Sometimes I am asked where I learned to be a professional home organizer.
While I did take an online course and did a lot of research, most organizers will tell you there is no formal training. It is a career that starts with a natural ability, a passion for helping others, and builds on your experience. Much of my experience began in my own home.
My oldest four children were born in a little over 4 1/2 years. I had a 4 year old, a 3 year old, a two year old and a newborn. We lived in a 1200 square foot, nearly 100 year old home. The only reason we had a coat closet and a linen closet is because we built them. They were small, but better than nothing! Being minimalist at that point wasn’t a conscious choice, it was because we had no space to keep excess.
But I still struggled to keep the house tidy. I still had to devote way too much time just to maintain it. Which makes sense! Four young children, lots of toys and books, lots of small clothes in the never ending laundry pile. I definitely could have used even more minimalism back then!
As the four kids got older, keeping the house tidy got a bit easier. There were less toys as the kids outgrew them and spent more time on their Nintendo Game Cube. They were busier with school, sports and activities. They became old enough to start helping with laundry and chores. Staying organized was just as important, even if the items being organized had changed. And since I was a single mother then, having organization and systems for dealing with all the things was completely on me.
It was around this time that I began reading more blogs and books about decluttering and organization.
I was an early follower of Allie Casazza, the Marie Kondo book “The life-changing magic of tidying up” had been released. And we had some life-changing things coming up: I had remarried to my amazing husband, Joe, and we were expecting twins.
Needless to say, a family of 8 would not have fit into a 1200 square foot house. So while preparing our house for sale (while pregnant and working full time), I discovered that less was truly more. When decluttering our house to stage it for sale, I saw how peaceful those cleared, clutter-free surfaces made me feel.
And it was so easy to reset each room to make it ready for real estate showings! In just minutes, the house was completely tidied. No more hours spent getting the house cleaned up. Every item had a clear home. I was also forced to go through our storage areas: the garage, attic and basement. Everything needed to be gone through and sorted into “keep active”, “keep in storage”, “donate” and “trash”.
Fast forward nearly ten years, and while the older kids are. no longer home full time, the concept remains the same. We are a busy family, like many others, and we have all the things we want to do, and all the things we have to do. What we don’t have is a lot of time for is searching for lost items, hectic mornings, or spending weekends dealing with all the things in our home.
Minimizing and organizing isn’t one size fits all.
Determining what systems work best for your family and how much your home can contain without being overwhelming will be different for everyone. Here are some things that worked for us:
Assigned Laundry days:
Older kids were assigned a laundry day every week (based on their extracurricular schedules). The laundry room was theirs that day for clothing and bedding, everything had to be out by end of day. I had days I would do the laundry for myself or the twins, and the kids were free to swap days as needed. This also created opportunities for the kids to communicate and help each other.
Chore Chart:
The three girls were assigned two “Dish Days” per week, while my son had one dish day and trash day. Since I ran the dishwasher at night and usually didn’t have time to unload it before work in the mornings, the kids needed to unload it and load it before I came home to make dinner. WiFi was turned off for everyone if it wasn’t done, so it was a self-regulating system!
A few times I came home early and heard the sounds of dishes and silverware being hastily put in the cabinets, so they knew we were serious! Luckily, we only had to turn off the wifi twice.
Drop Zones:
Having a designated area where each child”s items are located ensures that the kids knew where they should look for what they needed. Backpacks, sports bags, library books, and anything else they needed access to on a regular basis has a specific spot in our home, and kids are expected to return items to that area.
Regular clean outs, include the kids!
In our 1200 square foot home, three girls shared one bedroom. It could get very cluttered, very quickly! Each weekend we would have to tidy up, editing out what wasn’t needed. Please don’t think it was without some yelling and tears (both by me), as my kids *shockingly* did not want to spend their Saturday cleaning up their rooms.
I wish I had more fully embraced minimizing sooner and saved us all a lot of stress. But I am delighted to say that my kids that are in their 20’s now have grown up to be tidy and organized adults! And the twins regularly help me go through their clothing and toys to make donation bags.
Daily and Weekly Resets:
Daily resets are simply returning each room to its baseline of tidiness. This is especially important in common living spaces, like the kitchen, which needs to be a functional workspace. Each family member needs to clear their belongings from living spaces each day. That might mean they are moved to their room but not necessarily put away. Weekly resets can be simple or. more involved, like grocery shopping, getting clothes ready for the coming week, cleaning out the car, etc. When our house was staged to sell, tidying each room took only minutes. Keeping that up in every room isn’t realistic for us now. I do keep common living spaces clutter free for easy resets. The playroom, not so much!
It takes time and energy to maintain our homes and everything in it.
That is unavoidable. Even the items shoved into closets and attics to deal with later, will eventually need your attention. What you can decide is how much of your time you want to spend on maintenance. Adjust the amount of things you own accordingly. Pay attention to how your home makes you feel. If the answer is overwhelmed or stressed, then there is a good chance you have more stuff than you can keep up with.
Not sure where to begin your decluttering project? This blog post is here to help, or sign up to receive my ebook “From Chaos to Calm: 5 Steps to Blissful Living”