Run down

As a stay at home mom of two boys (wow I really just wrote that.. TWO BOYS.. ahh) I have a tendency to feel very run down by the repetition of my day to day.. Wake up , feed baby, change diaper, clean bottles, cook breakfast, wake up three year old, make breakfast, chug coffee, play, fight with baby to go to sleep, gets him to sleep, brother wakes up baby.. etc and so on ALL DAY LONG and lets not even get into the whole running a household and trying to do errands and please my husband and get dinner on the table... Leaves VERY LITTLE time for just me! It has all compounded hard on me these past few months with Aiden being quite a difficult little man to soothe and Jaxon being such a go go go go go child. He is not used to being cramped at home all day and definitely not ok with being sent to play on his own while mommy focuses all of her attention on someone else.  So needless to say my stress level has been maxed out lately..

Now some may find this as odd but oh well.. it is me and I have come to simply accept my uniqueness and Thank my wonderful Creator for giving me my gifts, but when I get stressed I clean. I am usually quite OCD anyway and well even with two kids I try my hardest to keep everything running smoothly. A unorganized mess can lead me into an anxiety attack quicker than anything else in the world. So you can only imagine the state of my house after a) moving across the country WHILE pregnant and b) having a newborn who consumes every ounce of energy you have... Needless to say at any given moment I could break down at the sight of my house and the state of my "stuff" that was strewn all over. I was utterly embarrassed if anyone came over and still am at times.

So now that my little man is consistently taking better naps IN HIS CRIB (and not on me).. and my bigger little man is still napping and going to preschool, I am slowly finding the time to organize and beautify my home again, to my standards.

Now here is the thing. I have had a lot of my friends and acquaintances ask for advice on organizing from a complete wreck... well here is my advice.. ONE STEP AT A TIME.. one item at a time.. one room, one shelf etc..

Here is my strategy when going through my home right now..

1) Access your stuff and your home..
         Go through each room and establish your purpose for that room and try to envision the room how you want it with what you want in it.

2) Start sorting your piles..
            Here is where it gets tricky for me... Pick a pile.. any pile.. go through it.. not organizing it per-say but instead throwing it in the room in which it belongs. By the end of your "piles" you will have one BIG MESS in each room..

3) pick a room any room
       Now comes the fun part... pick a room to work on... Now start to "organize" that pile. Make mental notes of any supplies you may need to help organize it better. Baskets, bins, labels etc.

4) Divy up your budget
       After figuring our supplies you will need start to prioritize them. Such as.. lets say in the kids play room.. the room that is used the MOST on a daily basis. you desperately need storage, possibly something like a big book case or shelving. Now on those shelves you may need baskets etc to make it "pretty"... but first you need the book shelf.. That would be your first purchase. Now I am NOT a person who buys ANYTHING full price. I LOVE thrift shops and I LOVE a bargain. So Try to think outside the box. Personally.. for our play room, I would have loved a huge bookcase thing from Ikea, but our budget didn't allow this.. so I settled on plastic shelving from lowes for $19.99 and it works for us for now. The key for me was to get toys up and off the floor. Oh and repurpose things.. I do it all the time.. Use an empty cereal box (painted or covered with scrapbook paper) as a way to collect coloring books etc..

5) be realistic... if you have children who are anything like my three year old.. toys are a huge problem. And picking up those toys can lead to major meltdowns, especially if they do not put them right back where you had them.. thus causing chaos.. this is where I LOVE BUCKETS.. they have these $5 plastic buckets at walmart that I loaded up on... It is much easier to get Jaxon to throw his toys in a bucket then to put them on a shelf. We make a game of it... Then while the toys may not be aesthetically displayed on a shelf, they are at least in one area off the floor!

6) Reaccess... once you have gone through and slowly purchased things to help organize (PS my favorite buys are always from Ross, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Homegoods and even the dollartree.. never ever ever buy baskets from target, pier one, Michaels etc without checking these places first)... Go back through and re-access your organization. Sometimes you will find things that just don't work. This happens to me ALL THE TIME! I will give you an example in a bit.

7).. now here is the kicker.. the #1 thing that causes people to live in chaos again... PUT STUFF AWAY... While in my senior year in high school, I was given the opportunity to live with a deacons family in my church to finish high school because my parents were moving out of the state... While living there Mrs Helen shared with me THE BEST ADVICE EVER... and I still stick to it.. it is the "touch it once rule"... When you have something that needs to be put away... touch it one time. In other words, put it back where it belongs.. By simply moving something out of your way, instead of putting it away, you are going to be using double the time, double the energy to actually put it away when the time comes.. ... I am constantly telling my husband this. Instead of throwing that in the garage.. take the extra two seconds to put it back in the toolbox where it belongs... if instead you just throw it in the garage.. then it will join the ten other things you just threw in the garage until it becomes a big chaotic mess that you have to spend all day Saturday organizing again! .. see my point?

Here is an example of this in my household.. When we first moved in the house I had an idea of how I wanted things. How I thought things would work for us as a family of four. And as usual I was wrong and we have been tweaking things ever since. See that is the thing with organization, it is a never ending process. So on one particularly stressful day, both boys were FINALLY ASLEEP and I started on my quest even though I was exhausted and should have taken a nap.. I needed to decompress (thus organize something). I wanted my computer in a more accessible area. I wanted less toys downstairs (less to clean up quickly when someone is coming over) and I wanted my arts and crafts stuff downstairs so I have it close to work on something fun with Jaxon when/if aiden is napping!... So I set to work.. made piles of stuff.. organized and jotted down what I needed..

I ran to my favorite Ross... grabbed beautiful baskets, set them up and then bam :: Arts and crafts bookshelf:: Plastic bins were from dollar tree.. total for the transformation was like maybe $50... the baskets on this shelf were $8.99 and $9.99 from Ross...

It is perfect for what I needed it.. I was able to simplify my life by organizing things into each bin!

Oh that was the other thing that helps.. SIMPLIFY! We all tend to gather things.. the ONLY positive thing I can say about moving is the ability to simplify every few years. Having to pack and unpack and reorganize definitely makes you declutter on a normal basis with the military.

I wish I had before and after shots of my recent organization marathons but I keep forgetting (I get into gotta get it done mode)...

And believe me.. it all goes to pot a lot too and I have redo it all. It happens.. TO EVERYONE.. And I am sure we all get embarrassed over how our homes look.. Lord knows if someone were to step into mine right now they would wonder what the heck people were asking me for advice for haha... (my floors are a disaster, toys everywhere, dishes all over the kitchen, bathrooms need scrubbing etc)... but I promise, once you make it a habit to organize, maybe it will be fun for you too, and help destress your life a little..