Organize Your Life

Time to kick this organization into high gear with these tips and downloadables to get your house clean, organized, and even help get the kids involved!

Organization for some is a daunting task that gets put off day after day, week after week until one day you are looking around thinking, holy cr*p what happened to my house?

Oranization for others, myself included, is something we may not always want to do, but it feels so rewarding afterwards.

Plus I personally love the before & after organization and clean photos. It gives me motivation and when my house (and life) is organized, my stress levels come way down!

But I was not always like this, ask my mom. As a teenager and little kid, I could care less what my space looked like.

Sure I envyed my friends who had “perfect” bedrooms, but I just didn’t have the means or will power to make it that way.

Honestly, it took getting married and moreso having kids to kick my butt into organization gear.

It is still something that I struggle with week by week. Some week are better than others. Some weeks I am all about it and want to organize every room and crevasse in the house and others I just want to sit on the couch and watch the world go by…anyone else?

I will say once I decided to stop the laziness and wallowing about how I wanted my home to be this “picture perfect” space, I kicked my own booty into shape and got. to. work.

I created some printables to help with this task however because sometimes we just need a pretty piece of paper to give us that boost of motivation and reminders of the promise we made to ourselves to stay organized.

Now a lot of my issues with keeping my house motivated, is people live here. If I wanted the picture perfect house, I’d have to kick my husband and kids OUT!

Kids have a magical sense of when something is freshly washed or clean, its like they have a radar that says “lets mess this up”. Am I right??

So since I can’t kick them out (I mean I could but I would miss them a whole bunch), I decided to get my kiddos involved.

I created chore charts for my kids to earn a reward like screen time, staying up late, extra outside time, ice cream for dinner, I mean you catch my drift.

I’m basically bribing my children to help me around the house and you know, I’m not above that (enter shoulder shrug).

*Disclaimer: some links are affiliate links meaning I may receive a small commission if you purchase through the link at no additional cost to you*

I will link the downloadable if you want to print them out yourself. I put mine inside a clear sleeve that I use a dry erase marker and just have the kids mark a check when they complete the task and then at the end of the day, I can just wipe it clean and reuse.

I also added a section at the bottom for sharing. Not sure about your kids, but mine are 2 years apart and sometimes have a hard time sharing.

So I decided I would give them little tally marks or smiley faces when they do a great job sharing without me having to lecture or tell them over and over. Once they earn 5 smiles, then they get a special snack or treat.

Now on to my own scheduling. I decided to create for myself, a daily cleaning chart. I did this so I’m not overwhelmed with the daunting task of cleaning an entire house in one day.

I break it up into days and those days, the only cleaning task (aside from normal pick-ups and dishes and such) are the ones listed on that day. I decided to break it up by room. Below is the chart.

I will link it here if you love my chart and want to download it for yourself.

I did leave Saturday and Sunday off on purpose because I gave myself two days off or two catch up days depending on how you want to work your week. But since I am a stay-at-home mom, breaking it up like this works for me.

The last thing I decided to create was a weekly meal plan. Once again, I just place this in a clear sleeve, linked here, and use a dry erase marker to write in my meals and grocery items needed and that way at the end of the week, I can wipe clean and reuse.

This has helped my stress levels tremendously. I no longer sit around with the fridge open wondering what the heck I’m going to make for dinner.

Now I sit down on Sunday’s (sometimes Saturdays) and plan out dinners and even sometimes lunches for the week ahead.

Makes it easy for grocery shopping too and overspending and overbuying items thinking, “I’ll make this one day” or “sure this can be used for something”.

Now I go to the store knowing exactly what I need and what I have for that week.

Now I don’t include the weekends because the weekends are a little unknown for us whether that be birthday parties, family bbqs, etc. and honestly its mainly the weekdays that cause me the most stress so I focused on those.

So there you have it, three printables that have saved me some stress and headaches throughout the week.

Hopefully these were helpful for you, let me know in the comment section if you like these organizational posts and if you download the printable and how it worked for your family!