one commandment/ works of mercy/ etc. and see how many pictures they can cut out or draw or write words for.  Is there something you’ve been wanting to teach the kids but never find the time for?  Maybe it will be as simple as “taking care of the sick” and how can the kids help out the sick one - playing their favorite game/reading their favorite book?  I’d keep it simple..i.e. if you want to talk about works of mercy do one each time you are stuck home on a Sunday.  That being said, you’ll probably still have days where you are too wiped out yourself to make anything happen - that’s O.K.  Also, just a thought.  I agree the little ones really need you vs someone to come take your place with them.  But, is there someone near you that you could mention this problem too that would be able to take at least your 9 yr old (I presume the 5yr old hasn’t received 1st communion).  I know at least for myself that I really don’t think about asking a friend if they need help getting their kids to Mass, but if I knew this was an ongoing difficulty for a friend I would certainly make a note of checking in and offering.  If there really isn’t anyone your or your children feel comfortable asking then you just chalk it up to you are doing the best you can.  Peace.

This is our life also.  There is always someone sick.  But whoever is sick has to watch mass on EWTN.  When they were younger it was read religious books.  Between October and April we hardly ever get to mass as a whole family.  We just offer this frustration up as a sacrifice and recognize that this is the cross we are given and try to accept it.

Your little blessings are 3, 2, 1, and 4 months?????  You should be lucky to get through the day, let alone be staying on top of the clutter!!!  Perhaps your husband is unrealistic about just how much time and attention these young ones take. My prayers for both of you as you raise your young family.

With four kids that young, cleaning/de-cluttering the house needs to be the responsibility of BOTH parents.  If it bothers your husband that you’ve had to not put something all the way away because you had to stop to tend to one of the children, perhaps he could complete the putting away, instead of complaining about it?

I agree, with 4 under 3 I’m impressed that you manage any type of clutter control.  Has your husband ever spent a day watching all 4 kids (I know that might be unrealistic right now if your baby is nursing, but when it’s feasible, that might give him a better understanding of what your day is like.

I think, and my husband agrees, that you should leave the house one Saturday, taking the littlest one with you if necessary, and be gone all day, coming home to a dinner he prepared (no take out pizza acceptable).  Go to a friend’s house, a coffee shop, the library, grocery store, wherever you can manage with a baby.  Don’t be mean about it, just explain that he needs to spend a day in your shoes to see how difficult it is.  My husband has been guilty of this “what-does-she-do-all-day?” attitude, and even nowadays he sometimes forgets.  But he is very good about giving me a day off when I need it, and it is always a shock to him how difficult it is to manage (and my kids are older now and can help!).  Over a year ago, I went out of town to visit my two best girlfriends.  I left on a Friday afternoon and came back before lunch on Monday.  He thought he was doing really well up until Monday, when he spent the morning directing the school day and when he looked up a few hours later, the little ones had strewn toys and other things throughout the house he had worked so hard to have picked up for when I got home.  When he told me about it, I just said, “Uh huh.”  This is my life…and I hate clutter and consider myself very organized.  It all falls apart when you have little ones around.  Just wait until they start school and then you have no end of paperwork about (doesn’t matter if you send them to school or do it at home - the paper just piles).

Okay, I’m going to stick my neck out with a slightly different approach.  Please be gentle, everybody!

You’re using the words “clutter,” “cleaning,” “toys,” “stuff” and “homemaking.” Each of us have different tolerance levels and standards for each of those words.  Clutter & stuff - anywhere, anytime - make me twitchy and anxious.  Toys are okay.  Cleaning - I can go weeks w/o so much as shaking a mop at the kitchen floor.  When the toddler starts gathering a meal from the floor, then I consider it.  The thing is, my particular (and phenomenal) dh is *A-ok* with all of that.
Without a photograph of your home, each one of us is going to project our own experience & opinion onto what is or isn’t acceptable with wee ones in the home, a SAHMom, and a working husband.  Your home could be just a hair off from House Beautiful and your dh is a military neat freak.  Or your home could be a day away from being shut down by the Board of Health and your dh has a point! The point is, none of us know exactly, but each of us has her own set of standards & her own dh with his own preferences.
The person you are sharing your life with & making a home with & raising children with is bothered by the mess.  He has told you how he feels - and although he may have done so in an unkind way - and his feelings do count.
What bothers him the most?  Can you get him to nail it down to a top 3 list?  Then, could you just commit yourself to taking care of at least the first most important category in the half-hour or so before he walks in the door? If he has a regular arrival time, great; if not, ask him to start giving you a call before he leaves. 
If you let him know you are trying your very best and it still is not working out to his liking, would he be willing to pay for help?
Finally, for your consideration (and the comments get interesting, too!):
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/stay-at-home-moms-need-help
God bless!

Brilliant, StephC! 

My husband and I have had a similar conversation to the one described & I finally learned something fascinating: my husband likes things NEAT; I like things CLEAN.  In otherwords, I have no problem with toys everywhere as long as the floor does not have dirt on it and I have recently used lysol on the kitchen sink; whereas he doesn’t even notice dirt (never mind thinking about germs!) but wants the toys picked up and organized.  It helped for us each to realize the other person was truly desiring a similar goal (cleanliness), but placing different values on different expressions of the concept. 

Also, it’s helped me to let my husband know simply THAT I value his desires, even when I can’t or don’t meet them (ex: yes, the house looks like a tornado blew through it, but that is because I know you also value household peace, so I chose to keep the kids happy and avoid the inevitable skipped-the-nap-meltdown over making everyone stop playing and clean up.  Hence, I chose the physical mess as the lesser of two evils today.) This just lets your husband know you SEE the clutter, realize and admit that you KNOW it bothers him, and let him know WHY you CHOSE to let it slide.  At least he won’t be able to feel like you are simply ignoring or disrespecting his standards (or that is my hope!)

Oh yeah, and there are products to help with organizing, as I’m sure you know.  Incidentally we are making a Wal-Mart run tomorrow morning to purchase some of these things for me to help sort the mess and make clean-up easier: a shoe rack for the closet, a desk organizer for the junk that collects on the kitchen countertop, a hanging mail-sorter to keep the bills separate from outgoing/incoming mail & keep them out of reach of small fingers, and shelf-organizers for the pantry).  I am SO excited for the “crutches” to help me keep things neat for my neat-loving-husband. 

Yes, StephC!  When my oldest were little, they were still older than Christine’s brood (5 y.o. down to newborn) and our house was tiny and our possessions minimal, and yet I still struggled.  I did have a cleaning lady twice a month, and she was a Godsend.  And yes, my husband is more concerned about clutter and I am more concerned about dirt (but I still hate clutter - it makes me hyperventilate), but it doesn’t matter which one bothers you more, it is still difficult to manage a day with 4 babies at home and not be exhausted and/or still working at 10 pm to reset the house for the next day.  My husband needed to experience putting something away (like shoes or books or the pots and pans) and having a toddler drag it out of a closet or off a shelf or out of a cabinet and relocate it to another part of the house, something that occurs a dozen times a day per child.  He needed to know what it’s like to clean up spilled juice in the kitchen while hearing the 2 yo make the next disaster in the living room, all while the infant is crying to be nursed.  No matter what his preferences are (and believe me, I fully believe in the “dad-is-on-his-way-home” daily clean up marathon), he may need to spend a day in her apron to figure out that he can help or he can complain, or he can barricade the children in one room of the house until spring, when he can make them spend the day in the backyard.

I am a neat-freak.  Clutter bothers me more than dirt.  Not that my house is a health hazard or anything, but my priority is clutter-control.  However, I only have one child.  I don’t know how well I could control the clutter if I had four kids three and under.

I love Steph C’s comments but I think doing that with Michelle’s idea is the best.  I have a 7,6, 5,4,3,2,1 year old and the next on the way so I remember the days of just little ones however my husband was a stay at home dad for 4 years and so HE remembers those days really well too!  He seconds the idea of leaving for the weekend if at all possible . . . it is so easy to think the person at home is “lying on the couch and eating bon-bons!” (We always joke that the only thing the person at home does is that!

Agree with both Michelle and Steph C’s comments but would like to add that I found “clutter” and “organizing” sanity help from the Flylady’s program—-she has a book:  Sink Reflections by M. Cilley (I got it at my library) and also a website—flylady.net (I find it hard to keep up with emails but it was helpful to get me on track and support).  Finding time to check my emails is just something I’ve recently found a little time for (my youngest is 6 yrs. and oldest is 18!) and I have NO FACEBOOK or any of the other time drags…but I do babysit a preschooler and soon a newborn again all day plus some afterschool friends pop in too!  I relate to the clutter vs. clean and used to get so frustrated & upset when my husband wanted to know “what did you do all day”....so I’ve done the leave him alone and actually had him call me home—and it was a weekend.  I’ve learned to write “my list” to show how I’ve accomplished things (even if they are incomplete again!)  I also learned to manage my own time better and simplify things which has helped tremendously—-less stuff = less mess = less cleaning!  Keep praying and take time to breathe and remember that old poem about leaving cleaning for babies and children will grow up quickly and this day will not be here again…but there will be time for cleaning (unless….its truly become a “hazardous situation” again we all need to see reality for what it is—-personal preferences or health/safety standards).  Good luck and I’ll be praying for you!