Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard Reveal What They Wish They Knew Before Becoming Parents

For Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, the noise and the mess of having kids came as somewhat of a surprise.

The couple, who share daughters Lincoln, 8, and Delta, 6½, share the various things they wish they knew before becoming a new mom and dad for a new PEOPLE and Parents magazine video. Among their many examples, Bell, 41, explains that she didn't expect her household to get so "loud."

"I guess I thought they're littler people, right? They might be less loud. And they're not," she says. "The volume is 3X what a normal person should be, and the problem is it's not just volume, it's the consistency of noise. It's like having NPR on all the time — so two stations of NPR on all the time — but if it were all questions. No answers, no fun stories, just all questions. And that's a lot."

One thing Shepard, 46, lists is that clutter comes with raising kids.

"I wish someone had let me know that I will never have anything nice again. That would've been a good heads-up," he says. "If you like that there are no crumbs and toys on your floor, say goodbye to it. The quicker you come to accept that you're gonna live in a pigsty and that everything will be vaguely broken — quicker you can accept that, the happier the experience is. We fought it for like six months."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Adds Bell, "It's not worth the stress. You just gotta surrender, because if you spend your whole time, you're gonna lose and you're gonna be mentally fatigued. Then your kids see that you're stressed 'cause objects are in different places."

"Then you just gotta go, 'But I'm here to spend time with these little people and enjoy them and love them,' " she continues. "The objects will eventually find their way back. The books will be on the bookshelf, not made into a weird fort in the living room, you know?"