There are easy, and extremely inexpensive ways to organize your life as a homemaker and stay-at-home mom so you can live more and clean less. I am all for that!
This list of five easy ways to add more organization to your life will free up more time for you when there is any down time in your day.
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Laundry:
Many friends of mine talk about laundry as if it were a dirty word. (It never ends!) Of course we need to clean our clothes, and I try to organize my laundry routine to help make this as speedy a process as possible.
WARNING-I am now about to air my dirty laundry in public! 🙂
Pre-sort your clothes
I have 2 hampers that are divided into sections. I sort clothes into the sections based on colors. I have a “Pinks/Reds” section, a “Whites with bleach” section, etc. I literally write the labels on the hamper bags.
Every bedroom in the house has a single hamper as well.
On Mondays, I start laundry. I gather all the hampers, sort into my divided hamper, and I can easily see my full loads. I wash clothes on Monday and Tuesday.
Wednesday and Thursday are usually laundry off days, and then Friday I sort again to see if any loads are full enough to wash-or if anything is needed for over the weekend.
Put a ‘hamper’ on all levels.
I have a rattan hamper on the main floor that I use to collect the dirty items (wash cloths, dish rags, bibs, etc.) throughout the day. I can let it fill for a few days and then sort it into my divided hamper on the designated days.
I hide the bin away when we have company over, and it works for us day-to-day.
These are similar products to what I use in my home:
Toys, toys, toys:
There is nothing worse than getting your children to bed after a busy day, and having to clean up after them. So, don’t do it! Have THEM do it.
I started with my son at six months old teaching him to clean up his toys. I gave him a box and he put a few things away while I took care of the rest; he was too small to clean it all up on his own. He enjoyed being a helper and I do this with my twins now.
Encouraging them to clean up has not always made the clean up process easy, but it at least reinforces that when you have stuff, you need to care for it.
‘Clean up’ is not an easy time of day in our house, but it’s part of our routine every night before bed, so it is expected, and that helps build routine and good habits that my children can carry throughout their lives. It is easy to get your children learning to clean up with these next two tips.
Minimize space-hogging packages.
If you store your puzzles in boxes they require a good amount of shelf space. We don’t always have a lot of storage space due to moving a lot, thanks to the military, so I store our puzzles in zip top bags.
I cut the top of the puzzle box off (so we have the image) and place it and all of the pieces in a gallon size zip top bag.
On the bag, I write the name of the puzzle with a permanent marker. My son can grab a puzzle easily, open the bag, and clean it up easily as well.
Many kids have trouble replacing the top of the puzzle box to close the box. How many times do these boxes get ripped and need to be repaired?! Just eliminate that. I store all of our puzzle bags in one storage bin.
Label your bins for non-readers, early readers…and babysitters.
I have used cloth bins from the local hardware store or discount store (they are about $5 a piece) and a divided shelf (there are wood or wire sets that you assemble yourself) to store our toys.
I take a picture of the toys that will be housed in the bin, print it out in wallet size, glue it to an index card or cardstock for more stability, and ‘laminate’ it with packing tape.
I add a typed label, but you could also use a black marker and write the simple title of the toy(s).
Toddlers can use the picture, preschoolers can see that the picture has a name, and early readers can read the words to know what goes away where.
It is an easy way to expose your child to word-picture associations. It helps readers become readers earlier…and besides that fact, it helps your child clean up after herself.
The goal of parenting is an independent child; this is one way to achieve that-and keep your house a little more organized.
I find that storing the toys this way allows me to teach more efficiently as well. When my son asks a question about a topic, I can easily find a toy I need to help explore the topic with him, if we have one on-hand. We don’t have to tear apart a toy box to finally reach what we are looking for at the bottom!
Everything is on-hand and easy to find-even for babysitters or family members, and other children who come over for playdates.
I know that these easy tips for organizing two areas of the house help me operate a little more efficiently during my weeks as a stay-at-home mom. I hope you can make them work for you.
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This post is featured in A Complete Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms: Homemaking Tips.
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Enjoy your time at home!
I am wondering how you got your six-month-old to pick up after himself. My son is seven months, and I don't think he would understand the concept.
Jamasina, good question! At about 6 months old, since he could sit up on his own and was exhibiting the ability to put items into a container, I started at clean up time to place a bin in front of him and push some toys in front of him that were on the floor while encouraging him to pick them up. I would say, "Put the toys in the bin," while handing a toy to him and pointing to the bin. When he placed it in the bin I would say, "Thank you for helping. Grab another one and put it in. Clean up the toys." I then cleaned up the rest, so he was really only picking up about 10 items max, but with my modeling and singing the clean up song I taught the association that 'clean up' means 'put toys in the bin'…over time. He did not master this lesson at 6 months old, but we started teaching him more deliberately at that age. The concept was not understood until he could ask, "Why do I have to clean up?" and we could explain that it is part of having things and taking care of them. Now that he is 4, we still get some resistance on nights when he is over-tired or just wanting to be more defiant, but it is the regularity of the clean up time and that we very rarely let him go to bed without helping to clean up. It has been a process, and still is a lesson that we reinforce most nights, but not one that is easily learned. Despite the patience that it takes to teach our children to clean up, I do think it has been a valuable lesson for them to learn.
Looking back, do you think it was worth the effort to start so young?
Absolutely, because it was not an effort to teach him then. We were merely setting up the framework of what our expectations were for him. We knew how we wanted him to take care of his things and we wanted to impart the lesson of being a contributing family member. I think the lesson of cleaning up teaches far more than just where the toys go when we are done with them. Plus, I was teaching to his developmental level-he could put items in a bin, and so I was merely encouraging that with a lesson of 'cleaning up' hidden (to him) in the mix. I think teaching early-taking the time and having the patience to scaffold your child's learning-beats undoing bad behaviors later on when they are older in order to attempt to teach them what you could have been teaching all along.