Organize It - How to Tame the Laundry Beast

Getting the laundry done has always been my biggest problem area when it comes to keeping things up around the house. I DO NOT LIKE DOING LAUNDRY, and have been really bad at it for years.

Sidenote: I do not have a laundry room. My washer and dryer are in our garage, and all of our bedrooms are upstairs. 

I have tried to follow the "do a load a day" approach, but it resulted in laundry that was started in the morning and left to sour because I forgot about it. I got tired of rewashing all of the laundry. The most common practice has been to wash several loads and then pile the clean clothes on my bed upstairs or on the love seat in the den until I got back around to it. Taking it upstairs and dumping it on the bed was not working. I rarely go upstairs during the day, so I basically forgot about it until it was time for bed. It is hard to go to bed when your bed is covered in 8 loads of laundry that need to be folded and put away. The same thing happens when I let it pile up on the love seat. I would let it sit and then we didn't have a place to sit down in the den.

I was tired of the laundry rut. I knew it was time to create a system that worked form me.

I knew that I wouldn't be able to get away with doing laundry just once a week. I decided to try having 2 designated laundry days per week. I have these days added to my weekly cleaning schedule and they are written in my planner every week. I do all of the laundry on Monday and on Thursday. I also do all of our sheets on Thursdays. It takes SEVERAL loads, but it gets us through the week and weekend with clean clothes. I have been doing this for a few months now, and it has been the best system that I have had. It is so nice to know that everyone has clean clothes when they need them. No more, do you have work clothes for tomorrow?

Here are a few tips that have made a world of difference for me.

1. I fold the clothes as SOON as they come out of the dryer. If I am where I can head upstairs to put them away I do. If not, they are put into a basket and taken upstairs the next time I go upstairs and put away.

2. My boys wear their pjs more than one time. They take a bath every other day, and know that they get clean pjs on bath night.

3. The clothes that we wear to church on Sunday morning are hung back up when we get home from church as long as we don't go out to lunch. We don't really dress up, so the clothes that we had on for two hours can be worn again later in the week.

4. I wear my jeans 2 or 3 times before I wash them.

5. I delegate when needed. Cade is in charge of making sure their laundry is taken to the garage on laundry days. If I am busy doing other things, Cade and Henry put their clothes away after I fold them. (I had to get over their drawers being super neat, but I do straighten them when I put their clothes away.)

6. If we have had an odd week and the laundry doesn't get done, Asher helps me catch it up. He used to do this frequently when I was bad at laundry. 

I still don't enjoy laundry, but I have found my laundry groove. What about you? What kind of system do you use to tame the laundry beast at your house?

Linking this post to:

The Pearl Blog - All Things Pretty Part-ay
Liz Marie Blog
House of Rose
Blissfully Ever After
Love of Home and Family
Tatertots and Jello
I Heart Nap Time
Lil' Luna
Somewhat Simple
Today's Creative Blog
Suburbs Mama

Organize It - The Cleaning Schedule

I hope you all had a great weekend! Asher spent Saturday working on our new dining room table, and I spent the day going through more closets. I am determined to get a handle on all of the clothing that has accumulated in this house. It seems like I just did this.

Ok, so back to what this post is actually about. Cleaning. I like for my house to be clean, but I am not a fan of the actual cleaning process. I have tried numerous cleaning schedules over the years, and have finally come up with one that works for me. I have not included monthly and quarterly type tasks on this list. This is just my daily and weekly schedule.

Daily - We all make our beds and my husband empties the dishwasher. I vacuum with my little stick vac under the table after most meals. My husband helps me clean the kitchen every night after we get the boys in bed. I usually remember to have the boys walk through the house and put all of their toys away before they head to bed. Most nights I do a walk through and put all the random things that have been left out back to there home. Waking up to a picked up house makes for a much easier start to the day.

Monday - Our family of 4 seems to go through a lot of laundry over the weekend, so I like to get it all washed and put away on Mondays. I also clean all 3 bathrooms. When I do the bathrooms consistently they don't take long to clean. And because I like to keep it real, I'll go ahead and fess up. I usually only do the showers/tubs every other week.

Tuesday - I used to try to break up dusting, vacuuming, and mopping on different days, but when I did that I always seemed to just not do them. I have to just jump in and get it done. The good thing is that it really doesn't take all that long if I start it early before the boys have a chance to leave trails of toys and clothing through the house.

Wednesday - We tend to have outings and play dates on Wednesday afternoons, so this is not a good day to clean. It doesn't take me long to wipe out the microwave and toaster oven. (I usually do this while I am making lunch or cooking dinner.) I also clean out the fridge and get rid of any food that needs to be dumped before the trash goes out on Thursday morning.

Thursday - I do all of the laundry again on so that it is ready to go for the weekend. I also do our bed linens and towels on this day.

Friday - I sit down and make a meal plan before we head out to run errands and grocery shop. I like to  make sure that we are prepared with plenty of food for the weekend.

This is my normal cleaning schedule. There are days that things don't get done, but I do try to keep this pretty consistent. It takes a lot less time to keep it up than to skip it and have to do a deeper clean. I don't have time for that!

Guess what? I didn't do most of the things on this list last week and my house is a disaster! If you follow me on instagram you may have seen that my pampered chef batter bowl exploded in my hands last Saturday night while I was doing dishes. I had one really bad cut that kept me from doing much of anything all week. It is finally doing better and I am ready to tackle my house this week. I still won't be doing dishes (my husband will), and the showers and tubs won't get scrubbed (I'm not asking him to do that), but by following my cleaning schedule my house will be mostly back to normal by the end of the week. Sometimes things happen. You just have to do the best you can.

Do you have a cleaning schedule that works for you?

Linking this post to:
The Pearl Blog - All Things Pretty Part-ay
Liz Marie Blog
House of Rose
Blissfully Ever After
Love of Home and Family
Tatertots and Jello
I Heart Nap Time
Lil' Luna
Somewhat Simple
Today's Creative Blog
Suburbs Mama

Euro Pro Shark - a CSN Stores review

Last month CSN contacted me about doing another product review. I have a list of things bookmarked on their website, but after moving I detoured from my list. When we moved and covered the bottom floor of our house in tile, things like "find the easiest way to mop these floors" became important. Enter CSN.

I decided to give the Euro Pro Shark mop a try. OH MY WORD! It is so easy, and fast, and my floors are clean! Really clean.

I had a nice mop before (that I still like and use to clean a spill), but I really like the shark. I like that I don't have to use any cleaning solution and that the floor is almost immediately dry. Major pluses in my book. If you have tile floors, this mop comes highly recommended from me. I was a little concerned about having to plug and replug the mop in to get from one side of the house to the other, but it hasn't been that big of a deal.

I was a little surprised that the mop arrived in just the original shark box, not a brown cardboard box, but it was in one piece, and arrived very quickly. 

*I was provided with a shopping code to use to purchase this item from CSN in exchange for a review of the item, but the opinions are my own. I was not compensated to tell you that I liked the mop, I really do like the mop.

Cleaning Out the Closet

After 9 months of pregnancy, maternity clothes, and not bending over to properly put away my shoes, my closet was a giant MESS.

I finally mustered up the energy to get this mess together.

Why am I showing you this? Well, I thought I would show you that you can be organized and not spend any money, and it made a pretty decent before and after.

The Process

-Get rid of ALL maternity clothes - the ones that were borrowed were packed up and returned to their rightful owner. The ones that were mine were packed up to give away or consign. I had done most of this before the before pic was taken, but there was still a good bit in there.

-Get rid of the things that I just didn't like anymore. I would say stuff that doesn't fit, but that would be just about everything for me at this point. I'm going to give my self a few more months to get back into most of my clothes again.-Everything that was staying got sorted. I like to hang all of my clothes with like items together and colors from light to dark. This makes finding something easy.

-I always use the same color and type of hanger. It makes a much cleaner look. You don't have to use expensive hangers to have a nice clean look.

-I re-purposed some bins that held a bunch of crap and used one for out of season shoes and one for sweaters.

-Our house is very tiny so I have to use my closet to store some things that aren't clothing related. At the top of my closet you will see some picture albums, scrapbooking supplies, fabric for sewing projects, and a few laptop cases. I used a wire folding shelf (that I already owned and wasn't using) on the top shelf to make extra room for these items.

-I also really like to use canvas over the door shoe hangers for accessories. I use them to store belts, scarves, gloves, lint brush, etc. These were cleaned out during my nesting phase, so I didn't have to touch these this time.

-My shoes and purses are stored on shelves and cubes from Target. Since this is a rental house I wanted to use something that I could take with me when we leave. These were items that I have had, they just needed to be reorganized because of the whole bending over while pregnant was too much work thing.

So what about you? Have you been organizing and cleaning out closets lately? Do share.

The Cleaning While Pregnant Routine

Image Source

This pregnancy has been great, but very different from my first. I learned early on in this pregnancy that I was going to have to have some help with some of my normal tasks and change the way that I did some things.

I changed my cleaning routine from doing certain tasks once a week to doing them as needed. This has made it so that certain tasks have gone from getting done once a week to sometimes every week, but often every other week.

My house has still been clean and tidy as long as I really do them when needed. I may keep this routine after baby gets here.

dusting

I now dust when I see dust.

swiffer vacuuming the hard floors

I swiffer vac the floor when I see crumbs, not after every meal.

vacuuming the rooms with carpet

I vac when I see stuff on the carpet.

bathrooms

I don't do the entire bathroom at one time.

I usually wipe down the sink and counter everyday with my bath towel after I have showered. (We don't reuse our towels between washings)

I use an everyday shower spray that keeps the shower cleaner longer.

When the shower needs to be cleaned I ask the husband to do it when its good for him.

I spray, wipe down, and swish the toilet bowl when it looks like it needs it.

mopping

I mop when it looks like or feels like it needs it.

There are still things that obviously have to be done everyday like dishes, laundry, making beds, and straightening up and making sure things get put away, but changing the way I did some of the big tasks, made things much easier. It has also been nice to have a husband that didn't mind taking over the tub scrubbing. I will also tell you have he has been super helpful with the laundry. I have a great husband!

One of the biggest tasks that the husband took over for me early on is bath time for the little man. This isn't a cleaning chore for house, but it didn't take long for it to be hard to kneel or squat next to the bathtub while trying to lean over and give the kid a bath.

So what about you, did you change your cleaning routines while pregnant? Did your husband pitch in and help? What changes did you make? Do share!