Tiddly Trinkets of Life: Getting Organized...

Sometimes I feel as though my life is in complete disarray.  That's when I look around my house; it often IS in disarray.  On bad days my routine goes somewhat like this:

I see piled up laundry in the bedroom, so I try to spend as little time in there as possible--get dressed and ready for the day--and get out of the bedroom lickity-split.  I shut the bedroom door behind me, and what do I see?  Our upstairs living area in total chaos: craft messes left out from the day before, luggage from my husband's recent business trip, exercise balls and leg weights out, night-before-snack-dishes placed on the end table.  So I think, "I'll start putting this stuff away in the office/craft room."  Then I look in that room: receipts piled high, more craft stuff not put away, clothes that we have sorted through but have not gotten rid of yet, phone books, magazines, and electronics all scattered across the room. My thoughts quickly turn to, "This mess can wait until later."  I'll just take my laptop downstairs to work.  As I head down the stairs, I notice sock fuzzies all over the carpeted stairs... I haven't gotten to THAT in a while.  Then I am greeted downstairs my shoe prints tracked inside and watermarks all over the floor. Mopping hasn't been on the top of my priority list.  I see mail piled up on the hall tree from where I haven't sorted through it yet.  My sink is full of dirty dishes.  My dishwasher is full of clean dishes.   I open the blinds to let in some natural light and I see a yard full of weeds and our old/broken bikes piled along the wall.  The rat trap is closed... we must have caught some kind of creature.   Where to begin??

I often get the clean dishes put away and the dirty dishes loaded into the dishwasher.  And then?  Where to next?  On those days I usually give up and think I'll try again later.  It takes me quite a while to finally get the house back to looking "normal", or should I say, what I WISH was "normal".  I would eventually tidy the house, but not quite clean all of it; or I would clean the floors and bathrooms, but not get rid of the piles.  I tried really hard to stay on top of things, but could never decide what to do when or how to keep a schedule to stay on top of things.  I wanted my hubby to be able to come home to a clean house with clean clothes--a clutter free environment, or at least have the clutter organized :).  Also, being well into my 3rd trimester of my pregnancy, I started getting that "nesting" feeling.  I want to bring my little girl home to a peaceful environment.  I don't want to feel stressed just because of the state of my house.

So, I began the search of how to become organized and be able to stay on top of cleaning as well as tidying. I recently found a wonderful website: Life As a Mom.  It has wonderful daily, weekly, and monthly organizers as well as meal planning tips, etc.  It had a weekly cleaning checklist included, but I wanted something daily.  So, I created my own.

Another thing that I realized is that if we invite people over, that means that I at least need to try to get all of the main areas of the house clean before they get here, especially if we're trying to impress them.   That got me boosted, and the last couple of weeks I've tried to stay on top of things.  I'm also attempting to become thoroughly organized (even behind closed doors!).  Luckily, my husband is a very very patient man and doesn't mind the in-between stages of cluttered closets to uncluttered closets where the entire room seems to be in shambles in the mean time. 

I started my organizational journey in our master bathroom.  It is almost finished!  I'll probably put the finishing touches in it tonight.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to post all of my pictures.