I'm hoping this is a skill that can be learned.
The goal is to not have my house look like a war-zone the day right after a full-day's cleaning. More kids, less time, and way too much stuff building up - I feel like I have to be cleaning all the time to keep my house presentable, which I don't want to do. There are way too many other important things I want to fit into my day (wrestling with Jackson, squeezing Katelyn, etc. - plus my long list of projects). I don't just need more time to pick things up, but I'm trying to make it more manageable, and a better "system."
So I want tips, advice, what works for you?
11 comments:
do you have a basement?!? I am the world's worst organizer, but my mantra is "LOWER STANDARDS." I CAN'T keep up with all those clean-cute house people. That said, the basement has been my salvation because my kids know that there must be ONE ROOM that is disaster free...the living room, that the front door opens into. Anyone who ventures past that room does so at their own risk. The basement can be a war zone indefinitely. Good luck, please post your results so I can get inspired!
I'm trying to figure this out myself so if you find out before me I hope you blog about it.
You could box half the toys and everything else in the house and put it in the basement off limits. Then just rotate through the toys. That way if you do have a mess, already you only have half the (toy) mess to pick up! Brilliant.
No basement! We do have a big family room so at least that can be the toy room/office/sewing room and all of that is not in the living room. But of course Olivia has to show her latest "creation" to anyone who comes to the door, walking them through the whole house to get to it.
I do need to figure out some place to turn into a storage area here so that I can do some boxing up. (Our one-car doesn't have much storage space, either, but I could probably get creative).
One-car garage, that is!
We have been in operation organization mode about a year. We were beginning to feel way to cramped in our little house. We've thrown out a lot of stuff. I have a book group I"m in and once a year we have a couples book. Dallin and I are leading the discussion - we're reading the book, "It's All Too Much - An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff" by Peter Walsh. It has helped us a lot - he's the guy who does Clean Sweep on TLC.
I struggle with finding a cleaning routine that works. I have discovered www.flylady.net It's kind of overwhelming at first - but I like her idea of setting timers to clean things - you'll have to check it out.
We are still a work in progress here, but slowly we're finding a way out of our mess (except for my desk - I'm beginning to wonder if it will ever get cleared off)
It sounds like you have as much storage room as us - we have a one car garage too and no basement. We have starting storing things under beds - who needs box spring mattresses anyway:)
I too, like the fly lady and her approach to the house work. The 1 hour blessing can be very amazing. (I always start the toliets first when I am doing this-then let the 'soak') Dr. Laura would say lower your standards. As long as the health department is not called, what matters most is the fun you have with the kids-oh and hubby too!
I will want to be tracking the comments to this post! So I totally agree and I also feel like I'm constantly doing dishes or sweeping! My only (likely unuseful) tips: everything needs to have a place whether it's a box or a shelf and ideally your kids can put their own things away. Lately our kids room was a DISASTER and I realized it was because they were able to make it bad. Not everything had a place so I had to fix that. Another thing I did was come up with a cleaning routine where I did 1-2 simple things each day so it didn't pile up only on Saturday, for example. But I would recommend overall you decide what, for you personally, makes you feel like your house isn't a mess (I've never seen it be a mess by the way). Is it if the floor is cleared? The surfaces? If you can pinpoint it, you'll be able to feel better by tackling that one thing if it piles up too much :)
I have been trying to figure out the best system for a long time! Just this morning as I was picking up a box full of random toys I decided it was time to purge some of them, so I threw away 6 or 7 broken army men, 2 little dinosaurs, and 3 kid's meal toys. If my kids realize, we will have a huge meltdown, and it really didn't clear up any room or make a big difference!
I have a friend who gives her kids quite a bit of responsibility as far as chores go. They all know their jobs and know they have to have them done if they want play time. I want to try to get my kids a little more involved. I know that when they clean their room themselves, they are less likely to just start dumping toys as soon as it is done.
Let me know if you uncover the secret to having a clean house without having to clean it all the time!
Another thing, as long as my kitchen and my bathrooms are clean, I can tolerate toys on the family room floor (I guess I feel like if someone were to drop by, at least I can blame the kids for that mess, but "my" areas are presentable. That helps me keep a little better grip on it.
OOOH I love to clean but hate to choose that instead of playing with the crazy girls, so this is what I do. Thanks to Cailean, I learned to do little things everyday. I made myself a weekly calendar in which I put something like M-W-F vacuum, Thursdays-groceries, M kitchen, so and so. Then I made myself a list of big projects (I'm just starting this actually) and I choose one day to work on one of them and no other project gets touch until that one is done (we're finally able to see out computer) I also keep a note pad and a pen close by to right down things a need to do and choose 3 to do in one day(like pay bills,make Dr appointments). If I get them done I pat myself in the back if I don't then I put them on my to do list for the next day. Last thing I promise :-( I have a block of one hour to pick things up from the living room and sweep, the girls know the hour (same everyday) so Elena comes and takes everything that belongs to her room in there and then sits on the ouch to watch a short movie or plays in her room(her choice)while I sweep. At the end we have a snack, that way she's not so upset of the work.
You should let me play at your house with you, I love projects :-)
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