Most of us tend to throw home organization and house rules out the window with young kids in the picture. That makes me mad. Mad, I tell you.
Well, I ain’t gonna take it anymore. No giving up allowed here. Not happening. No excuses. No way, Jose. (Well, ok, chaos and messes do happen here, as they happen at any house with small kids… but I keep fighting that good fight against accepting and navigating myself around a slop of a tornado just because I’ve got young kids.)
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. There are house rules here that keep us all on track (me included, because no one knows how to leave my shoes thrown in the den like I do).
Heed the rules:
If you build it, you enjoy it for 2 days tops (1 night) and then we’re putting it away. This includes, Legos, extravagant dollhouses made from random objects from the bathroom that took hours and hours to put together and other complicated creations that took far too much thought and effort to just take apart and destroy hours later. We do take great enjoyment and pride in our hard work and accomplishments (and gush over them), but it must be put away before the sun sets on the second day…
Puzzles are included in this 2-day rule. Which leads me to….
Wrap those puzzles up. This is a happy little hack I figured out thanks to my unruly impatience for puzzle pieces getting lost while in storage. Where can they possible disappear to inside the cabinet?!?! Clear plastic wrap to the rescue. Like opening a gift before playtime…
Pile it on a tray. If the random papers, mail, workbooks, art containers and drawing notepads are seem to be multiplying on your kitchen counter at your house (like they do at mine) — pile ’em all on a tray in an open space. Paper has always been my biggest foe, but, if everything’s piled high inside a tray, I feel like you’re good to go. Stack that stash as high as you like… until it starts spilling out of your tray and you absolutely have to deal with what’s in there. Just don’t let it touch the actual counter…
Do laundry every day. (Every other day if that works too — I tend to throw a load in every 2 days.) The point? So you don’t end up having to fold 2 or more clean loads at a time. Oh! The other thing? Fold the clothes as you take them out of the dryer. Best way to annoy a husband? Make him look for his clothes to wear to work in a huge, honkin’ pile on the floor. Out of the dryer, folded, into the basket to put away. Quick. Done. If you can’t fold the clothes directly out of the dryer, leave them in there (and out of sight) until you actually do have time. Life changing.
Keep that sink empty. Keeping the sink dish-free also means that your dishwasher must be ready-to-load. Instead of dirty dishes piling up in the sink, pile ’em up inside the washer so no one can see where they’re really hiding. I guess I’d better get crackin’….
Here’s the reality: A clean house isn’t the most important thing in the world (hello, spending time with our kids is much more important than obsessively tidying up), BUT… if we make a habit of living in a messy house, that habit ain’t gonna die easily. And, a our sloppy habits will set a status quo of ‘messy is totally fine’ for our kids to follow. And soon we’ll all be wondering why our future slob teenagers refuse to clean up and why we feel so confused and disheveled and incapable of being productive. And y’all know how I hate feeling unproductive. #fail
Save ourselves the trouble of yelling at sloppy teenagers in our future. Clean up now. Show them now. Make them do it. Home organization doesn’t have to be all about fancy boxes and gadgets that hang from windows and walls in a space-saving way, but more about the simple rules we set and maintain for ourselves. Because it’s our house too… and I want to live it in without feeling like I’m suffocating. Now, and in the future.
WHAT ARE YOUR HOUSE RULES?
