Whether you’re working outside the home or in the home, most women would agree that one of their biggest struggles is maintaining an organized, tidy household. I’ve heard many women say that they thought that being a stay-at-home mom was the answer. However, they found that once they became a stay-at-home mom, it was their messiest season. So, what’s the secret? How do you maintain an organized, tidy home without turning it into your full-time job? Here are my top 10 tips for keeping your home clean, tidy, organized, and running smoothly.
1. Get rid of the excess.
Don’t let your blessings become curses. If you have too much stuff, it gets in the way of your ultimate goal: to have a peaceful home. I like to call clutter “visual noise”. I don’t know about you, but when the house is cluttered it feels chaotic to me, and I have a hard time either relaxing or getting work done. One way to combat this is to keep a big garbage bag in your laundry room with items that are to be donated. Donating to any charitable organization can give you a tax credit.
Hint: if you donate to Savers, they will give you a coupon for a discount off your next purchase, usually around 20-30% off your entire order. Don’t use it to get more stuff that you don’t need though!
One trick that my husband taught me is to ask yourself this question before purchasing an item: “Where would this go?” If you don’t have an immediate answer as to where this item will live in your home, then don’t purchase it.
2. Put on your Mary Poppins hat.
Tidying the house can be made into a game. Apart from regular chores, sometimes we just need to do a “Quick Pick-up”. When we do this, I set a timer for no more than 15 minutes, and we race to see how tidy we can make the room in that timeframe. Any person who slacks off gets more minutes to work by themselves at the end.
Racing can be another fun way to turn a mundane task into a game, especially when you join in. You can say something like, “Okay, it’s time to pick up the Legos. I’m gunna get more in the box than you are!! Reaaaaady… GO!”
Playing music is also a great way to change the atmosphere from grumpy to happy. I have noticed that if my girls are bickering when they’re doing the dishes, that the second that the music starts playing, the bickering evaporates like a fine mist in the morning sun. They start singing and forget what they were even arguing about! Check out the Dude Perfect playlist on Spotify if you don’t know what you kids might enjoy. We all LOVE it!
3. Thin out the toys.
At least once a year, take time to go through all the toys. We try to do this before going into the holiday season, because it helps to give the child perspective about how much stuff they really have. Dump every single toy basket in the house into one large pile and help the kids sort the items into four categories:
- Broken toys that need to go into the garbage
- Donation pile
- Maybe pile
- Keepers pile
This can be a tough process that will take several hours, and there can be many disagreements. Put on some fun music, have some snacks nearby, and try to keep the attitude cheerful. Teach the kids to ask themselves the following questions:
- Is this an item that is particularly special to me, or is it just so-so?
- How often do I really play with this?
- Is it worth it to keep a toy that I don’t really love if it means that I can’t find the ones that are truly special to me?
- Would another child whose family doesn’t have much money appreciate this a lot more than I do?
One of the ways that we solve disagreements as to whether or not to keep an item, is that the child whose age the toy is appropriate for gets the higher vote. If you can’t come to an agreement, then stick it in the “Maybe” pile and come back to it at the end.
Size matters. Larger toys like a huge teddy bear should be considered more critically than a tiny palm size doll. After all, you can probably keep 25 small toys in the same space in which the one large toy takes up.
4. Baskets are your friends.
When you have small children, toys tend to migrate all over the house. Keeping a large toy basket in all of the common rooms and bedrooms helps to make pick up time a snap. Of course, you wouldn’t want to throw toys that need to be organized into them, such as Legos, but stuffed animals and action figures can quickly be tossed in. This is something that even a one-year-old can help with!
One of my organizational tips is to get a shelving unit that can fit the cube-shaped boxes in them, and stick it in the child’s closet. Here’s an example of what I mean:
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Hint: don’t get the cubes that are fabric covered, but the basket type instead. Although the fabric covered ones are much cheaper, the handles tend to rip off! This happened to us, and I wish I had paid a little more for the nicer ones! Here’s a link to the type of boxes that hold up better:
Use the boxes to help organize the toys. For instance, I have one for the dolls, one for doll clothes, and one for the furniture that goes into the doll house. They are also handy for storing Legos, Matchbox cars, or blocks.
5. Don’t feel badly about getting rid of gifts that you don’t care for.
If someone gives you or your children a gift that you don’t particularly need or want, it’s okay to let it go. Sometimes the items are nice, but for one reason or another, it’s not something that you want to hang on to. It’s okay to thank them, and be appreciative of the thought that they put into it, but to ultimately not keep it. These items can go into a box to be given away as a gift at a later time. This has saved my bacon so many times, if there’s a last-minute birthday party that snuck up me, and I didn’t have time to shop for a gift. However, you may want to make note of who gave you the item, so that you don’t give it to someone they know accidentally!
6. Get organized.
The first step is to get rid of the piles. You know what I’m talking about… they breed and multiply! You find them on the floor around your bed, on the staircase, on your desk, or by the front door. Each item needs a “home”, and if they don’t have one, pitch it!
If you don’t have one already, get a filing system into place. It doesn’t have to be an ugly metal cabinet; you can get some really pretty pieces of furniture that have file hangers in them. Setting up files will take a decent bit of time, but once the system is in place, it is so much easier to keep your paperwork from piling up and getting lost!
Arts and crafts are another organizational nightmare. One hint is to get a bunch of clear plastic storage bins with lids. They’re cheap and perfect for sorting the crafting supplies. These can then be stacked neatly on shelves and labeled on front side. We have one cupboard that has about a dozen of these bins. Crayons, markers, scissors and glue, beading supplies, bracelet making, play dough, kinetic sand, yarn, etc. Try to get bins that are the same sizes so that you can stack them. Larger ones for paper, etc, and shoebox size for the rest. Tackle boxes can be great for sorting small items like beads or string.
We also use mason jars with lids to store small items in the kids’ mini kitchen (don’t do this if you have kids who can’t be trusted not to smash the jars, though!). The kids will pretend to cook with the marbles, beads, dried beans, etc.
7. Teach your kids responsibility
Kids need to know that, although you often serve them, you are not their servant. They should be doing what they can do for themselves and picking up their own messes. I’ve written an in-depth article about this topic, which walks parents through the process of training their kids to do chores, which you can read here.
A few of our household rules that we tell the kids are:
- If you get something out, you put it away
- If you drop something, you pick it up
- If you make a mess, you clean it up
Every person makes messes in the house and needs to contribute to maintaining the house. The chores may look different based upon their ages, but that doesn’t mean they can’t contribute. For more on this topic, check out my article on age appropriate chores.
8. Be a smart cleaner
Instead of ping-ponging all over the house, up and down the stairs a million times to put away migrated items, grab a laundry basket, throw all of the items in it, and then go room to room putting them back into their “homes”. If you can afford it, getting an inexpensive robot vacuum can be a huge time saver. We got ours for $150 on Black Friday, and it has been great. I know that when I had a toddler, I needed to spot sweep 3-5 times a day because they drop so much food! This little guy does a great job of picking up all of the food particles, and keeps the kitchen from needing to be swept daily. It even mops!
This one is the same version, but without the mopping, and is significantly less expensive!
9. Negotiate a fair division of labor plan.
There’s no such thing as a “man’s job” or a “woman’s job”. It’s simply a matter of preference. Running a household is a team effort, and should be approached that way. Get creative with how you divvy up the chores! Teens can make a meal once a week. Laundry duty can be shared-for a long time, my husband put the laundry through the washer and dryer, and I folded it while I watched my favorite show! I pay the bills that come in through the mail and my husband pays the bills online. He takes care of the yard work and maintaining the cars, and the kids and I take care of cleaning the inside of the house for the most part.
Don’t get resentful and overwhelmed. If you feel like the division of labor isn’t balanced, write out all of the jobs, and have people put their initials by what they would like to be in charge of. When both parents are working outside of the home, sharing the household duties equally will make sense. However, if you have a stay-at-home parent, they are going to be doing a larger portion and by doing so, they are contributing financially to the family. After all, how much would it cost to: get frequent take-out, hire a cleaning service, hire a landscaper, a nanny/babysitter/daycare, and get groceries delivered?
Yes, there are seasons when maintaining the home is more difficult, such as when a woman is pregnant or has an infant. These times are challenging, and roles may need to be shifted. That’s okay! Sometimes you have to go into survival mode for the time being. It’s a season… this too shall pass. Just make sure that you don’t let it become the status quo once you’re out of the season.
10. Have a servant’s heart.
When you do your very best to maintain a tidy, organized, clean home, you are serving your family. It makes the home peaceful and comfortable for not only you, but for your family. You’ll also be more likely to ask people to come over or offer to host events when you have a home that you are proud of. Sometimes procrastination adds more stress than simply getting up and doing the thing you’re dreading.
Teach your children and yourself to change the attitude that, “I didn’t make this mess! Why should I clean it up?” to, “We all need to do our share to maintain this home, and this is how I am serving our family.” It’s just a team effort. Yes, we should all do our best to pick up after ourselves, but at the same time, everyone contributes to messes in the home. We all track dirt, we all use dishes, we all drop hairs and stir up dust.
Moms, do you remember the old saying, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!”? We need to constantly remember that we are the tone-setters in the house. It’s a big responsibility. When we decide to throw up our hands and give up on the house, everyone else does the same. When we decide that the keeping the house clean, tidy, and organized is a priority, then others will follow suit too. I don’t know about you, but I have definitely noticed that when the house is already a mess, people don’t bother to pick up. However, if the house is already tidy, leaving your things in the middle of the kitchen floor will definitely stand out. It’s not easy… far from it, but I can promise you that it is worth it.