Nikki, I agree with Cailin - if a clean house is that important, clean the house. I'm sure you will settle into a routine with four children, just as you did with three, and just because you can't give your children as much as you want doesn't mean your husband will return home to a disorganised and unhappy house.

As for the elder lads, you can just tell them to either keep their rooms clean or keep the door shut - that way you'll know not to go in and freak out about it! Also, they will start doing things for themselves then. Even with boys, there's a limit to the squalour in which they'll live! Also, can you have "tidy boxes" in the sitting room? - you put their stuff in it that they leave out and every weekend they go through it, anything they leave in there on a Monday morning is thrown away. That's what my parents used to do! (Peed me off because they'd mess up my space and system entirely just to throw stuff out, but it's a good system for anywhere BUT a bedroom.)

Don't worry about sounding selfish - I would never think you were thinking this to be "mean" or anything like that - everyone has things that concern them and with me it is also how I'll get out of bed in a morning even with one child! (Also when I can finally go back to eating what I want... not that I want the baby to wean straight away, but it would be nice to not have everyone on at me about my food!)