We have been going to fast-food restaurants less and less because of the double whammy of the high cost of feeding a family of 5, and very-bad-for-you food–  and I feel all the better for it.  But!  Sometimes it is unavoidable or just plain easier to hit the drive-thru, especially on trips or when we have an especially hectic day.

Recently we went to camp 2 states away, and amidst packing all of us for a week at a rustic camp, I didn’t dream of preparing and packaging healthy snacks for the 8-hour trip.  This left us at the mercy of the quick drive-thru, and I’m sure you’ve repeatedly had the same experience as I:  Get a couple of miles from the restaurant, then realize that they forgot to put napkins or ketchup in the bag!

I try to keep extras in my glovebox: napkins, ketchup/mustard packets, plastic forks, and straws.  It gets messy, though, so recently I put everything in a vinyl pencil bag from our old stash of school supplies.  It works perfect!  I have the little packets in the see-through mesh pocket, all zipped and held in place, and the plastic utensils and straws are right there, nice and clean.  The taller straws I have to let stick out, but I just zip right up to them so they stay in place.  Nothing is flying around or getting squashed and messy in my glovebox, but I have what I need.

The few minutes it took me to stash my glovebox is well worth the lowering of my stress level… even when I have to eat on the go!

To-Do List on Tuesday: Clean out bathroom cupboard.  To-Do List Wednesday: Clean out bathroom cupboard.  To-Do List on Thursday: Clean out bathroom cupboard.  To-Do List Friday: Forget the cupboard, there’s too much going on with Easter.

No, it wasn’t the only thing on my to-do list, but it was one of the things that kept NOT being crossed off, NOT getting done… didn’t I just have this same situation with a drawer in the bathroom?!  But look at this mess; can you blame me for just shutting the door and trying to forget about it?

Today I determined to clean it out, and it took me ALL OF FIVE MINUTES.  For real!  Most of it didn’t even belong in that cupboard, and a lot of it was trash. 

Now look how nice.  In the back are new towels that are always clean, to hang prettily when we have a house showing.  In front are my travel bags, filled with plastic baggies and product lids for quick packing.  And yes, that’s my basket-o-pads-n-tampons.  Even the mundane can look nice, set on the back of the toilet.  It’s also a more gracious way of telling my hubby: no sex this week.  :)

What job has been on your to-do list lately?  Set the timer and spend 15 minutes on it TODAY!

Okay, I just spent 3 minutes digging around my ‘hair’ drawer in the bathroom, looking for Tea Tree Oil… it  doesn’t belong in there, but neither do a lot of things I found.  Rummaging around in that nasty drawer prompted me to do a cleaning mission TODAY.  Among the necessary tools (hairbands, clips, brush, combs, mousse, gel, hairspray) was a ton of junk that should be either in a separate space or just thrown out! 

Join me in this purge-and-clean; take 15 minutes to clean all the floating hairs, un-used haircolor cartons, hairbows (!?) and bobby pins out of one of your bathroom drawers.  Wipe it out with a damp rag or paper towel, and then arrange only what you need and use back in the drawer; everything else goes!  Put like things together, preferably in containers of some kind: hairbands and clips can all go in tiny baskets so they don’t slide all around the drawer; I used pretty boxes left from Christmas that are too cute to toss.  Brushes, combs (pare down on these– how many do you need?) can go in a small plastic basket that’s made for office supplies, and then place any gels and hair products that you use in a neat little row.   

Your drawer should be orderly and you should be able to see all of your supplies without having to move anything.  Now stand back and smile.  And fix your hair.  :)

With extra activities going on the past several days I got behind a bit in my laundry, so I decided that today’s Mission would be to catch up.  It’s actually not too bad– I mean, I’ve had days of so much laundry needing to be done that I couldn’t open the door to the laundry room, so 6 loads to do today?  No problem.  

Laundry has always been something I detested, but I have finally, through trial and error, figured out a system that works for me. It’s now something I don’t dread, and rarely is my laundry room overflowing as in the old days.  Here’s what I did:

First, I determined how many loads I needed to wash each week to keep my family in clean clothes and with clean sheets and towels.  It was quite shocking– 10-11 loads a week!  Next I divided that number between the number of days I was willing to do laundry.  Although laundry doesn’t take much actual hands-on time (it’s really just loading, reloading, and folding/putting away,) I have to be home and able to switch out loads when the buzzers go off, so I do laundry in the morning M-T-TH-F.  I run 2 loads T-TH-F and 2 extra loads on M, one of which is usually sheets and towels.  There have been times when life gets hectic and I can’t do 2 loads on most days– then I compensate and either do multiple loads first thing in the morning or a load in the morning and a load at bedtime every day. 

Another thing that helped was buying a 3-section laundry cart (I got mine at Walmart for about $25.) A bit pricey to start out, but well worth it– before getting the cart I used 3 different laundry baskets which worked fine, but they were a bit bulky and clumsy in the laundry area.  I then taught my husband kids to separate dirty clothes into the sections/baskets: darks, lights, and towels/sheets every time they brought in dirty laundry. If a person is old enough to learn their colors, they are old enough to bring clothes into the laundry room and to learn the difference between colors and lights. This training was a pain at first, but it did pay off later.  Now when I go to run a load, the section in the cart that is the most full is the next load.

This part is what transformed the whole laundry issue for me: I had a clothes rod installed near the dryer, and I use all flat surfaces on or very near the w&d (In the past I have used shelves and an ironing board always set up; now I use the tops of our front-loading w&d.) 

• Key Action #1: I set either a timer or the buzzer on the dryer so that when the dryer is done (meaning, the clothes are freshly dry, with no wrinkles) I can put items that need to be hung or ironed immediately onto a hanger and hang them on the clothing rod. This saves on the ironing chore (which I despise even more than laundry)– many clothes hung immediately no longer need to be ironed, or at the very least there will be less deep wrinkles to be ironed out. 
• Key Action #2: All other items I immediately fold and put in piles : Hubby’s, Mine, Child 1, Child 2, Child 3, and Towels/Sheets.  This step is probably the most important because it completely eliminates the steps of 1)unloading the clean clothes from the dryer to a basket, 2)lugging the full basket somewhere to fold, 3)folding and making little piles either on the bed or couch, 4)needing said bed or couch and either piling the stacks on the floor (to be knocked over) or taking them to everyone’s room.  Since I sort clothes into stacks as I fold, this step usually takes only 5 minutes! 

I have the kids check their piles each morning, and they put their clothes away themselves.  I had to work to establish this routine, but my kids have put their own laundry away since they were 2 years old so it was mostly training them to do it every morning as part of their Morning Five. 

Now that the laundry is tamed, I have more time to spend on other things… like cleaning food from under the dining room table!  What are your laundry tips?

I have always been a slob an untidy person.  I put my mother, sister, and various roommates through countless ‘inconveniences’ (I’m remembering as a kid cramming everything my sister and I owned into the closet to ‘clean’ our room, and having so much junk on my bed in the dorm at college that I’d squeeze in my roomie Holly’s bed at night,) and I can’t even begin to tell you all that Nate had to put up with.   And it was all because I really didn’t know how to clean up and keep things cleaned up. 

If you don’t understand that last sentence or never related to it, just skip the rest of this post; you are a Born Organized person and have the blessing of not knowing the frustrations of the rest of us.  If, however, you felt an immediate kinship with me when you read it, I have good news:  I not only feel your pain, but I have found the answer!

After sharing my ‘always-messy-house’ stories with my (ex) sister-in-law several years ago, she told me about flylady.net  THIS SITE CHANGED EVERYTHING for me!  Flylady is a woman who had lived within a mess for years, and as she figured out how to climb out of it she began sharing it with others.

Her basic philosophy is: it took years to get your home in the state it’s in now; it will not become clean and organized overnight, so you have to work by Baby Steps.  I was frustrated when I first began because I really wanted that quick fix.  In fact, I gave up many, many times; but the small changes I made really did make a difference, and over time my home has become what I want it to be.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re pretty much never prepared for a magazine shoot, and if you came over right now you’d see some messy spots and lots of dust.  But overall, things get picked up and put away; dishes and laundry get done and rarely piled up; beds are made each morning, and the floors are swept daily.  Our house is lived in, but it’s not an embarassment like it was before I began following Flylady’s principles.

If you have a spare 15 minutes today, check out flylady.net and just look around the site.  I use the Baby Steps approach in other areas of my life, too– see the Journey to Health on this blog for details.  Happy cleaning!!

Two weeks ago I was horribly sick for 4 days.  I couldn’t do much but sleep and drink water… and plan.  The mess around the house gets really bad unless I’m harassing the family to ‘pick up,’ and since I was unable to nag about the mess and unable to do anything about it, I lay on the couch with my notebook and decided just how things were going to change once I felt better. 

Once I was over ‘the sickness,’ I spent the next 3 days going through our storage areas, craft bins, closets, and kids rooms getting rid of the excess– by excess I mean things we don’t need to have cluttering up our home.

How to determine what is excess?  I asked myself 3 little questions for every item:

• Do I use this and/or need this? *Note: The question is present tense, NOT future tense:  It’s not will I use this and/or need this at some point in time.*
• Do I love this?
• Do I want to keep picking this item up and putting it away?

 We ended up with 10 recycling bags full of usable items that we took to the Salvation Army, countless bags of trash, plus a large amount of things we put on Craig’s List to try and sell (we made $62 so far!) 

Jesus said in Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  If we are spending much of our time taking care of our ‘things’– and I mean cleaning, organizing, shuffling, dusting, and storing our ‘things,’ that’s where our hearts end up.

When we have less stuff, there’s less money spent on it, less time to take care of it, and therefore more time to be used by God and more time to be actively growing closer to Him.  If that’s where our heart is, or where we want it to be, then we have to release the things that hinder us: those little ‘treasures’ that pull our time and hearts away from God. 

I have been amazed by how much less mess there is now that we let go of that chunk of ’stuff.’  It was startlingly time-consuming to keep putting away things or shoving around boxes of things we didn’t even use in order to get to things we do use.  I’m eyeing my china cabinet now– I know there’s lots of odds and ends in there that I don’t want or use.  Hm, maybe that’ll be my Mission next Monday.

I used to dread Mondays– the beginning of another work/school week, the end of the relaxing weekend.  Since becoming more dependent on a schedule, though, I really like Mondays.  I like getting back to the things that got off of routine over the weekend (like the kids doing chores!) and getting everything and everyone back on track.  Things are truly less stressful around here when routines are in place and boundaries are kept.

Mondays not only get me back into our regular schedule, but I also like to add on a Mission: something that doesn’t take too long but that needs to be done.  Today my Mission is cleaning under the kitchen sink. 

I’ve known for a while that I needed to clean under there, but it can seem so daunting.  In reality it took only 15 minutes!  And you’ll never guess what I found: 3 spray fresheners, 2 spray glass cleaners and 1 refill glass cleaner, 2 spray disinfectant and 1 refill disinfectant, 16 rubber gloves, and mouse poo.  Yuck-o.

I’m thrilled that I have an abundance of cleaners, and now that I know about them, I won’t be going to the store and wasting money on something I already have.  I’m also thrilled to know that we have a mouse– not that we have one, but that I know about it and can put out some mouse poison.  There were actually only a few of the little droppings, and after my initial freak-out I remembered that I had put the cleaner-bin under the sink straight from storage when we moved in.  I’m hoping it’s leftovers (ewww) from ’storage mice,’ but if not there was such a small amount that I think I’ve found out about it pretty early on and can take care of that business.

I wish I had thought to take a ‘before’ picture of under my sink, but I didn’t, so just the ‘after’ will have to do.

Notice the neat little rows of ‘extras’ behind each cleaner.  Now I can get what I need from under my sink and not be overwhelmed or grossed out– well, except for the possibility of that stinky little mouse…

Why don’t you give it a whirl today– set a timer for 15 minutes and see what may be lurking under your sink!