Shoes and books...aaaggghhh

Try to have a place for all shoes to go.
My girlfriend makes all dinners for the week on Sunday and freezes them.
My other friend, makes a menu for the week, buys the groceries on Sundays so she knows ahead of time what she is making and has the food on hand to do so.
All shoes by the door. Do you have a place set aside for shoes to go?
My house is by no means super clean but I am a SAHM w/a baby and an older stepchild and don't get much help. So I don't beat myself up about it.
I make easy meals, slow cooker meals, meals that go a long way etc.

We have a shoe bucket right by the front door so when company comes over all i have to do is put the bucket elsewhere. My hubby has a basket right by the door to place his keys, wallet, ipod etc so he can put it all down before getting tackled by the dog/kid. Possibly keeping these things near th front door so they can walk in put it down/take off and move on to relaxing.

One thing that helps us is we have a little wooden shoe rack next to the door coming in and the door in the garage and we all take our shoes off right when we get home and leave them there. We dont have much trouble finding shoes that way.

One thing I do to help with laundry is one load a day, I start it in the washer when I leave for work and put it in the dryer when I get home.

Take a moment to check out www.flylady.net. My best friend introduced me to this wonderful "home maintenance & organization" site two summers ago and it's revolutionized my family's life. It may sound goofy at first, but I swear to you, it's one of the best things I've tried out (and no, I haven't spent a single cent).

My husband and I both work multiple jobs each (he has 3 and I have 2) and it's been amazing. Our home isn't perfect but for the first time in our married lives (almost 20 years), we're not afraid to have people come over.

Good luck!

Sigh... my house was MUCH cleaner when I was working (because no one was home messing it up... if I could get it clean to start with... it just stayed that way).

Here are some ADHD tricks for cleaning:

(Hitherto called the "laundry Situation" in my home)
- Laundry hampers for everyone + 1 for drycleaning + 1 for towels. Clothes are only allowed in 3 places: in the hamper, on your body, or put away. If you only do one load a day, it's easy to keep that up. ALSO make everyone responsible for their own laundry, instead of 1 person doing everyone's. Any clothes found on the floor get tossed in the hamper. If my adhd 4yo could be responsible for his own laundry, so can husbands and older children. You'll need to help your 3yo, but the 6 & 8yo can durn well be upending their hamper, adding soap, cycling into the dryer, and lugging their clean laundry back to their room to put away. (I do NOT bother to sep out children's colors... literally just upend the hamper over the machine for the bigger kids or a game of "toss 'em in" for wee ones). We bought the kind of hamper that is "tote-like" (lightweight with handles) so it does double duty for kiddo (& his cousins when they're with us) to carry it from their room... to the LR... and back up. Best $10 each I ever spent.

- Cubby system at the entryway for shoes. Everyone's shoes go in THERE the moment they walk in. I actually built a nice looking wooden one with an upper cubbies for hanging jackets/backpacks etc (similar to this but MUCH cheaper ... http://www.potterybarn.com/products/brady-5-piece-entrywa... ... the top and bottom of mine are identical, aka instead of doors, just open cubbies so shoes get tossed in... cost me about $150 in wood and $30 in stain) but prior to that I just used a box cubby thing from IKEA.

- Books everywhere. I have a basket in every room. "Schtuff" gets tossed in the basket when it's found in the room, and once a week we go through them and put it all away and start over. Books, toys, music things, you name it... if it's not put away / gets found on the floor / table/ hanging from furniture/ on the stairs/ kitchen counter/ you name it: it gets tossed into the basket (about 1' x 2' x 1').

These are all adhd tricks... because "schtuff" has to have a home, and it has to be *easy*. If there are 10 things on the floor and I can just put them in the basket, it gets done. 30 seconds, voila. If I have to take them all and put them where they belong... even though it would only take 5 minutes... it doesn't happen. By breaking things into manageable chunks, that to boot, make things LOOK clean... they actually happen.

do check out flylady. I'm gonna start that soon but what has helped most since my daughter was born is to do something now not later. I read in one of the free magazines you get after you have a baby that if something takes less than 2min then do it now. Don't walk past that thing that needs to be put away a hundred times before you do something about it. Grab it now and go out of your way to put it away so it isn't in the back of your mind to get it done and you can focus on what is really important.

I think cleaning house is like dieting, crash cleanings don't work in the long run. It has to be a lifestyle change.

I agree with the other people who have suggested FlyLady. She is wonderful, has many great ideas and products {love love LOVE the water bottle}, and is always a positive voice in an often negative world. Even if you don't follow her system to the letter, there is so much useful advice there that you're sure to find SOMETHING to help you.

Also, when I was a kid, my mother insisted that everyone rinse off their plate and place it in the dishwasher, immediately after eating. I don't think I've EVER seen a pile of dishes in my parents' house. I don't do as good about it, but when I do, it makes a difference. With the shoes and books, I have started with a "put away" bin. Anything I find that is out of place, no matter what or whose it is, it goes in that bin. At the end of the day, everyone must claim their things from the bin...or risk having it go to Goodwill.

The kids ned to help out more. Shoes should not be left out, I agree that shoes should be placed in each person's room. Get a big laundry basket and label it the "SATURDAY BASKET". Warn each person that anything left out by them- in a place it should not be- will be placed into it-without exception. The reason it is called the Saturday basket is because you can only get your stuff back ON SATURDAY. Period. No arguments. It just is. I locked the basket in my closet during the week. At first there was a lot of stuff out. But losing your IPOD, laptop, your favorite toy or sweater for a few days or even a week is a great teacher. My daughter had to wear her play coat (warm and clean, just older) to school for 3 days because she left her coat out. That happened just once. I went back to school for 2 more degrees and worked full time. My house looked like a tornado hit it before the Saturday box and then it looked like just a mild passing storm hit it. heh heh. Don't worry about it now. Spend time with your kids (my biggest regret was I spent time cleaning) and with your husband. Take time for yourself and use your crockpot. Any of the websites that have tons of recipes on them such as allrecipes.com and recipezaar.com and places like the food network all have lots of slow cooker recipes. Good luck and God bless.

Well, for the shoes, you could get a shoe rack that's kept by the door. As soon as people come in the house, their shoes automatically go in/on the rack. For laundry--we have an actual laundry room. Every morning, our kids rotate bringing the dirty laundry to the room where I sort. If I see that the pile is rather large, I will wash a load or 2. However, I normally allow all laundry to wait until Sat or Sun. Sunday is usually my "prep" day. If I make spaghetti, I will make enough sauce to make lasagna a day through the week. If I make chicken or another meat, I will make enough to use for another meal. This is honestly a learned habit. It's not that easy when you're not used to doing it. Throughout the week, I will pick one room a day to dust/run the sweeper and do whatever is necessary. I've also found that just by waking up 1/2 hr sooner than I had before, that I can actually add an extra 3 1/2 hrs to my week. How cool is that?

We do not wear shoes in the house, so they are always by the front door. Laundry is brought to the basement at least once a week by the children themselves, I have designated hampers in each bedroom and one in the hall outside the bathroom for towels (also one on the landing to the basement for the kitchen towels and errant clothing).
Books also have designated places and with enough reminding, everyone has learned not to place them elsewhere.
Meals are always planned ahead of time, and put on a calendar, shopping is done accordingly. We eat the same few things for breakfast every day, and lunches are packed the night before, usually made from leftovers from dinner.
Even when I stayed at home my house wasn't perfectly clean, not with four children. To expect it to be so is only asking for unnecessary stress. Relax, do the best you can, and make sure everyone is included for a once-weekly "declutter".

I do not have a perfectly clean house and I do not try for that but I do try for neat. I came up with something a while back for shoes that works well and several of the moms who come over have adopted it also.

I have shoe baskets. One for each child and one for guests. They are actually square multi-colored cloth bins - but we call them baskets. They are at the front door and the kids put all their shoes in them. We still have an occaisonal pair left somewhere but all I do is tell them "shoebasket" and they put them in. It has helped tremendously.

We usually take a shoes off when we come in the door. For a long time, I just had a laundry basket that we threw them in, now I have a shoe rack. I've also know people who have cubbies, I just down have the room. We also have hooks near the backdoor for backpacks, reusable grocery bags, and umbrellas, to help with organization.

In our house Saturday in laundry day (ocassionally I'll do a load or two during the week). Everyone has a hamper in their room and on Friday afternoon/evening it gets taken downstairs, now that the girls our older they are expected to sort it. I do most of it, but everyone puts away their own items and the kids sort the socks. Okay, this seems obvious, but I just recently started doing it. I hang the laundry outside to dry. I was hanging it on the line, then taking it down and putting many items on hangers to go into the closet. Now I just put the wet clothes on a hanger and hang on the line - it saves a step.

For weekly meals, we do some prep on the weekends, like cutting up veggies, making a salad, etc. We also overcook, so there's leftovers, which can easily be heated up. Ocassionally I'll make a large pot of soup, a pulled pork, or a turkey and freeze it into meal sized portions.

We used to have sit down "semi-formal" meals almost every night. Where the table was set and food was in serving bowls etc. We spent a lot of time, putting things in bowls, taking them to the table, clearing the table, etc. Now I often leave food on the counter or stove top and we make our dishes and take them to the table. The focus is on spending our time together eating and talking, not spending time serving and cleaning. Works great for those nights when time is short due to meeting, classes, practices, etc.

Once I had kids, I said good-bye to a clean house. Focus on the area that need the most attention - dirty dishes, bathroom, etc.and keeping things tidy.

We have a table in the family room that is a catch all - books, mail, shcool papers, under it is a paper recycle basket. This helps to keep all clutter in one area. At least when we're trying to find something, we know where to start first.

R.,

I personally like to wear my shoes in the house but my kids always take off their shoes. So shoes can become a big problem, quickly. My boys wear men's size (11 & 13) so the shoes are huge. Shoe organizers that hold big shoes take up too much room for my small house. So I tell the boys, as soon as the shoes come off, to take their shoes to their bedrooms. There should be no shoes in the common areas of our house.

I've gone back to school and it seems that there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done. I don't make a detail meal plan but I usually have easy foods in the house. We'll typically have a couple pasta meals and a couple crockpot meals a week. Crockpot should be your friend, as well as, grocery store rotisserie chicken. Fridays are pizza day at our house.

I don't have classes on Fridays so that is my catch up day. I do a lot of laundry, run errands, and wipe the house down. After all that work, I really don't want to cook or clean up a meal so, I, too, endorse Pizza Friday. My boys are responsible for keeping up their rooms. The rooms aren't to my standards but they are trying to be helpful.

The reality for us is that my house will only be perfectly clean if my family is not home. But it can be clean enough for company most of the time.

Good luck.
~K.

you have kids a clean house dont happen its a pipe dream. are the kids old enough to make them help make you a shoe bin and all kids put their shoes in their own bin. if they dont they go bare foot for a day the point will get there. but age also has an effect on this. cant do this with a 1 yr old 2 is questionable depends on the kid. books can go in a basket or tub or dissapear till the point gets across if they are old enough. make one book at a time dissapear and when they say I have no books say why would that be? the will figure it out. if they are old enough. if they are to young for this give a sticker for picking up their own books and a reward at the end of the week. ice cream or whatever. and I work with kids and am crock pot addicted. I cook every other night. I fix dinner and get dinner ready for the next day put in fridge and hit the crock pot in the morning and cook while I am at work. heat and eat like lasagna or pizza works too.

I used to work 7 day 12 hr days for years and this is how I did it. alot of frozen food to heat and eat and paper plates cups and silverware. if you can master a perfectly clean house let me know how. :)

Be sure to engage your children. It seems time consuming to teach them to help with tidying up but in the end, it really saves you time. My kids learned how to sort their laundry when they were young. Whenever I was about to do laundry, I would tell them to bring down their laundry (they each had a basket in their room). They would come down and put the clothes in the appropriate hanging bin. (I bought two of those hanging laundry sorters from Target.) I hang almost all clothes since I hate to fold (it just wouldn't get done). From the dryer, they go on a hanger. My hangers are on a tension rod above my dryer. My husband helps put the clothes in the appropriate bedrooms when he sees a lot hanging in the doorways. When the kids were sitting down in front of the TV, I would just dump a basket of clean socks and they sorted them. Easy to do while watching TV. They may not have always gotten the socks right, but it was mostly right.

If you don't have closet space to hang your kids' clothes, then have a cubby and basket that all of their clothes go in when folded that you can keep in near the laundry area. Then your kids can retrieve their basket of clean clothes as they get full. The sooner you include them in helping out, the sooner it will be a habit. You may have to remind them all over again when they become teenagers (the brains sometimes fall apart - ha ha), but have them tell you what works for them when they get that age. Then you can put it back on them if it doesn't work.

Shoes go in bins or boxes. Most kids are better at tossing in a bin then placing them neatly on a shelf.

Books are also easier to stack in a bin or basket then put on a shelf. Constant reminders for where to put shoes, books, toys, etc. will get them organized. They might even have suggestions for you which will give them some ownership of keeping their things put away. (They surely have seen good ideas from school that they like.) Just remember to praise, praise, praise when they get their things in the right place. It is more fun to praise than nag anyway. Reward if necessary with privileges.

Each having their own cubby, bin, hook, etc. will help keep their school and personal things separate from siblings.

Use your crock pot for cooking as much as possible. Go online and put the main ingredients and "crock pot" and you will find many recipes. If you don't have one, go to a thrift store. They seem to have them all the time. For example, you can put a roast, sprinkle with Lipton onion soup mix and a little water and red potatoes (you don't have to peel them), some bagged carrots and "voila" - easy meal. The leftover meat can have BBQ sauce added for BBQ beef sandwiches the next day - if you have leftovers. Or just shred the meat and add some BBQ sauce when you get home to a roast (that has been in the crock pot all day with a little water and seasoning) and let it heat through to make sandwiches.

Dump soups are great. A large jar of salsa, 4 times the water, ground beef or cut up chicken (you can buy in a bag already cooked), bag or two of frozen corn and you have easy chicken tortilla soup. Toss tortilla chips and cheese on top when serving. Some soups are better simmering all day in the crock pot, others are just fine heated up for 15 min.

Even canned soup and some canned biscuits or croissants are easy. You can also buy frozen rolls, let them sit out all day and rise, then pop in the oven. Kids seem to love warm rolls of any kind no matter what you are serving them with.

Double cook when you do decide to make something so you can freeze some in a pan with foil for another day or place in ziploc freezer bags.

For cleaning, get those cleaning wipes and hand them to your kids. They have different kinds for different cleaning purposes. Have them learn now to wipe down the toilet, the counters, the living room furniture, etc. Put the chores in a basket and have the kids pull out what their next job is: wipe the entry floor, wipe the windows in the ___ room, wipe the bathroom mirror, etc. Don't criticize if they have done their best. Who cares if there are streaks? Just teach them to get the main dirt off. Mini vacs are great for kids.

Sorry I got so wordy...

we keep container for things. It is still a bit more cluttered but at least the items are more contained in one spot. I got cute open boxes/baskets from Tjmax (they have a good selection of unique ones to match your decor) for the living room, daughter room, and our bedroom for books. We also put a few toys in sometimes for a quick cleanup. Keeping books stacked on a shelf is way too much, we have tons of books. We keep a laundry basket in the bottom of the closet which is close to the door we usually use. Though we still tend to have one pair that stays out pretty often.

I totally understand the dishes. I have such an aversion to them. I would truely rather deep clean my entire house than do dishes, and many times that has happened and I just keep them stacked and rinsed as the pile got higher lol.
We eventually got a portable dishwasher which helped some. However to keep them from getting so bad that they became too overwhelming we packed away a lot of them.

Don't be too hard on yourself, I don't know many people that keep a perfect house. Maybe eliminate some of the unecessary clutter and replace with functional things that allow you to easily organize or put away with out much hassle or effort.

I am currently attending school with an almost 3 year old an a husband who works full time. My house is not perfectly clean, nor do I strive (too hard) for it to be clean. I get it picked up when I am going to have guests over (ones that don't understand how hard it is to juggle school and housekeeping). Even then when I need to get my house cleaned up I rely on the help of close friends to get it done. As for meals during the week, we tend to make easy meals.

How about shoes at the front (or whichever) DOOR. Everybody's shoes.
How about making very large meals on the weekend
and freezing in individual (or 2-3) portions for defrosting.
I have a few more ideas but think I should read the other answers first.
Good luck.
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FLYLADY is WONDERFUL.
All kinds of suggestions, helpful hints.

HOWEVER, do no let yourself get stuck on SHINE YOUR SINK.
People who have done that swear by it
but, if you don't want to take the time (for now, anyway)
you can still go ahead and use some/many of their other helpful ideas.

One of the nice things about all shoes left at the door
is that you don't have dirt (or germs or other yucky stuff)
tracked in from outside. The area around the front door
needs extra special cleaning regularly;
but the rest of the house is (relatively) germ-free.

Also sock-feet are good dry mops.
Depending on the age of the kids, you might want to
suggest 1-2X/week poking toes into corners to pick up dust.
Not as a chore but as a fun activity.
Shake socks out over trash can (or outside) before putting into laundry.

BOOKS -- If they are LIBRARY books,
they need to ALWAYS (except while actually being read)
be in a very specific place/shelf, ideally near the door.
You might find it helpful to make a list or chart of due dates,
what's checked out/returned.

If they are owned by your children . . .
instead of a bookshelves in bedrooms,
how about a bookcase in the family room or hall
where ALL books go.
Kids books on lowest shelves, grown-up books on upper shelves.

This is a never ending problem and I was going to suggest many of the same tips already offered here.
I have finally realized that the stuff is taking over. Things sit out on the counter because cabinets are full. The cabinets are full because there are things that are "stored" there- haven't been moved or touched since we moved in ten years ago. Some of it is treasured but not needed- grandmother's wine glasses-I have my own that I like better. I am still working on what to do about those. But the rest-OUT!
I have had to hire a cleaning person to come every other week to keep up with the house while I work on my goal of making my house look like it is ready to sell. If you have ever sold a house, you know the joy of everything being put away and clean ALL the time. I am going through every drawer, cabinet, closet, shelf and really looking at what is in there. I suspect this is something that should be done more regularly than every ten years!!
So...maybe not a total solution for you, but if you can clean out a few cabinets and drawers so at least there is a PLACE for everything-you might be able to keep up better.
Otherwise-BASKETS for CONTROL!!!
GOOD LUCK!!!