House management

So one of my resolutions every year that I have the hardest time with is getting my house organized and de cluttered!! As a self proclaimed slob married to another slob, we have always had this problem!! We never leave trash around or anything, but we tend to collect stuff and frankly the main problem is not everything has its own home so it sits everywhere around the house. I knew the first step to trying to solve this problem was going to have to be establishing a routine for cleaning!!

My first step was finding an app that had a check list of things to do each day, week, and month. Having something interactive to look at and see what I was getting done everyday really helped me focus on doing them. 

The daily chores I do now are: 

Dishes

Clean the kitchen counters

Laundry

Put away clothes 

Pick up toys 

Clean bathroom counter

And take out trash and recycle.

For a while I wasn't sure why those things needed to be done daily, but I have learned from experience when I skip days that it makes the next days chores take twice the time. And there is just something about cleaning the dishes and counters and having a clean kitchen to cook dinner. It gives me more space to work with and be creative cooking new meals!!

And a long debated topic is doing laundry daily or having a laundry day, I used to do it so I did laundry on one day a week. But man switching over to daily is so so so much easier to keep up with!! We bought one laundry basket for each of us, and when there is a full load I wash it. And dry it. And fold it. All in one day. It gets put away and takes a lot less time. Folding one load of clothes a day is better than having a whole mountain of clothes to fold at once. I know from experience how stressful that can be, often times it made me not want to even touch it.

The only chore that occasionally gets skipped is the trash and recycling because honestly we don't fill up the trash every day.

So as you can see with just doing these chores three rooms ( kitchen, bathroom, and laundry) stay clean all the time and really with little effort I spend maybe 30 mins actively cleaning these areas a day!! It took me a while to keep up with the routine but now that I have it all down I rarely actually check off the list as I just know what needs done and do it!!

There are also weekly chores in the app too. Which include cleaning the bedrooms, vacuuming, moping and cleaning other areas of the house. We usually pick a couple each weekend and do them to keep the rest of the house as clean as the main rooms.

This routine has started to teach Kyra responsibilities too. Every evening after dinner before bath she is asked to pick up all her toys from the living room. She has gotten really good about getting it done in no time!!

So having the house cleaned up had been very helpful but really hasn't done much for organizing or decluttering the house. At least now the clutter is sustained to bookshelves, table tops, couch backs etc.. Haha a lot of the problem right now is us planning the declutter and than moving the clutter to a more central location in hopes of selling them before our move. But unfortunately I hate dealing with the online garage sales and people not showing up. Luckly for us most of the stuff we want to sell is kids stuff and there is a kids stuff sale coming up this month can't wait to get rid of a bunch of stuff!!

I am really hoping as we progress on the process of this pcs we are able to get rid of a lot of clutter and not bring it with us to Texas so we can start out with an organized home there so it's easier to keep it that way!! I really hope by the end of this year I will have accomplished this goal once and for all. I am sure it's all a matter of establishing a good routine!!