Home Organization Plan

Today I found a fun link that I thought readers of the my blog would really enjoy. It's a website called www.justmommies.com. It's all about pregnancy, childbirth, child-rearing, etc. I didn't spend a lot of time on the "new mommy" parts of the site, but they look well-thought-out and informational for ladies just beginning the parenting journey, as well as those making their way through those first years.

The part of the webisite which I found to be useful at my stage in life was the Home Organization Plan. It's a very simple plan for daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning, plus de-cluttering challenges each month. I am in the process of preparing my family for an out-of-state move, and we are putting our home on the market in about 3 weeks. Needless to say, there's lots of projects to be done, and I want my children to get into some better habits of keeping things "spotless"!

In the past I have been really big on letting go and realizing that our home is to "live in", not to "show off". Sure, I want a clean home, I am a perfectionist at heart. BUT, I don't want a perfectly spotless home at the expense of our family's peace! I did great at keeping my home extremely clean up until somewhere between my 4th & 6th children's births, when my standards just had to be lowered, for the sake of my own sanity! It just became so overwhelming that I could not keep up as well as I wanted to anymore. So I have just learned to let go of (most of) my perfectionism, do the best I can, and then relax and enjoy my family.

BUT. . .putting the house on the market is a different story! Now the house needs to be so clean that with only a short notice I can have it ready to "show off" to potential buyers. So, I am working hard on re-establishing some of the habits that I had let slide, both my own habits as well as my children's. Of course, one of the biggest helps is getting rid of tons of stuff, and boxing up what we want to keep, but can do without for the next 3 months.

So it is in this frame of mind that I googled "daily housekeeping" today to get some new ideas. I always love new ideas! The thing I liked about the JustMommies Home Organization Plan was the fact that someone else figured it out!! I have enough to think about with the home sale, out-of-state-move & new home purchase. I don't want to have to worry about when the perfect time is to clean the toilets! :) So I found this cute little February calendar that you can print out, with all the tasks on them for the month. (You can download the other months here). I'm going to give it a try, adjusting the daily housekeeping tasks to my personal situation.

Right now our family's main housecleaning schedule is a big 2-3 hour session on Saturday with the whole family helping. We have 4 teams (one older person & one younger in each group). The teams are these:
1. Tidy & Vacuuming Team
2. Garbage & Hard Floors Team
3. Kitchen & Bathrooms Team
4. Dust & Polish Team

This weekly consistency has worked really well to keep up with the basics, and to be honest, it's a great family-togetherness time! We put on great music and can visit with the person on our team, talking about things that we might not ever get a moment to discuss otherwise. Of course, as always, when children are helping, the cleaning is not always done to the standards that Mom would like. So with a home on the market, I figure I need to go back over many areas giving them "Mom's touch" with this cute little cleaning calendar. So, that's my plan! I hope a few of these ideas can help you out.

Another resource that might be helpful to you is www.flylady.net. She is a great motivator, and sends daily emails (about a dozen per day!) that tell you what to work on in our your home each day. She's great at teaching you to establish daily habits and to "do anything in 15 minutes". She focuses on "Finally Loving Yourself" (FLY-ing), and letting go of perfectionism so you don't drive yourself crazy! So that's another resource that may be of help to you.

If any of you have other cleaning & organization resources, websites, or ideas that you think could help someone else, please leave a comment! I believe that the best resources we have are ideas and strategies that we can learn from each other. Thanks for reading! Have a great day!