My House is a Mess!

so here's what i want to know... how do people have clean, tidy houses? and by people, i mean people with kids and no cleaning or landscaping service. in other words, people like me. i have this perpetual guilt complex about the state of my house. it's not even really that bad, but i have this (apparently unreal) fantasy about living in a house without crumbs on the carpet, clutter on every flat surface, clothes on bedroom floors, laundry half folded and not put away, and a garage that you can actually park your car in. i know these people exist, i just don't know how they do it. then i start to feel really guilty when i think of people like my great-grandmother who, at the turn of the century, was raising 8 kids on a farm in nebraska. she didn't have a washing machine or dishwasher. they didn't run out to the mall when they needed new clothes or bedding. they didn't have safeway.com delivering their groceries. they didn't have frozen costco meals for times when she 'forgot to cook dinner'. they didn't even have running water, i bet! well, i guess that means she didn't have bathrooms to clean. then again, i bet she didn't have a blog to update either.... it's official, i'm really just a lazy and incompetent homemaker! i guess it's not the end of the world. i just really would like to walk in one day and see everything clean and in it's place (i guess that would mean that everything actually had a place). i suppose if that actually happened i would just want to leave again, since living in your house is apparently what messes it up!