Maybe Parts of Your Broom are Missing Too?

I am standing while typing. The children and my husband are gone on an adventure today but the baby and I are home as the adventure is not exactly baby friendly. So the baby is on me in his little pack as he is fussy and tired but cant sleep.I am hoping this will be the magic to settle him. Right now my house is a mess. I live in the upstairs of a 'BC Box' and every room is a mess. Now I dont want to brag about my children but honestly they have raw talent at making messes. They have it down to a science, its an actual art form here. They are so good at it it takes no effort, none at all. They can effortlessly enter a space and in mere seconds its a disaster. So ya...top that.
Anyway, this seems to be the theme in my life right now, and it has been for a very long time: everything is a mess!!!!! I seem to have people in my life, a lot of them in fact, who keep their houses very neat ~ I mean clean also ~ but neat. Oh my word I so look up to them and I wonder ~ why cant I do that? I am not sure what the key is. I mean there are the obvious things like getting each child to pick up each toy after playing with it, having a central place JUST for toys, picking everything up each evening...the list goes on and on. Somehow NONE of those work for me consistently for various reasons. It is a source or woe. When we came home from our little trip we just went on I walked in my door and my mom had spent hours picking up stuff off my floors. My house was not even recognizable it was so clean! That night I VOWED to keep it so. I did all my unpacking and laundry that night and it was awesome. The next day I organized toys and got rid of even more stuff (I had gotten rid of three bags of junk the week before). By that evening my four children had managed to over ride my vow and that was it. Now the house is trashed and I am once again overwhelmed. So right now I need to sweep the egg off the floor from my husband feeding the baby breakfast but parts of the broom are missing (I can only assume that the broom handle was used for some article of weaponry) and and I cannot find it anywhere! So in order to sweep I need to be on my hands and knees because I only have the broom head. I could vacuum except part of the vacuum is broken so once again I would be on my hands and knees. My mop has also disappeared!!! Where do these things go? My house is small!!!! Although I had the children's rooms cleaned and organized my daughter decided to work on her patchwork pillow she was making yesterday. Her room is now covered in fabric and pins, plus the three outfits or more she wore yesterday for various reason, plus her four year old sister is changing every five minutes and pulling every article of clothing out of her drawers to accomplish that. The eight year old had a friend over all day so his room has every toy dumped on the floor. I mean I could go on and on and somehow even MY room is trashed. So once again I am faced with the fact that my best intentions, and never ending attempts at keeping the house neat, and getting everyone to pick up their stuff and clean up after themselves...has failed. So here I sit (the baby fell asleep now and transferred well thank God) writing, because quite frankly I just dont want to walk around the house going from room to room cleaning again, considering all the work will be undone so quickly. Now as a 'fixer' myself I can imagine reading this on someone elses page and being filled with all sorts of ideas as to how to help. Please feel free to give me some tips. However, my two oldest children are special needs, and are not capable of helping in all the ways they could be at their age without A LOT of effort from me~ so keep that in mind. In this house I am sort of on my own in many ways. Any thoughts? Tips? Advice? My attitude is one of defeat I readily admit that. I need some sort of stiff upper lip intervention. The baby is asleep now so I need to go get started. I'll start with the egg, on my hands and knees,with the broom head.