Get Organized: Day 5

Today is the last day of getting my house organized. I have cleaned all of the messiest places in my house and shared a few tips along the way. I am so glad that it is done but it was a lot of work and I am thankful that I don't have to do it every day.

In order to continue with staying organized I have come up with a plan. I am cleaning my house well today so that I can start it with a clean slate.

First off I am going to keep up on the daily chores.
I have come up with a tentative daily schedule. It will give me small goals to accomplish throughout the day so that I don't feel so overwhelmed in the evening when I am trying to make dinner and everything is a mess. I will be doing everything Monday through Friday and not doing the speed cleaning on Saturday and hardly any of it on Sunday (that's my day off).


Things to before 9:00 Am:
-get dressed (kids too)
-put in 1 load of laundry
-unload dishwasher from night before
-make my bed
-pull food out for dinner (if needed)

Things to do before 11:00 AM:
-put breakfast dishes in dishwasher
-speed clean one area of my house that has been bugging me for 15 minutes (I am going to set the timer and do as much as I can for that short amount of time, stopping when the timer beeps.)
-put laundry into dryer

Things to do before 5:00PM:
-speed clean another area of my house for 15 minutes (same as earlier with timer)
-fold laundry that I just did and put it away
-put lunch dishes into dish washer
-pick up clutter (not toys yet)

Things to do before 8:00 PM (the kids bedtime):
-have kids pick up all their toys and put them where they go
-make sure all laundry is put into hampers
-bathe children
-put dinner dishes into dishwasher

Obviously I may not be able to get everything done every day for example the speed cleaning may have to be cut down to one time a day on occasion. But if I can keep up on the regular tasks them I won't feel overwhelmed by some of the deep cleaning that has to be done at times.


Secondly, I am going to deep clean my house once a week. For example my baseboards are in need of a real scrubbing. I have decided that every Thursday I am going to take an additional 30 minutes in the afternoon to do one job of deep cleaning and organizing. That way these things will get done and I don't have to feel bad about not doing them because I have already scheduled a time to do it.


Also, I have been trying to have one area in my house that is always kept clean. For me it is my kitchen sink. As long as that is shinning clean then I don't have to feel guilty about the rest of the house. For me having to wake up in the morning and having a sink full of dirty dishes is just so depressing. It makes me not want to do much cleaning because I feel so overwhelmed. But it is the completely opposite if I wake up and there is a shinning sink smiling at me.
This area can be different for everyone. The only requirement is that it has to be a place that makes you feel better when it is clean. For one of my friends it is her kitchen table. When it is clean then she can be at peace with her house.

Finally, I just want to say that a perfectly clean house is a thing of fairy tales and not real life.

How we keep our homes clean and organized is such a personal thing. We all tackle it differently. And we all have our own definition of what "clean" is.
I do think that we have a few things in common though. I think that we all put way more pressure on ourselves than we need to when our house is not clean, and that we have feelings of guilt when we feel we have a messy house. I also know that keeping a house clean (especially with kids) is one of the hardest things we can do because there is always something to be done. But if it is tackled in small parts it can be manageable.
As for me, I am striving to accept that I can only do what I can and that is good eough. So I may not have done the laundry today and there are dishes in the sink, thats Ok. I'm trying and thats what's important.

I am going to do a brief post every Friday to let you know how this cleaning schedule is working for me and any changes that I may be making to it. Feel free to try it out for yourselves and let me know how it went or any ideas that you have about it. My goal is not to be perfect, just better than I have been.