Closets

"Failing to plan is planning to fail."

I do firmly believe this, even though I don't always practice my life that way. Let's face the facts: I am a lazy procrastinator. Planning takes time and energy so sometimes, we are guilty of just letting our life lead us, letting our money lead us, our laundry, our cleaning, everything. Jason and I just got so tired of our lives overtaking us so we decided to do something about it. I used the chalkboard in the girls' room to create a cleaning list for our weeks/months.

The instigator to this was Friday, when Avery got pink eye again. Her babysitter was in tears because she had sanitized the whole house and now another kid was going to pass it around. I asked myself, how clean is our house, really? And then I realized that while our house might be straightened up, it wasn't clean because we never knew when the last time we sanitized her toys was, or scrubbed the floors. For us, days just run together, a huge blur of activity that get away from us. So it was important that we come up with a plan.

This list was pretty simple. It allows us to have certain days that it is expected for us to complete something. It also includes the little things that we never do, like organize the kids drawers and sanitize toys.

Sunday, I had the kids help and we went to work on our closets and drawers. We put together all random socks in pairs, refolded all of our clothes (since we all just tend to shove them in there) and got rid of clothes that didn't fit us anymore. But I organized the linen closet, which was in need of some tidying up. I don't have a before picture, but basically, things were just crammed all over the place. Every time we got a new towel or sheet, we got the "linen closet avalanche." You know, one thing comes out, they all come out?" It was hard to find things in there.

So.....

Here it is now.

I also believe that everything in your house needs to have a home. My husband and I don't always where the other person puts things because some things just don't have a "home." So I went one step further and labeled each stack in the closet.

It's nothing fancy, but it works.

Since we have dogs, we do keep towels even when they tear. We use them for cleaning up messes or drying them off when we give them a bath. But it drove me crazy that all towels were mixed up together. So, we have a stack for each.

I think when you've got a house with kids, having these types of organizational plans is incredibly helpful. Although last night, when it was time to do the floors (we have to do those three times a week, since we have dogs) I wasn't loving it. I would have rather been sitting down. But tomorrrow, our house will be clean and we will have the night off. And I won't be sitting there, trying to relax, constantly feeling like there is something else I should be doing. So, I guess it's worth it!