Home Organization: My Motivation

Being organized is hard with kids.  It’s really hard.  Okay let’s be honest.  It’s really really hard.  Kids get to live in the moment.  They don’t have to plan for the next hour or really take any responsibility in getting themselves out of the house.  They just get to be.  And sometimes that interferes with their adult’s ability to do.

I was just about to write that I’ve been struggling with organization lately, but that’s not exactly true because I have struggled for a very long time with organization.  Somewhere deep in my neurotic brain lies the belief that there is a best or perfect or one true right way to do things and to organize things.  I remember trying to describe it years ago by saying that it was like there is a cosmic order to the universe, and if my stuff isn’t organized according to the very best principles of that guiding order, then I am just wrong.

Have you guessed that such a mindset caused me stress?

There are a couple of things that I know about myself in regards to organization.

1.  I get a rush off of having everything organized very well.  I take pride in it.  The more over the top the organization is, the happier I am, and the prouder I am of it.

2.  I tend to second guess every organizing decision I make, thinking there must be a better way that the very best people in the world know about, and I will always be relegated to second best because I don’t know these secrets.

3.  All the stress of trying to organize perfectly makes me shut down and I let things get really out of control messy while I beat myself up over not having found the secrets to the organizing universe.

4.  Nothing makes me feel more at peace, in control, comfortable, and at home than an organized space.

Most of that list probably makes me sound a little bit loony, but I vowed to be honest in this blog space of mine, and if I’m not sounding at least a little bit loony, then I’m probably not being very honest.

But it’s number four that is motivating me to make a change.

I do my very best to take care of my family.  I want my girls to feel young and free and inspired.  I want them to use their toys and be creative with them, and that usually requires a lot of mess.  And I am actually okay with that.  I have no problem with kids running around my house living life out loud.  And I want my husband to feel at home.  I don’t want him to have to worry about accidentally leaving something out.  I want him to find our home a refuge at the end of the day.  I want it to nurture his spirit.

But do you notice anything that’s missing in that list?  Me.  In an effort to make everyone else comfortable, I have made myself crazy.  I end up trying to be outside of my home as much as possible because inside my home drives me mad.  And this makes it hard to feel like this house is my home.  And I don’t think that’s right.

The good thing is that their needs and my needs aren’t mutually exclusive.  We can all live happily under this roof if I’m willing to change up the ways that I do some things.

I recently came across the A Bowl Full of Lemons Blog.  In it, she has a 14 week plan to organize your whole house.  (Check it out — her house really is amazing.)  The plan doesn’t necessarily work for me because I have different priorities about what needs to get done when, but I am taking her advice and tackling one room per week.  At first, I was going to try to be more ambitious and do one room a day, but I think if I give myself an entire week for a room, I can really get it working smoothly.

And the thing is that once I do this, I can stop worrying about it because good organization maintains itself.

First up is our kitchen, and I start tomorrow.  I can’t wait until next week to share pictures with all of you!

Last week, I started working on organizing our days a bit better.  And let me tell you — it worked wonders!  I was no longer overwhelmed about facing the new day.  It no longer felt that I just had endless stretches of unstructured time.  And we followed our plan with one theme a day.  We’re going to continue it this week, but I have to change around the themes a bit because I signed us up for two story times.

So for our week this week, we have Library and Laundry Monday, Art and Library Tuesday, Water Wednesday, Play Outside Thursday, and Play Group Friday.  I’ll let you know how it goes next week!

Anyway, here are some pictures from our “Art Monday.”

We started off the day making slime.

Mae wants to know why everyone else gets to play with slime and all she gets is a silly rattle.

We then went to The Painted Penguin and painted some ceramics.  Normally we would just do this at home, but we had a Groupon that was about to expire, and Art Monday seemed like the perfect day to use it.

SO glad I didn’t have to clean this up!

Once again wondering why she didn’t get to join in the fun.

Make sure to check back in the next couple of days because there will be a giveaway!  I’ve teamed up with a couple other bloggers to give away something that I’m sure you would all love!  More details will be posted at midnight!

And if you haven’t already, check out my facebook and bloglovin pages.

And I’ll end with this picture.  Nothing I like better than a little babywearing 🙂