I am not an organized person(if you hadn’t guessed from the title of this blog). My name is Melissa, and I am
organizationally challenged, maybe even impaired mom, but I am working on that! It’s almost hard to believe that right at this very moment, my sink is empty and shiny…..my living room is vacuumed and almost completely clutter free. The area in the corner of the living room, behind the recliner, is all cleaned out where boxes of maternity clothes and baby clothes used to be stacked (now all put away neatly in the closet, and the baby clothes ready to go to someone else). Our bedroom is pretty much as clutter free as can be, and the dining room and kitchen are slowly looking cleaner and cleaner!

I’ve always been afraid to invite people to my house, or for anyone to show up unannounced for that matter. I’ve never been a neat freak by any stretch, although I envy those who are(to a certain extent anyway). But once we started having kids, things got even harder to deal with. We now have 3 boys, ages 7, 4, and 2 in a very small house with only 2 bedrooms, so you can imagine how quickly things can get out of control. Add to that homeschooling, a soy candle business (I make the candles myself in my kitchen) and working on websites (my own and for a couple other people), and the hope of someday starting up painting again, and it makes things that much more critical that I really focus on getting organized…..my home, my time and my priorities!

Tip #1   Start out by visiting the Flylady. She is awesome. Her strategies, baby steps and routines help you so you can stay focused and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel by trying to come up with your own organizational plan. She kind of takes the thinking out of it, which really helps because I know once I get to “thinking” about getting organized, then that’s usually all that happens and then I get so worn out just “thinking” about how to do it and it just doesn’t get done!!

So I found out about the Flylady a week before my oldest boys 5th birthday, in November 2008(wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost 3 years now!). I had to get ready for his birthday party, so I decided I would do the crisis cleaning that she outlines on her website, and then start the baby steps after the party. It was stressful getting ready for the party because my house was in pretty bad shape, but it got done, and every room except our bedroom was clean and clutter free! After the party, I started the baby steps and a month went by. Then I started doing some of the zone missions, and another month went by. 2 full months of  a wonderfully clean home! Fresh towels in the bathroom on a regular basis, all neatly folded. A shiny sink every morning with all clean dishes air drying in the rack waiting to be put away. It was great!

Then I got pregnant with our 3rd child…..duduh duduh……. Yeah, you guessed it….all that organizational bliss just flew right out the window once the morning sickness and fatigue set in about a week later.

So I’ve been trying to get back on the bandwagon ever since and I think I’ve finally done it!  We started homeschooling again after labor day, and I’ve been able to get up early and start on my morning routine again. I’ve been having fun doing the zone cleaning tasks and some detail cleaning in the current zone, which for this week is the living room. I shined my sink and have been keeping it dish free and shiny every night for the past week!

Everything just seems so much clearer to me as long as I stop “thinking” about it so much and just look at my list and “DO IT”. The list helps take the thinking out of the equation. Ever since having multiple kids, I often feel like I just need somebody to tell me what I need to do, because there is just too much stuff going on in my brain that it’s hard to stay focused on one thing ( I do not have ADD, I just get sidetracked easily with all the things I have on my plate lol).

So here is what my daily routine has been looking like. Some of these things I get done every day, and some of them I am working on implementing on a daily basis. The cool thing is that I had been sick for a week and just started feeling much better late last night, yet my house didn’t go back into chaos like it normally would have!

Morning routine

1. Get up at 7am
2. Study/Prayer time
3. Get fully dressed
4. Make bed
5. Get kids up at 8am
6. Eat breakfast
7. Swish and Swipe (see the Flylady for this one)
8. 2 min. hot spot (set timer for 2 min. and clear of a place that tends to collect clutter)
9. put dishes away
10. reset laundry

Evening routine

1. Shine sink
2. Put out clothes for the next day
3. 2 min. hot spot
4. 5 min. room rescue
5. Set things in launch pad (stuff I may need to take with me somewhere the next day)
6. Get to bed at a decent hour(working on this one! Obviously 2am is not a decent hour!)

Other daily routines:

1. Homeschooling
2. 10 min. pickup in each room. (living room, dining area, kitchen, bathroom) I’ll be changing this to a 5 min. room rescue in each room once they are all decluttered.
3. do 2 loads of laundry in washer and dryer (this and #4 will be changing to 1 load a day once I’m all caught up)
4. Put away 2 loads of laundry
5. Do Zone Mission
6. Do 1 detailed cleaning task in current zone
7. Declutter an area for 15min.
8. Work on websites
9. Work on candles

Okay, so that’s my list of to do’s. I know it seems like a lot, but really, much of it does not take very long to accomplish. Plus, like I stated on some of them, once I get things completely decluttered and under control, I won’t need to spend as much time on them. Getting organized is a process, but if you just take it one baby step at a time, you can get there. As the Flylady says ” it didn’t get messy in a day, and it’s not going to get clean in a day”  Well, it could probably get cleaned in a day, but you would burn yourself out, and you wouldn’t be creating life long daily habits to keep it organized on a daily basis!

So these are some tips on getting organized, and I’ll keep you all posted with my progress and share more organizational tips that I find here and there! Now I need to get ready for bed !

brought to you by- the unorganized mom blog