This week is a themed edition of Works for Me Wednesday…and I get to ask you for a tip!
I have tried so hard to get my house in order and keep it that way (at least most of the time). However, my usual pattern is: clutter and disarray at every turn, leading to despair and a marathon cleaning session, followed by an almost instant return to clutter and disarray.
Just to give a bit more of the picture…all four of us are home most of the time. I am a stay at home mom, we homeschool, and my husband works from a home office. You’d think since we’re here that we could keep it clean. Sometimes I think that since we are here all the time, making messes all the time, and eating almost all our meals here, we create more of a mess than if we were away at jobs and school all day.
I really want to find a system that will work for me. What tips or ideas do you have that might help?
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment! For more Works for Me Wednesday posts, visit We Are THAT Family.
- Erin
Twitter: lorizimbardi
says:
When you find a system or someone suggests a good one, I may steal it. I have no system. I need a system. I just cant figure one out myself. I’m looking forward to the responses.
I have no system either…hopefully we will get some great ideas today!
I really do think that the more people who are at home, the harder it is to keep the house clean. When my husband and I both worked full time outside the house and we had no kids, our house was pristine. Now? While I clean one room the kids destroy the others. I feel your pain.
Two things that have improved things a little bit for me are:
1. Getting rid of as much clutter as possible. We have so many things that we don’t really use, and they’re just taking up space and collecting dust. Passing them along to a thrift store so that someone else can use them makes me feel liberated.
2. Setting up organizational systems that are easy to understand and use. We used to keep all of our toys in a toybox. Every time a kid wanted a toy the whole toybox got emptied to find it. Setting up shelves and baskets and so on so that things were easy to find and replace did help us out.
Good luck!
Ah…clutter…definitely need to work on that! Also, we have a toy organizational system with shelves, baskets, etc…but it needs some serious attention and tweaking! We’ve acquired more stuff since I set it up…
Erin,
I don’t have any earth shattering organizational tips…sorry…I am just so happy to see someone else describe their situation exactly the way that I see mine. I have a favorite quote that I found in a magazine – “I try to put things away…but they just keep coming out!” This quote came from an artist!
I have struggled with this for years always feeling that I am not doing right by my family having this artful but messy environment…we all love to make art and the cleaning gets ignored and the art supplies make messes! We all work together when we can’t stand it anymore and do the marathon cleaning that you mentioned.
Maybe we should just be thankful that our families are together happily making messes….at any rate you are not alone!
Yours in messiness, Elizabeth
I have a post that might help….. http://www.tidymom.net/2009/10/tips-for-tidy-home.html
WOW! This is such a great post!! I will definitely have to put your tips to good use! Of course, I should have known you would have some great ideas…you are TidyMom, after all. Thanks!!!
Elizabeth,
Your house does sound just like mine. For example, yesterday afternoon my girls decided to do a spontaneous craft. It involved tearing lots of construction paper into strips and then taping it together to make purses. They had the best time ever, but I’m still trying to pick up the leftover shreds of paper. Then of course, I have to figure out where to put them, because I’m sure they will be used for some future project! Thanks so much for commenting!
I agree with the first commenter … the more people home the harder!! My husband works from home part-time & out part-time. I have a love/hate relationship with him being home. It’s definitely harder when he’s home. I actually have a similiar question up for my WFMW post this morning too, so unfortunately I’m not the best to GIVE advice on this one:)
It makes me feel better to hear that others are in the same place…hopefully we can all figure out SOMETHING that will work for us!
This is a constant problem in our house too. I am a SAHM and I feel like I spend all day every day picking up and putting away. I do the deep cleaning once a week when hubby is here to watch the little man. But still, no matter what I do, there is always STUFF everywhere in our house…I can’t get it together. Again, no major revelations in organization here, just letting you know you aren’t alone and if you find something that works, please tell me.
Good luck!
Thanks so much for letting me know you have this struggle too! There are some great tips in the comments here…I hope some of them work for both of us!
Twitter: TeriLynneU
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Girl, wish I could help you … we are in a similar boat. But I’m subscribing to comments so I can glean any wisdom you receive from others!!
Well, if I have to be in this boat with somebody, I’m glad I’m in it with you, friend!
I am so. there.!
What I TRY to do (emphasis on try) is work on one thing a day – Mondays laundry (which I’m still working on today – lol), Tuesdays vacuum/dust/declutter, Wednesdays kitchen, Thursdays bathroom, Friday once over de-clutter of the house.
Like I said, that’s what I TRY to do and most weeks I completely fail at this. But, it is helpful to me to have a goal in mind, at least!!
That sounds like such a good system. Maybe I should try it!
I don’t homeschool, but I still have 2 kids at home with me. It is my humble opinion that you cannot live in your house full time and keep it “clean” or clutter free. Clean and clutter free are two different things. Our house is always in some state of “lived in messiness” and I have learned that it’s ok. I think the size of the space you have and the number of people in it make a difference too. We have lots of bodies and not much room. I’m not trying to make excuses, although it sounds like it doesn’t it.
Amber had some great tips. My cleaning system is one room a day gets a good cleaning (except Sun.). Mon. bathrooms, Tues. living room, and so on. We do the kitchen on Thurs. b/c the trash man come Friday morning and I like to get my fridge cleaned out. Every kids gets a job. Base boards, vacuuming, dusting… it is my ideal but some weeks a room may be missed. That’s ok though b/c I know I’ll be going back through the next week. But we try to “pick up” everyday. Bedrooms are done before bed and my husband requested that the living room be picked up when he comes home from work so we have that done. But I look at our small home, that is full of love and laughter and maybe a little messy, as a state of lived in loveliness. Again, that is just my humble opinion. 
My kids are getting to the age now where they can help. We are working on not complaining when I ask them to help. I’m okay with some messiness, it’s just the reality of life. But I do want things to be clean, and I don’t want to be completely taken over with the clutter. It’s hard to find the balance in all that!! You are right…I do need to shift my perspective a little. I love your phrase, “a state of lived in loveliness.”
Twitter: nonsensical2
says:
Well, I unfortunately don’t have alot of great advice for you cause I’m pretty much in the same boat! I stay at home with my 2 kids and then my husband is here in the evenings and on weekends. Plus I tend to have alot of health problems so things just sometimes get left undone.
Something that has seemed to help a little is making an effort to at least keep the messiness more contained to certain rooms.(and that doesn’t happen all that time, but seems to be easier than doing it all) Our dining room, kitchen, and living room are all open with bedrooms, etc being on other ends of the house so I try to get the kids to help pick up their stuff out of those main rooms and move them onto the end of the house with their rooms and the den towards the end of the day. I’m sure that wouldn’t apply to everyone though depending on how your house is laid out.
And like others have said, sometimes I just try to look around and remember that we live here and it’s nearly impossible to expect it to look good all the time….but I totally understand where you’re coming from on at least wanting to have some kind of system that maintains a little bit of order. I don’t really have one either but I’ll be checking back to see what other good suggestions you get!
I often do try to contain the messiness, but with the layout of our house, it’s never actually hidden. But still, I always feel better when the living area, dining room and kitchen are neat!
I use flylady.com and Peter Walsh’s ideas from Clean Sweep. He has a website too http://www.peterwalshdesign.com/ They both have books that you can get from the library. Flylady’s book is Sink Reflections by Marla Cilley. Peters book is It’s All Too Much by Peter Walsh. He has a couple other books too.
My house is not always perfectly clean but it is under control most days. Even my husband commented on how good I was this year at getting rid of clutter and keeping it at bay. Which I am normally not good at and I can’t stand to have to clean the house.
Flylady calls it CHAOS (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome) and shows you ways to move to FLYing (Finally Loving Yourself) with routines and daily missions. Flylady is also a Christian. Peter helps you with deciding what is clutter and what is not and dealing with attachment to your things. He also helps a lot with organization; he’s a professional organizer. Another tip of my own is if you can afford it, hire a housekeeper to come every other week, or whatever works for you, and don’t feel guilty about it. The Proverbs 31 woman had servants to help her and didn’t have toilets and windows to clean.
Hope this helps you some.
I am not a neat person by any means but I am trying to pick everything up in a basket at the end of the day and put it where it belongs. My husband and I also realized that we keep our home cleaner when we expect company so we try to invite people over regularly.
We definitely keep our house cleaner when company is coming. I like the idea of using a basket too!
Twitter: apichea
says:
Use a basket system. Have an open basket in each room. Once a day (or more often if needed), use the basket to gather items that don’t belong in the room. At the end of the day, take 15 mins to return all the items in the baskets to their correct room. By having the items already identified and put in the baskets, you will save yourself the “overwhelmingness” of having to pick up AND put away all at the same time, making it more likely that you’ll actually put things away!
I love this idea! I think I might actually be able to do that one…thank you so much Ashley!!
Girl, I will also be back to read what others suggest – very curious to know what the community has to offer for containing chaos. I think we could all learn from that!!
I use the Motivated Moms chore list: http://www.motivatedmoms.com — I’ve found it the single most useful strategy for keeping my house cleaner. What I love about it is there’s no sense of difficulty if I don’t get to something. I know it will turn up again, soon, so I don’t worry about it.
Our house has been a great deal cleaner since I started that.
FLYLADY ROCKS!
http://www.flylady.net
You’ve been to my blog, you know I don’t have it all figured out.
One thing I do use from time to time for dealing with the daily clutter that just occurs in a day is I will play a song and tell the kids they need to clean up “this room” or “their toys” or some other sort of instruction by the time the song ends.
If they are working diligently then they can get the song a second time. It is like a timer, but more fun and they can tell when time is running out… helps make clean up a little more fun and getting help, helps me!
The best thing I learned from flylady was the zone cleaning. you can just down laod her list of what to do in each zone for each week. Then I know that even though we may be messy, we are atleast not dirty.
Also, we have cleanup time around 5 pm for all toys, books, etc. Then the kids take turns each day who gets to help in the kitchen. The other kids have to play in their room (the baby goes to the pack and play) with some thing easy to clean up.
So the house may be messy all day, but atleast my evenings can be clean.
The rest of the night after dinner is spent doing clean stuff: movies, stories, baths, family games, etc.
Okay Erin, I have a lots and lots of baskets. I don’t always discern which one goes in which basket, but as long as it’s not the floor I’m good.
I have a few tips here. One, my daughter cleans up her toys before naptime and before bedtime. Yes, it might seem like alot, but I don’t want to be left doing it when it is driving me crazy at night, and it keeps the quantity to a minimum. If she’s really dragging her feet, she gets a time limit, and at the end of that time, I bag up all the toys left out in the floor and put them away for whatever period of time is effective – a day, a week, whatever. If she makes a mess at her art table, she has to straighten up before moving on to another task, or her art stuff is quarantined. She figures out really quickly that I mean it when I say clean up. Two, on my part, I try to follow through when I notice something out of place. For example, if I am leaving the TV room, I grab the dishes and take them to the kitchen, even if I don’t wash them. Or if I’m in the bathroom, I don’t leave until I close the shower curtain and rehang the hand towel. I make my bed before I leave my bedroom in the morning. Most tasks only take a few moments, if they are done as they come up, rather than waiting for a marathon cleaning. Teach your kids to do the same (with whatever motivation works for you), and you can maintain your house’s condition with relatively little stress, with the occasional super-cleaning for company or other occasions.
There are DEFINITELY more messes when everyone’s at home! What works fo rme…is to SIMPLIFY. Get rid of stuff. I’m always amazed, when I’m on vacation, at how LITTLE I can make-do with. Does that make sense? Oh, and don’t worry about tidying up unti after the kiddos are in bed. LOL