There weren’t actual household returns in England/Wales until 1911, the first census completed by the householders themselves. Previously enumerators called at each house with a ‘rough’ book in which they recorded (in pencil) the details of the households as given (verbally) by any occupier they spoke to. Not everyone was in at the same time and the process continued over several days and several visits to houses they had not had a reply from. Obviously the information they recorded at that stage was not in street address order and information was recorded in difficult circumstances; weather, temperature, light etc. At a later stage they then had to transcribe that into the ‘returns’ we see today (often in ink) and there were sometimes difficulties there including enumerators reading their own writing!
Having said that images of the actual returns are so much more reliable than the transcriptions. For example the 1901 census was transcribed, on a contract to the Prison Service, by prisoners. I find it one of the most unreliable; one of my ancestors from Stoke-by-Nyland in Suffolk was recorded as being from Stoke Newington in London!