I am not an organized person(if you hadn’t guessed from the title of this blog). My name is Melissa, and I am
organizationally challenged, maybe even impaired mom, but I am working on that! It’s almost hard to believe that right at this very moment, my sink is empty and shiny…..my living room is vacuumed and almost completely clutter free. The area in the corner of the living room, behind the recliner, is all cleaned out where boxes of maternity clothes and baby clothes used to be stacked (now all put away neatly in the closet, and the baby clothes ready to go to someone else). Our bedroom is pretty much as clutter free as can be, and the dining room and kitchen are slowly looking cleaner and cleaner!

I’ve always been afraid to invite people to my house, or for anyone to show up unannounced for that matter. I’ve never been a neat freak by any stretch, although I envy those who are(to a certain extent anyway). But once we started having kids, things got even harder to deal with. We now have 3 boys, ages 7, 4, and 2 in a very small house with only 2 bedrooms, so you can imagine how quickly things can get out of control. Add to that homeschooling, a soy candle business (I make the candles myself in my kitchen) and working on websites (my own and for a couple other people), and the hope of someday starting up painting again, and it makes things that much more critical that I really focus on getting organized…..my home, my time and my priorities!

Tip #1   Start out by visiting the Flylady. She is awesome. Her strategies, baby steps and routines help you so you can stay focused and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel by trying to come up with your own organizational plan. She kind of takes the thinking out of it, which really helps because I know once I get to “thinking” about getting organized, then that’s usually all that happens and then I get so worn out just “thinking” about how to do it and it just doesn’t get done!!

So I found out about the Flylady a week before my oldest boys 5th birthday, in November 2008(wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost 3 years now!). I had to get ready for his birthday party, so I decided I would do the crisis cleaning that she outlines on her website, and then start the baby steps after the party. It was stressful getting ready for the party because my house was in pretty bad shape, but it got done, and every room except our bedroom was clean and clutter free! After the party, I started the baby steps and a month went by. Then I started doing some of the zone missions, and another month went by. 2 full months of  a wonderfully clean home! Fresh towels in the bathroom on a regular basis, all neatly folded. A shiny sink every morning with all clean dishes air drying in the rack waiting to be put away. It was great!

Then I got pregnant with our 3rd child…..duduh duduh……. Yeah, you guessed it….all that organizational bliss just flew right out the window once the morning sickness and fatigue set in about a week later.

So I’ve been trying to get back on the bandwagon ever since and I think I’ve finally done it!  We started homeschooling again after labor day, and I’ve been able to get up early and start on my morning routine again. I’ve been having fun doing the zone cleaning tasks and some detail cleaning in the current zone, which for this week is the living room. I shined my sink and have been keeping it dish free and shiny every night for the past week!

Everything just seems so much clearer to me as long as I stop “thinking” about it so much and just look at my list and “DO IT”. The list helps take the thinking out of the equation. Ever since having multiple kids, I often feel like I just need somebody to tell me what I need to do, because there is just too much stuff going on in my brain that it’s hard to stay focused on one thing ( I do not have ADD, I just get sidetracked easily with all the things I have on my plate lol).

So here is what my daily routine has been looking like. Some of these things I get done every day, and some of them I am working on implementing on a daily basis. The cool thing is that I had been sick for a week and just started feeling much better late last night, yet my house didn’t go back into chaos like it normally would have!

Morning routine

1. Get up at 7am
2. Study/Prayer time
3. Get fully dressed
4. Make bed
5. Get kids up at 8am
6. Eat breakfast
7. Swish and Swipe (see the Flylady for this one)
8. 2 min. hot spot (set timer for 2 min. and clear of a place that tends to collect clutter)
9. put dishes away
10. reset laundry

Evening routine

1. Shine sink
2. Put out clothes for the next day
3. 2 min. hot spot
4. 5 min. room rescue
5. Set things in launch pad (stuff I may need to take with me somewhere the next day)
6. Get to bed at a decent hour(working on this one! Obviously 2am is not a decent hour!)

Other daily routines:

1. Homeschooling
2. 10 min. pickup in each room. (living room, dining area, kitchen, bathroom) I’ll be changing this to a 5 min. room rescue in each room once they are all decluttered.
3. do 2 loads of laundry in washer and dryer (this and #4 will be changing to 1 load a day once I’m all caught up)
4. Put away 2 loads of laundry
5. Do Zone Mission
6. Do 1 detailed cleaning task in current zone
7. Declutter an area for 15min.
8. Work on websites
9. Work on candles

Okay, so that’s my list of to do’s. I know it seems like a lot, but really, much of it does not take very long to accomplish. Plus, like I stated on some of them, once I get things completely decluttered and under control, I won’t need to spend as much time on them. Getting organized is a process, but if you just take it one baby step at a time, you can get there. As the Flylady says ” it didn’t get messy in a day, and it’s not going to get clean in a day”  Well, it could probably get cleaned in a day, but you would burn yourself out, and you wouldn’t be creating life long daily habits to keep it organized on a daily basis!

So these are some tips on getting organized, and I’ll keep you all posted with my progress and share more organizational tips that I find here and there! Now I need to get ready for bed !

brought to you by- the unorganized mom blog ;)

So I’ve come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, easier to work away from home. Those that have these dreams that working from home with your children underfoot is going to be absolutely wonderfull and euphoric will have them dashed to pieces once you realize that, especially with children under 4 years old, it’s hard to get anything done!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I want to be home with my kids. They can drive me absolutely nuts, but I also can’t stand to think of missing out on watching them grow and learn. I love that it makes us closer as a family, and I love taking care of them.

I do know what it’s like to work outside the home part time though, and it is nice to be able to make money without the distraction of kids, baby, and guilt about not getting housework done.  You’re completely focused on your job, and there are no other expectations while you’re there except to just work.

So why don’t I just get a part time job?

Because I want to be home with my kids. I don’t want to be stuck at a job that we might come to rely on financially to where one day we might not be able to afford for me to quit. Then I’d be wanting to be home with my kids and I’d be stuck.

It also isn’t worth the cost of daycare.

I was also brought up with entrepreneurial delusions of grandeur.  I was brainwashed into thinking that being your own boss is the best way to go! I love the idea of having my own hours, and being able to take time off whenever I want without having to ask the boss and schedule it in.  I love the idea of making money working on the internet, and making my own product like with my soy candle business, or with my paintings.

I love the idea of all this, but the reality is that it is difficult to schedule it all in! I do chalk part of it up to the fact that I have a baby that needs alot of attention, and that is true. I know things will get a bit easier once he starts sleeping completely through the night, and in his own bed. Also, once he starts being able to follow his brothers around, I won’t have to hold him so much. So there is a light on the horizon.

So how to juggle Mturk, candle making, mom blogging, a horse classified site, painting(which I am not even attempting to do right now), and still be able to homeschool, take care of the house, all without crashing and burning? Well, that’s a good question because this past week, though it’s partly due to everyone being sick, I’ve felt like I just need to take a break from it all. I really, really, really need to get it together and quit trying to fly by the seat of my pants.

So here are my goals for next week:

7am- get up, get dressed, study/prayer

7:30am- start working on hits at Mturk untill 8:30-9

9am- kids up, eat breakfast

9:30am-start some school work, reading and math with Nboy, ABC’s and counting, etc… with Ekid, and the mechanics of learning to crawl, with Baby :)

10:30-kids watch tv

11am- make hubby some lunch

11:15-noon- Work on Mturk hits some more

Noon- make lunch

12:30-1:30 do something with the kids(read,play,play game, walk to park etc..)

1:30-nap time for baby and Ekid- Nboy can draw or do workbook. Housework for me

2:30-work on blog or website of choice :)

3:00-4:30- kids tv time

4:30pm-start cooking dinner-wash dishes

6pm-dinner

8:30pm kids get ready for bed

9pm kids in bed

9:30pm work on blog, websites or Mturk or watch a movie :)

11:30 bed time!

So tell me, does this all sound crazy to you? I know it seems like I’m trying to fit too much onto my plate and you’re thinking,”why don’t  you just drop a couple of things so you’re not so stressed?”  I don’t know, I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment! There are some things that don’t need to be done every day, like tweeking websites, and once that’s done, they’ll kind of be on auto-pilot much of the time.

So all you working-at-home moms out there. How do you do it? Do you think you have too much going on? Do you do it because you Need the income, or is it because you just enjoy it?