Hope for the Disorganized Mom Part 2

Welcome to 31 Days of Hope for Moms! To see all the posts in the series, click here!

I’m writing to you today, a day later than this post should be, from my ancient desktop in our basement. My daughter accidentally spilled a cup of water on my laptop and it no longer works, which set me back a bit. But here we are!

In part one of Hope for the Disorganized Mom, we addressed three roadblocks that are keeping you from having a more organized, cleaner home.

Today, I’m going to share with you five basic and simple tasks you can complete that will help you finally clear those three hurdles that hold you back from organizing your home and family life, plus my top absolute favorite resources that will get you on your journey to a more peaceful home.

If you feel like overwhelmed, let me encourage you! Depending on your season of life, your organization needs will be ever changing! What works for one year might not work in the next but hopefully you are able to start simple and build on it so that your home {and my home} can be a more peaceful, clean and organized place for our families.

Let’s take a look at these tips.

Practical Help

Here are five tasks you can complete to help you come to grips with what you may need or even want to do to help regain order in your home and your mind.

1. Purpose to start your days with prayer and devotions. It can start with just five minutes of getting up before the rest of your family. Family devotions can be done at night, but I would highly encourage you to spend a few minutes of personal time with the Lord. It WILL make your day better and help it flow well and with less stress, I promise! Use this simple daily planner sheet for your prayer time reflections.

2. Identify your triggers or “stress areas”. What area of your home makes you the most annoyed if it’s not clean? For me, it’s the kitchen. I feel defeated if I don’t get the dishes done or the floors swept and wake up to a mess. Maybe you hate it when the beds go unmade. Whatever it is, figure it out and hold that thought.

3. Take some time to mentally process what needs to be done to maintain the bare minimum cleanliness in your house. For us that’s putting away the toys in our small living room every night, washing the dishes & sweeping floors, tidying up the bathroom and making the beds in the morning.

4. Now, take some more time to mentally process what needs to be done to maintain order and organization in your home. This could be having a meal plan for a week in advance, writing your family’s schedule on a paper calendar or putting it into your phone or other tasks that could make your day less stressful if you accomplished them on a regular basis.

5. Find a system that works for you to create this order and cleanliness. It could be something as simple as just writing a to-do list on a piece of paper each morning or printing out a checklist of the “five chores that need to be done each day” {see #3} for your children to see and help you with {or just as a reminder for you–I find that helps so much!!} Check out the bottom of this post for my favorite free printable planner and read “How I Finally Got Organized So I Could Enjoy my Family“.

BONUS: Declutter your home. I know this is overwhelming. Start with one cupboard, like your bathroom closet {here are my 5 steps to organizing and simplifying your bathroom closet}. It might take a full day, but when you are done with that ONE place, it will give you motivation to tackle other areas. Be vicious. {You may also like Why You Can’t Keep Your House Clean No Matter How Hard You Try}

Remember that less stuff means more time and more energy to complete your daily tasks and enjoy your family because you won’t be having to organize or put away a bunch of extra “junk”.

“But how do I get this done? I don’t have time to think about and do these things!” I hear you. I realized I simply could not get this process started while I was at home with the kids during the day. So my husband has started giving me a day each month to just go over to his office and have a full 6 hours of peace and quiet to plan out my month for meals, schedule and some basic goals I have for our home.

It has helped immensely. If your husband cannot stay with your children, find a way to have a few hours alone to allow yourself to mentally process what is and isn’t working in your house and start coming up with some very simple goals to fix it.

The main point I want you to take away from this post is that you don’t need a complicated system, home management binder or daily three-hour cleaning session to help you go from “disorganized” to “simply organized”. Our grandmothers did not have complex systems, appliances that did all the work for them or free printable planners to help them organize their family and home :) Simple is better!

Remember, take one day at a time! Walking by grace, God can work with our impatience in wanting things clean and organized RIGHT NOW if we let him slowly transform us and take practical steps toward a more organized life and home.

Further Reading

These are the best, most simple resources I have found on cleaning and organization so far. Please share if you have other questions or suggestions!!

Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider – I LOVE this book. I found it refreshing, encouraging and most of all practical. It goes into the “why” behind simple living, which helped me really change my mindset about how much we really need and then, consequently, how to best organize the different aspects of my life and stuff.

Clutterfree with Kids by Joshua Becker – This man’s blog, Becoming Minimalist, is one that I read often. I really enjoy having a guy’s perspective on decluttering, organizing and simplifying. His book is equally as helpful and I really needed the advice in it, as we have four children who love “stuff” :) This helps you not only identify your issues with accumulating items and gives practical tips for clearing the clutter, but it helps you see how his family’s person journey to minimalism allowed them to truly begin enjoying life.

Clean Enough by Jenni Mullinix – This lovely book about cleaning and organizing is in one word: realistic. As a mom of young children, I was able to find tips and suggestions that I could actually implement without a ton of planning involved. I’m a work in progress, as I’ve mentioned before, but this book is grace-filled, which is just what all moms need. {She has some pretty printable inspirational quotes included as well!} It is free when you sign up for her blog.

One Bite at a Time, by Tsh Oxenreider – A 52 week plan to decluttering and organizing your home.

FREE Printable Daily Planner for Disorganized People from MaryEllen at Imperfect Homemaker. People, this planner was created just for me. Okay, not really, but I totally felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders when I found her planner. This is what it looks like:

Very, very simple and very effective. It is currently on my bulletin board and I love that I can make my list in different areas of “to do” on little post it notes and then just remove them when the task is complete. This has honestly been the ONLY planner that has worked for me at this time of life.

If you want “daily dockets” or planner sheets that are a bit more detailed, you can find a cute daily planner here and a daily docket that includes a prayer/devotional section here as well as 31 Days of Printable Planners for free.

I hope this has been helpful to you and that these tips will get you on the road to a cleaner and more simple home, allowing you to enjoy what really matters!

Do you have any organizing, cleaning and decluttering tips that have helped you manage your daily routine? Please share in the comments!

And finally, Happy Birthday to my sweet Lydia!! She turns ONE today and is our fourth child and such a blessing. She sure keeps me on my toes and keeps me from keeping my house clean, but we’re working on her ;)