Helping/Messy House

I am extraordinarily proud of Justin's beginning to help because it's of his own volition. Helping, coerced or not is not easy here. My children don't seem to take to that role easily, it's more like kicking and screaming and dragging their feet! Our place is always a mess, it doesn't seem to matter how much I clean. It just all comes undone so fast. I know that my Mom (frequently) tells me how she had her kids all cleaning their rooms and drying dishes, etc. etc. by the time they were five. Things are a little more complicated here. I know I've read about large families where all the kids are doing chores by two, and are taking care of themselves and are well mannered and it all seems to come easy. I read those stories and I think, where did I go so horribly wrong??!! I did start Leanna at two helping to fold wash clothes and dish towels. And the boys also have small jobs-things along the lines of washing the kitchen cabinet doors, washing the stove/dishwasher/refrigerator, folding laundry, helping me collect and carry laundry downstairs, etc. But I don't think I'm consistent enough with it-it needs to be every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I think I was just exhausted with the constant demands of pregnancy and caring for infants the past five years, and didn't have enough energy left over to do things exactly as I should. I think normally the Dad would step in and help, but in our case the Dad started working extra hours while I was pregnant with child #2 and then started his own business and just didn't have any energy left over to help either. So we've just been doing the best we can, and although it wasn't enough, hopefully we can make up for it now. And I'm not positive, but maybe boys take a little longer to learn to do this without "persuasion." Or else it's just like everything else, where each child has their own timetable, and it's just something my kids pick up a little later thanks to their extreme stubborn streaks. And I am aware that it's more than just teaching them how to clean, it's also teaching them to pick up after themselves-every time! But again I plead, a late start, combined with strong personalities and bad habits. Once something is already a habit you have to work so much harder to instill the correct behavior. It's definitely not anywhere even close to as easy as it would have been to teach this behavior from the start. Then putting one thing away before getting something else out would be the automatic setting, and my job would mainly be just maintaining that standard.
I've mulled this over many many times, and I think our problems with keeping things clean and getting the kids to help out are just a result of multiple things that worked against us:
1.)Both Tom and I ended up in situations where our lives were all work/no play and we had very little money and time as a couple and time as a family. This completely drained our energy and we didn't have as much to give.
2.)Our children have naturally strong, stubborn, and resistant personalities which means we have to work a bit harder even just for regular behavior, letting alone trying to change bad habits. (I'd like to state that although people tend to think that having strong and stubborn personalities is a negative thing, there are many positives to this as well. I just have to work a bit harder to ensure that the positives are more prevalent.)
3.)Having the boys so close together was hard because I really do lose energy when I'm pregnant.
4.)My parenting style is very time consuming for the first year or so of life and that made it harder to keep up with cleaning as well.

I would hate to have people think it's just a result of having so many kids. I really don't think that's the cause at all. I mean, it would be easy to blame it on that, but the reality is much more complicated. Lots of people have large families without the mess and chaos. We just have our own unique combination of events that got us here.
I am NOT writing this for advice on how to get the kids to clean or to listen better. I cannot emphasize that enough! People I love dearly have been trying to tell me what I'm doing wrong and I may just go completely insane if one more person tells me something I already know or have already tried. This is just an explanation of why we are the way we are, and who knows, maybe one day someone else will stumble on this post and it may help them. I guess I'm just asking for understanding, and at the same time letting people know that I am trying to change things. It's just a very slow process.