How to organize your life with kids, pets, and everything else.
I had my life totally organized before my twins' arrival... so I thought. Then about a week into motherhood I had no idea where to find anything, and everything was taking ten times longer than it should have. My mom, a mother of three and grandmother to nine, helped me get organized in those first hazy days and I came to realize that being organized was the secret to success in this new world of motherhood. Do you want to organize your life so you can enjoy your home and family (and feel a little less stressed too)? Let's do this together.
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Organize Your Life - Is it Possible?
I'm not going to tell you that you can organize your life and every day will be perfect. If you have kids, you will likely not have a Pinterest perfect house. Life with kids can be messy and chaotic. But here's the secret - planning and organizing will help you to feel more in control, less stressed, and you will have more time to enjoy your family. I can't promise you perfection. But I can promise to give you easy, real life solutions that are totally doable for a busy mom.
You may not be able to organize your entire house so that it looks like a magazine spread, but you can organize a playroom so that toy clutter doesn't take over your house. You may not make a gourmet meal every night, but you can make freezer meals to better organize dinner time. You may not clean the house from top to bottom as often as you'd like, but you can do little things every day to keep your house clean and organized. By creating organizing systems throughout your home and your routine, you'll find that you are feeling less overwhelmed, more in control, and you're able to enjoy your home and family time more than ever.
Clean and Organized
The first step to getting organized is to make sure that your house feels clean and organized overall. This sounds a lot harder than it really is. Again, you're not striving for perfect white glove cleaning every day, but doing the essentials that are going to keep the clutter down and your most trafficked areas fresh and clean. The first step is the 5 things to do every day to keep your house clean and organized. These are my every day must dos to make sure that my house is clean and organized.
Bathrooms can be especially challenging when it comes to keeping clean. I have a few extra things that I do every day to keep my bathrooms clean as well - now that my boys are potty trained these are essentials on my to do list too.
Floors are another cleaning hot spot for me with kids and pets in the house, so I make sure to tackle these easy steps to keep my floors clean.
Kids can make unexpected messes, so I also keep a quick clean caddy at the ready to clean up small areas quickly. Staying organized with my cleaning supplies keeps these little messes from getting overwhelming.
If you have a cat like I do, dealing with a stinky litter box can make your whole house feel like its not really clean. Conquer the smelly litter box problem with these tips.
Finally, when it's time to tackle Spring Cleaning, or deep cleaning any time of year, you can make it a breeze with these ideas:
10 Places You Need to Dust When You're Spring Cleaning
5 Spring Cleaning Games for Kids
Spring Cleaning Laundry Checklist (with free printable)
Bathrooms can be especially challenging when it comes to keeping clean. I have a few extra things that I do every day to keep my bathrooms clean as well - now that my boys are potty trained these are essentials on my to do list too.
Floors are another cleaning hot spot for me with kids and pets in the house, so I make sure to tackle these easy steps to keep my floors clean.
Kids can make unexpected messes, so I also keep a quick clean caddy at the ready to clean up small areas quickly. Staying organized with my cleaning supplies keeps these little messes from getting overwhelming.
If you have a cat like I do, dealing with a stinky litter box can make your whole house feel like its not really clean. Conquer the smelly litter box problem with these tips.
Finally, when it's time to tackle Spring Cleaning, or deep cleaning any time of year, you can make it a breeze with these ideas:
10 Places You Need to Dust When You're Spring Cleaning
5 Spring Cleaning Games for Kids
Spring Cleaning Laundry Checklist (with free printable)
Organize Your House
Organizing your house can be a daunting task. There are a few different schools of thought on how to organize. I like to take it one project at a time, based on the areas of greatest need. In general, when you are organizing a room, a closet, or even a drawer, you want to go through some basic steps.
First: decide what you need to keep. Don't just move clutter from one place to the next. If its broken or you can't remember when you last used it, toss it out. Next, give everything a home. Having a designated spot where things are easily found and accessible means they will be used. And finally, make sure everyone in the family knows where things belong. Organizing does no good if things don't return to their proper spot, and you'll make yourself crazy if you're always the one picking up.
I've tackled a few organizing projects around the house and have more on my to do list. Here's my favorites of both:
Mudroom Organization Made Easy
5 Ways to Organize a Playroom
10 Genius Toy Storage Solutions
Organizing Your Kids' Bathroom (with free printables)
Genius Linen Closet Organization Ideas
5 Ways to Organize a Playroom
10 Genius Toy Storage Solutions
Organizing Your Kids' Bathroom (with free printables)
Genius Linen Closet Organization Ideas
Kids Organization
Kids come with a lot of stuff. But organizing your life with kids doesn't just mean dealing with all their things, but also helping them with routines and schedules. Here are some of my secret tips and tricks for organizing with kids.
I'm not homeschooling, but my friend Julie is, and she created an awesome organized homeschool room. She has lots of great tips for organizing traditional school supplies too!
Get Organized with Meal Planning
Mealtime becomes incredibly stressful when you have kids. There's just something about getting all those meals and snacks prepared that can become overwhelming fast, especially if you have a child who is a selective eater or one with allergies (I have one of each). I've found that meal planning is the number one way that I can be organized in the kitchen, and I have a few special ways to do get it done.
First, you need a place to organize all of your recipes, meal plans, and grocery lists. My printable make your own recipe binder & meal planning organizer has everything you need! Check it out here.
My best tip is to let someone do it for you. I love this meal plan system that gives you a customized meal plan and shopping list every week based on your chosen store's sales. How awesome is that? It totally pays for itself with the money you save and you don't have to figure out what to make every night. I love it! Read more here.
First, you need a place to organize all of your recipes, meal plans, and grocery lists. My printable make your own recipe binder & meal planning organizer has everything you need! Check it out here.
My best tip is to let someone do it for you. I love this meal plan system that gives you a customized meal plan and shopping list every week based on your chosen store's sales. How awesome is that? It totally pays for itself with the money you save and you don't have to figure out what to make every night. I love it! Read more here.
I'm also a big fan of making freezer meals. You can plan and prepare a month's worth of meals in one day and not have to worry about dinner all month long. Check out my freezer meal basics & my 10 favorite meals. You can also prepare any of these 5 chicken meals as freezer meals, and with only 4 ingredients each, they are easy to prep and easy on your budget.
Lunch is also tough especially during the school year. These 10 lunch hacks for back to school will make things easier and help you stay organized.
I feel like I could spend my entire day making snacks, so I organized our snack choices into this DIY self serve snack station. My kids can help themselves and I know they are making healthy choices (my top easy snack picks are in there too).
Holiday Organizing
The holidays are an amazing time to have kids, but they can easily become stress filled if you aren't organized. I love getting ready for the holidays and think the planning is half the fun!
To get totally organized for Christmas, you need my Christmas Planner. With over 25 planning pages it will help you actually enjoy the holidays without the stress (and check out the awesome bundle with my Thanksgiving Planner too).
Here's some more of my favorite tips for holiday organizing to let you enjoy the season.
To get totally organized for Christmas, you need my Christmas Planner. With over 25 planning pages it will help you actually enjoy the holidays without the stress (and check out the awesome bundle with my Thanksgiving Planner too).
Here's some more of my favorite tips for holiday organizing to let you enjoy the season.
Create a Home Organization Binder
So how do you keep all these things straight? There are lots of organizing apps out there but I prefer to have a paper planner. I love to create planner pages to help me organize my day and to plan special projects as well. I've created several printable organizers that you can use to help create your home organization binder - use the ones that you need to customize your binder and create the perfect organizer for your life and family.
Start with my 2017 printable planner. It has everything you need: monthly calendars, weekly schedule, daily to do list, goal planner, and so much more. Check it out here.
Or if you prefer you can try my free printable planner with all the basics - undated monthly calendar, weekly planner, to do list, meal planner, and a shopping list. You can find it here.
Add in my free family chore chart set to keep track of everyone's chores - it has 6 different colors so that you can coordinate for each person.
Or if you prefer you can try my free printable planner with all the basics - undated monthly calendar, weekly planner, to do list, meal planner, and a shopping list. You can find it here.
Add in my free family chore chart set to keep track of everyone's chores - it has 6 different colors so that you can coordinate for each person.
If you have kids in school, I highly recommend using my printable school planner. It covers the entire school year with dated calendars, checklists, lunch planners, a project planner, and more. You can see more here.
You should also grab a copy of my free birthday party planner to add to your binder. It's the perfect resource to help you plan your children's birthday parties and stay organized throughout the process. Find it here.
Planning a family vacation? Be sure to add my family travel planner to your organization binder. With 15 total pages, it includes a budget sheet, activity planner, packing checklists, and more. Find it here.
Favorite Organizing Books
When I moved into my first house, my older sister gave me a copy of Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping Home by Cheryl Mendelson. A nearly 900 page classic, this book covers everything you could possibly know about keeping a home - organizing, cleaning, and so much more. It's a wonderful reference and a must have on every organizer's bookshelf.
I'm also a fan of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo and it's companion, Spark Joy. However, I look at these two books as inspirational reads and not necessarily practical advice, especially if you are a mom with young kids. After I read them I was excited to work on decluttering my house but the whole system just didn't work for me. If you're looking to get motivated to declutter then they are the books for you, but if you want practical advice, Home Comforts is the way to go.
Favorite Organizing Products
These are some of the things I love to use to organize my house!