One Dollar Allowance

About once a year, I have an urge to share some tips. I’m blessed/cursed with the ability to see how to organize things and tasks in my day, which doesn’t come naturally to everyone. The cursed side is that I have 4 other people living in the house with me, and their desire for things to work efficiently doesn’t match my desire. As the end of the year approaches, and new years resolutions start to be made, here are some things I think about when I’m managing my house.

ONE LAYER ORGANIZATION

To the fullest extent possible, I’m going to put things one layer deep. I’m looking to take one action rather than multiple steps for small tasks. Like I mentioned with the milk, I’m going to make sure I’m able to grab the most used things with my free hand. I’m also not going to lay things on top of other things because that means I need to move those items out of my way to get what I need. I’m willing to go one layer deep. That means I want to grab something with one hand to reach the thing I’m looking for. I don’t want to move several things to get to the one thing I need.

I’m thinking multiple steps ahead in the decision today. Here are some examples of what I mean by that.

• Milk is something that’s used daily in the house. So I put it at the front of the fridge. I just need to open the right door and grab the milk handle with my left hand. If I need to open the door, move things out of the way (possibly even set something on the counter), and then grab the milk, that’s an inconvenience that isn’t necessary when milk is a frequently used item.
• Two kids were on medication, so we had a lot of kids syringes in the silverware basket. I put them into the basket upside down so they don’t collect water and get things wet as I pull them out. I’m thinking several steps ahead in the one action I take.
• When we get home with groceries, I don’t just put them in the pantry wherever they fit. I take the time to rearrange items so that everything is where it belongs and now strewn about.
• I rinse out the sink after dishes so that crud doesn’t harden onto the sink and require me to scrub it later.
• When putting something away, don’t go 90%. I watched someone put shoes in front of the shoe bin instead of in it. Just finish the step if you’re that clsoe. Those ten-percents add up over the day (not to mention the distraction it causes me to see it, do it, and forget what I was first doing).

SWEEP CLEANING

Now, even though I mention putting those shoes fully away, I do have a caveat. My overall cleaning process doesn’t mean that I’m going to take an item and put it exactly where it belongs immediately. I’ve seen reels online about how people had a life changing feeling because they put something immediately away instead of putting it on a surface to move/touch a second time. I don’t agree. If you have a kid’s headband that belongs in her room upstairs, then taking that one item from the first floor to her room is time consuming. I like to sweep rooms. This isn’t for when you get home with something and need to put that one thing away; this is meant as a mid-day and end of day straightening up.

When I’m doing a full clean, I’m going to take the kitchen things that are in the living room and place them on the counter in the kitchen. I’m not going to put them where they belong in the kitchen; I’m just focusing on cleaning the living room. If something belongs upstairs, I place them on the stairs. I don’t take a dish and put it right in the dishwasher. I gather all the dishes and put them on the counter to load the dishwasher once. I follow this process through the whole house. If it’s something that I can easily put right away, I will. But after years of cleaning up after my family, I know that I’m going to find more than one thing in the living room that actually belongs upstairs, so I’ll create a pile to bring up when it’s time to move that direction.

REDUCE

The other main part of organization is just to have less stuff. Right before Christmas, I was tired of cleaning up after the kids when they play in the basement. Most of their toys (outside of crafts and board games) are in the basement. They’d dump bins to look for something or to play with things (it really wasn’t ever just to dump for the sake of dumping), but they wouldn’t pick things up. I finally went through and got rid of all the little trinkets. I used to hold onto things that I thought mattered to them, but I got to the point where having things is a privilege. If they couldn’t keep up with cleaning and keeping their pieces of items together, then it shouldn’t be here. I eliminated toys that were missing pieces or broken, and I got rid of all the trinket type things (think McD’s toys). Cleaning up is much easier and faster now because there are less pieces, so I can create piles of where things need to move to and get them put away without having to make many trips around the room.

SYSTEMS AND SCHEDULES

I have a few goals that I’ve set for myself. Now that I’m working part time, my free time is less and the kids want more of me. I discovered that my life is easier if I made a plan for cleaning. For instance, I used to vacuum every other day. That’s just not practical anymore. Now I look to vacuum twice per week, but that doesn’t prohibit me from vacuuming if there’s a mess made at the table. More specifically, I made Saturdays bathroom day. I learned that if I didn’t clean the bathrooms every Saturday, then I’d start noticing that it was dirty mid-week, when I didn’t really have the time to be dedicating to the bathroom. So I made it a priority to clean all the bathrooms at the beginning of the weekend. When I was working in DC, I had a friend tell me something similar about her cleaning schedule and I thought that was crazy. Three kids later, and it all makes sense now.

I also have a goal that we go into the school week with all the laundry done. While Mr. ODA does a load or two of laundry during the week, I strive to do a final load and clear our all the hampers before the week starts. Sometimes I get it into the dryer, but it sits in the dryer until the next load needs room in there. Sometimes I’m feeling really on top of things and I make it a priority to get it washed, dried, folded, and put away before the kids’ Sunday night bed time. It creates less stress and I hear fewer “is my shirt clean that I want to wear” type questions to eliminate that disappointment.

Frankly, I could add more things into this type of schedule, but I’m still learning the concept of juggling between work, school, home, and kids attention needs.

SUMMARY

Create a system that works for you. These are things that make my life easier, and I find it more straightforward and faster to clean up after my family of 5 with these thought processes. If you create a system and do a house reset each night, it doesn’t become an overwhelming task to tidy and clean when it’s actually necessary. It also eliminates the distraction of the mess, and it doesn’t create the anxiety and stress if someone shows up unexpectedly or you need to prepare for company.