5 tips for keeping organized!

I am the mother of two small children, one recently turned 3 and the other 7 months old. They make a lot of messes. It is the nature of the beast. They are also VERY time consuming! The best most adorable time consumers of my life!

But what that means is that there are lots of messes happening constantly and by the time one mess is cleaned up... another has happened! Any mom knows the drill! Silence means trouble, and while you are busy cleaning one mess another is being made!

So it is important for me (someone who is innately lazy) to keep things organized and clean in the EASIEST way I possibly can!

So I thought I would compile a small list of how I stay organized while not spending my entire day cleaning! This is obviously not everything I do and just a sampling of what helps me, but this might be the beginning of a series!

SO HERE WE GO!!

1. MAKE EVERY BED

The easiest thing in my house that makes the biggest difference in the over all appearance of our home is making the beds. EVERY SINGLE DAY. Nothing makes a room look more sloppy than your biggest piece of furniture (often times the focal point in the room) being an unmade mess. Making a bed takes practically zero time, depending on how ocd you are, and makes the biggest difference! It also goes hand in hand with other productive things. For example: I will feel less inclined to fold the laundry if I have to do it on an unmade bed. I challenge you to make every bed in your home every day for one week. That's it. I feel at the end of the week, most people will want to continue making their beds because of the difference you can already feel in your home.



2. DAILY TO DO LIST/ WEEKLY TO DO LIST

I am a massive list maker (isn't that obvious already?).  I can have all of these random lists going on in my head, or I can spend 5 minutes once a day and write things down. I try to spend a few quiet minutes every night, after the kids have gone to sleep, and think about the next day. I think about what things in the house need taken care of immediately, what things we have planned, and what I need to have on my radar. I then make a quick list in my iphone for the next day. It takes very little time and sets my day up to be on time for things, have a clean home (with little effort), and take care of the adult things that I have to do. In the same regard, I like to spend a few minutes on Sunday night and make a weekly to do list. The items on this list are more like goals than HAVE TOS. For example, my fridge needed cleaned out after all of the Easter cooking. It isn't something that has to be a major priority, but if I have the time and the kids are napping or keeping themselves entertained, then it's something I can look at and get done. I don't push myself to get EVERY SINGLE THING on the list done EVERY SINGLE DAY. I just use it as a guide so I don't feel over whelmed. Most of the things on my daily lists take less than 5 minutes for each item. Instead of crowding my head with things that need done, I write it down and get rid of it!

3. DO LAUNDRY EVERY DAY

I mentioned that I am innately lazy. SO why would I want to do laundry every single day. I don't really want to. What I want to do less is spend 6 hours on my Saturday doing all of the laundry from the entire week. When you have little children, there happens to be a TON of laundry. Also, it takes like 5 adult items to fill a load in the washing machine and 8 billion kids clothes. So if I have 3 loads of kids clothes... I will be folding tiny clothes FOREVER, which takes a surprising amount of time. So here is the solution that has worked best for us.  Every single day, I gather all of the dirty clothes in the house, wash and dry that load, and put it in the laundry basket. I don't fold it though, because who wants to fold laundry EVERY DAY?!  Definitely not me. ON the second day, I do another load of laundry all the way through. After, I fold that laundry and the laundry from the day before. So I am only folding laundry every other day. Keeping the laundry on this schedule insures that the laundry doesn't stack up, and it insures that I am not folding laundry every single day. Find a laundry pattern that works for you and stick with it.

4. DOWNSIZE!

This tip is something that takes a little time at the beginning but ends up being a big time saver on a daily basis. My example: I have a lot of kitchen tools. As someone who used to be a chef, I have 3 different types of food processors and blenders, a million cake tools, cooking tools, scales, and anything you could possibly imagine! Do I need or use all of it? No. Especially not anymore. So when we purchased this home, which is smaller than our last, we knew that not everything could stay. We went through and weeded out the multiples, choosing the best or most useful to stay, and tossed/ donated the extras. By reducing the amount of things that you have, you directly reduce the amount of time it takes to keep those things organized. Do I need 3 pairs of the same pants in a small closet?! No. Do I need to keep those 6 inch heels that my feet are now too spread (from having babies) to comfortably wear? No. Do the kids need to keep every single toy they have ever been gifted?! NOOOOOO. Seriously though, NO.

5. DUST ONCE OR TWICE A WEEK

Shiny things look nicer. Our brains are wired that way. Once I started dusting the house a few times a week, I found that I wanted to keep that habit up. Just for the simple fact of when I walk around my house my brain goes "Oh. So shiny!" and it likes that.

Woman, where have you been??

I can't believe it has been so long since I last posted.

Our lives have been so insanely crazy and fun and wonderful and just straight busy.

Let's get down to the stats!

- I think my last post was Oct/Nov of 2014. During this time, we went on a whirlwind vacation to Costa Rica. And it was every bit a dream vacation. We did everything we could have ever wanted to do, and spent way too much money fulfilling life long dreams. I'm talking about things like: riding horses through the rainforest. Riding a water slide through the dense jungle. Zip lining hundreds of feet in the air. Swimming on private beaches. Couples massages and days at the spa. I better stop before you hate me. Anyway... circling back now. We knew after this trip that I would be getting back some cervical cancer screening results and that we were very much wanting to try to conceive sometime soon. After getting the all clear from my specialist, we started trying for baby #2!

- December 15th 2014, we found out that I was expecting our new family member! It was an amazing time and we were completely excited.

- I had some pregnancy related scares that ended up being just fine, but were very stressful for the time being.

- My husband was working out of town a lot and I was busy during the week growing our tiny baby and our toddler.

- Enter in potty training said toddler.

-Growing our big spring and summer garden.

- Being massively pregnant in the dead heat of a desert summer.

-We started house hunting when I was about 24 weeks pregnant. We looked into building and buying and we toured so many things! We toured everything lots of lots and lots of homes. And on the 10th (yes 10th) home tour (not including the number of lots) we found the one that just felt like us. It is a small(ish) home with lots of sweetness and a big back yard. We closed on the house on Friday August 14th at noon. Which turned out to be not a second too late because I had the baby on August 17th at 38 weeks and 4 days.

-Having the most beautiful baby and birth, which was a surprise gender! This baby was a little boy who weighed 7 pounds 6 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. He was born with a full head of hair and was just beyond gorgeous. We arrived at the hospital at about 6 ish on the 16th, and he was born at 1:58 am on the 17th. We left the same day at about 10 pm. It was a really amazing day.

 - When the babe was 10 days old, we moved from our rental home into our new home. I should mention that during the first two weeks of our babies life, my husband stayed home with us. He spent most of his day taking care of us and splitting his time over at the new house. Which was luckily only about 10 minutes away. He got everything ready for us to move in with out it being a struggle for me or for our new baby.

- We lost our dear sweet dog Lily, who passed away pretty unexpectantly that November. She was 7.5 years old and an American Bulldog. She had tumors in the year before that were massive, but successfully removed. She had been healthy and happy ever since. In the weeks before she passed, she because pretty sick. We took her to our favorite vet, and we all thought that she possibly had viral pneumonia. We put her on anti-biotics and after a few days, she seemed completely back to her normal self. Then about ten days later, she stopped eating and drinking, or really having the desire to do anything. Towards the end of that night, we knew that she wasn't going to make it to the next morning for us to take her to the vets office. We heard her about 4 am and at 6 am she was gone. We burried her in the back yard under a beautiful tree with a soft blanket and some of her favorite toys.

-Our daughter was devestated by the loss of Lily and said (very frequently) who will be my best friend now. So a little before we were ready, but for the sake of our little ones, we welcomed a new canine family member. His name is Bear and he is a German Shepherd. He is a full time job. And a half. I train him almost everyday and he is so incredibly smart. He is also frustrating, exhausting, and completely a puppy.

I think (?) that covers most of the big stuff. There were a million other things in the middle that could have made this blog post a book, but I won't bore you with the details. Instead I hope that I am now back to write again!

Our spring garden is going in this weekend and it is going to be completely massive. It's kind of ridiculous, but I have always liked a challenge and lots of hard work. I hope that this can be a place where I show and talk about our home renos, projects, gardening, baking/cooking, and life in general. Thank you for sticking in there during this blog post and during the extensive break from almost all things computer.