by Tessa | Homemaking
Head over to my Facebook page to access my free planner printable available to my fans!
Last week I shared some of the things that I’ve learned about myself while doing research on how to get my life and home organized before my family welcomes another addition in November. I promised to share with you this week what I’ve learned about home management binders. So I’ll dive right in:
Even though all those free printables and different section ideas are very tempting, I don’t need them all. Some things come more naturally to me than others. I don’t need to organize areas of my life that are already organized. For example: My bill paying and savings plans are second nature to me. They don’t require a section in my binder. I also don’t have any need for a lot of space for appointments because, let’s face it, my schedule on paper is very boring. I made and tried a daily planner. I had used a two-page-per-day planner for years before I had children so I thought this would be the best method for me, but found that it was just not working this time around. Then I read this article about different levels of planners and it became clear to me what the problem was. I was much like her and started off with the “nerd planner” when I really only needed a Week-at-a-glance. I have found it makes more sense for me as my tasks are not usually day dependent because the amount I can do in a day varies so much.
I have since upgraded to a color printer so my weekly pages are color coded into different sections. Keeping the boxes and line space to smaller amounts has meant that I can only add so many tasks to my list, so as not to overwhelm myself. I took a lot of inspiration from the Uncalendar and tweaked this idea to suit my personal and business life. First, I made a list of things I wanted to keep track of: personal to do, blog to do, kids to do, meals, habits I’m working on, people I need to get in touch with, a weekly memory/focus verse and a simple “catch all” area for when I don’t want to pull out the specific list or project sheet for thoughts that pop into my head. That’s a lot of information that I was trying to get out of my head and onto paper!
I also have a very simple list of regular housekeeping tasks, broken down into daily, weekly, and monthly. I put them in a page protector and I just lay it on top of my binder. One side has my brief daily list and a section for each day of the week. On the reverse side I have a 4 week rotation of monthly tasks and I will choose one week at a time to complete. I found it much simpler to make my own lists rather than print or purchase those made by someone else because, others’ lists just don’t suit me. There are certain cleaning tasks that I just don’t care about (at least in this stage of my life) and I do different things on different days than or not as frequently as premade lists tell me.
I’ve been using my weekly calendar for a few weeks and it has been working very well. I leave it open on my counter so I can see it and add to it throughout the day. This method has eliminated the need for me to write out my to do list every evening and transfer everything that I didn’t accomplish to the next day. Planning my day in advance takes just a couple of minutes and having the whole week visible allows me to shuffle tasks around easily.
I am still using a lot of the tips I learned from Planner Perfect when it comes to projects, lists, goals, and having all of my brain’s information available at my fingertips. My mind feels much less cluttered and, surprisingly, my energy levels have increased! It has been great to use this newfound energy to play more with my kids and actually stay (mostly) caught up on my housework.
Do you use a home management binder? I’d love to hear about it or see photos because I’m on a constant quest of tweaking mine to perfection.
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Head over to my Facebook page to access my free planner printable available to my fans!
by Tessa | Homemaking
If this is the first time you’ve have heard about the news I’m about to share, I apologize. I wish I could tell everyone personally instead of having them find out in such an impersonal manner. But I can’t and the deadline is coming closer. So here’s my big news:
We are moving.
We are moving about 3.5 hours away but we have family, friends, and other ties to our current area so we will be back on a pretty regular basis. We bought a farm and are doing some barn renovations down there so things have been pretty hectic lately. Lots of trips down there to arrange renos and prepare the farm for animals and much more needs to be done. So there is a lot of work to be done and I’ve been doing what I can to prepare my family.
This includes things like figuring out internet, grocery stores, mail, banking, church information, kids activitiesc and mommy groups. I’ve also been trying to visualize how we will live in the new place. The house we are going to live in down there has about 200 square feet less space than here. Not a big deal for bedrooms but the main floor of the house is something else. It’s proving to be a tough layout to work with. For example, the “coat closet” is inside the bathroom and the space for the fridge is in the laundry room. I think that we have figured out how we can make our belongings work and I know that God will provide the peace and patience we need to live in that house for the time being. Due to the down sizing, we have had to make some tough decisions. We won’t have the space or storage that we do in our current house (there are only 3 closets in the whole house) so we are getting rid of stuff.
It is amazing how much stuff a person can accumulate. I filled a garbage bag with toys to donate and I packed some of the less popular toys. The boys haven’t missed them. They are actually sitting in a clear plastic bin on a shelf in the playroom and neither boy has asked for them to play with in the whole 6 weeks they have been packed. I may have to donate them as well. I have noticed that since I packed up a good number of toys (the boys play outside most of the time anyway) that I don’t have nearly as many issues getting them to clean up. I’m not tripping on toys the way I used to either. I like that!
I have also taken this opportunity to simplify other areas of our life. I packed about half of our dinnerware. I do still have extra plastic plates/bowls for snack times but we mostly haven’t missed the extra dinnerware. I have been doing way less dishes. I have a dishwasher but I used to wash all the plastics and pots and larger items by hand because the dishwasher was always full with plates. Now I can fit nearly every dirty dish and pot into the dishwasher and just run it every other day. It takes me 20 minutes to do dishes and clean the kitchen in the morning instead of 1.5 hours. The only issue I’ve run into with this is that my husband was upset that both large coffee mugs were dirty and he didn’t want to use a medium one so he didn’t drink his coffee one day.
Things I have already packed/donated: DVDs (we watch Netflix once in a while but that’s about it), books (just kept a couple out that I will read before the move), baby gear (lent it to my sister actually), all of the kids’ clothes that they don’t currently wear (plus most of what actually fits them too – less laundry!) and a lot of my clothes (sad yet freeing to donate all my nice business clothes I used before I became a SAHM, they can bless someone else).
Next areas to simplify/pack: towels (probably leave 1 towel per son, 1 for me, and 2 for hubby), computer gear (we have extras of nearly everything), some fabric (I have to face the fact that I won’t have time to sew it all before the move).
So preparing to move has given me a great opportunity to live with less. It has shown me that we really do have an abundance of “stuff” that we don’t really need. I’m not at the point that I could get rid of it all but I certainly am looking at things differently. I still have a bin with clothes that fit my boys because I know that they (especially my 4 year old) will wear out a couple pairs of pants before they outgrow them. I can just go to the bin to grab a “new” pair. I know that we will eventually have company over for dinner and will require those extra plates. So I’ll just go to the box to grab them. But the won’t go into my regular rotation because I don’t want to be a slave to my stuff. I don’t enjoy dishes or laundry so I’m going to keep it to a minimum.
Less stuff really does translate into more time!
Is there an area in your life and household that you can simplify? Ask yourself, do you really need that stuff or can you do with less?
by Tessa | Homemaking
I am scatterbrained. I am one if those people that will run out to the car and back to the house 3 times because I forget things like keys, diaper bag, and once even the baby. True story! Don’t worry, I realized I didn’t have him before I actually reached the car and, in all fairness, he was only a couple months old so I was still new to the mothering thing.
I can also be a perfectionist. This is a very bad combination. I am not one of those people that is a natural born housekeeper. Though I crave organization, I find it very difficult to achieve.
I used to be organized. When I was a child, I made my bed every morning and placed all my stuffed animals in their proper spots on my bed. When it was bedtime, I placed those same stuffed animals on the floor surrounding my bed to they could “guard” as I slept (I have no idea why I thought I needed their protection through the night). I was up at 6am so I could do my homework in peace, tidy my room, and have a really great (and long) shower. Life was great when all I had to do was organize my stuffies.
My whole adult life has been much more chaotic. It didn’t help that when I moved out of my parents’ house and became a home manager and wife all in the same breath. I had done my chores growing up but I really had no idea how to run a household.
Insert several years of floundering with household management (everything except the financial end anyway, I have always been good with budgeting).
Insert baby #1 and becoming a SAHM. Soon my son began to crawl and keeping my floors clean became my number one priority. Then he began to eat solids and cooking became a necessity. I started scraping by. Eventually I became pregnant again and realized that as excited as I was about it, I had no idea how I was going to add another child into my wonderful life and crazy household.
I read somewhere that if you have
less stuff then you have less stuff to take care of. So we dejunked. It was a little bit easier (I didn’t have to show people a “junk room” when I gave them the grand tour) but housekeeping was still tough. Correction, it
is still tough. I used to feel embarassed about my home and did the “mad woman cleaning blitz” anytime a friend came over. I also tried to avoid inviting people over to my house as often as possible and would go to their house to visit instead (some of my friends are nodding their heads while they read this, realizing they have never, or rarely, seen my home). About a year ago, I realized this was silly.
My mom told me this (true) story one time: Mom had three little kids (a total of less than 3.5 years between the oldest and youngest) and had just moved. There was something about kitchen renovations going on as well. Her friend called her and let my mom know that she was on her way to visit. As much as mom looked forward to seeing this friend, she looked around her kitchen with horror. This friend was a little bit of a neat freak. To the point that she was bordering on OCD. Mom panicked. She hadn’t fully moved in yet so several cupboards were still empty. So all the dirty pots, pans, and dishes got stuffed in the cupboards and she closed the doors. A quick wipe of the counter and the kitchen looked spotless. Mom was feeling pretty good about the whole thing.
In walks her friend.
Keep in mind that this was a new (to us) home. This friend is OCD about dirt and dust. This friend is also kind of a snooper. So she started opening the kitchen cupboards. One by one she opened, looked inside, and shut the door. Mom held her breath and tried to think of a way to distract her friend. Her friend opened the cupboards with the dirty dishes, looked, didn’t say a word, and closed them again.
Moral of the story: If this particular friend of my mom (and believe me when I say her own house is immaculate and pretty much always has been) didn’t say anything about the dirty dishes in the cupboard, chances are none of your friends are going to say anything about the dust on your TV or the sand on your floors of the dishes in your sink. Because trust me when I say we all have it. Even my most organized friends have dirt on their floors.
The bad news: My home is not perfect and never will be. The good news: I’m getting better. I am slowly building a system that works for me. A system that helps me track what I need to do on a regular basis but gives me enough flexibility for when life hiccups and my schedule is no longer my own. I can’t begin to describe the freedom that I have knowing that I don’t have to clean the bathroom today because it is on the docket for Monday. And isn’t that what having a clean home is really about, freedom? Mental, physical and even spiritual freedom?
So tell me, are you naturally organized or do your flounder and scrape by? Or better yet, have you found a system that works for you and your family?
I’ve been using my weekly calendar for a few weeks and it has been working very well. I leave it open on my counter so I can see it and add to it throughout the day. This method has eliminated the need for me to write out my to do list every evening and transfer everything that I didn’t accomplish to the next day. Planning my day in advance takes just a couple of minutes and having the whole week visible allows me to shuffle tasks around easily.
