Bedroom Talk

Organization in my house!?

I have a messy family. Two children under the age of five and a messy husband. I am getting tired of constantly picking up after them. I clean my kid's bedrooms and 10 minutes later the rooms are messy again. Three year old DD loves to take her bins out, throw clothes out of her drawers and closets, changing her clothes 4 times a day... (DS is pretty good about picking up his messes). Hubby's bedside table is a disaster area and our desk in the bedroom is horrible (papers everywhere). I am sick of having to clean it up! But I feel that some of it is my part because my house isn't too organized and there isn't a lot of room to put things. Any suggestions? How can I keep a clean desk, keep the laundry up, kids room clean??? YIKES! I really want to buckle this down. It looks bad on a mother that can't keep her house clean. I just don't know where to start anymore. You wouldn't think it bothers me, but it really does. I hate living in a mess.

Public Comments

1. Look at IKEA they have a lot of organization stuff thats cheap
2. As the other person said you can look in to IKEA.. but also you should throw alot of things away!!! Like the papers.. do you really need a cluttered table? Buy a portable dresser.. put the important papers in one and the rest of the papers can be tossed. Laundry: if you have a washer and drier at home, try to wash every other day to keep it from piling up. if you wash else were wash at least once a week. Play games with your children: Lets see who cleans up faster.. Or reward DD if she keeps her room clean!!! Kids love to be rewarded. As for your messy husband, talk to him and tell him to be more organized!!!
3. It doesn't look bad on a mother because the house is messy. There are TWO adults first of all. Your husband should just know better. You're his wife not his maid. One thing might be to just let them live in their own filth for a while until they can't stand it anymore. Or stop doing certain things around the house until they figure out YOU are the reason they have clean clothes or lunch or dinner. If they have to live inconvenience for a bit, they might learn what a pain it is for you to clean up after them. For the kids, my parents got sick of my sister and me not doing chores while we still collected an allowance. Their solution was to make a list of everything that could be done in the house from closing the drapes to washing the car, gave it all a monetary value and gave us a fresh copy each week. We had to write down how many times we did which chore and give it to them. It became up to us how much our allowance was. And with most things, it's obvious if the kid's are being honest about it. We hated it at first, but sometimes, we wound up with more allowance so it worked out. At the age of your kids, you could just make it easy things like making the bed - or helping with it, putting away toys, putting their plates or cups from a snack in the sink or throwing away the napkins after dinner, brushing their teeth even. To keep things organized, buy plastic totes and drawers, baskets, letter trays, little boxes for small items... That will help out so that things have a place. Keeping them there will be the trick.
4. Check out www.flylady.net. I promise it works!
5. Good ideas here, m'dear... especially getting EVERYONE "onboard" with the cleaning/organizing! It is EVERYONE's responsibility, not yours alone.... and DON'T feel badly that you have "lost control" of it. It's not hard to undermine anyone's efforts to clean/organize. Here are some of my mom's "3-Word Wisdom" which helped keep our house tidy: -- PICK IT UP!!! (things on the floor are garbage, and as such will be thrown out if left there... esp toys and clothes) -- PUT IT BACK!!! (A place for everything and EVERYTHING in it's place! Dirty clothes in laundry basket, toys in bins, etc. This includes borrowing things: Borrow my scissors but PUT IT BACK, borrow my .... whatever... but PUT IT BACK when you're done with it.) --CLEAN IT UP!!! (you spill/mess...you clean it, don't leave it for someone else to do, unless you are physically unable to!) --DON'T GO EMPTY-HANDED!! (technically, a hyphenated word is ONE word! Anyhow.. if you're going to the kitchen, take the dirty dishes with you, if you're going to your room, take the laundry with you, if you're going to the laundry, take hangars with you... etc. etc. Look around you, you'll find SOMETHING that you can take along that doesn't belong where you are!) The "flylady.net" is a great website... GO For it! Good luck!