School is finally over and my house looks like a tornado hit it. Each kid emptied their desks and cubbies, brought it all home, and dumped it on the kitchen counter. We have piles of books, school supplies, and a ton of papers!
That’s just downstairs. Upstairs we have piles of school clothes, I didn’t fully take out all the camp clothes yet, and I don’t know if my kids have enough socks to get through a full week.
Just because my kids were off from school didn’t give me more free time. Instead of organizing all of these things I’ve been focused on arranging child care for the days in between school and camp.
Luckily all the childcare arrangements worked out, but now that camp started it’s time to clean up. We need our counters back. We need to be able to find camp clothes.
To get this done I’ve taken a page out of the FlyLady handbook.
FlyLady is a decluttering and cleaning method that is known for starting people off with small daily tasks and then encourages them to create zones within their homes so that cleaning becomes an easy to follow daily routine. Check out her website for more info.
I don’t think I’d be able to follow the entire Flylady method, but after reading about it I’ve come to appreciate it. And it inspired me to implement my 30 minute zone organizing system.
30 Minute Zone Organizing
In order to get my house back in order I created organization zones that are small and manageable. Each night I’m setting a timer for 30 minutes to tackle one area.
Each zone is small on purpose. There’s no way I can tackle “clothes” or “kitchen counters”. It’s too overwhelming and I know I’d just push it off and never get it done.
For now my list is in Google Keep. There are checkboxes so I can get the satisfaction of crossing something off the list when I’m done. It also allows me to review and update the list while I’m on the go. I also set a reminder to the list so that every night at 7:00pm my phone reminds me to do the zone cleaning.
I wish I could spend an entire day just going through my list, but I don’t have time off from work to do this. And because the weather has been so nice, I don’t want to spend my Sundays cleaning either.
So far, this system has been working and has brought me peace of mind. Even though I’m only in the beginning stages, I feel like I have an actionable plan and I just keep reminding myself that every day one area of our house will get better.
Baby steps.
Until next time,
Shaindy
