We’re already a month into 2008 and things are just now getting back to normal. That’s mainly due to the kids being on a year round school schedule and finally returning to their class rooms this week after being on winter break since before Christmas.
So now that our schedules are finally ‘back to normal’ it’s time for us to get back into our regular routines and jump back on the organizational wagon. Jamee, a friend of mine from college who I recently reconnected with through her blog, posted about her experiences with one of my favorite sites Fly Lady. She encouraged me to share my Fly Lady story, so here it goes.
I discovered Fly Lady 5 years ago back when we lived in Texas. At the time I was a stay at home mom to my 3 young children and also babysat my friend Trisha’s 3 young boys during the week. The lessons I learned from the Fly Lady website enabled me to maintain a clean, orderly, organized home without spending all day cleaning, which freed up plenty of time to focus on the kids. The Fly Lady philosophy isn’t simply about cleaning and organizing it’s actually a lesson in time-management, something I value even more now as a working mom. It’s about setting routines and implementing those routines until they become habits.
Fly Lady helped me establish a weekly routine such as Tuesday = meal planning, Wednesday = grocery shopping, Thursday = paperwork, bills, ect. This helps keep me on track during the week and makes it so much easier to plan ahead. In our house we also have standard morning and night routines, as well as daily and weekly cleaning routines. The most important part with the cleaning…everyone chips in (even my then 2 year olds). Now that my kids are older they’ve gained a lot more responsibilities but since they’ve been use to helping out it’s not a struggle…it’s just part of our routine. Every once in a while I get the complaint “How come our friends get allowance and they only have to make their beds?” To this I usually answer by offering to do their chores for them…but for a nominal fee of course.
Funny, I’ve yet to have anyone take me up on my offer.
While we all have our daily chores our favorite way to quickly pick up the house is a little thing we call the 1 hour tidy. The kids and I make a list of all the rooms in our house, then set the timer in 5 or 10 minute increments depending on the room size and spend only that time in a room until the timer rings. We cross that room off our list, reset the timer and move on to another room. We don’t do any major cleaning during this time, instead we limit the 1 hour tidy to dusting, Windex, sweeping, vacuuming, wiping sinks and countertops and general picking up. I also put a laundry basket at the bottom of the stairs, anything that needs to go upstairs gets tossed in the basket, then we take the full basket up once all the downstairs rooms are crossed off, that way were not wasting time running up and down the stairs. I know it sounds like a lot of work but you’d be surprised how fast everything gets done when your racing against the clock. We only do this for exactly 1 hour and when the hour is up we stop what were doing and it doesn’t feel like we spent all day cleaning. It’s prefect when expecting company especially on short notice.
My other favorite thing to do is clearing the clutter. I love cleaning out rooms and sorting through old stuff. We make 3 piles...keep, toss and donate. I usually end up having a donation pick up every 3-4 months...in fact I have one scheduled for today because we just cleaned out the garage. Every once in a while I'll do a sorting thing with the kids that we've nicknamed 'Auction'. I go into their rooms and pick out a few things, some good...some not so good. Then we have an auction...in order for the kids to save something from the donation pile they have to give up something else in exchange. Now that they're older we don't do this as much as we used to but it was a great way to get rid of useless fast-food toys or thin out stuffed animal collections.
The following are few of my favorite organizing solutions in our house:
Backpack Rack – Each of the kids has two hooks one for their school backpack and the other one is for their soccer bag with all their gear. Everyday when the kids get home they place their school folders on the kitchen island. Then they hang up their backpacks on the rack in the laundry room. Once their homework is done and papers are signed the folders go back in their backpacks. This eliminates a majority of the last minute scrambles in the morning before school and before dashing off to practice in the afternoon.
So now that our schedules are finally ‘back to normal’ it’s time for us to get back into our regular routines and jump back on the organizational wagon. Jamee, a friend of mine from college who I recently reconnected with through her blog, posted about her experiences with one of my favorite sites Fly Lady. She encouraged me to share my Fly Lady story, so here it goes.
I discovered Fly Lady 5 years ago back when we lived in Texas. At the time I was a stay at home mom to my 3 young children and also babysat my friend Trisha’s 3 young boys during the week. The lessons I learned from the Fly Lady website enabled me to maintain a clean, orderly, organized home without spending all day cleaning, which freed up plenty of time to focus on the kids. The Fly Lady philosophy isn’t simply about cleaning and organizing it’s actually a lesson in time-management, something I value even more now as a working mom. It’s about setting routines and implementing those routines until they become habits.
Fly Lady helped me establish a weekly routine such as Tuesday = meal planning, Wednesday = grocery shopping, Thursday = paperwork, bills, ect. This helps keep me on track during the week and makes it so much easier to plan ahead. In our house we also have standard morning and night routines, as well as daily and weekly cleaning routines. The most important part with the cleaning…everyone chips in (even my then 2 year olds). Now that my kids are older they’ve gained a lot more responsibilities but since they’ve been use to helping out it’s not a struggle…it’s just part of our routine. Every once in a while I get the complaint “How come our friends get allowance and they only have to make their beds?” To this I usually answer by offering to do their chores for them…but for a nominal fee of course.
Funny, I’ve yet to have anyone take me up on my offer.
While we all have our daily chores our favorite way to quickly pick up the house is a little thing we call the 1 hour tidy. The kids and I make a list of all the rooms in our house, then set the timer in 5 or 10 minute increments depending on the room size and spend only that time in a room until the timer rings. We cross that room off our list, reset the timer and move on to another room. We don’t do any major cleaning during this time, instead we limit the 1 hour tidy to dusting, Windex, sweeping, vacuuming, wiping sinks and countertops and general picking up. I also put a laundry basket at the bottom of the stairs, anything that needs to go upstairs gets tossed in the basket, then we take the full basket up once all the downstairs rooms are crossed off, that way were not wasting time running up and down the stairs. I know it sounds like a lot of work but you’d be surprised how fast everything gets done when your racing against the clock. We only do this for exactly 1 hour and when the hour is up we stop what were doing and it doesn’t feel like we spent all day cleaning. It’s prefect when expecting company especially on short notice.
My other favorite thing to do is clearing the clutter. I love cleaning out rooms and sorting through old stuff. We make 3 piles...keep, toss and donate. I usually end up having a donation pick up every 3-4 months...in fact I have one scheduled for today because we just cleaned out the garage. Every once in a while I'll do a sorting thing with the kids that we've nicknamed 'Auction'. I go into their rooms and pick out a few things, some good...some not so good. Then we have an auction...in order for the kids to save something from the donation pile they have to give up something else in exchange. Now that they're older we don't do this as much as we used to but it was a great way to get rid of useless fast-food toys or thin out stuffed animal collections.
The following are few of my favorite organizing solutions in our house:
Backpack Rack – Each of the kids has two hooks one for their school backpack and the other one is for their soccer bag with all their gear. Everyday when the kids get home they place their school folders on the kitchen island. Then they hang up their backpacks on the rack in the laundry room. Once their homework is done and papers are signed the folders go back in their backpacks. This eliminates a majority of the last minute scrambles in the morning before school and before dashing off to practice in the afternoon. 
Winter Gear Center – After total frustration of constantly digging though baskets in search of a matching pair of gloves I went and bought an over the door shoe organizer to hold all of our winter gear…hats, gloves, goggles, ect. I hang it out of sight on the back of the basement door, which is right next to the coat closet. The clear plastic makes it super easy to see what’s in each pocket. We even have extra gear for guests. Then in the spring I take the whole organizer down, roll it up, store it in a plastic bin and it’s ready to go the following winter. 
Chore Chart – This little magnet chore chart kit was the best thing I ever bought and super easy to put together. Some of these are daily chores and others are weekly. I never have to ask “Who wants to help with ______?” Instead I just say…”Dinner time who’s doing what?” Then each Sunday we rotate the chores for the following week. You can order your own custom chore chart at Adhering Thoughts. 
2 comments:
I'm so excited you wrote this post! Thank you so much. It's so motivating to read. I'm still a flybaby, but it's such a great system, it's easy to get addicted. Thanks again!
So helpful! I went out and got the backpack rack. Now I really want to get that chore chart and shoe organizer for hats and gloves!
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