Cleaning Is NOT My Passion

I need to start off by telling you that I am no Molly Maid. My house is not a perfect, spotless show home and I will never win an award for my tidiness! My house is a continuous ebb and flow of mostly tidy and somewhat messy. When I started planning my organization overhaul, I found I spent a lot of time cleaning the house. But it was not a lot of time everyday, it was a full day once every couple of weeks. And it was usually the day before we had company coming and I was time crunched as it was trying to pull everything else together. It was stressful, not to mention exhausting.

So I went in search of a way to simply my cleaning, without sacrificing a clean house. I headed to pinterest (I swear they should pay me for advertising!) and found quite a number of cleaning plans and schedules. There were even a few that claimed I could have a clean house in 15 minutes a day. Which I would love to believe but it takes me more than 15 minutes to vacuum my house, so I think they may have exaggerated just a wee bit. I ended up finding a link to a Home Organization Plan posted over at JustMommies.
The site sets out a weekly basic cleaning routine. For example Monday you do laundry, change bed linens and bath towels. It has different basic cleaning activities for each day of the week, and it repeats certain ones like laundry so that you are not doing 5 loads of laundry all in one day (like I usually do!).
There is also a monthly calendar that gives you a different task each day. AND, this is my favorite part, there are periodic Catch-up days. So if life has handed you a plate of crazy one day, you can just do that days activity on your catch-up day. Whoever made this calendar obviously has kids! Also on the monthly calendar is a Declutter Challenge for each month. January's Declutter Challenge is the master bedroom. You have all month to tackle the checklist. Unfortunately for me, the lack of structure on the challenge leads to putting it off, but I am determined to finish the challenge before month's end!
Another great thing that I love on this site is the Daily Habits list near the bottom of the page. She (I assume it is a she, because this Home Organization Plan is brilliant!) sets out some simple daily habits you should adopt and breaks down what your day should look like. For example, your morning tasks are to make your bed, wipe down the bathroom and set something out for dinner. Simple little things that will save you time in the long run and SIMPLIFY your life! Love it!

So now that you know what I LOVE about the Home Organization Plan - take a look at what it looks like at my house!

This is Grand Central Refrigerator! Personally, I need to have all of my schedules/plans front and center so that I will follow them.

I keep my monthly cleaning calendar in a plastic sleeve. In behind January are the cleaning calendars for February and March so that I won't have an excuse to slack! I also changed a few of the tasks to better reflect my family/cleaning needs. I have done very well at keeping up to date on these tasks (except the 'clean out car' one - it has been WAY TOO COLD!)
Also, you will notice I got my FREE calendar template at calendarlabs.com . If I can keep my momentum going, I plan to reward myself with some cute, colorful printables.

I changed this a bit too - it just makes more sense to vacuum and mop on the same day, right?

I feel really good about this part of my organization overhaul. I feel like I have more time for my kids and husband (or maybe I just enjoy the time more because I am not looking at a messy house?) It also means that I can have impromptu playdates in the middle of the week and not run around like a mad woman before everyone arrives.

Now for the hard part - sticking to it!

A Life More Organized

As you know, one of my New Year's resolutions is to be more organized. This is not the first year I have had this resolution - but this is the first year that I have actually taken time to sit down and think about how I am going to be more organized. I mean, I would LOVE to have my crafting table/area more organized and have all of my closets and drawers neat and tidy with everything in its place. Realistically, however, I know that that would take me years and then the kids (and/or my husband) would just come behind me and undo all of my hard organizing work. Instead, I am simply hoping to get my day to day routine more organized and routine so that I can have more time with the kiddies, the hubby, and more time for ME (ie. crafting time!)
So the first thing I did was try and figure out what I was spending the most time on so that I could try and simplify the process and hopefully save time! When looking at my day I found I spent a lot of time cooking and cleaning. Actually, I spent A LOT of time thinking about and dreading cooking and cleaning. I decided that these were the areas I was going to target.
So, goal in mind, I headed to pinterest! (It is a GREAT site! If you haven't been - you should go!) I did some searching around to see how other people are becoming more organized and better at time-management. I discovered that a lot of people had the same resolution as me, my pin feed was abuzz with organization ideas. So with some digging around, following links, and pouring over various blogs and sites, (hard work right? But someone's gotta do it!) I chose a few plans and began my journey to organization.

Here are the links I used and a few other ones I liked (and may use later):

Monthly Meal Planning by Callie @ Greater Things

Home Organization Plan from the JustMommies site (there are lots of great things on this site!)

Home Management Binder by Toni @ A Bowl Full of Lemons

Declutter Calendar by Beth @ MySimplerLife (it is from 2011 but could easily be used any month/year!)

My Organization and Storage Ideas board on pinterest - lots of other great ideas and links for you to explore!


Check back next week and I will show you what the Home Organization Plan looks like in action at my house!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We are already halfway through the first month and I am JUST getting to writing a Happy New Year post - guess that tells you haw the rest of the year is going to be!

2012 was... well 2012 was unlike any other year I have experienced in my life! I guess all I can do is hope that 2013 will have a little more of the good stuff, a little less of the bad stuff and a whole lot of love!

**Now for the resolutions - so you can hold me accountable and say "See Amy - you SAID you were going to do it, so DO IT already!" Hmmm.....what were they again??? I wrote them down and stuck them away with the Christmas stuff and then promptly forgot what they were. So maybe now is a good time to come up with a few new ones and put them somewhere a bit more accessible for when I need reminding of what I should be doing!

• Do a blog entry at least once a week (good thing I already FAILED at this one, seeing as I already missed the first two weeks of the year so I will amend it with...) from this day forward!
• Train to run 5K (I have done this before and had good intentions to run in an actual race - but then along came a pregnancy followed by a baby. Alas, running was not only impossible but also bumped down to the bottom of the priority list!)
• Get organized - and stay organized for more than 3 weeks! (So far so good on this one - I will soon be posting about my meal planning adventures!)
• I am sure there was also one about eating healthy or cutting back on junk food...blah, blah, blah. (Yeah, I am sure I will follow this one ALL year!)

Anyway - welcome to 2013! Hopefully THIS is the year of great things - I just have to work hard and stay on track!

Sparklers on the deck at midnight! Happy New Year!

Oh, and did you notice I updated my space? Thought it could use a more personal touch so I did some pretty paintings! Hope you enjoy!