The first thing I did was get myself back into a cleaning schedule. For the last couple of years, I used this Motivated Moms chore schedule. It is a system created to help someone keep up with having a clean house by using a checklist of weekly and daily chores that had to get done. It took a little work to get up and running, but once I had it going it didn't take as much time everyday and my house was always looking good. More than having things clean, which is important, my brain just functions better when there is less clutter so this schedule helped with that. I liked it but once the kitchen fire happened it all went out the window.
This year, I am trying something a little different based on some research I have done on the different systems out there. In many of the reviews, a lot of people championed Jen Allyson's weekly planner. It is much like the chore schedule that I used before except for that it also has space for menu planning, to-do list, weekly glance...and best of all, I can edit the pdf and customize it how I want. This meant that I could move the chores around and changes things so that it fit our house and my schedule a little better. For example, I work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays so I changed those days to be lighter on the chores part. I moved these things to either Monday or Friday since I am home those days with Taelin and could accomplish things a little easier then. I spent a few hours working on how I might want it for myself. I just printed out a few weeks so I can live with it for awhile and will evaluate if there is something I want different from how I have it now. I know for some people this would seem like a lot of extra work and not simplifying things at all...but I think it has been well established that I like lists. This list brings organization to a large part of my responsibility which can often feel overwhelming. It is easy for me to always feel like there is something to do regarding the house (laundry, dusting, bathrooms, vacuuming)...it might sound silly, but I already feel better knowing that I have it to guide me.
The second thing I did was make a home binder. The idea is basically to make a central and organized place for the paper "stuff" that accumulates in your home; bills that need to be paid, checks that need to be cashed, coupons that need to be filed, Taelin's school lunch menu, etc. Before the kitchen remodel, most of this kind of stuff either ended up on the refrigerator or in my purse...in no kind of organized way. It worked, I guess, but the cluttered nature of this system (if you could call it a system) is that it often too more time that I would have liked to find what I needed when I needed it. I am hoping that by spending the time up front now by building my binder that I will save time later on.
My binder at this point has 5 different sections. When I first open the binder, I turn to weekly planner that I just talked about. I have my to-do list, my menu plan for the week, special events and of course the cleaning plan. When I bought the binder I also bought some dividers that are also folders. I think this will help quite a bit with some of the papers that end up in piles around the house.
There is one that is just labeled bills. We don't have many bills that actually come to our house as most of them are automated, but there are some and so anything that fits that category would go in here. This will be quite helpful for when Joe is the one that picks up the mail, which is almost always. This way he will know exactly where it needs to go and I can just check it quickly to see if there is anything I need to take care of.
There is one that is labeled coupons. These are for the coupons that I come across throughout the week in the various locations one can acquire coupons. I don't (and won't) take the time everyday to file them in my coupon organizer. Now though, I can quickly file what I find away and then just organize them once a week on Sunday. I used to be really good about keeping up with my couponing, but I fell out of the habit. I don't use them as much for food as much of it is for more processed food, but I did for household kind of things (toothpaste, mouthwash, makeup, etc) and I was actually able to save quite a bit of money. Hopefully this system will help me get back into it all.
There is one that is labeled Taelin. At this point there isn't much there except for her school lunch menu. Because of her milk allergy, it is important for me to know which days I need to make her lunch. It isn't like they would let her starve, but I don't want to be that mom...you know, the one that forgets to make her daughter's lunch. While there isn't much there now, I can only imagine that this is going to be needed soon enough.
The last category I have right now is labeled receipts. I am not a huge receipt keeper. Regular grocery shopping and gas station trips don't get saved. But I do need to keep the receipts for daycare expenses and the ones for our Flexible Spending Account. Also, there are those bigger ticket items that need to be kept for one reason or another. By having this section, I will have a place that they all go...instead of trying to remember which pocket of my wallet I put them.
If you are interested in reading more about home binders you can just Google it. Or look here or here. There are a LOT of different kind of free printables that are out there, but I am starting simple and will see if a need arises for something in any of my categories. I may find myself needing to add a category...I just will have to see.
All of this is taking some time right now. Something like this would make someone else completely crazy. But again, I know myself well enough to know that my time will come back to me. I know how much energy it takes my brain to try to remember and juggle all of the things I have mentioned in this post. I know how much it makes me crazy to move the same pile of paper to three different spots because I just don't know what to do with it. I know how much I hate having my refrigerator full of things that constantly get knocked off and reminding me of what I still need to get done. All of that is unnecessary...and I think the weekly planner and home binder will help me manage it all.
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