Manage my household to be clean organized and happy

just a little more organized and i am ready to say i have done this one!

Wiped down all baseboards and doors
Touch up painted the walls
Given the kitchen a good scrubbing
Weeded the yard and cleared yard debris
Caulked around baseboards
Spot cleaned downstairs rug

Kicked BOOTY in the bonus room-play room (it looks really really good!)
Shredded some mail I found from 10 years ago (gasp!)
Cleaned the wood floors in great detail
Did massive amounts of laundry
Gave things a good vacuum
Decluttered a great deal downstairs and in play room
Took out several bags of trash
Organized the Laundry Room

To do for this upcoming week:

Touchup paint baseboards
Wash windows
Steam Clean rugs
Dining room
Toss old clothes
Work on garage
Work on guest rom
Hand wash sweaters
Give bathrooms a good scrubbing

Working on my spring cleaning this week….

So far I have wiped down all baseboards and doors
Touch up painted the walls
Given the kitchen a good scrubbing
Weeded the yard and cleared yard debris
Caulked around baseboards

Still to do:

Touch up paint baseboards
Give wood floor a good cleaning
Steam clean downstairs rug
Wash windows
Give bathrooms a good scrubbing
Get dining room in shape
Decorate dining room for Easter
Toss old clothes
Work on bonus room upstairs
Work on garage
Work on guest room
Hand wash sweaters

Not going to do much more than that…that should keep me plenty busy!

The weekly routine thing still holding strong! The only thing that is not included in it is serious decluttering or organizing, but cleaning, yes, so at least I know the place might have some clutter here or there, but it is indeed clean!

As for organizing, more furniture coming today, hand-me downs from grandma…something to put dining room stuff in (finally!). This will definitely help with the organization!!

Places in need of organization:

Dining room
Entry closet
Under stair closet
Guest bedroom
Bonus room
Master closet
son’s closet
garage

Still lots of work to do! One project at a time! This week will be the dining room!

I have just about given up on the flylady concept of doing stuff daily, as I am finding I have been exhausted in the evenings or booked solid with activities lately. I am having more success with a “weekly chore list” that I can cross items off as I do them for each room, so I know how often they get cleaned and what I have overlooked. I’ve been using google docs much in the same way crazyinagoodway had previously kept a spreadsheet, except I am not assigning a score to the items, just simple “X” and checking them off when they are completed with my initial.

I also shared the doc with my hubby so he can jump in and put his initials in if he completes a task….although so far no luck (sigh…) it is just my initials all of the sheet so far. My son did get his in there for vacuuming though, which made my day!

myspringpadit.com

Free, similar to google docs, but free, and does GTD and many household notebook forms!! I am going to be playing with this for awhile. Does not work on PalmOS though, but I have firefox and it runs well on here.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve added some laundry related goal on here. I get it caught up, or at least a little more controlled and I always end up back in the same place. Loads of laundry simultaneously in the bedrooms, on the garage floor waiting to be washed, in the washer, in the dryer, in a basket waiting to be folded and on the table waiting to be put away.

Laundry is easily the single biggest contributer to the visual clutter of myself. How much square footage is devoted to some form of laundry or another?

And right now it’s particularly bad, the dirty laundry is on floors in an unbelievable 5 different rooms and as well as the clean laundry there is a pile of new christmas clothes still waiting to be put away.

First step: Get every screp of laundry to the laundry room where it belongs.

Then I’m spending the weekend getting every bit of laundry done and getting rid of as many clothes as possible.

I haven’t posted about this, but I’ve spent the last several weeks combining the best of all my various organizing tools (the menu plan on the fridge, next action list in my purse, the housecleaning spreadsheet, the calender on the wall, project folders in my work area) into a master household notebook.

The biggest advantage is that it’s portable and set up with GTD type of project management, which works for me. I keep it in the bag I use for work, and do a daily review of everything I have going on during the time I wait to pick my son up from school.

I’ve been using this for a few weeks now and WOW, am I ever feeling organized. I have been truly ready for everything and making progress on everything. It’s a wonderful feeling.

I should say, that the big master household spreadsheet I’ve written about was only ever intended to be a tool to analyze what was taking too long, how often things needed doing and to measure my progress if I altered a few habits. I’m still going to use it occasionally for that, but not as a big to do list. Instead I combined like tasks into a much more simplified weekly cleaning chart.

The household notebook is a soft covered 3 ring binder divided into sections:

A quick notes section

• a plastic pocket for me to slip things that I’m currently working on and can be done quickly (like TBR school forms)
• A master grocery list of all things grocery, with check boxes for what I need to get.
• A next action list, just a lined page for jotting down all the little things I need to do

Household Routines

• Menu plan page, a chart with a column for each meal and a row for each day of the week, I plan for the whole week before getting groceries
• A weekly cleaning checklist, with a column for “daily minimums” for each day of the week, a column with weekly jobs and a section at the bottom where I add in extra things that I want to achieve around the house during this week.
• Monthly calender for keeping track of events, appointments, etc

Kitchen Section

• a page for recipes to try with columns for the recipe name, where I will find it, notes
• Printouts of recipes I want to try go in the binder (until I’ve tried them, then they are filed with the cookbooks
• A list of sure win meals and snacks with details about ingredients

Goals and Projects

• a lined page listing each goal or project I’m working on, with a column for whether it is active for for later
• a separate page for each goal where I make notes, brainstorm,etc.
• other things like instructions or pictures are added to the binder behind each goal

Events

• right now, the only thing going on here is a checklist for getting my son’s birthday party organized, and the master guest list

Christmas

• weekly checklists to get ready, courtesy of OrganizedChristmas.com
• List of baking to be done
• A list of movies, books, and music that I want to use over the holidays
• A list of christmas presents purchased, who for
• List of who to buy for, ideas of what to buy
• Christmas menu plan (yet to be filled out)
• List of christmas activities and traditions that I want to make sure we do

Kid’s activities section

• print outs and notes on things I think it would be fun to do with the kids. Brochures, instructions….

When I review the notebook, I plan my next actions from all the different project pages, and add them to the “Next Action” page at the front. Then when I get home I only focus on those things and not all the other loose ends. Pages that I’m finished with come out each day and go in the recycling and once a week I start up new menu and household chore pages. It only takes a few minutes each day, during time that was otherwise just spent waiting.

It probably sounds complicated when I write it out, but it has been wonderfully simple.

I’ve been away from home about a week for work, and coming back to try and reestablish the peace is so difficult….seems a good habit takes 30 days, a bad habit about 3 days max.

Today I managed to run some laundry, clean the bathrooms, unpack several boxes, work on a budget, and scrub the kitchen sink, amid grocery shopping and dealing with a hungry stray kitty that has taken refuge under our porch.

Now the cub scout uniform is MISSING and no one knows where. Trying to prepare for Monday is worse than herding cats.

Managed to clean the bathrooms, vacuum, unpack more boxes from the moving and move all the empty boxes from the living room to the spare bedroom temporarily….the living room has been reclaimed, and I put my love seat in there today! (Yay!) It is not accessorized yet, nor as lit as I want, but it is now CLEAN!!!

The spare bedroom has boxes in it, but considering what is in there, the things that are in there are ORGANIZED!

One room clean, one organized, clean bathrooms and a clean floor = awesome! (Did I mention my sink is FULL of dishes??? Something had to give!)