Need help with the basics

[urbanmommy]

I'd like some ideas to keep my house in shape between bi-weekly cleaning lady visits. My main issues are laundry and clutter. I have other stuff that needs to be addressed but if I could get these under control that would be huge.

How often and when do you do laundry so that it doesn't pile up? Do you fold and put it away right away?

Do you have a good system for keeping surfaces free of clutter? What about all the cr*p my kids bring home from school?

Would love some ideas because I'm feeling overwhelmed.

[ArizonaGirl]

I have 2 LO and I do a load of laundry roughly every other day, when I do it I fold it and put it away because if I don't I get behind and then it just gets in the way (we only have 1400 sq ft).

I just do a daily or every other day sweep of the places that tend to collect clutter, as far as the crap that comes home from school and the kids I tend to throw away most of it. :bag

I wait until Daddy has seen it and then it gets tossed because again we just don't have the space.

We still do have some clutter and we try, but we don't have any sort of cleaning assistance so if I don't stay on top of it, it will snowball in a hurry.

HTH

[legaleagle]

I do laundry at least a couple times a week but I'm terrible at sorting and putting away. I "solved" that problem by getting a bunch more stacking laundry baskets. At least this way I can make sure laundry is promptly moving through washer and dryer and when I do sort everyone gets their own basket.

[mikala]

For laundry I put it on my bed for folding so I have to do it before we go to sleep. I put the kids stuff in a basket in the hall so we have to put it away in the morning or keep tripping over the basket.

I'm still working on clutter and the best I've come up with is to give the things we really need and use good storage. I keep a canvas pocket shoe holder over the garage to hold seasonal gear like hats/mittens in winter, sunglasses/sunhats/sunscreen/bug spray in the summer. The kids have hooks for their coats and bags. I have a hanging file for school forms and things that need action.

[essnce629]

I do laundry at least a couple times a week but I'm terrible at sorting and putting away. I "solved" that problem by getting a bunch more stacking laundry baskets. At least this way I can make sure laundry is promptly moving through washer and dryer and when I do sort everyone gets their own basket.

I do this too. I have a shelving unit in my laundry room that holds 3 large laundry baskets-- one for me, one for DS1, and one for DS2 (DH does his own laundry). I also have a triple laundry sorter (colors, whites, sheets/towels/napkins) and a large hanging rod with tons of hangers in my laundry room. All the folded clothes (pajamas, shorts, pants, socks, undies) go in the individual baskets and everything else (shirts, hoodies, cardigans, dresses) is hung up on the hangers immediately after they finish drying so they don't wrinkle. DS1's clothes always get folded and then it's his job to take his basket and put everything in his closet, but DS2 and I usually live out of our baskets! I do manage to put the hanging stuff away though since that's easy.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Clutter, I'm no help.
Laundry- we have a laundry chute and it's great. It can pile up in there and it's out of sight. :) clean laundry cones out of the drier and gets sorted and folded ASAP. I refuse to put people's laundry away. It's up to them to take it and put it away. It really helps! We do terribly if we are "living out of baskets". I used to fold in front of the drier and put it in the basket un- sorted, with every intention of sorting and putting it away. Often it stayed in the basket getting rumpled and dug through.

[123LuckyMom]

I have a basket inside a kitchen cabinet which is where I put random papers I need to take up to my office and sort through. I have one that's only for bills and important stuff, and that one I take up to my office each night and bring down again each morning. The other one has school stuff, catalogs and magazines I want to look at, and any other papers that aren't time-sensitive but need to go upstairs. It probably goes up a couple of times a week, or once a week. Sometimes it lingers for a while, but the jumble of papers is tidy and out of sight. I sort mail and school stuff right into those baskets, the paper recycling, and DH's basket.

With laundry, I have a rolling laundry cart with a hanging bar. I take things out of the dryer and fold and hang everything right then onto the cart. Undies get dumped in a pile. I'm the only one who folds my undies. Everyone else has a box in a drawer where they just pile them. I pair DD's socks. Otherwise the socks are in a pile. I try to hang most of our clothes, because I find it easier and less wrinkly. The only folding things are jeans, undershirts, and the like. It's not hard or careful folding.

I do tend to leave loads in the dryer for a while sometimes, but when a new load goes into the washer, the load in the dryer has to come out and get put away. If I'm really pressed for time, I might not get the laundry off the cart, but it's contained there, and the cart lives in the laundry room.

The kids both put their own laundry away. We do it at bed time. I roll the cart into their rooms, and they transfer everything into their drawers and closets. It takes 5 minutes, because almost everything is on hangers or already folded. The only laundry that stays in that cart for more than a day is mine!!! I'm really bad about taking the cart into MY room and putting it away. I'm doing it tonight because I have to. I have a load of kid stuff coming out of the dryer tonight, so I have to clear the cart. That's another thing that helps. In my old house the laundry room was on the main floor, not the bedroom floor, and I used to have a bunch of baskets. I'd fold the clothes and fill the baskets, but then they'd sit FOREVER. I'd never put the clothes away. Having the one cart forces me to put stuff away.

This is my cart:
http://www.cleanersupply.com/products/product.cfm/pid/5172/Laundry-Cart-w-Double-Pole-2-1-2-Bushel/

It's worth every penny! It's one of my very favorite things!!!

[rlu]

The papers that come into the house (mail and DS) get sorted into shred, recycle and keep daily. The shredder is in the living room (we shove it behind the recliner for visitors) and the recycle bag is next to the garbage can in the kitchen, both of which DS empties when necessary. The keep is the problem of course. We try to go over DS's schoolwork with him and then it goes into a scrapbook box (often on sale at Michaels). When it gets full and at the end of the school year I'll go through the box and put a greatly reduced number of items that I want to keep (why? who knows, I have a problem here) into another scrapbook box to keep. These boxes live on my bedroom dresser. this is not a perfect solution but it makes me feel like I have control over it and it's out of the way.

DH would say my laundry sorting is out of control as I have 8 sorting categories. I usually have a load going each day. We have a bar with hangers over our utility sink next to the washer, so any cold wash that needs to hang dry gets onto a hanger and goes into the bathroom to hang. Loads out of the dryer go into the living room where I sort on the couch back. With a curious and thieving puppy, the sorted clothes go onto the appropriate person's bed for them to put away. I used to leave the sorted piles on the couch so they would be put away before the tv went on.

[baymom]

Well, some weeks are better than others at my house, so I'm definitely no expert. In terms of laundry, I do several loads of clothes over the weekend. DH and I often fold together while watching a TV show, or the kids will sometimes fold clothes as well. We try to do it that everyone puts their own clothes away, but in all honesty, it's often me doing that. As for loads of sheets or towels, those usually happen during the week. This is because if they end up sitting in the dryer and wrinkling, I don't mind it like I would if it were shirts or something. (not that that doesn't happen, too!) My biggest problem has been to relax about things. I like underwear and shirts and socks and pants and everything to be folded JUST SO but I've learned to be grateful for the help and it's not the end of the world if something is folded 'wrong'.

As for clutter, we try to do a quick clean each night before going to bed. It helps if every single thing in your house actually has a "home" and everyone knows where that home is. During the day, I will put things that need to go upstairs on the stairs so I can take a bunch of stuff up at once, instead of making a lot of trips. In our house, the kitchen counter tends to get over run and so if I don't have a lot of time, I just focus on tidying that ONE place and it makes the entire space look better. One strategy that helps me is to set a timer for 10 minutes and promise myself that I only need to tidy for 10 minutes and then I can stop. You'd be surprised at how much you can do in a short amount of time, plus then you don't feel overwhelmed with all the potential things you could tidy. However, the single biggest thing that helps us to tidy is that we have a cleaner who comes every other week and we HAVE to tidy for him. Sometimes without a hard deadline like that, it can be difficult to get motivated. That's one reason I like inviting people over--it forces me to clean! But, when my kids were younger, the biggest thing that helped was to just give myself permission to have a home that wasn't tidy all the time. :tongue5: